Catholic Democrats Appeal to ‘Primacy of Conscience’ in Abortion Support

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Catholic Democrats Appeal to ‘Primacy of Conscience’ in Abortion Support

Breitbart | 19 Jun 20210

Sixty Catholic Democrats in Congress have written an open “Statement of Principles” explaining why the Catholic Church should not deny Holy Communion to professed Catholics who promote abortion.

The open letter was published online on June 18 to coincide with the June meeting of the U.S. bishops, who discussed, among other things, the question of “Eucharistic coherence” and conditions under which a Catholic should not present himself to receive Holy Communion.

“As legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives, we work every day to advance respect for life and the dignity of every human being,” the letter states.

The representatives declare that “the weaponization of the Eucharist to Democratic lawmakers for their support of a woman’s safe and legal access to abortion is contradictory.”

The Catholic Church has consistently taught that taking an innocent human life in abortion is always gravely evil.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.”

Abortion “is gravely contrary to the moral law,” the Catechism declares, and, therefore, a person who procures an abortion incurs ex-communication from the Church “by the very commission of the offense.”

For his part, Saint John Paul II wrote that “direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.”

The U.S. bishops’ Faithful Citizenship letter, a “teaching document on the political responsibility of Catholics,” underscores the evil of abortion, suggesting it is not “just another issue” to be weighed against prudential matters such as immigration laws or a carbon tax, but stands out as a singularly weighty moral issue.

“The threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself, because it takes place within the sanctuary of the family, and because of the number of lives destroyed,” the bishops declared in the letter.

In their June 18 letter, the Catholic Democrats insisted they “seek the Church’s guidance and assistance but believe also in the primacy of conscience.”

“In recognizing the Church’s role in providing moral leadership, we acknowledge and accept the tension that comes with being in disagreement with the Church in some areas,” they declare.

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Here is the 'open letter' by these sixty 'Catholic' Democrats in Congress, in its entirety - notice how they can only quote the Second Vatican Council and the Conciliar Popes: 

Statement of Principles 

June 18, 2021

As Catholic Democrats in Congress, we are proud to be part of the living Catholic tradition – a tradition that unfailingly promotes the common good, expresses a consistent moral framework for life, and highlights the need to provide a collective safety net to those individuals in society who are the most vulnerable. As legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives, we work every day to advance respect for life and the dignity of every human being. We believe that government has moral purpose. 

We are committed to making real the basic principles that are at the heart of Catholic social teaching: helping the poor, disadvantaged, and the oppressed, protecting the least among us and ensuring that all Americans of every faith are given meaningful opportunities to share in the blessings of this great country. That commitment is fulfilled in different ways by legislators but includes: reducing the rising rates of poverty, particularly child poverty; increasing access to education for all; pressing for access to universal health care; recognizing the dignity of all humans; and repairing long-standing racial and gender inequities in our society. Each of these issues challenges our obligations as Catholics to community and helping those in need.

We envision a world in which every child belongs to a loving family and agree with the Catholic Church about the value of human life. Each of us is committed to reducing the number of unintended pregnancies and creating an environment with policies that encourage pregnancies to be carried to term and provide resources to raise healthy and secure children. We believe this includes promoting alternatives to abortion, such as adoption, improving access to children's healthcare and child care, and creating a child benefit through the expanded and improved Child Tax Credit.

In all these issues, we seek the Church's guidance and assistance but believe also in the primacy of conscience. In recognizing the Church's role in providing moral leadership, we acknowledge and accept the tension that comes with being in disagreement with the Church in some areas. We recognize that no political party is perfectly in accord with all aspects of Church doctrine. This fact speaks to the secular nature of American democracy, not the devotion of our democratically elected leaders. Yet we believe we can speak to the fundamental issues that unite us as Catholics and lend our voices to changing the political debate – a debate that often fails to reflect and encompass the depth and complexity of these issues.

