Who is a Catholic? Does each individual determine his Catholic status, or does the visible institution, which proclaims itself the Holy Roman Catholic Church, possessing a written charter, requirements for participation and a fixed creed, determine membership.
In recent years, leading Catholic laymen including the Vice President of the United States, various Cabinet Members, the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, as well as numerous other legislators of the United States, have chosen to declare themselves bonafied Catholic members in full communion with the Church of Rome, while simultaneously supporting social positions, which run contrary to Natural Law; specifically issues relating to embryonic stem cell research, abortion, homosexuality, capital punishment, suicide and marriage. They therefore create a marked separation between conscience and action.
The immediate problem resulting from such a division in standards implies the subjective nature of any and all basic tenets upheld by the Church. Such defiance at a national, public level produces further division within the ranks of Church membership.
Pope John Paul II stated clearly that Catholic public officials have a grave and clear obligation to uphold Catholic tenets, which are clearly defined by Natural Law.
Solutions to the problem vary from an outright public excommunication of the offending parties, to prohibiting those public members denying Natural Law principles, participation in the Eucharist, and lastly the creation of a category, which does not bring the full force of excommunication upon the individual, but labels him a “Separated Catholic.”
A fierce ongoing debate at the highest levels within the Church continues to center around the question of how to deal with public Catholic figures in government who support abortion rights and gay marriage. The issue remaining at the core of the controversy is: who decides who is Catholic?
Archbishop Raymond Burke, four years ago, argued that pro-abortion Catholics should be denied communion and funeral rights. His nemesis, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, defended his actions to grant such rights to Senator Kennedy, Senator Kerry, and Vice President Biden. Archbishop Burke was temporarily silenced by a majority of American Bishops and reassigned across the pond.
Now, four years later Vice President Biden, a self-proclaimed Roman Catholic, spearheaded the Obama Administration’s approval of gay marriage. It was later endorsed by the President himself and eventually by the Supreme Court of the United States, which invalidated DOMA (Defense of the Marriage Act). The majority decision held that any negative disposition toward homosexuality animates from narrow sectarian religious beliefs. All this occurred in conjunction with 52% of all American Catholics casting their vote in the last election for the Party, which propounds abortion on demand, full marriage privileges for homosexuals and lesbians, and has forcibly attempted to rescind the religious liberty of all churches.
The Roman Catholic Church, like any visible institution, employing basic rules of reason, determines viable qualifications for membership adherence. The individual participant has no such right! It always remains the participants’ prerogative, however, to formally remove himself or herself from communion with the Church should he or she be in opposition to any major Natural Law position held by the Church.
--Xavier Rynne
