Dissenting Catholic Dick Durbin tells Dems not to dissent on abortion.

he hypocrisy of Sen. Dick Durbin knows no bounds. He is a Catholic who pub­licly dis­sents from his Church on abor­tion. And yet he has no dif­fi­cul­ty in telling fel­low Democ­rats that if they are pro-life, they have no place in the par­ty. So as Sen. Durbin sees it, you have a high­er oblig­a­tion to your polit­i­cal par­ty than you do to your Church. You should obey men rather than God.

For­tu­nate­ly, accord­ing to Dea­con Greg Kan­dra, Sen. Durbin’s bish­op has invoked Canon 915 and for­bid­den him from receiv­ing Holy Com­mu­nion. His Excel­len­cy the Most Rev. Thomas Paproc­ki hath said:

Sen­a­tor Durbin was informed sev­er­al years ago by his Pas­tor at Blessed Sacra­ment Parish here in Spring­field that he was not per­mit­ted to receive Holy Com­mu­nion per canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law. My pre­de­ces­sor upheld that deci­sion and it remains in effect. It is my under­stand­ing that the Sen­a­tor is com­ply­ing with that deci­sion here in the Dio­cese of Spring­field in Illi­nois.

Good. This should also be the case (though it is not) with dis­sent­ing Catholics like Nan­cy Pelosi, Joe Biden, John Ker­ry, and Tim Kaine. The Church leaves no room, as I have point­ed out before, for Catholics to be “per­son­al­ly opposed” to abor­tion but think it should be legal. Sen. Durbin can not make that claim with any cred­i­bil­i­ty.

Car­di­nal Ratzinger made that clear as Pre­fect of the CDF:

Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abor­tion and euthana­sia. For exam­ple, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment or on the deci­sion to wage war, he would not for that rea­son be con­sid­ered unwor­thy to present him­self to receive Holy Com­mu­nion. While the Church exhorts civ­il author­i­ties to seek peace, not war, and to exer­cise dis­cre­tion and mer­cy in impos­ing pun­ish­ment on crim­i­nals, it may still be per­mis­si­ble to take up arms to repel an aggres­sor or to have recourse to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. There may be a legit­i­mate diver­si­ty of opin­ion even among Catholics about wag­ing war and apply­ing the death penal­ty, but not how­ev­er with regard to abor­tion and euthana­sia.

And Pope St. John Paul II made that clear in Evan­geli­um Vitae:

72. The doc­trine on the nec­es­sary con­for­mi­ty of civ­il law with the moral law is in con­ti­nu­ity with the whole tra­di­tion of the Church. This is clear once more from John XXIII’s Encycli­cal: “Author­i­ty is a pos­tu­late of the moral order and derives from God. Con­se­quent­ly, laws and decrees enact­ed in con­tra­ven­tion of the moral order, and hence of the divine will, can have no bind­ing force in con­science. …

 

[Thus, no mat­ter what Sen. Durbin says, they may not bind the con­sciences of Democ­rats.]

 

Now the first and most imme­di­ate appli­ca­tion of this teach­ing con­cerns a human law which dis­re­gards the fun­da­men­tal right and source of all oth­er rights which is the right to life, a right belong­ing to every indi­vid­ual. Con­se­quent­ly, laws which legit­imize the direct killing of inno­cent human beings through abor­tion or euthana­sia are in com­plete oppo­si­tion to the invi­o­lable right to life prop­er to every indi­vid­ual. …

 

73. Abor­tion and euthana­sia are thus crimes which no human law can claim to legit­imize. There is no oblig­a­tion in con­science to obey such laws; instead there is a grave and clear oblig­a­tion to oppose them by con­sci­en­tious objec­tion. From the very begin­nings of the Church, the apos­tolic preach­ing remind­ed Chris­tians of their duty to obey legit­i­mate­ly con­sti­tut­ed pub­lic author­i­ties (cf. Rom. 13:1–7; 1 Pet. 2:13–14), but at the same time it firm­ly warned that “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). …

In the case of an intrin­si­cal­ly unjust law, such as a law per­mit­ting abor­tion or euthana­sia, it is there­fore nev­er lic­it to obey it, or to “take part in a pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign in favour of such a law, or vote for it.

“We must obey God rather than men,” St. John Paul II reminds us. But accord­ing to Sen. Durbin, Democ­rats must obey men rather than God.

That is where dis­sent from the Church always leads, and that is why Sen. Durbin has incurred a latae sen­ten­ti­ae excom­mu­ni­ca­tion under Canon 915. Would that this could be said, also, of Pelosi, Biden, Ker­ry, Kaine, and oth­er Catholic politi­cians who sup­port abor­tion.

I say that Democ­rats should obey God, and their (right­ly formed) con­science, and not men. The Church has a high­er claim on our con­science than the Par­ty.