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In yesterday's blog I spoke of the defection of Catholics who convert to other religions.
There is another phenomenon that is worth mentioning here: the Catholic who while not formally renouncing his or her faith nonetheless acts and speaks in ways that are contrary to the basic tenets of the Faith.
Almost 1700 years ago a Bishop confronted a powerful public figure and refused him Holy Communion until he repented. The Bishop was Saint Ambrose, Doctor of the Church and Bishop of Milan. The public man was the Emperor of the Roman world, Theodosius.
The occasion was described by the late Pope John Paul II:
"In the year 390 news of a dreadful massacre committed at Thessalonica was brought to Milan. Butheric, the governor, had a charioteer put in prison for having seduced a servant in his family, and refused to release him when his appearance in the circus was demanded by the public. The people were so enraged that some officers were stoned to death and Butheric himself was slain. Theodosius ordered reprisals. While the people were assembled in the circus, soldiers surrounded it and rushed in on them. The slaughter continued for hours and seven thousand were massacred, without distinguishing age or sex or the innocent from the guilty. Ambrose took counsel with his fellow bishops. Then he wrote to Theodosius exhorting him to penance, and declaring that he neither could nor would receive his offering at the altar or celebrate the Divine Mysteries before him till that obligation was satisfied.
In the funeral oration over Theodosius, St Ambrose himself says simply that: 'He stripped himself of every sign of royalty and bewailed his sin openly in church. He, an emperor, was not ashamed to do the public penance which lesser individuals shrink from, and to the end of his life he never ceased to grieve for his error.' By this triumph of grace in Theodosius and of pastoral duty in Ambrose, Christianity was vindicated as being no respecter of persons. And the emperor himself testified to the personal influence of St Ambrose. He was, he said, the only bishop he knew who was worthy of the name."
Today we face the phenomenon of many professed Catholic politicians who condone, and indeed, promote and defend various positions clearly inimical to the Catholic Faith:,e.g., deliberate destruction of clearly human life in abortion, genetic experimentation, so-called "gay marriage" and so forth. They go beyond mere silence in the face of these evils. They stridently defend them and profess themselves shocked when called to account by the Church in the person of a Bishop.
Ambrose refused the master of the Roman world Eucharistic Communion because he had allowed mass murder to punish a rebellion. Surely it should NOT be a shock when a Diocesan Bishop advises an obdurate politician that his immoral public positions disqualify him from Holy Communion.
Yet, it is to so many.
I wonder how long a Jew would be allowed to describe himself a "practicing" Jew if he publicly denied the teachings of the Torah and ridiculed kosher law; or a Muslim would survive if he declared Mohammed was wrong about the revelations he said he had and recorded in the Koran?
Not very long.
Yet, we seem to feel it exceptional if "prominent" and self-professed "practicing" Catholics who go out of their way to encourage profoundly evil and morally destructive policies are given even mild episcopal criticism and disapproval.
St. Ambrose, pray for us!
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