Saturday, April 5, 2014

The scandal that is eating the heart out of the Catholic Church in America

Today we have a guest blogger, a native of the Archdiocese of Washington, Fr.  Vincent Fitzpatrick.  Fr. Vincent is a retired priest of the Diocese of Fargo.

Here is the text of Canon 915: “Those who have been excommunicated or interdicted after the imposition or declaration of the penalty and others obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.”

Several American bishops have made statements to the effect that a bishop must exercise “discretion” regarding whether to “impose the penalty” of denial of Communion. Among them: Chaput, Dolan, O’Malley, and Wuerl.

All bishops who refuse to “impose the penalty” are participating in a lie. Namely, that denial of Communion is a penalty.

Denial of Communion is NOT a penalty.

To read his thoughts in the entirety, please click here: http://www.all.org/article/index/id/MTM1OTA/

1 comment:

Kurt said...

While some bishops have voiced the right of individual pastors to use their personal judgment and others have spoken vaguely in the abstract of withholding the sacraments, not a single bishop in the USA has actually withheld communion from a pro-choice politician