Bishop Charles Grahmann of Dallas extends the teaching on who may receive Communion to the point of absurdity by mixing immutable Church teaching with matters of prudentials judgement.
And Dallas Bishop Charles Grahmann argues that CEOs of media corporations that support abortion rights, anti-immigration policies, the death penalty and gay marriage should also refrain from Communion. “These individual CEOs are as much of a threat to society as politicians who vote for abortion,” he wrote in a column for the diocesan newspaper. “Neither should present him/herself for Communion.”
Wrong, Bishop Grahmann. The Church has never taught that you must accept a single viewpoint on immigration policy and the death penalty, like we must on abortion and gay marriage. I do agree that any Catholic who finds himself at odds with the Church on those issues must re-consider whether he should receive Communion (although I wonder why he singles out CEOs; what makes them special?), but by muddling related and unrelated issues together, the bishop makes it all a mess that will lead people to ignore him all together.
(The rest of the article is the same muddled mess, mixing political considerations with Catholic belief and Protestant theology with Catholic.)
This tells one a lot about Grahmann and what he thinks about the receptivity of this opinion in the newspaper.
It gets back to a point I’ve been making that the bishops haven’t even defined the political advocacy of abortion as objectively sinful.
The sacrilege is sin and not a difference of opinion.
In any case, I await the Bishop’s decree.
You know, the classical trivium should be taught in seminary, so such idiotic “reasoning” would be erased from the priesthood. A little more on logic and rhetoric might give these guys the help they need.
According to Allen’s latest report from Rome in NCR,the HF gave Eucharist to the mayor of Rome, who advocted abortion in a most political manner. Odd.
The Dallas Morning News, which is pro-choice, pro-death penalty and pro-gay marriage, has also been very tough on Grahmann for his rotten leadership of this diocese re: the sex abuse scandal. Our publisher is Catholic. That’s what Grahmann’s snit-fit was about.
You have to wonder whether these bishops actually studied anything in the seminary. This is pathetic.