Last Friday's Kansas City Star reports that Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City has told Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius that she should stop taking communion until she repudiates her support for abortion rights. In a column in The Leaven, the official newspaper of the Kansas City Diocese, Naumann indicated that his latest concern was the governor's April 21 veto of the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act passed by the Kansas legislature. He wrote:
Since becoming archbishop, I have met with Governor Sebelius several times over many months to discuss with her the grave spiritual and moral consequences of her public actions by which she has cooperated in the procurement of abortions performed in Kansas.... I wrote the governor last August requesting that she refrain from presenting herself for reception of the Eucharist until she had acknowledged the error of her past positions, made a worthy sacramental confession and taken the necessary steps for amendment of her life which would include a public repudiation of her previous efforts and actions in support of laws and policies sanctioning abortion.
Recently, it came to my attention that the governor had received holy Communion at one of our parishes. I have written to her again, asking her to respect my previous request and not require from me any additional pastoral actions.
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Many writers condemned the Church for bothering the Governor, trying to impose church on state.
MY REPLY:
The archbishop is saying abortion is homicide. He's saying the governor is a disgrace to her church and disobeying God by trying to be on both sides of the fence, expecting the Catholic vote. In fact, the church may not allow her to be on both sides of the fence. They could excommunicate, I suppose. He's at least really scolding her publically for all the church to hear the message.
Indeed, he is telling all the Catholics to vote and live their faith and quit being liberal about the moral issues. He's suggesting to all the church that they not support such candidates just because they have the label, "Catholic."
Granted, so many of the priests are charlatans and I would hope their pro-life support is sincere and not a cloak for, or distraction away from, the closeted homosexuals and pedophiles among their clergy.
The archbishop is trying to get Catholics to consider that their choices and beliefs have consequences --because that's what he believes, what THEY believe, and what the CHURCH teaches. And I agree with them.
Consequences: she should not have the Catholic vote for her pro-abortion stand. She can go to Hell for her unconfessed sin --for disagreeing with God about what is right and what is wrong. The church says the babies are fully human and therefore have a 'right to life' --which right the constitution also recognizes for all human beings.
The issue is the civil law as much as the church law. Do we want our nation's laws to protect life and stand for right against wrong or not?
The church stands for right --we are to be salt and light in the society. That's why the church RIGHTLY seeks to influence legislation and law. If we, the salt, lose our taste, our "saltiness," we lose our "preservative" quality --we fail to save humanity.
The Governor is part of the church --and she has lost her salt! The church rightly rails against such members --and probably ought to kick them out to bring them back to repentance--before God bars their entrance to Heaven. This IS serious. It's no mere threat of dire consequences (as some commentators have said.)
"God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance and have eternal life."--the Bible
