Who is really weaponizing the Eucharist?

 

From Bishop Samuel Aquila:

"Jesus counseled the disciples to enter 'through the narrow gate,' since the road that leads to destruction is broad and 'those who enter through it are many,' but the road that leads to life is narrow and 'those who find it are few' (Mt. 7:13-14).

Those of us who have followed the news in the last week or so know that the press has declared that the U.S. Bishops are planning to ban President Biden from Communion, allegedly ignoring the Vatican’s guidance. Of course, that is not true when one looks at the details of what we discussed at our June meeting and what Cardinal Ladaria said in his letter to the bishops.

The bishops were asked by Cardinal Ladaria, who heads the Vatican’s doctrine office, to build consensus about how to respond to Catholics who hold public positions and who insist on receiving Holy Communion after publicly committing grave sins. After hours of discussion, the bishops voted 168 to 55 to draft a document that addresses both this issue and the broader question of what places any person in a state of not being able to receive Communion. The document, which will be drafted and then discussed regionally in the coming months, will strive to make the Church’s teachings on the Eucharist and worthily receiving the Lord more widely known.

Despite the efforts made to clearly communicate that the document is 'not meant to be disciplinary in nature, nor is it targeted at any one individual or class of persons,' 60 Catholic lawmakers released a letter one hour after our vote justifying their support for legalized abortion and arguing that the bishops have 'weaponized the Eucharist.'

This is deflecting the blame for the situation. Instead of accepting their own responsibility to understand and follow Church teaching, these politicians are the ones who are 'weaponizing the Eucharist' by insisting that they remain in good standing despite publicly committing grave sins and continuing to receive Communion. Everyone with common sense understands that their claim of being in communion with the Church is false. One cannot say one believes something, do the complete opposite and then credibly say that they are in communion with a Church that believes what they did is evil.

To add another layer to this, many bishops – including myself – have been privately dialoguing with Catholic politicians on abortion and other issues for years, urging them to refrain from Communion if they won’t change their immoral political positions. Unfortunately, many – but not all – of these public figures have chosen political expediency over the Gospel. They value their political party and their power more than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They do not serve as a leaven of the Gospel in society, but rather build a culture of death. They cite the importance of following their consciences but fail to explain how their conscience is a properly formed conscience. Instead, they adopt a form of relativism that says, 'truth is different for every person.'

As Jesus said to the disciples, the road that leads to eternal life is narrow and those who attempt to take the wide road are headed for destruction. We see this in St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, where he warns that some people had received the Eucharist in a state of grave sin and became sick or died. “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died” (1 Cor. 11:27-30).

Drawing on St. Paul, the Church’s teaching for every Catholic about worthily receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus is that one “must be in the state of grace. Anyone aware of having sinned mortally must not receive communion without having received absolution in the sacrament of penance” (Catechism 1415)..."

In the words of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger:

"Presenting oneself to receive Holy Communion should be a conscious decision, based on a reasoned judgment regarding one’s worthiness to do so, according to the Church’s objective criteria, asking such questions as: 'Am I in full communion with the Catholic Church? Am I guilty of grave sin? Have I incurred a penalty (e.g. excommunication, interdict) that forbids me to receive Holy Communion? Have I prepared myself by fasting for at least an hour?' The practice of indiscriminately presenting oneself to receive Holy Communion, merely as a consequence of being present at Mass, is an abuse that must be corrected." 

See Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1395

Related reading here

Democrats are suddenly concerned with the welfare of children?

American Thinker makes the point that open borders are not pro-life here.

Daniel Sobieski writes: "Having ignored an earlier border deal that would have made the issue moot, Democrats have stooped to a new low by comparing the separation of children from their illegal alien parents as required by current law to the mass murder of the unborn, including the harvesting and sale of fetal body parts. That is what Charles C. Camosy, a board member of Democrats for Life, an oxymoron if there ever was one, does in the June 16 New York Times opinion section in a piece with the Orwellian title 'You Can’t Be Pro-Life And Against Immigrant Children'."

Nobody should be surprised at this blatant hypocrisy.  After all, the Democratic Party is the party of the Ku Klux Klan - see here as well as the party which supports the genocide of the unborn and attacks against religious freedom - see here.

A Democrat pretending to be concerned about the welfare of children is about as credible as Ted Kennedy giving a lecture on the virtue of chastity.

Here again, we are confronted with bovine Scatology.

Intelligent people of good will are able to discern bovine scatology..

Remember when Francis chided President Donald Trump for wanting to build a border wall?  He referred to the President as "Non-Christiano."

Why was he silent about this?


