Who will be the next Pope?

[Philosopher]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Two men? Palpatine and Ratzinger? I guess the Emperor never harmed me, since he died long ago in a galaxy far far away.

As for Ratzinger, he's the Cardinal who tried to get John Kerry to be denied communion, so your scolding falls a bit flat.

Finally, any topic you're not allowed to joke about is also a topic you're not allowed to think about.

1) Come on, you know well I meant Popes John Paul II and Benedict (Ratzinger). You’re just trying to get my goat.

2) Let me try to illustrate why the second sentence makes no sense (except that it has been drummed into people by a brainwashing press and lots of people repeat it without thinking it out):

a) Suppose there was a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Seals. Suppose the son of one of the founding members of this Society got it in his head that regardless of what the constitution, mission statement, and bylaws of this Society say, he would actually publicly go on TV and radio and ADVOCATE bashing baby seals' heads in, and in spite of months of warnings from the Board of the Society, continue to insist to identify himself as a member of that Society to the public.

Question: Would most organizations have at first privately called the man and asked him, if he was going to continue to advocate that position, to resign quietly and stop associating his name with their organization? When he refuses, and unabashedly continued, would warn him that their bylaws expressly forbids anyone (not just him) who advocates such a thing to come to meetings, and to please not do so? When he insists on showing up, with the press waiting outside, would they not refuse to accept him at the weekly banquet? For crying out loud, if they do, and are seen to be doing it to boot, would that press outside not question the very organizing principle of the organization? Would that organization not open itself to charges of defrauding its members whenever it fundraised? How can this be any clearer?

For Pete’s sake, it’s even clearer. It’s like a guy joining the Pistol Marksmen’s Guild of America and bringing a scoped match M14 rifle to his first competition, bringing the press with him, and insisting loudly and publicly on his right to use it in the match!

Now take Kerry vs the Catholic Church. The Code of Canon Law (internal legal code of the Church, designed to check against Popes abusing their administrative power vis a vis bishops and priests without diluting their ability to safeguard the body of the Faith) specifically says that no priest may deny communion to anyone UNLESS he is CERTAIN that person is in a state of mortal sin. No priest can ask you at the receiving line if you are or not in that state.

A Catholic knows that if he/she takes Communion in a state of unrepentant mortal sin, they are automatically excommunicating themselves. Nobody does it to them, they are doing it to themselves. But Mr. Kerry's face is so well known, and his stance on the mortal sin of abortion is ALSO so well known (because he trumpets it often enough), that by definition he is unrepentant, and also instantly recognizable to any priest. That leaves them no choice, if they are faithful to the Church. They must refuse him, or they themselves would be materially cooperating in sacrilege and be excommunicating themselves.

You see the problem? To force a priest to give him Communion is to destroy the very underpinnings of that Church. Its reason for existence vanishes. It has betrayed it's essence.

Now you can find flaky priests that would hem and haw and even violate Canon law. That happens everywhere. Because human beings are not only fallible, some are outright evil. And some have even entered seminaries with the express aim to weaken the Church from within and use it for their own ends. But the Magisterium of the Church CANNOT teach that as correct. Because it would cease to be what it is. It would be a lie. It would be defrauding itself.

And so, Kerry found himself one of those priests, and continued to receive Communion up to the election. I don't know what he's done since then. I pray that now that he is no longer running and the temptation of trying to gather or retain Catholic voters to his cause no longer matters, that he may have had a change of heart and repents. Ditto for the priest that enabled him. I wish them no harm, just for them to stop the sacrilege.

There are places of worship for people who do not believe that the Sacred Host is truly the body and blood of Christ. And who don't believe you have to have confessed your mortal sins to a priest and received absolution and intend to do your best to not recommit those sins before you can take Communion. Who dissent openly from the teaching of the Catholic Church.

They are called liberal Protestant churches. Nobody says that Kerry can't think for himself and choose what to believe. What we say is that he should be honest with himself and others and not call himself a Catholic. Call himself whatever denomination of Protestant will have him. That would be honest. If he continues to call himself a Catholic publicly while advocating positions like abortion, he is adding the sin of scandal to his existing sin of sacrilege, because there are Catholic Democrats, many of them children, who grow up either ignorant or dismissive of the Church's warning, who would look at their candidate and say, well, if he can do it, so can I, and that would contribute to the expansion of sacrilege to other souls, a much worse sin even than corrupting your own.

Be honest, Mr. Kerry. Change or accept what you are. For your sake, I hope the former. But if you won’t, then for our sake, the latter.

3) As to your final point being that anything you can’t joke about is something you aren’t allowed to think about, that’s a glib dismissal. What, are we not allowed to get indignant at carelessly disseminated outright falsehoods and outrages? Is anything and everything supposed to be a joke now?

Would you not take offense (and action) against a man slipping his hand up your wife’s skirt at a restaurant? What would you say to him if he defended himself by saying: "Hey, bud! Can’tcha take a joke?"

Come on now. You don’t really believe that, eh? You’re just being flip, right?

Look, man, I’m not here to toot my horn and make myself a target for everyone who has a beef against the Church or one of its faithful or not-so-faithful. Frankly, I should do more than I do. That’s my shame. But when I see the usual kind of trashing I see all the time, under the guise of "joking", heck, trying joking like that about anyone or anything Jewish, and see what happens.
I’m just sick of the double and triple standards.

I remain hopefully a new friend or at least a respected acquaintance,
and with no intent to offend, but not a patsy either.