Bishops have denied communion before

In the wake of the United States Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, Joseph Francis Rummel, Archbishop of New Orleans, began planning the integration of the archdiocese's schools. It would take eight years, several court battles and the excommunication of three prominent Catholic political figures for Rummel to achieve his goal.

Some conservative Catholic organizations have glimpsed parallels in the cases of Archbishops Rummel and Burke. They see two men who stood up, in the face of tremendous opposition, for a moral imperative. That both men were willing to use the sacrament of Communion to make their points is further proof for such groups that the two cases are similar.

"There are no convincing parallels between today's situation and the one in New Orleans more than 40 years ago," said the Rev. Richard P. McBrien, a liberal Catholic and professor of theology at Notre Dame University. "None of today's pro-choice politicians has openly opposed the Church's teaching on the morality of abortion nor defied any of the bishops' rights to articulate that teaching."

McBrien, who frequently extols and promotes heretical ideas, should have been removed as a priest years ago, rather than remaining as a professed Catholic priest and theologian.

Others who feel some bishops' pronouncements on Catholic politicians and Communion are meant to play a role in national politics are more specific. "In new Orleans, those politicians held that segregation was good," said Robert McClory, a retired Northwestern University professor, and former board member of Call to Action, a liberal Catholic organization. "(Senator John) Kerry does not hold that abortion is good, but rather that he is against criminalizing it."

And leave it to a Call to Action type to twist Kerry's "personally opposed" mantra. I suppose obtaining comments from the radical fringe help sell papers?

"Surely the two situations are not perfectly the same," said Burke. "There are differences. But if (abortion) is a grave moral evil, which surely it is, then a person who is taking public stands in favor of it, and even accepting recognition from groups that are promoting it, then it's dissent by whatever name you want to call it. Maybe it's less extravagant, but it is full-blown dissent."

Article here.