Is Francis really interested in the Gospel of Life and Gospel values or is he merely a liberal partisan looking to prop up a political party which has become a tool of the Devil?

 As Dr. David Carlin has said, "..when clerical leadership is weak or foolish, we can't be surprised when the quality of lay Catholicism sinks." (Can a Catholic Be a Democrat? How the Party I Loved Became the Enemy of My Religion," p. 106).

Pope Benedict XVI once said that while, "everyone has the right to leave home to seek better conditions of life in another country...At the same time, states have the right to regulate migration flows and to defend their own frontiers, always guaranteeing the respect due to the dignity of each and every human person."

Pope Benedict XVI also said that immigrants have the duty to integrate into their host countries and respect their laws and national identities.

The challenge, as the Holy Father noted, is to "combine the welcome due to every human being, especially when in need, with a reckoning of what is necessary for both the local inhabitants and the new arrivals to live a dignified and peaceful life”.  See here.

Why is it that President Trump is demonized as a "bigot" and "non-Christian" for defending the United States frontier when President Obama was given a free pass to do the same?

Clerics such as Francis and Cardinal Dolan (see here) need to provide us with an answer.

In the meantime, intelligent people of good will can see through the bovine scatology.

This is racism? Democrats need to stop lying...

A call to stop the politics of personal destruction here.

Selective outrage and hypocrisy from the Democrats and the liberal msm

The Washington Examiner is reporting that President Trump denies using vulgar language attributed to him.  See here.

Rolling Stone Magazine has listed examples of vulgarity employed by a host of presidents, vice-presidents and presidential candidates:

Abraham Lincoln: "There is nothing to make an Englishman shit quicker than the sight of General George Washington."

Barack Obama: “Obama really drew the ire of the pious, calling opponent Mitt Romney a ‘bullshitter.’ Sometimes the dirty word is the most precise.”

Joe Biden: "This is a big f**king deal."

Dick Cheney: “Cheney reportedly told Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy to ‘go f**k [himself]’”

George W. Bush: “Commented on the presence of New York Times reporter Adam Clymer. Believing he had an audience of one, Bush called Clymer a ‘major-league asshole.’”

Barack Obama: "I don't think I should take any sh*t from anybody on that, do you?"

Richard Nixon: “The Watergate tapes put the phrase ‘expletive deleted’ on the map.”

Lyndon Johnson: "I do know the difference between chicken sh*t and chicken salad,"

John F. Kennedy: "This is obviously a f**k-up."

Harry Truman: “In Truman's eyes, General Douglas MacArthur was a "dumb son of a bitch," and Nixon was ‘a shifty-eyed goddamned liar.’”

So why is  President Trump being singled out for describing certain governments (not the people) as "shit-holes"?

I think we all know.

And while the liberal "mainstream media" are busying themselves with bashing the President over his language, their outrage is most selective.  Where is the concern over well-documented comments made by Nancy Pelosi?  See here.

Or what about President Obama's disparaging remarks regarding white middle-class voters in old industrial towns?  See here.

Hypocrisy is the pretension to qualities which one does not possess. Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, in a sermon delivered in the presence of Pope Benedict XVI on March 11, 2007, explained the gravity of hypocrisy: "Hypocrisy is the sin that is most powerfully denounced by God in the Bible and the reason for this is clear. With his hypocrisy, man demotes God, he puts him in second place, putting the creature, the public, in first place. "Man sees the appearance, the Lord sees the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7): Cultivating our appearance more than our heart means giving greater importance to man than to God.


Hypocrisy is thus essentially a lack of faith; but it is also a lack of charity for our neighbor in the sense that it tends to reduce persons to admirers. It does not recognize their proper dignity, but sees them only in function of one's own image.

Christ's judgment on hypocrisy is without appeal: "Receperunt mercedem suam" (They have already received their reward)! A reward that is, above all, illusory, even on a human level because we know that glory flees from those that seek it, and seeks those who flee from it.

Jesus' invectives against the scribes and the Pharisees also help us understand the meaning of purity of heart. Jesus' criticisms focus on the opposition between the "inside" and the "outside," the interior and the exterior of man. 'Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones and filth. So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity' (Matthew 23:27-28).

The revolution which Jesus brings about here is of incalculable significance. Before him, except for some rare hint in the prophets and the Psalms — 'Who will ascend the mountain of the Lord? Those whose hands are innocent and whose hearts are pure' (Psalm 24:3) — purity was understood in a ritual and cultural way; it consisted in keeping one's distance from things, animals, persons or places that were understood to contaminate one and separate one from God's holiness. Above all, these were things associated with birth, death, food and sexuality. In different forms and with different presuppositions, other religions outside the Bible shared these ideas.

