"Hey, Joe, whaddaya know?"

Judgement Day

Is fraternal correction really so complicated? We're hamstrung by the need to preserve reputation, or so it seems, and unable to correct in-house problems created by errant brothers and sisters who flaunt their defiance by advocating behaviours rejected by the Church.

Jesus speaking to the disciples (St. Matthew 18:15-20).

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

Two or Three

Dear Bishops, Ban Them
by Robert Royal

[...]

Joe Biden, somewhere along his politically ambitious way, has been persuaded to say – against all evidence provided by “The Science” – that human life does not begin at conception. Nancy Pelosi, in the course of an eccentric “Catholic” education, was taught that God gave “women” the freedom and ability to decide right and wrong. Not to address these sowers of falsehood and infant mayhem in strong terms, backed by action, would add another scandal on top of the one that already exists.

It won’t be easy, but let’s pray that our good bishops find a strong voice. And act.

One of the advantages of belonging to a long tradition is that the Church has faced similar things in the past:

• St. Ambrose excommunicated the Roman Emperor Theodosius for ordering a massacre of 7000 men, women, and children in Thessalonica in Greece. Theodosius did public penance for almost an entire year before being readmitted to Communion.
• Pope St. Gregory VII let the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV spend three days in the snow outside of Canossa when the king insisted that he, not the pope, should have the right to name bishops and other Church officials – in other words, as in China today, the ability to choose Catholic leaders who would be submissive to the regime. Gregory excommunicated Henry and gave him one year to repent, or be excommunicated permanently.

Then, as now, there were many other complex factors in both cases. But these great saints acted and stuck to their guns. They did not give political malefactors cheerful audiences, as if evil activities could be ignored in persons occupying high offices. The Church remembers these men as among our very greatest leaders.

[...]

What the bishops really said at Baltimore
by George Weigel

1. Facilitating the grave moral evil of abortion is a public act that estranges one (to use Pope Francis’s term in a recent press conference) from full communion with the Church.
2. Those who are not in full communion with the Church because of their public actions should not present themselves for holy communion. To present oneself for holy communion is to state, publicly, that one is in full communion with the Church. If that is not the case, then the lie of presenting oneself for holy communion compounds the evil of the public acts that estrange one from the Church.
3. The bishops have a solemn obligation to inform estranged Catholics of their situation and work to catechize them in the truth. If that catechesis fails and the estranged Catholic obstinately continues to facilitate grave evil, then he or she must be told not to present himself or herself for holy communion.

These are settled truths of Catholic faith, and what “The Mystery of the Eucharist” proposes ought to have been long-settled Catholic pastoral practice. The bishops have now recommitted themselves to the hard work of bringing wayward Catholic public officials to the truth and they should be supported in those efforts by the people of the Church – who have their own responsibility to correct, in charity and candor, fellow-Catholics whose work in government facilitates the wickedness of killing innocent human beings in the name of “reproductive health care” (an Orwellian formulation if ever there was one). Bishops who work to bring public officials to the truth, and who then apply the appropriate disciplinary measures if those efforts fail, should be supported by their brother bishops. Bishops who decline to carry out that pastoral duty should be fraternally corrected by their brother bishops. And Catholics dubious about what they read in the press on virtually every other matter ought not take the bait cast by media outlets like the Post and the Journal and think that the bishops ducked the “abortion issue” when crunch-time came.

Archbishop Aquila: The Eucharist Can Transform Your Life

President Biden, the second Catholic president in U.S. history, positions himself as a “devout Catholic” while supporting the expansion of abortion, which is considered a grave evil by the Catholic Church.

“All of us understand that you have to be pastoral in dealing with these situations and that it is really important to have a dialogue with the person, for us as bishops,” Archbishop Aquila said. “To speak with those who are in public life, no matter where they are in public life. That the positions they take influence those within the Catholic Church and can be a real scandal to those faithful who adhere to the teachings of the Church and the dignity of the human person.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which summarizes Church teaching, recognizes the inherent dignity and worth of the unborn human person and considers abortion a “crime against human life.” 

“Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception,” the catechism reads. “From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.”