Daily Kos wants to Excommunicate John Boehner, N.Y. Times Extols Dissident Priest

Questions concerning excommunication are not at all implicated in the budget debate and have absolutely nothing to do with the issues surrounding Speaker John Boehner's approach to budget proposals. The Daily Kos knows this to be the case. The publication is obfuscating the issues in order to achieve it's own political ends.

P>WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) -The Daily Kos is a secularist weblog which purports to present the "state of the Nation". On Friday, July 30, 2011, it decided to pontificate. In a post entitled "Will Catholic bishops deny John Boehner communion?" they offered their spin on the recent budgeting debates in the US Congress opining that, "John Boehner, Catholic, is displeasing the US Conference of Catholic Bishops."

The Daily Kos, by selectively quoting one paragraph from a July 26, 2011 letter sent to the entire U.S. House of Representatives by Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, California, and Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany, New York, personally attacked the fidelity of Speaker John Boehner's Catholic faith.

The letter from the Bishops called on all members of Congress to remember the human and moral dimensions of the ongoing budget and debt ceiling debate. It can be read in its entirety here: It properly raised concerns about the poor and the vulnerable - as the Bishops should. 

In the context of a pastoral letter the Bishops wrote: "We write as pastors and teachers, not experts or partisans. We acknowledge the difficult challenges that the Congress, Administration and government at all levels face to get our financial house in order: fulfilling the demands of justice and moral obligations to future generations; controlling future debt and deficits; and protecting the lives and dignity of those who are poor and vulnerable.

"As Catholic bishops, we lead a community that brings both moral principles and everyday experience to this discussion. We defend the unborn, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, educate the young, welcome refugees, and care for the sick, both at home and abroad. As teachers, we offer several moral criteria to help guide difficult budgetary decisions:

1. Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it protects or threatens human life and dignity.
2. A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects "the least of these" (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first.
3. Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times".

The Daily Kos lifted only the following paragraph from the letter: "A just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons. It requires shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs fairly"

Then, they intentionally - and incorrectly - insinuated that the letter was addressed specifically to the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, John Boehner, who is a practicing Catholic. Finally they proceeded to "pontificate" - acting as if they knew the teaching of the Catholic Church- by asking this loaded question, "Given he's (John Boehner) ignoring the church on this matter, will he be denied communion?"

This posting on the Daily Kos is about more than bad reporting. It misstated the nature of excommunication under the Canon Law of the Catholic Church for its own political ends. Embedded within the question as to whether John Boehner would be denied communion was a link to an article regarding Senator John Kerry . Senator John Kerry is an open dissenter from the Catholic Church's infallible moral teaching on the intrinsic evil of every procured abortion and the inviolability of every human life.

Let's just consider these words from Evangelium Vitae, the 1995 Encyclical Letter of the Blessed John Paul II addressing all life issues:  "Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral. This doctrine, based upon that unwritten law which man, in the light of reason, finds in his own heart (cf. Rom 2:14-15), is reaffirmed by Sacred Scripture, transmitted by the Tradition of the Church and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.

"The deliberate decision to deprive an innocent human being of his life is always morally evil and can never be licit either as an end in itself or as a means to a good end. It is in fact a grave act of disobedience to the moral law, and indeed to God himself, the author and guarantor of that law."

Let's cut to the chase. Senator John Kerry is among some professing Catholics in public service who try to hide their rejection of this infallible Pro-Life teaching of their Church behind a façade that a Catholic in political office can separate their "personal" opposition to killing children in the womb through abortion and their public support of calling it a "choice" - and paying for it with federal tax dollars. They should be ashamed.  

What is revealed in the Natural Law, confirmed by medical science and taught infallibly by the Catholic Church is that every child in the womb is a human person and thus should never be intentionally killed. Every procured abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human person which is ALWAYS an immoral act and a wrong "choice". The defense of the Right to Life is at the top of a hierarchy of values which should be applied in the application of the social doctrine of the Catholic Church.Our concern for all people, including the poor, is based upon our recognition of their human dignity and right to life. 

This hierarchy of values is about more than a "single issue" - as the opponents of the fundamental Human Right to Life try to contend.Rather, it presents a worldview through which every issue is to be viewed, the dignity of every human life from conception, throughout every age and stage and up to and including a natural death. John Kerry and his companions know this to be the case and they openly dissent from the teaching of their Church. They then engage in sophistry to attempt to hide their dissent but it is easily exposed. 

This is what explains the entire controversy over whether the actions of these errant Catholic politicians give rise to what is called a "Latae Sententiae Excommunication" (incurred automatically by their own act) in Catholic Canon Law. Their actions reveal that they are no longer in full communion with the magisterium, the teaching office, of the Catholic Church. It leads some to argue that since they are not in full communion, they should not present themselves for the Holy Eucharist, which is the sacrament of full communion.

Questions concerning excommunication are not implicated in the budget debate and have absolutely nothing to do with the issues surrounding Speaker John Boehner's approach to budget proposals. The Daily Kos knows this to be the case. The comparison is ludicrous. The publication is obfuscating the issues in order to achieve it's own political ends.To even attempt to make the analogy reveals their agenda. 

One can certainly argue over whether or not the budget legislation proposed by the speaker comports with the principles set forth by the U.S. Bishops. However, that has nothing to do with the Speaker, a practicing and faithful Catholic, incurring excommunication! Rather, it falls within the arena of exercising prudential judgment in elective office. There can be - and there certainly have been - honest disagreements over how to best implement the principles of Catholic Social Doctrine to which the Bishops referred in their letter to the entire Congress concerning budgeting.

For example, just this past June, Congressman Paul Ryan and the President of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, had a very helpful discussion in an exchange of letters concerning our obligations in solidarity and the principle of subsidiarity. I wrote about it here. What the Daily Kos was doing is poor journalism. However, I contend it was much more. It reveals a secularist agenda and constitutes propagandizing.

The weekend brought another blatant example of just how the secularist agenda is at work in the Media. Our friend, Bill Donohue, the President of the Catholic League, issued a Monday Press Release entitled "New York Times Fans Dissent" in which we read:

"A priest, Fr. Roy Bourgeois, decides to break with the Catholic Church's teachings on ordination and "ordains" a woman in an illicit ceremony. He is given three years to recant, but he refuses, and is now threatened with excommunication. He is a hero to Church critics, especially the New York Times. Had he been a Times reporter who decided to break with the newspaper's editorial position on abortion-putting a positive spin on pro-life leaders, while casting aspersions on abortion-rights advocates-he would not have lasted three weeks. So much for the glory of dissent.

"Other than the New York Times, not a single newspaper in the U.S. carried a story on Fr. Bourgeois yesterday. Indeed, in the last three months, there were only two other stories on the renegade priest, and one of them was a front-page story in the Times just a week earlier. It's the way the paper is spinning the story-fanning dissent-that counts most."

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We have extensively covered the decisions and actions of Fr. Roy Bourgeois which have placed him outside of fidelity to the Catholic Church. Most recently, in an article entitled "Fr. Roy Bourgeois Openly Defies the Church: Are Laicization and Expulsion Next?", we urged our readers around the globe to pray for this errant cleric. Bill Donohue is correct; the New York Times is simply fanning dissent in the Catholic Church.

The arrogance of the secularist media must not go uncontested. It needs to be exposed and opposed. It is increasingly looking like propaganda media. Perhaps even more importantly, alternatives need to be offered.

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