Jesus makes a clean sweep of all these taboos and does so first of all by certain gestures: He eats with sinners, touches lepers, mixes with pagans. All of these were taken to be highly unsanitary things. He also sweeps away these taboos with his teachings. The solemnity with which he introduces his discourse on the pure and the impure makes apparent how conscious he was of the novelty of his doctrine. "And he called the people to him again and said to them: 'Hear me all of you and understand; there is nothing outside a man that by going into him can defile him. It is the things that come out of a man that can defile him.... For from within, out of the heart of a man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man'" (Mark 7:14-17,21-23)."

Jesus knew that the pharisees often preached a good game but that they failed to live up to what they preached. Which is why He told His listeners, "Do as they say, not as they do." Might not the same be said of the Democrats and the liberal mainstream media with its selective outrage?

Related reading here and here.

Father Peter Naranjo: I didn't vote for either candidate, cannot see any difference between the two, and question whether or not Trump is President-Elect

At Women of Grace, we read:

Lifesitenews.com is reporting on a homily given by Father George Rutler, pastor of the Church of St. Michael in New York City in which he refers back to a column he wrote eight years ago. The column was based on a book by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson entitled, The Lord of the World, which was a dystopian novel about the anti-Christ who imposed a new world religion with man as god. His only foe was Christianity, which he thwarted by using “compromised Catholics and compliant priests to persuade timid Catholics.” Benson’s book has been cited by several popes, such as Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis who said he read it several times.

“Since then, that program has been realized in our time, to an extent beyond the warnings of the most dire pessimists,” Father Rutler explains.

“Our federal government has intimidated religious orders and churches, challenging religious freedom. The institution of the family has been re-defined, and sexual identity has been Gnosticized to the point of mocking biology. Assisted suicide is spreading, abortions since 1973 have reached a total equal to the population of Italy, and sexually transmitted diseases are at a record high. Objective journalism has died, justice has been corrupted, racial bitterness ruins cities, entertainment is degraded, knowledge of the liberal arts spirals downwards, and authentically Catholic universities have all but vanished. A weak and confused foreign policy has encouraged aggressor nations and terrorism, while metastasized immigration is destroying remnant western cultures, and genocide is slaughtering Christian populations. The cynical promise of economic prosperity is mocked by the lowest rate of labor participation in forty years, an unprecedented number of people on food stamps and welfare assistance, and the largest disparity in wealth in over a century.”

The picture is indeed grim as we stand now upon yet another precipice – an election offering a choice between two of the most flawed candidates in American history – which has left many Catholics despairing over how to vote.

Father Rutler feels their pain – but not their confusion.

“It is incorrect to say that the coming election poses a choice between two evils. For ethical and aesthetic reasons, there may be some bad in certain candidates, but badness consists in doing bad things. Evil is different: it is the deliberate destruction of truth, virtue and holiness.

“While one may pragmatically vote for a flawed candidate, one may not vote for anyone who advocates and enables unmitigatedly evil acts, and that includes abortion. “In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to ‘take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it’” (Evangelium Vitae, 73).

He goes on to remind that at one party’s convention, the name of God was excluded from its platform and a woman who boasted of having aborted her child was applauded.

“It is a grave sin, requiring sacramental confession and penance, to become an accomplice in objective evil by voting for anyone who encourages it, for that imperils the nation and destroys the soul,” Fr. Rutler says.

He goes on to direct his guidance to the clergy whom he encourages to speak the truth, regardless of how unfashionable it might be, and not to shrink from explaining the Church’s censures.

“Wolves in sheep’s clothing are dangerous, but worse are wolves in shepherd’s clothing. While the evils foreseen eight years ago were realized, worse would come if those affronts to human dignity were endorsed again.”

He then issues a dire warning: “In the most adverse prospect, God forbid, there might not be another free election, and soon Catholics would arrive at shuttered churches and vacant altars. The illusion of indifference cannot long be perpetuated by lame jokes and synthetic laughter at banquets, for there is handwriting on the wall.”

This homily was given prior to the election.  This morning, during Holy Mass at Saint Mary's Church in Orange, Massachusetts, Father Peter Naranjo, a liberal ideologue and partisan fanatic, asserted that, as as priest, he didn't feel he could vote for either candidate.

Father Naranjo then implied that it's a question as to whether or not Donald Trump is President-Elect because He won the Electoral-College and not the popular vote.  This even though Hillary Clinton has conceded defeat twice - in a call to Trump on the eve of the election and again on Wednesday in a speech.

