By CHRISTOPHER MANION
It’s a tough time to be a Democrat. Joe Biden is now the frontrunner for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president. Nancy Pelosi has just been reaffirmed the leader of House Democrats. And Democrats have lost every special election this year.
As their party’s most prominent leaders, Biden and Pelosi undoubtedly welcome Pope Francis’ tacit opening of the Eucharist to divorced Catholics who, with secular government approbation but without a valid annulment, live in a new “monogamous” situation of sexual intimacy known in the current vernacular as “remarriage.”
But wait — aren’t both Pelosi and Biden validly married Catholics?
Yes they are. But they also know how to use logic — at least when it suits them.
Simply put, if one “legalistic” Church law can be ignored, why not another one?
Catholics have seen this same approach at work before. In 2002, the “Sex Abuse and Cover-up Scandals” broke out.
To address the scandals, America’s bishops met in Dallas and issued the so-called Charter of Protection of Children and Young People.
Well over half of the prelates in attendance had covered up for abusers in one way or another, but only one resigned, fleeing to live safely in Rome ever since. After all, they had grown up in the “Age of Humanae Vitae Denial,” so one more denial was not a big deal.
Biden and Pelosi took note.
The bishops’ own lay board later determined that over eighty percent of the crimes were “homosexual in nature.” But the Dallas bishops undoubtedly knew that already. So, when a brave bishop placed a simple motion before the Dallas gathering, proposing that the conference investigate the causes of the scandals, his motion didn’t even get a second.
Welcome to the ecclesiastical version of Orwell’s Memory Hole.
Two months before the 2002 Dallas meeting, Wilton Gregory, then bishop of Belleville, Ill., and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, worried that “there does exist within American seminaries a homosexual atmosphere or dynamic that makes heterosexuals think twice” about entering the priesthood, adding that “it is an ongoing struggle to make sure the Catholic priesthood is not dominated by homosexual men.”
A “struggle”? Come on, why bother? After all, that was then! Today Bishop Gregory’s factual statement (which he never repeated) would elicit shocked condemnations of an unlovely and socially unjust “phobia.” Yes, Catherine of Siena tells us that the “unnatural sin” is so vile that Satan, after he tempts us to it, flees in disgust because his angelic nature, however fallen, still abhors it.
But hey, so what? That was centuries ago!
Well. Recalling our pre-Vatican II grade school catechism, aren’t we all called to flee from sin? At least in fear (“And I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishment. . . .”), if not in virtue?
Sure. Flee if you must: but you’re still a homophobe.
Alas, it is no surprise that a number of bishops, invited by Pope Francis to urge the faithful to use the “internal forum,” rather than an informed conscience, regarding the reception of the Eucharist, have extended that invitation not only to the illicitly cohabiting couple but to the active homosexual as well.
As the huge banner hung outside a Notre Dame residence hall put it years ago, “If It Feels Good, Do It!”
On May 9, 2007, as he was traveling to Brazil on his first trip as Pope outside of Europe, Pope Benedict XVI told an inquiring reporter that he would support Mexican bishops who excommunicated pro-abortion lawmakers.
“It is part of the code,” Benedict said, referring to canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law, which reads: “Those who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”
“It is based simply on the principle that the killing of an innocent human child is incompatible with going in communion with the body of Christ,” the Pope continued.
Within hours, a reporter from The Hill, a newspaper on Capitol Hill, asked Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), a Catholic, for comment on the Pope’s statement.
Leahy’s reply was blunt: “I’ve always thought that those bishops and archbishops who for decades hid pederasts and are now being protected by the Vatican should be indicted,” he said.
Wow. Snarky, maybe?
Not at all. Leahy was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, a powerful position that gave him the power to subpoena witnesses and swear them in (n.b.: lying under oath constitutes perjury, a felony).
Leahy was only being logical: If you apply your Canon Law to me (a pro-abortion Catholic), Your Excellency, I’ll apply federal criminal law to you.
“Please raise your right hand.”
Not one bishop took up Mr. Leahy’s offer. And today he’s still a Catholic in good standing.
Ideas have consequences, said Richard Weaver, and bad ideas have very bad consequences. We are now living in the complaisant age of denial of truth (“so legalistic!”) and the celebration of profoundly bad ideas (“Who am I to judge?”).
For years, Catholic faithful have asked why their bishops (with precious few exceptions) have not followed canon 915 regarding actively pro-abortion politicians. Yes, Cardinal McCarrick once (and only once) observed that, after all, these important personages supply the Church with important funding for schools, hospitals, and welfare agencies; but it is hard indeed to believe that our shepherds might be encumbered by an attachment to filthy lucre.
In fact, Cardinal McCarrick’s successor in Washington, Donald Cardinal Wuerl, offered a more appealing explanation: Simply put, he explained, canon 915, and not the politician, is the problem. It is canon 916 that should rule: Each person should decide for himself his worthiness to receive the Eucharist. After all (we conclude), “manifest grave sin” is so judgmental!
Given the fallout from Amoris Laetitia, we can now see that it’s not lucre, it’s logic. One cannot defend the truths of Humanae Vitae regarding sex, marriage, and the family, and deny them at the same time. As Spock used to put it in Star Trek, “it’s illogical.”
And meanwhile, we may as well correct the English title of Amoris Laetitia to read “The Biden-Pelosi Protection Act.”
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