May 20, 2004
That didn't last
I can't leave politics alone for long, can I? I came across this article about the current move by certain presumably conservative Catholic bishops to deny Eucharist to politicans who vote in favor of abortion.
Frankly, I support this motion, though I do think that it isn't going far enough. A politican who wishes to identify himself as being Catholic doesn't need to toe the Roman party line on every issue - abstaining from measures you want to vote for but the Church opposes would be sufficient - but you also can't actively support measures that the Church opposes. This isn't a church and state issue, this is an ecclesiological issue. If you claim to belong to the church, any church, you need to act like it. Aligning yourself with the Catholic Church while voting for abortion is behavior that could be described as apostate without too much trouble. Can the Church force politicans to vote a certain way? Of course not. But can politicans force the Church to accept them regardless of their voting record? No. Or, at least, they shouldn't be able to.
I'm pretty confident the Church will hold the line on this one. At least, I really hope they do.