Father Naranjo finished his asinine "homily" by suggesting that there is much violence because of the election results and asserting that he doesn't feel Trump will make it to the Inauguration and will be assasinated.

Aside from his irresponsible and partisan-fueled commentary, Father Naranjo's words highlight the fact that even within the Church, there are secret enemies of Christ who have no desire to see certain societal evils such as abortion and Same-Sex "marriage" defeated.  Nor do they care for the religious freedoms which the Democratic Party has been assaulting for years.

If Father Naranjo were really committed to Catholic moral teaching and religious freedom, he would have voted for Trump.

The fact that he doesn't see any difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump speaks volumes about his character.

And none of its good!

Archbishop Samuel Aquila: Voting Democrat is akin to betraying Christ

Archbishop Aquila on voting Democrat:

"Some, both in politics and in the Church, have stated that it is the Church that needs to change Her teaching to include abortion, same-sex unions and even euthanasia...Yet, in faithfulness to Jesus Christ, to the Gospel and to Sacred Tradition, the Church cannot change Her teaching on these issues without denying Christ."

Archbishop Aquila went on to slam the DNC for promoting abortion so flippantly.

"The platform is aggressively pro-abortion, not only in funding matters, but in the appointment of only those judges who will support abortion and the repealing of the Helms Amendment...which prevents the U.S. from supporting abortion availability overseas."

_____________


David Carlin was a lifelong Democrat. From 1981 to 1992, he served as a Rhode Island state senator, serving as senate majority leader in 1989 and 1990. In 1992 he was his district's Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. For more than twenty years, Mr. Carlin has been a professor of philosophy and sociology at the Community College of Rhode Island.

In his book entitled "Can a Catholic Be a Democrat: How the Party I Loved Became the Enemy of My Religion," he writes:

"..an excuse that appeals to the 'separation of church and state' seems to be among the silliest rationales for a Catholic's support of the secularized Democratic Party. This separation, so we're told, is enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution, and it prohibits the intrusion of religion into the affairs of government. Yet the First Amendment says nothing about keeping religion out of government; it's concerned instead with keeping government out of religion. Its two religion 'clauses' say (1) that there will be no 'establishment of religion' and (2) that there will be no interference with the 'free exercise' of religion. That's it: government must keep its hands off religion; nothing about religion keeping its hands off government.

However, it should be considered that in writing the religion section of the First Amendment, the framers were no doubt remembering the history of England and how the government of that nation, from the time of Henry VIII until what was then the present day (the 1780's), established a national religion and interfered with the free exercise of dissenting religions. This was a case of government controlling religion, but at the same time it was a case of religion controlling government. That is to say, government persecuted, or at least discriminated against, all religions other than the Church of England, but one of the main reasons it did so was because the Church of England, both through its bishops and its lay members, had tremendous influence over government (only members of the Church of England could serve in Parliament or government). In other words, in its competition with other churches, not to mention its competition with outright infidelity, the Church of England used government to put down the church's rivals.

This is the kind of thing people, many of them Catholics, have in mind when they say that advocating laws against abortion or same-sex marriage violates the principle of separation of church and state. They fear that an alliance of conservative churches might someday gain enough governmental power to impose religious values on everybody else, non-believers included. This is what they mean when they speak, as they often do, of the looming danger of 'theocracy.' Behind the moral-conservative political activism of Christian churches they see would-be theocrats, or 'dominionists,' who want to take over America, stamp out abortion, subjugate women, drive homosexuals back into the closet, and enact other items allegedly on the agenda of the Religious Right. Yet this would be clearly un-American, violating the philosophical, religious, and moral pluralism that has long been, and should be, characteristic of the United States.

One obvious and oft-given answer is this: few liberals have made similar objections to the modern civil-rights movement, which was in large measure inspired by religion and based on churches. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Protestant minister - even, it might be said, a Christian martyr. Are the objectors ready to say that the great legislative fruits of this religio-political movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, are illegitimate, that they're instances of the imposition of theocratic values? Will they say that the spirit of American 'pluralism' demanded that the pro-segregation values of the KKK and other racists should have been respected? Of course not. And so it appears that what's at stake for these people isn't a matter of principle (separation of church and state) but a matter of policy. Some policies they like )e.g., civil rights legislation), and some they dislike (e.g., laws restricting abortion). A religion-driven politics is okay when it produces laws they like, but it's very naughty when it produces laws they don't like. And so we may conclude (may we not?) that all this talk about the separation of church and state is nothing but dust they throw in people's eyes." (Can a Catholic Be a Democrat: How the Party I Loved Became the Enemy of My Religion, pp. 129-131, Sophia Institute Press, 2006).

