TWILIGHT
ZONE
***When is a Catholic not a Catholic? John Kerry parades as a Catholic, a grown-up altar boy. [Hmm…gives altar boys a bad name.] Kerry usually tells audiences he’s Catholic right before he defends “choice” – even stabbing a baby in the neck and sucking out his brains. Oh, he believes the baby is a person, a baffling admission that makes his position more reprehensible. [At least Hitler believed his victims were subhuman.] But that’s not all. In a recent interview in the New Yorker Mrs. Kerry revealed some interesting facts to reporter Judith Thurman. “After a brief courtship, a short period of cohabitation, and the signing of a prenuptial agreement, the Kerrys were married in a civil ceremony on Nantucket in 1995." Add another twist – Teresa Heinz is a widow, but John Kerry never bothered to seek annulment of his previous marriage. So the Kerrys are married invalidly and neither may receive Communion for reasons other than the candidate’s pro-abortion advocacy.
***Answer: When he’s a heretic! The most compelling reason John Kerry must be denied Communion, however, is he’s a heretic. In June, canon lawyer Marc Balestrieri, filed a heresy lawsuit against Kerry in his home diocese of Boston. In August Balestrieri went to Rome to seek a response to questions about the heretical nature of the “pro-choice” position. Eleven days later, he received an “unofficial” reply dated September 11 from Vatican consultant Fr. Basil Cole, OP, STD, who said he wrote by request of Very Rev. Augustine DiNoia Undersecretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).
In a four-page letter outlining the infallibility of the Church’s teaching on abortion, Fr. Cole wrote: “Heresy is the obstinate denial or doubt, after received baptism, of a truth to be believed by divine and Catholic faith… To claim that the teaching on abortion is not definitive and can be dissented from… [is] erroneous and heretical theologically … The condition of obstinate denial or doubt is met, from the theological point, when there is the existence of an objective situation of sin that endures in time and which the will of the individual member of the faithful does not bring to an end, no other requirements (attitude of defense, prior warning, etc.) being necessary to establish the fundamental gravity of the situation in the Church….To commit the sin of heresy, you do not have to deny solemnly defined truths of the faith only. It suffices to deny truths contrary to the manifest understanding of the Sacred Scriptures, such as denying the truth of any of the ten commandments….So, if I obstinately deny by teaching and preaching or doubt that abortion is not intrinsically evil, I commit the mortal sin of heresy. All things being equal, I am automatically excommunicated according to the provisions of Can. 1364, § 1, provided that the presumption of knowledge of the law and penalty (Can. 15, § 2) and imputability (Can. 1321, §3) are not rebutted in the external forum:
[Editor’s note: External forum refers to matters of record where written documentation may be kept vs. the internal forum which refers to matters of conscience, usually in a sacramental confession that may not be recorded. Read the complete letter at www.defide.org.]
Fr. Cole sums up saying, “It should be obvious from all that I’ve said that for anyone to maintain a right to abortion piggybacks on the heresy and becomes part of its darkness.”
***Keep it simple, stupid! Okay, we will! Balestrieri summed things up in an interview with Catholic World News. “I went to Rome in person to submit two critical questions to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith …. The first: Whether or not the Church’s teaching condemning any direct abortion is a dogma of Divine and Catholic Faith, and if the denial and doubt of the same constitutes heresy. The second: Whether or not a denial of the Church’s teaching condemning every right to abortion also constitutes heresy. Father Cole, an expert theologian who studied the matter carefully, responded in the affirmative on both counts.”
Balastrieri filed four additional complaints on October 18 against Sen. Ted Kennedy (D) of Massachusetts; Sen. Tom Harkin (D) of Iowa; Mr. Mario Cuomo (D), former Governor of New York; and Sen. Susan Collins (R) of Maine. They were filed in the five Ecclesiastical Courts of the Dioceses of Boston, MA; Fall River, MA; Des Moines, IA; New York, NY; and Portland, ME. The four politicians were selected because of their “consistent, extensive, and public pro-abortion records.”
***Backpedaling begins! Following publication of Fr. Cole’s letter Catholic News Service (CNS) ran an article October 19 contradicting Balestrieri. “Father DiNoia denied that Father Cole, a theologian who resides in Washington, was delegated in any way to address the questions on behalf of the congregation …. Father Cole's letter to Balestrieri… begins by saying he had been asked by Father DiNoia ‘to respond unofficially’ to Balestrieri's questions…Father Cole told CNS the Holy See ‘gets these requests ...tons of them,’ and that Father DiNoia asked him to respond to Balestrieri in a private capacity. ‘I have no relationship to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith... and the letter that I wrote to Balestrieri was purely private,’ he told CNS Oct. 19. ‘I wrote it as a private theologian, not with any authority. It has no authority whatsoever.’” CNS, well-known for its liberal leanings, quoted several unnamed “Vatican sources” assuring us Kerry’s not excommunicated.
Responding to the CNS article, Balestrieri issued a press release October 20 detailing at length his contacts with both the CDF and Fr Cole which indicate he never attempted to “hoodwink” anyone. “Fr. Augustine di Noia, O.P.,…has now acknowledged, despite his earlier statements, that he did in fact prompt the response by the Rev. Fr. Basil Cole, O.P….And in the words of the Undersecretary, the Response was ‘excellent and solid’… Fr. di Noia’s apparent nescience [ignorance] of my pending suit against Senator Kerry in fact produced the unintentional effect of a cogent and intellectually honest response to be granted, qualifying in exact and unequivocal terms the terrible gravity of the profession of the right-to-choose heresy.” Balestrieri calls the “unfortunate series of events” an “exercise in obfuscation.” [Les Femmes agrees. It is all too common for members of the hierarchy to slander faithful Catholics in the interests of political correctness.]
