Bad enough to experience earthly doubts about one’s choice for president.
But Kansas City’s Bishop Robert W. Finn warned yesterday that supporting Barack Obama could jeopardize a Catholic’s eternal salvation, because of what he called the Democrat’s “fanatical” stance on abortion rights.
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“You make yourself a participant in the act of abortion” if you vote for Obama, Finn said in an interview with KCMO Talk Radio. “That’s gravely wrong. And you mustn’t do it because your eternal salvation is tied up with that important choice.”
At a time when both parties are aggressively courting Catholic voters, Finn is among a group of at least 70 bishops of the Catholic Church’s 195 diocesan leaders who have urged Catholics to vote on the single issue of abortion, which the church deems a grave sin, according to church commentator Rocco Palmo.
Others in that category include Cardinals Edward Egan of New York, Francis George of Chicago, Justin Rigali of Philadelphia and Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston.
But none of those have expressed themselves in such fire-and-brimstone terms.
A member of the conservative Opus Dei movement, Finn has become a standard-bearer of conservative orthodoxy since being elevated to head the Kansas City-Saint Joseph, MO diocese in May 2005.
Before being elevated to bishop, he was a priest in St. Louis under Archbishop Raymond Burke, who made headlines himself in 2004 when he forbade Sen. John Kerry from taking communion in the area due to Kerry’s stance on abortion.
Two weeks after Finn was installed as the head of the midwestern diocese, he demonstrated his take-no-prisoners attitude by dismissing the diocese’s longtime chancellor and vice chancellor, and canceling a nationally known lay education program, according to National Catholic Reporter.
“Our goal is to get ourselves to heaven and take as many people with us as we can,” he said by explanation.
Listen to an excerpt from Finn’s interview:
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2 Comments
#1. curtastrophe 11.06.2008
Only the Catholic Church could be so narrow minded and wrong about an issue. Obama is not pro abortion, he is pro rights and a womans right to choose. The whole abortion rights issue is not about abortion at all it’s about rights, and a womans right to privacy. Obama is only in favor of abortion if it becomes a health issue or in cases of rape or inscest.
#2. Matt 11.09.2008
I think what’s really wrong about his statement, has nothing to do with women’s rights or the rights of an unborn child. His view of salvation and what it takes to go to heaven is way out of wack. Even though I don’t support Obama or abortion, if you voted for Obama, it will not send you to hell. That’s as accurate as the doctrine the “Church Lady” had on SNL. Listen to what God says:
Romans 10:9-10 (9)that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. (10) For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
God loves you, He did what had to be done as a Just Judge, he gave us what was necessary to pay the price for sin. For sin, any sin big or small, the penalty is eternal death, but like a judge paying your speeding ticket, He gave His Son Jesus to stand in for the sin of the world. That is what salvation is.
Not trying to republish a bible here, but this is key…
John 3:15-21
15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but[b] have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
18 “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. 21 But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”
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