Pope Benedict XVI has spoken clearly enough. And he has condemned "gay marriage" and abortion as "among the most insidious and dangerous challenges" to society. The Democratic Party advances both.

And so the political party which advances a Luciferic agenda will stop at nothing to destroy a political candidate who stands in their way.  Donald Trump may be a flawed person, but he doesn't advance an agenda to murder unborn children.  And, although he has engaged in inappropriate and offensive talk regarding women in the past, for which he has apologized, Barack Obama has done the same and has never apologized.  See here.

And Hillary Clinton has enabled her husband to abuse women for years, not just engage in offensive commentary.  See here and here.

Make no mistake, the Democrats and certain RINOs are not really concerned about Trump's comments made years ago.  If they really had a respect for women they would not have tolerated a serial womanizer and rapist in the White House for two terms.  If they had an authentic respect for women, they would have denounced Barack Obama's comments about a woman's anatomy and his remark, directed at Sarah Palin, that one can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig.

If these hypocrites were concerned about women, they would not advance abortion, which kills innocent children while scarring the mother physically, emotionally and, most significantly, spiritually.

The Democratic Party is the Devil's Party.  Mr. Trump may be a flawed person.  But there's no evidence, from what I've seen, that he is demon infested like the sick individuals who view killing children as "quality health care."

Democrats created and own the Confederate Flag...

Writing for National Review, Deroy Murdock quotes Governor Nikki Haley, referring to the Confederate Flag, as saying, "My hope is that by removing a symbol that divides us, we can move forward as a state in harmony."

Then Murdock correctly notes, "Haley, a rising Republican star, is correct to lower the Confederate flag. It has reflected Democratic racial oppression since it was stitched together in 1861, and has been hoisted by Democrats ever since. Just as Republicans — led by President Abraham Lincoln — valiantly crushed the Democrat-run Confederacy, Republicans proudly should banish the Stars and Bars to private property and history museums. They also should remind Americans that Democrats waved this frightful banner until very recently.

 As the Civil War began, the Army of Northern Virginia, led by eventual Democratic activist Robert E. Lee, adopted the battle flag that is under contention today. It became the secessionists’ national banner in 1863. Its designer, William T. Thompson, praised it in the Savannah Daily Morning News that May 4:

As a national emblem, it is significant of our higher cause, the cause of a superior race, and a higher civilization contending against ignorance, infidelity, and barbarism. Another merit in the new flag is, that it bears no resemblance to the now infamous banner of the Yankee vandals.

Two years later, that flag was in tatters. The North beat the South, and the Confederacy was gone with the wind.

How did this symbol of a pro-slavery breakaway republic wind up atop South Carolina’s state capitol? As the debate raged over civil rights in 1961, the Democratic legislature under Governor Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, a Democrat, raised the Stars and Bars to mark the “Confederate War Centennial.”

About that time, Hollings presented a Confederate flag to President John F. Kennedy, another Democrat.

Of course, Democratic U.S. senators such as former KKK Grand Cyclops Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Tennessee’s Albert Gore Sr. (father of you know who), and Arkansas’s J. William Fulbright (Bill Clinton’s mentor) stood shoulder to shoulder with Hollings and other segregationist Democratic governors, most notably Arkansas’s Orval Faubus and Alabama’s George Wallace. (Wallace installed the rebel flag over his statehouse in 1963, the day before Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy arrived to discuss integration.) While Byrd and Company filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964, these state executives blocked schoolhouse doors to exclude blacks.

Illinois’s Republican senator Everett Dirksen finally broke the bigoted Democrats’ filibuster and got the Civil Rights Act approved for the signature of Democratic president Lyndon Johnson." Full article here.

Father Lawrence Lovasic, in his book The Hidden Power of Kindness, explains that, "You practice professional hypocrisy when, in public office or business, you speak against some evil and in reality practice it yourself, or when you complain of losing money while you yourself are making an unjust profit..." (The Hidden Power of Kindness, pp. 138-139).

These words apply to Democrats like President Obama who attempt to distance themselves from the negative stigma attached to the Confederate Flag while attempting to manufacture a narrative which lays the flag at the doorstep of Republicans or Conservatives in general.

President Obama, your hypocrisy is showing.

Archbishop Charles Chaput on Democrats...

The Denver Archbishop said that Democrats simply don't know Christianity if they insist on continuing to spin the Bible's teachings on abortion. Chaput told the Associated Press that Senator Biden should refrain from taking Communion because of his support for abortion.

Related reading: http://lasalettejourney.blogspot.com/2008/08/senator-biden-and-catholic-teaching.html