If you happen by the front page of the Drudge Report in the next while you may see a headline that reads:
MOVE TO EXCOMMUNICATE KERRY AND OTHERS ADVANCES...
I'm assuming Drudge used all caps intentionally so I'm reproducing it that way. If you follow his link you'll be taken to a New York Times story from which the first three paragraphs follow:
A canon lawyer seeking to have Senator John Kerry excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church because of his support for abortion rights said on Monday that he had ammunition in the form of a letter issued at the request of a senior Vatican official.The lawyer, Marc Balestrieri of Los Angeles, who heads a conservative Catholic nonprofit organization called De Fide, also said that, based on the letter, he would now seek to have four other Catholic politicians excommunicated: Senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Susan Collins of Maine, and Mario M. Cuomo, the former governor of New York.
"Senator Kerry, and all pro-choice Catholic politicians, who publicly call themselves Catholic yet who blatantly violate canon law by continuing to profess heresy and receive Holy Communion, must publicly reject their abortion advocacy for the sake of their own souls, and the others they have scandalized," Mr. Balestrieri said in a statement. "They have been excommunicated."
That sounds pretty definite, doesn't it? The letter in question was written by one Father Basil Cole. If you sniff around the internet a little you'll find this from a web site called The Washington Dispatch:
Father Cole, author of the response received by De Fide, was contacted on Monday evening and in a courteous and extremely affable tone explained that he does not speak for the Vatican. The response that he had provided to Mr. Balestrieri was simply his personal opinion.
Sniff around a little more and you'll find Father Cole being quoted in the Washington Times:
Father Cole is lamenting the fact that his missive was brought up Friday on the Catholic cable channel EWTN and is being discussed widely on the Internet since Mr. Balestrieri posted it on his Web site, www.defide.org."It's a letter about an abstract question," the priest said. "It's not from the Vatican at all. It has no authority at all. None. Zip. Zero. It's not the teaching of the church; it's me implying what I think are the teachings."
It's just another normal day on the world wide web.
It is a shame when religious leaders use the full force of their faith on complex political issues. My pro-life American in-laws see some serious contraditions in the position of these Catholic bishops in trying to make voting for Kerry a mortal sin:
http://www.bowjamesbow.net/2004/08/31-god_is_on_.shtml
Despite the facts, the next thing we'll be hearing is that John Kerry was already excommunicated.
Don't worry about it. "Vatican denies it responded to lawyer seeking Kerry's excommunication." Here's the link: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0405749.htm
I'm not surprised. The Vatican has to know that interfering in American politics to that extent would anger millions of American Catholics. According to the polls I've seen, the majority of them will vote for Kerry.