{"id":7081,"date":"2004-07-04T23:34:38","date_gmt":"2004-07-04T23:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/from_across_the_sea.html"},"modified":"2004-07-04T23:34:38","modified_gmt":"2004-07-04T23:34:38","slug":"from_across_the_sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/from_across_the_sea.html","title":{"rendered":"From across the sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reporting on the Kerry\/Communion issue from an Italian source<\/a><\/p>\n

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was clear with Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, archbishop of Washington and the head of the \u201cdomestic policy\u201d commission of the U.S. Catholic bishops\u2019 conference. He was more than clear, he set it down in writing: no eucharistic communion for the politicians who systematically campaign for abortion.<\/p>\n

Read: no communion for the Democratic candidate for the White House, the Catholic John F. Kerry.<\/p>\n

Ratzinger\u2019s memorandum is presented in its entirety below. It was sent as a confidential letter, during the first half of June, to cardinal McCarrick and to the president of the bishops\u2019 conference, Wilton Gregory.<\/p>\n

….But it must be noted that the rigorism of Ratzinger and the Holy See have for years lived side by side, in Italy and the rest of Europe, with a more flexible praxis, even at the highest levels of the Church.<\/p>\n

On January 6, 2001, at the concluding mass of the Jubilee, John Paul II personally gave communion to Francesco Rutelli, a practicing Catholic and a premier center-left candidate for this year\u2019s planned elections in Italy.<\/p>\n

Rutelli had been, as a member of the Radical Party, one of the most active supporters of Italy\u2019s abortion law, which is among the most permissive in the world. And he continued, as a Catholic, to maintain publicly \u201cpro-choice\u201d positions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reporting on the Kerry\/Communion issue from an Italian source Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was clear with Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, archbishop of Washington and the head of the \u201cdomestic policy\u201d commission of the U.S. Catholic bishops\u2019 conference. He was more than clear, he set it down…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom across the sea - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/from_across_the_sea.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"From across the sea - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Reporting on the Kerry\/Communion issue from an Italian source Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was clear with Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, archbishop of Washington and the head of the \u201cdomestic policy\u201d commission of the U.S. Catholic bishops\u2019 conference. He was more than clear, he set it down…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/from_across_the_sea.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-07-04T23:34:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"From across the sea - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/from_across_the_sea.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"From across the sea - Via Media","og_description":"Reporting on the Kerry\/Communion issue from an Italian source Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was clear with Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, archbishop of Washington and the head of the \u201cdomestic policy\u201d commission of the U.S. Catholic bishops\u2019 conference. He was more than clear, he set it down…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/from_across_the_sea.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-07-04T23:34:38+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/from_across_the_sea.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/from_across_the_sea.html","name":"From across the sea - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-07-04T23:34:38+00:00","dateModified":"2004-07-04T23:34:38+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/from_across_the_sea.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/from_across_the_sea.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/from_across_the_sea.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"From across the sea"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}