Catholic teaching and Senator Kennedy

http://catholicpreaching.com/index.php?content=articles&articles=20090904anchor

If Senator Kennedy had remained true to his Catholic faith and a “doer” of the Word of God proclaimed by the Church (Js 1:22), there would without a doubt be far fewer Catholics who support abortion, or same-sex pseudomatrimony, or other such intrinsic evils today that the Senator himself championed. His example taught other Catholics that one can pick-and-choose what areas of the faith on which to be faithful, as long as one tries to do good in some other areas.

We have to add, however, that one of the reasons why Kennedy’s example was so injurious to the Church was because the pastors of the Church, for the most part, made the imprudent call to do little or nothing about it beyond general teaching statements that they hoped offending politicians would apply to themselves. There were no real consequences, and as a result, Senator Kennedy, scores of other Catholic politicians, and millions of American Catholic lay people concluded that the Church’s teachings in defense of human life cannot be that important if those who publicly and repeatedly act in violation of it do so with impunity. It would be very hard for an abortion-supporting Catholic politician to have watched Senator Kennedy’s very public and panegyrical funeral rites and not have concluded that the Church’s teachings on life are, in the end, a very small matter indeed. It would have been even harder for such a politician or others who support the evil of abortion to have been inspired toward conversion.

Posted via email from The Blue Pelican