10/18/2004 06:28:20 PM|||Toni|||I know I have a lot of Power Line links today but they just have too many goodies to pass up. I have no clue how valid this is but it sure is curious:

From a quick reading of the documents, it appears that a canon lawyer in Los Angeles named Marc Balestrieri brought a complaint against John Kerry, which the Vatican responded to last month. I gather that the answer has just now been made public.

The Vatican's response is by Father Basil Cole, a Dominican theologian based in Washington, DC, who said he had been assigned to give an unofficial response to the question that Balestrieri had submitted. He answers two questions that Balestrieri had posed, both affirmatively. His letter concludes:

Consequently, if a Catholic publicly and obstinately supports the civil right to abortion, knowing that the Church teaches officially against that legislation, he or she commits that heresy envisioned by Can. 751 of the Code. Provided that the presumptions of knowledge of the law and penalty and imputability are not rebutted in the external forum, one is automatically excommunicated according to Can. 1364, Sec. 1.
Catholic World News says that "[t]he type of excommunication outlined in the new information is called latae sententiae, which means that it occurs automatically and does not require a formal pronouncement by any Church official."

The same logic would apply to almost every Catholic Democratic politician.
|||109814210095631692|||Kerry Excommunicated?