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The Catholic Politician
While former Mayor Rudy Giuliani runs around the country trying to explain how he can be for and against abortion at the same time, abortion politics were reaching a feverish pitch in Mexico City, where legislators recently legalized abortion.
At first, it appeared that Pope Benedict, in informal remarks aboard the plane taking him to Brazil, was endorsing a formal excommunication from the Church of Catholic legislators who voted for the legalization. But the Vatican quickly issued a written transcript of the pope’s remarks clarifying his words. Catholic News Service has written an excellent analysis of the situation and we have printed it in full this week on Page 3.
What Pope Benedict and the Mexican bishops are saying is that a Catholic politician who actively supports abortion already is not in union with the Church and therefore should remove himself or herself from the Communion line.
Formal excommunications are rare. But what really matters is the harm being done to the unity of the Catholic community by politicians who want to remain Catholic but do not act like Catholics. In a sense, they have already left the Church, which excommunication is in a formal way.
In Washington this week, a group of Democratic office holders issued a statement chiding the pope for supporting the excommunication of Catholic politicians in Mexico. In fact, the pope had not done that, as our Page 3 story explains.
The D.C. dissenters should get their story straight before issuing press releases. In other words, they should know what they are talking about when they make a public statement.
It’s really all pretty simple. The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is wrong. A Catholic representative of the people in Congress or in Albany cannot stand up and say he or she is a good Catholic but simply disagrees with the Church on this issue.
Life is the defining issue of our times. You’re either for or against abortion. If you’re against abortion, you’re moving in union with the Church. If you’re not, then you’re not moving as a Catholic. You’re simply tooting your own horn.
Reason for Hope
Ascension Thursday, which we celebrated this past week, reminds us of St. Luke’s account of Jesus being “taken up into heaven.” Luke’s Gospel ends simply, maybe even abruptly.
Jesus is instructing a group of His Apostles; ending His instruction, He blesses them and takes them to a place “outside Bethany” where He blesses them and was “carried into heaven.” The Apostles for their part worshiped Him and returned to Jerusalem “filled with joy.” There they were continuously in the temple praising God.
St. Luke picks up the story in the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, his second book. A group of the Apostles and some women including Mary, the Mother of Jesus, were praying in the upper room, where the Apostles usually gathered. Jesus appeared to them telling them not to preach until they received the Holy Spirit and not to leave Jerusalem until then. Then a cloud appeared, engulfed Jesus and took Him into the heavens.
When the startled Apostles stood by looking into the heavens, the two men who had taken Jesus chided the Apostles asking, “Why are you men standing here looking into the sky? Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven, this same Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen Him go there.”
The feast of the Ascension is at once a feast of faith, of hope and of mission. It is a feast of faith for it is the ultimate validation of the life and work of Jesus.
We say in the Creed that Jesus “ascended” into heaven and sits at the right hand of God from where He will judge the living and the dead. It is a feast of hope, of heaven our promised destiny, to which we are called. May we take hope in our heavenly home. It is a feast of mission.
In the words of the two men who escorted Jesus, “Why stand looking by idly?” We have work to do, a life to live, a Gospel to which we must bear witness. We have lives of great promise, but not lives to be lived complacently. We have work to do, a life to be lived in imitation of Jesus. Let us be about the demands of the Christian life.
Ascension Thursday forces us to think of those who have gone before us and are in “a better place.” We wear white vestments at funerals, the color of the elect. We should keep that vision alive as a sign of our daily lives, our promised everlasting life and destiny. Our loss should never be lived in despair. Jesus is in heaven; they have met Him. We live in hope and assurance that we will meet him. Let us live each day as people of the promise.
That is our focus on Ascension Thursday, the great day of Christian hope, the day that puts all the sacrifices of the Christian life into perspective. When we think in this way, it is not of “pie in the sky,” but of Christian hope.
We often hear of people saying that we should live as if there was no afterlife, as though what we see and touch is all that there is and that virtue is its own reward. The good and innocent suffer prompting us to ask why. The answer to why is that we do not have here an everlasting city, but we live in the promise of everlasting life. Let us remember that truth as we celebrate the feast of the Ascension.
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