June 17, 2021
By Christopher White
Pope Francis' closest U.S. allies (click here) made a last-minute and at times desperate appeal to their fellow U.S. Catholic bishops not to charge ahead with plans to draft a divisive document regarding Communion and pro-choice Catholic politicians ahead of the bishops' much anticipated June 17 vote.
"The proposal before us presents us with a stark and historic choice," said Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey. "Voting in the affirmative will produce a document, not unity. Voting against it will allow us to work together in dialogue to forge a broad agreement on the serious questions embedded in the issue of eucharistic worthiness."
"Our very identity as an episcopal conference calls us to vote no, and I will vote no," said Tobin, who is one of only two Americans on the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops, which is tasked with advising the pope on which Catholic priests to appoint as bishops across the world.
Tobin said that any effort to support the "categorical exclusion of Catholic political leaders from the Eucharist based on their public policy positions" would force the bishops' conference "into the very heart of the toxic partisan strife, which has distorted our own political culture."
The bishops voted on whether to greenlight the document during the second day of virtual meetings; the results are scheduled to be announced on Friday, June18...
There was a vote to move forward with a committee to discuss a policy for the good standing of people in regard to the Holy Eucharist.
Pope Francis has been a servant to the people from the beginning of his priesthood. From the beginning of his papacy, he has viewed his role with the church as being one that brings reason to power. The Holy Roman Catholic Church is a wealthy and powerful organization as well as a religious order. Pope Francis is not interested in alienating Americans from Catholics. Pope Francis is a unifier. He seeks to understand the people in relation to their governments and the control that government has in providing a valuable space for worship.
"Voting Your Conscience" has always been a rallying cry for Republicans. In other words, Republicans have no problem with the idea of a theocracy so long as it is a Christian theocracy, with plenty of freedom for other faiths, of course. The "other faiths" is where the problem arises for most political figures. There are plenty of faithful under orthodoxy that believes many parts of life are personal issues and not religious doctrine. There are some faiths such as the Jewish faith that have an ongoing dialogue about life and have many complex standards that in no way will become standard Jewish policies in an ever-changing world.
...It is commonly believed in the non-Jewish world (click here) that the Talmud is the Jewish book of laws, but that’s not quite right. The Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses–that is, the first five books of the Old Testament–contain the 613 mitzvahs, or commandments, by which Jews live. The Talmud is an anthology of abstruse and (to Culturebox, anyway) weirdly fascinating conversations about those commandments, as well as a slew of other biblical and extrabiblical passages that appear to the uninitiated to have nothing to do with the principles of conduct extracted from them. You cannot compare the Talmud to, say, the United States civil code, a series of prescriptions issuing from Congress, or to Catholic doctrine, which comes directly from the pope. The Talmud is more like the minutes of religious study sessions, except that the hundreds of scholars involved in these sessions were enrolled in a seminar that went on for more than a millennium and touched on every conceivable aspect of life and ritual. It would be hard to overstate the Talmud’s amorphousness. The more closely you look at it, the harder it is to pin down....
These widely diverse views held by faiths throughout the USA is the reason any elected official regardless of his or her faith has to remain neutral in their approach to issues such as abortion which is a completely personal one where the law is not appropriate.
I think the Pope is sensitive to the role of elected officials with constituents that are not exclusively Roman Catholic. Where religion has a place in our society and given the freedom to practice, it is not a dictate of the government. I think Pope Francis is among those that realize people are directed by their faith and in that understanding the presiding government needs to allow a legal space to practice faith. But, to think any government needs to abide by a certain Catholic doctrine because there are Catholics elected to an office is an entirely hideous idea. Quite frankly, any aspect of American life legislated by the government or precedent created by the courts that limit freedom and diminishes the quality of life is an affront to the USA Constitution.
An American has legal rights under the law as a baby, but, they have to be born first and achieve a birth certificate of live birth before those rights are conferred on them.
Secretary Kerry was harassed about this when he was running for office and it is ridiculous. When an elected official goes to work he is carrying out the will of the people including agnostics and atheists. No one group of people should have control over the quality of life of any other. The Rule of Law is about controlling the "public areas" where citizens mingle with each other, not the privacy Americans have within their homes or lives. There are also conduct issues addressed by the Rule of Law to all citizens in that a crime committed against them, even in their own homes and private spaces, such as home invasion is illegal and punishable in the court systems.
Pope Francis does not have authority over the Rule of Law and it's many aspects. He has complete control over the way Catholics address their lives, including being part of a congregation. Pope Francis also realizes (he lives this when he travels and has inter-religious convocation (click here)) Catholics must accept the differences of other faiths. Pope Francis is a peacemaker to bring freedom of worship to Catholics. In that is the religious doctrine the Catholic faith has when elected officials in the USA have personal standards and then standards for work in the public realm.
The Bishops in the USA feel the need to bring a definition about receiving the Holy Eucharist. It should not include belittling the role of Catholics elected to office. The reason the Republicans take on the mantle of the extreme views of Evangelical Christians is because of money for elections, voters, and the "idea" there is about 22 percent of the USA population are Catholics. If Republicans kiss the ring of the Pope and stand up for the idea of backing religious doctrine rather than public policy that will win votes and at the very least keep Catholics from ridiculing a candidate for their more liberal beliefs if not Catholic.
The idea of abortion should be left up to the individual and their individual conscience and not a point of extremist hate or any government policy.