***Well, if the Vatican ducks responsibility, let us turn to a bishop who, like the Master, speaks with the voice of authority. His Excellency Rene Gracida, retired bishop of Corpus Christi, placed three Catholic abortionists and a local pro-abortion politician under interdict during his governance. He’s not afraid to use the H word:
Among the various heresies extant today, there is one which has grown to such huge proportions as to assume an importance which demands the attention of the bishops of the Church. It is the heresy which underlies the phenomenon which Pope John Paul II has repeatedly described as the prevailing ‘Culture of Death.’ What is the heresy? It is the persistent pervasive denial of the sacredness of human life. The denial of the sacredness of human life has been manifested in the promotion of abortion-on-demand, in the tolerance of infanticide, in the legalization of euthanasia, in the legalization of assisted-suicide, in the promotion of human cloning, in the promotion of fetal experimentation.…In the Catholic Church the heresy of the rejection of belief in the sacredness of human life really began to manifest itself in the dissent which followed the publication by Pope Paul VI of his Encyclical Humanae Vitae. (our emphasis) That dissent has grown in the acceptance of one after another of the violations of the sacredness of human life which I have listed above. This heresy has grown exponentially during the past three decades and has now assumed a status analogous to the great heresy of the Fourth Century: Arianism. (See full text at http://www.catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm?recnum=6251)
***So is John Kerry a heretic? Duh! He and many fellow travelers, including some in roman collars, qualify by their blatant rejection of central tenets of the faith. Should we respond to Vatican vacillation with handwringing? Not a chance! This is the time to hold our ground and fight. Recall that during the Arian heresy most bishops were Arian. St. Athanasius was exiled numerous times for opposing the evil. When the faithful lamented losing their churches [Sound familiar?] Athanasius reminded them, “Who then has lost more, or who possesses more? He who holds the place, or he who holds the Faith?” The answer is obvious! Cling to the faith with resolve and hope. Confusion and chaos can’t last forever.
***Then again chaos can last for awhile and apparently will as this embarrassing and disgraceful incident indicates. In September the Vatican conferred papal knighthood on Anglican, Julian Hunte, a government official of Saint Lucia in the West Indies who served as president of the 58th session of the U.N. General Assembly. Hunte is credited with casting the deciding vote to legalize abortion in the small island nation in December 2003. He was quoted at the time saying, "I think every woman must have a choice. I am a pro-choice man." Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican Secretary of State, made Hunte a Knight of the Grand Cross Pian Order at a New York ceremony at the close of the Assembly. According to the international news service Countrywire, Hunte was honored for his role in upgrading the Vatican's status at the UN and for his efforts in fighting AIDS. Human Life Saint Lucia, a pro-life organization, has asked the Vatican to rescind the award. [Can you hear the fiddle playing Twilight Zone music while Rome burns and the smoke of Satan swirls around us? Who exactly is minding the store?]
***Meanwhile, back in the diocese… criminal background checks and fingerprinting volunteers who work with children continues apace. Most of the priests have been fingerprinted except for a few who are appealing to Rome. Our new code of conduct tells us not to sleep with children, give them drugs or alcohol, show them pornography, or photograph them undressed. [Sheesh!] Gifts are also banned. [May teachers give holy cards to their students?] Ironically, most religious educators are never screened on their Catholic beliefs e.g., whether they accept basic Church doctrine on contraception, divorce, and abortion. [Insurance companies don’t care about spiritual abuse.]
All the frenetic activity using the secular state violates privacy and helps hide the root of the scandal, i.e., homosexuals in the priesthood. [At the risk of repeating ourselves…] Most priest abusers were homosexual predators molesting adolescent boys, NOT PEDOPHILES. Background checks would have turned up nothing, because bishops lied to parents and urged them not to file criminal charges. [Let’s see: two thirds of the bishops failed to screen homosexuals out of the seminaries and covered up sex crimes, so now we screen moms who pass out hotdogs in the cafeteria. Go figure!]
***To the Arlington Herald: DITCH CNS! On September 30 The Herald ran a Catholic News Service (CNS) article titled Creative Tension: Omnipotence of God vs. Dynamism of a Universe featuring the ramblings of Fr. George Coyne, S.J., head of the Vatican Observatory. The Herald devoted almost a page to nonsense depicting God as Lord of the roulette wheel. CNS wrote “Father Coyne and others have suggested that a case could be made for a type of divine creation that did not pre-ordain human beings, or which might have even produced thinking beings different than humans.” [Hey, Adam could have been a cone head or a one-eyed Cyclops! God wasn’t sure Himself!] To make matters worse, the Herald ignored the Catholic Conference on Creation held at Christendom College October 15-17 which featured experts in theology, philosophy, and natural science making the case for special creation. Hugh Owen, director of the Kolbe Institute, in an October 21 letter to the editor quoted Fr. Coyne in a separate article saying that, “Even the Creator (“he or she”) can’t know everything.” [So much for God’s omnipotence. Does the H word apply to Fr. Coyne?] Another disgraceful CNS article appeared October 7. Criteria for Voters When Candidates Back Abortion gave enough rationalization to justify voting for Adolf Hitler himself. “Most… theologians [queried by CNS] concluded that a Catholic might still find acceptable reasons to vote for…a candidate in spite of [his] support for abortion or euthanasia.” While Germaine Grisez’s correct moral view was presented, CNS contrasted it with people like Fr. Kevin O’Rourke who justifies killing patients in persistent vegetative state. [Dump the drivel! Zenit and Catholic World News are real Catholic alternatives to the blatant scandal perpetrated by CNS. To promote scandal is a sin.]