These lawmakers supported abortion rights. A bishop barred them from Communion.

[yortsed snacilbuper]

John Cullerton grew up in the church.

Long before the Illinois Democrat became one of the most powerful politicians in the state, before his party picked him to be president of the Senate, he attended Catholic school. A lot of it. Grammar school, high school, college, law school. Then he sent his children to Catholic school, all five of them. He’s from a devout family, and raised his own to be the same, he said.

But if he were to attend Mass — which he does every week — in the Illinois capital, maybe before a Senate session one morning, he’d be left out of the most important part of the service: Holy Communion.

Last week, an Illinois bishop issued a decree directed at Cullerton, his counterpart in the House and a host of other Catholic lawmakers, ordering them not to receive the sacred sacrament after supporting abortion rights legislation that the governor signed into law on Wednesday.

The bishop’s strongly worded statement challenged the politicians to square their public policy positions with their professed faith, an issue that has proved particularly thorny for Catholic Democrats, whether they’re running for city council or president of the United States.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/these-lawmakers-supported-abortion-rights-a-bishop-barred-them-from-communion/ar-AACP03z?ocid=spartanntp

[TheBlackAdder]

1. This isn't the same bishop that let Ayn Randian Paul Ryan take communion, is it?

.

You can't get any more anti-Christian than being an Ayn Rand supporter and promoter.

.

[bottomofthehill]

2. Maybe the bishop should worry about this pack of perverts

Once your own house is clean you can start to look in other directions.

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/il_chicago/

[zipplewrath]

3. Most of his congregation

I was talking with an old friend who was also a priest. We don't talk religion much at all. We were talking though about a catholic nun that we both knew. I mentioned that although she taught catechism in school, I wasn't sure she really understood it all. He made a strange comment that sorta bears on this problem. He said that one of the struggles of a parish priest was understanding that the vast majority of his congregation really understood little if any of the theology of the church. He opined that half of them consciously violated various positions of the church. And that he was pretty sure ALL the women were because there weren't large catholic families anymore. I presumed he was making reference to birth control.

It's a weird phenomenon where politicians claim some adherence to a strict faith of some sort and yet profess liberal points of view that are in conflict with that faith. But even more so when they profess not to follow the dictates of their hierarchical authorities to which they claim part of their strict faith. You can bet it drives the bishops crazy.

[OnDoutside]

11. Oh you bet it does, and not just in the US. Here in Ireland too. It's called A la carte Catholicism,

and the hardliners want to push them out.

[zipplewrath]

12. They are the minority

What the "hardliners" don't understand is that in essences, they are the "minority". i.e. if they pushed out all of the people they didn't approve, they'd be 1/6th of their size.

[Wounded Bear]

4. How is it that these men get to decide who goes to heaven?

Asking for a friend.

[MicaelS]

5. Just another reason I would never be a Catholic.

The Church sticks it's nose into places it doesn't belong.

[customerserviceguy]

6. But, that doesn't stop people

from trotting the Pope out there when he says something they agree with, like his positions on socialism.

[MicaelS]

9. Hell, I AGREE with the Pope on many social issues.

If they and lots of other Christian denominations, could cleanse themselves of their obsession for sexually related issues, everyone would be better off.

[gratuitous]

7. He's issued the same decree against Catholic legislators backing the death penalty, right?

Or maybe not, I'm guessing.

[mnhtnbb]

8. This happened to a city councilman years ago

in Lincoln, Nebraska when we were living there. 1990's. Very right wing Catholic diocese. Only that bishop took it a step farther and ex communicated the guy for daring to support Planned Parenthood when they came before the City Council for some kind of application. I don't remember the issue.

He felt the same way JFK did: that his personal faith was not going to interfere with carrying out the obligations and duties of his office under the Constitution of the United States.

This is the problem with the right wing theocrats--whether Catholic or Baptist or any other denomination-- who are determined to subvert the Constitution by imposing some sort of religious based rule of law.

[hunter]

10. I support awkward moments in church.

I learned this from my mom.

If I was a Catholic lawmaker secure in the knowledge I was well representing my constituents, I'd be sure to get in the Communion line and make the Priest or Bishop squirm. It only takes a quarter second, as God is my Witness.

I was actually afraid my mom or her insane mom (my dear crazy grandma, I'm a quarter her) would do much worse at my own Big Catholic Wedding, but they were very well behaved.

My Irish Catholic sister-in-law did however play a redundantly skiffle Bohemian Rhapsody on the organ as we were decorating the church. An elderly nun shuffled by and asked her, "That's pretty, what is it?"

I think she knew.