SCCR Parish Blog

  Here is the Christmas message to America from President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump. Not political, just a message directly to and about Christians regarding Jesus the Son of God coming to redeem mankind.

  A while back, I wrote on the scandal of the likelihood of a baptized Catholic President contradicting the teaching of the Church in his policies and political agenda.  The always prayerful and thoughtful Archbishop Charles Chaput, former Archbishop of Philadelphia, has written a good short article about this in a fine journal on religion and public life entitled First Things .  He is a very clear and cogent writer.  As an aside, I recommend his book on the interaction of Christians and the government entitled, Render Unto Caesar . Here are a few excerpts from his article. The implications [of the Vatican's teaching on Communion to public figures who oppose the Church] for the present moment are clear. Public figures who identify as “Catholic” give scandal to the faithful when receiving Communion by creating the impression that the moral laws of the Church are optional. And bishops give similar scandal by not speaking up publicly about the issue and dange...

  UPDATED: Nov. 18th In light of the recent election, I've received some questions about Catholic politicians who oppose the faith and the question of Communion (for example, elected officials who support abortion or same-sex "marriage.") These are complicated questions, so here are some considerations. Is someone like Mr. Biden who opposes Church teaching in public office still Catholic? The short answer is, yes.   There is a saying, "Once Catholic, always Catholic."  It means that one is incorporated into the Catholic Church by virtue of baptism, and once baptized into the Church, that  can not be changed.  It is still possible for someone to renounce the Catholic faith of course (technical term: apostasy ) or refuse to follow the teachings and disciplines of the Church, or even to stubbornly contradict the truths of the Church (technical term: heresy ).  This is a separate question from whether or not someone is Catholic.  A good summary of thi...

  It appears likely that we will have a baptized Catholic president who has publicly claimed that he is "personally opposed" to abortion but does not believe it is right to impose that "belief" on others who disagree. He is not the first baptized Catholic politician to make this claim. American politicians of both parties have tried to hide behind this cover.  One can try to twist his reasoning into knots to try to make this justification work, but the argument simply doesn't hold water. There's a good article from the National Catholic Register that sums up why this argument fails, as well as briefly detailing the history of this argument. One line from that stands out:  What if someone argued, "I'm personally opposed to racism, but I insist that we fund racist acts, because I don't want to impose my beliefs on someone else."  That wouldn't get him very far. The heart of the question is, Why is someone personally opposed. It might be t...