We also urge the Church to heed the words of Our Holy Father Pope Francis, who wrote in his Apostolic Exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel,” that the Eucharist although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.” Further, the Holy Father extolls that clergy must act as facilitators of grace, not arbiters, because “the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems.” As legislators, we too are charged with being facilitators of the Constitution which guarantees religious freedom for all Americans. In doing so, we guarantee our right to live our own lives as Catholics but also foster an America with a rich diversity of faiths.

We believe the separation of church and state allows for our faith to inform our public duties and best serve our constituents. The Sacrament of Holy Communion is central to the life of practicing Catholics, and the weaponization of the Eucharist to Democratic lawmakers for their support of a woman’s safe and legal access to abortion is contradictory. No elected officials have been threatened with being denied the Eucharist as they support and have supported policies contrary to the Church teachings, including supporting the death penalty, separating migrant children from their parents, denying asylum to those seeking safety in the United States, limiting assistance for the hungry and food insecure, and denying rights and dignity to immigrants.

We solemnly urge you to not move forward and deny this most holy of all sacraments, the source and the summit of the whole work of the gospel over one issue. We remind you that the Second Vatican Council renewed emphasis on the Eucharist as the central focus, especially in the Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy: “For the liturgy, ‘through which the work of our redemption is accomplished,’ most of all in the divine sacrifice of the Eucharist, is the outstanding means whereby the faithful may express in their lives, and manifest to others, the mystery of Christ and the real nature of the true Church.” To pursue a blanket denial of the Holy Eucharist to certain elected officials would indeed grieve the Holy Spirit and deny the evolution of that individual, a Christian person who is never perfect, but living in the struggle to get there.

As Catholic Democrats who embrace the vocation and mission of the laity as expressed by the late Pope John Paul II in his Apostolic Exhortation, Christifideles Laici, we believe that the Church is the "people of God," called to be a moral force in the broadest sense. We believe the Church as a community is called to be in the vanguard of creating a more just America and world. And as such, we have a claim on the Church's bearing as it does on ours.


Rosa DeLauro
Sylvia Garcia
Brendan Boyle
Norma Torres
Veronica Escobar
Grace F. Napolitano
Gerry Connolly
Marie Newman
Jackie Speier
Henry Cuellar
Linda Sánchez
Mike Thompson
Cindy Axne
Cheri Bustos
Nanette Barragan
Anna Eshoo
Jimmy Panetta
John B. Larson
Joe Courtney
Mike Doyle
Thomas R. Suozzi
James R. Langevin
Pete Aguilar
James P. McGovern
Ruben Gallego
Greg Stanton
Jim Costa
Jesús “Chuy” García
Frank Mrvan
Stephen Lynch
Anthony Brown
Debbie Dingell
Mikie Sherrill
Frank Pallone
Teresa Leger Fernández
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Joe Morelle
Nydia M. Velázquez
Madeleine Dean
Mary Gay Scanlon
Matt Cartwright
Lou Correa
Juan Vargas
Kathleen Rice
Betty McCollum
Bill Pascrell, Jr.
Lucille Roybal -Allard
Paul Tonko
Lori Trahan
Joaquin Castro
Filemon Vela
Ted Lieu
Jimmy Gomez
Peter Welch
Raúl M. Grijalva
Adriano Espaillat
Mark DeSaulnier
Susie Lee
Albio Sires

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Pro-Abortion Congressman Ted Lieu ‘Dares’ Bishops to Deny Him Holy Communion

Ted LieuDoug Mills-Pool/Getty

Breitbart [secular source] | 20 Jun 20210

U.S. Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) has challenged the U.S. bishops to refuse him Holy Communion at Mass, flaunting his support for abortion and same-sex marriage.

“Dear USCCB, I’m Catholic and I support contraception, a woman’s right to choose, treatments for infertility, the right for people to get a divorce, the right of same sex marriage,” Lieu tweeted Friday.

