I may be a Protestant but I’m very happy at this news:
Scientists who carry out embryonic stem cell research and politicians who pass laws permitting the practice will be excommunicated, the Vatican said yesterday.
“Destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion. It is the same thing,” said Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family.
“Excommunication will be applied to the women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos [and to the] politicians that approve the law,” he said in an interview with Famiglia Christiana, an official Vatican magazine.
Excommunication forbids Catholics from receiving communion, assisting in any Church duties, and sometimes from having a Church burial.
Dare I hope that the Kennedy’s will be excommunicated?
I doubt that there are many fetal stem cell researchers who are evangelicals, and I don’t have much hope for the old-line Protestant denominations, but non-Catholic churches ought to follow the Catholics and announce that they, too, will exclude from communion or use church discipline on abortionists, fetal stem-cell researchers, and their politician friends. This is certainly one issue that all Christians should agree on.
I'm for it.
If you came out in favor of racial segregation and seizure of private property by the Federal Government, it'd probably get you kicked out of the Republican Party.
Gee I didn't know that a voter could get “kicked out of a party” republican or otherwise.
Must be another one of those Democrat liberties they are always talking about but never allowing.
A church, on the other hand, can indeed excommunicate at their prerogative.
In my opinion many churches should have started excommunicating twenty or thirty years ago or more.
No church should have to put up with people who are in abject opposition to the church's doctrine.
Looks like some churches are starting to understand that.
I only hope its not too late.
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I agree that stem-cell research is a bad thing…but I don't really understand how excommunicating people is any better. “Gee, this person sins in ways different from everybody else, so we're going to deny them the opportunity to spend close formal time with God”? It doesn't solve anybody's problem, so far as I can tell.
The purpose of church discipline (Roman Catholics call it excommunication) is not to deny people access to God but rather to urge them to reflect upon their actions, repent, and draw them back into God's will.
The Apostle Paul urged the Corinthians that casting a man out of the church them that this was primarily for the good of the man, “so that his sinful nature will be destroyed and he himself will be saved when the Lord returns” (1 Cor. 5:5).
Paul also commanded that the church welcome back someone who has been disciplined and has repented. In 2 Corinthians, he told the church (possibly referring to the man he spoke of in 1 Corinthians 5:5) to include redemption in dealing with a former member: “Now it is time to forgive him and comfort him. Otherwise he may become so discouraged that he won’t be able to recover. Now show him that you still love him” (2 Cor. 2:7, 8).
Also, in Galatians, Paul writes “If another Christian is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path” (Gal. 6:1).
Church discipline is a last resort in urging a person to give up a persistent sin in their lives and return to the love of Jesus Christ.
-Michael McCullough
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