You always wanna give people the benefit of the doubt inasmuch as you can, so that just possibly there’s a 0.000000001% chance of whomsoever being open to conversion. We gotta have the hope that we can maybe work with people in this world.
Take Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill) as an example. When asked about pro-aborts protesting outside of SCOTUS Justices’ and elected officials’ family homes he had this to say:
- “I think it’s reprehensible. Stay away from homes and families of elected officials and members of the court. You can express yourself, exercise your First Amendment rights, but to go after them at their homes, to do anything of a threatening nature, certainly anything violent, is absolutely reprehensible.”
Wow. So very different from Nancy Pelosi on this point. With the glee of the DOJ and DHS, Nancy seems to encourage, you know, that which is “mostly peaceful.” So, with Durbin it seems there might be a conscience hiding in there somewhere. Yet he also is an ultra-pro-abort and way back in 2004 was himself reprimanded about reception of Holy Communion. So, in defending Pelosi over against her San Francisco Archbishop Cordileone, he’s kinda using her as a proxy to defend himself. Which means it’s bothering him, still.
- “The decision of the Catholic bishops and the treatment of pro-choice Catholics is different in dioceses by dioceses.”
Great point. But I’d like to think that he’s smart enough to know that bishops can be total idiots just like all the rest of us, and that we shouldn’t look so much to them for any consistent teaching but rather to Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the authentic interventions of the Magisterium throughout the ages. That teaching is crystal clear: abortion murders innocent human beings, the least of the brethren, about whom Jesus said, What you’ve done to the least of these, you’ve done to me.
- “As a policy, they [the bishops] were poised to act for the entire nation, but then withdrew that decision.”
Yep. Good point. That’s also true. The bishops as a group are total cowards and greedy as hell, not wanting to offend the powers that be to the end that the bishops conference continues to receive truly ungodly amounts of government money to redistribute to, say, abortionists and marxists and LGBTQI+ “ministries” world-wide, you know, so that they can legally skim mountains of money off the top to finance their USCCB operations. All legal, however terribly immoral. Durbin’s point is that the bishops don’t give a damn about whether or not someone is damning themselves by going to Holy Communion unworthily, so it must not be something to worry about. For Dubin, that’s the teaching of the bishops, and… that is the teaching of the bishops (though not the teaching of Jesus, not the teaching of the Church).
- “I still believe that the authorities in the church believe we have issues that can only be decided by our own conscience, and not by some bishop’s conscience.”
Well, that’s stating it wrongly. Surely he does get the impression that the bishops hold that there is no such thing as consistent doctrine and consistent morality. We already know that so many of our bishops are out and out anti-Catholic, you know, like Judas. Nothing new there. But Durbin is wrong to say that the argument is on the level of some bishop’s conscience and that all bishops are different and therefore it’s all up in the air. It never was on the level of any individual bishop. Catholic doctrine and Catholic morality is never up to the conscience of some individual bishop. No.
Bishops are to serve the absolute Living Truth, the unmanipulatable Son of the Living God, who is Love, and who said, “If you love me, keep the commandments.” Bishops can’t dispense from Truth or Morality. Bishops cannot dispense people from loving Jesus. The bishop of Rome cannot legitimately proclaim that the commandments are not absolute. The bishop of Rome isn’t God and cannot change the truth. But neither can God change the truth. God is Living Truth. We prove we’re not God by claiming we can change doctrine and morality.
I’m guessing Durbin is making a thing of all this, assisting the bishops by showing them how idiotic they are, because deep down, perhaps unbeknownst to himself, he wants the bishops, for once in his life, for once in their lives, to take the sheep of the Lord’s Little Flock as deadly seriously as Jesus took us deadly seriously. Durbin just wants to be taken deadly seriously. And that means just what it says, deadly seriously:
- “And I think that is fundamentally unfair. I don’t think anyone should be judged in that matter [of supporting abortion].”
But the Lord will come to judge the living and dead and world by fire. He was Himself in the womb of His blessed Mother for nine months. He doesn’t take kindly regarding the murder of the least of the brethren whom He Himself has redeemed.
To the point: while it is true that Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law has it that people “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion,” I believe that it is also true, a fortiori, that those bishops who scandalize people into continuing their manifest grave sin, even if Cardinals, are themselves to be removed from active ministry and dismissed from the clerical state. I think of Archbishop Cordileone on the one hand and, quite opposite, Cardinal Wilton Daniel Gregory on the other hand.
Dear Dick Durbin, I realize that you may well think that you or Nancy et alii cannot go to Confession even if you were fully repentant and want to go to heaven and not to hell because, first of all, you are having a difficult time in finding a priest who upholds the constant teaching of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and the authentic interventions of the Magisterium throughout the centuries.
But I’ll hear your Confessions. You know the drill. You have to make a public repudiation of manifest public obstinate grave sin. I’m in good standing in my diocese which grants very full faculties for the absolution of sin. Also, I’m a Missionary of Mercy of Pope Francis. I can lift many undeclared excommunications and absolve many “reserved” grave sins. I’ll give you a do-able penance. Don’t risk going to hell. Go to heaven. May such blessings come upon you.
ARISE! LET US BE GOING! 