“Next time I go to Church, I dare you to deny me Communion,” he taunted.

The Jesuit-educated congressman, who attended Cleveland’s St. Ignatius High School and Georgetown University, enjoys a 100% legislator rating from lobbyist NARAL for his spotless voting record in favor of abortion rights.

Lieu went on to tweet: “How radical is the @USCCB decision? A Catholic can love Jesus with all her heart, oppose abortion & work at Catholic Relief Services. But if she believes government shouldn’t put women in jail for an abortion, then she can be denied Communion.”

“No wonder membership is declining,” he stated.

Lieu was one of the 60 Democrats from the House of Representatives who signed a “Statement of Principles” Friday appealing to “primacy of conscience” as justification for promoting abortion, which the Catholic Church considers a very grave sin.

On Friday, the U.S. bishops voted overwhelmingly in favor of drafting a document on the reception of Holy Communion, a heavily debated topic following the election of President Joe Biden, a professed Catholic who supports the expansion of abortion rights.

In response to that vote, Ted Lieu called the leaders of the Catholic church “hypocrites” for failing to deny former Attorney General William Barr Communion for expanding use of the death penalty.

“You are being nakedly partisan and you should be ashamed. Another reason you are losing membership,” he wrote.

The Catholic Church has consistently taught that taking an innocent human life in abortion is always gravely evil and has declared that Catholic politicians are obliged to oppose laws permitting abortion or euthanasia, noting that “it is impossible to promote such laws or to vote for them.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person — among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.”

Abortion “is gravely contrary to the moral law,” the Catechism declares, and, therefore, a person who procures an abortion incurs ex-communication from the Church “by the very commission of the offense.”

For his part, Saint John Paul II wrote that “direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.”

In 2004, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, declared that not all moral issues “have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia,” which are grave evils that allow for no legitimate diversity of opinion.

The cardinal explicitly distinguished abortion and euthanasia from application of the death penalty and the question of a just war, where he said a diversity of opinion is possible.

Concerning reception of the Eucharist, Ratzinger wrote that the minister of Holy Communion “may find himself in the situation where he must refuse to distribute Holy Communion to someone, such as in cases of a declared excommunication, a declared interdict, or an obstinate persistence in manifest grave sin.”

He went on to write:

Regarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a person’s formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws), his Pastor should meet with him, instructing him about the Church’s teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist.

“When these precautionary measures have not had their effect or in which they were not possible, and the person in question, with obstinate persistence, still presents himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it,” he said.

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Biden’s Jesuit DC parish council declares they won’t deny Communion to anyone

Holy Trinity Parish is a bastion of fringe liberal Catholicism in an archdiocese whose leaders have exhibited complicit behavior regarding homosexuality, transgenderism, and abortion.

WASHINGTON, June 30, 2021 (LifeSiteNews- slightly adapted) — The parish council at historic Holy Trinity Catholic Church, the Jesuit-run parish where President Joe Biden normally attends Sunday Mass, has issued a statement declaring that their church “will not deny the Eucharist to persons presenting themselves to receive it.”

The parish declaration is clearly a response to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) stated intention to draft a formal statement on the Eucharist addressing Church teaching on worthiness to receive Holy Communion, which will bear upon the reception of the Eucharist by pro-abortion Catholic politicians.

While a parish council has no authority over the distribution and conferral of the sacraments, the parish’s Jesuit pastor’s continued silence signals his agreement with the council’s proclamation.

“We stand with our Archbishop, Cardinal Wilton Gregory, concerning the issues surrounding offering the Eucharist to American politicians,” begins the brief dispatch. The Washington, D.C., archbishop is one of several outspoken U.S. prelates who have decried the USCCB’s move to protect the Eucharist from being received unworthily.

The parish council’s declaration continues:

Cardinal Gregory serves as one of the most prominent ecclesiastical leaders in the current controversy and so it was therefore shocking and disappointing that his request to postpone the draft of portions of this document about the Eucharist received the minority of votes among the bishops. As Cardinal Gregory stated in the discussions leading up to the vote, “The strength of our voice in advancing the mission of Christ has been seriously weakened.” Sadly, the recent vote has caused considerable desolation among our parishioners as well as Roman Catholics throughout the nation.

Despite the protestations by Cardinals Gregory, Blase Cupich, and Joseph Tobin, the USCCB voted to move ahead with the effort by a wide margin, 168-55.


The foreignness of Biden’s ‘Catholicism’ to faithful Catholics

President Biden adheres to a brand of Catholicism that is foreign to faithful Catholics. He has made it clear that he embraces abortion and sodomy — as Vice President, he conducted a same-sex “wedding” — and has promised to squash religious liberty and conscience rights via the Equality Act.

After Biden attended Mass at Washington’s Cathedral of St. Matthew on the morning of his inauguration, Austin Ruse, the president of the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM), wrote:

Joe Biden ate and drank his own spiritual death. That he received the Holy Eucharist from the hands of a Cardinal of the Church adds scandal upon scandal. One radio wag called it a [M]ass for Planned Parenthood. And so, it was.

And yet Holy Trinity Parish decided to continue the scandal.


Holy Trinity: The perfect parish for Biden’s brand of ‘Catholicism’

Located just outside Georgetown University’s main gate and ensconced in the fashionable neighborhood by the same name, Holy Trinity is arguably the most effete liberal Catholic parish in the Archdiocese of Washington, drawing well-heeled Catholic elites — who deem their own neighborhood parishes too “conservative” or too “rigid” — from wealthy suburbs around the city.

Earlier this year, the parish proclaimed its support for Black Lives Matter, a Marxist organization that aims to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure” and that demands abortion “rights.”

It’s also a place where someone like Father James Martin, S.J. — the chief promoter of the normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism within U.S. Catholicism — can count on receiving a standing ovation from a church packed with adoring fans.

In March, when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a statement declaring that the Catholic Church cannot bless homosexual relationships, the Holy Trinity “LGBTQIA+ Ministry” published a rebuke.

“Unequivocally, Holy Trinity affirms that LGBTQIA+ individuals have and always will have a valued place in our parish community,” asserted the parish’s homosexual, transgender, intersex, and asexual supporters. “To our LGBTQIA+ friends, we want to stress that Holy Trinity is enriched by your presence, ministry and leadership.”


The most liberal parish in a very liberal archdiocese

Holy Trinity is a bastion of fringe liberal Catholicism in an archdiocese that for the last two decades has been led by ultra-liberal prelates who have exhibited varying degrees of complicit behavior regarding homosexuality, transgenderism, and abortion.

• Theodore McCarrick, formerly Cardinal Archbishop of Washington from 2001 to 2006, was stripped of the clerical state for crimes against minors and adults, with no possibility for appeal. McCarrick’s most well-known victim, James Grein, described how McCarrick abused him for years starting when he was 11 years old. Other alleged victims included former seminarians and priests who have detailed the sexual abuse to which McCarrick subjected them.
  

• Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who led the archdiocese from 2006 to 2018, downplayed his predecessor’s culpability and publicly pretended not to know about the many allegations against McCarrick. A Pennsylvania Grand Jury also found that while Wuerl was bishop of Pittsburgh, he allowed predatory priests to remain in active ministry, shuffling them between dioceses and parishes.
  

• Washington’s current archbishop, Wilton Gregory — elevated to the rank of cardinal by Pope Francis last fall — as archbishop of Atlanta displayed an uncritical willingness to accept LGBT ideology in defiance of the Church’s Magisterium. Soon after arriving in D.C., he tacitly affirmed the transgenderism of a “transgender Catholic” at a public event. He condemned President and Mrs. Trump’s visit to the city’s John Paul II National Shrine to pray on the occasion of Pope St. John Paul II’s 100th birthday.