Communion and abortion
By Tom Smith
This
post via Michael Perry at Mirror of Justice is interesting. As you would expect, the canon law on denying communion to public officials because of their public activities is complex.
Even so, it's not clear to me Kerry would not qualify to be excluded, given the canons. If you had a public figure that said he strongly supported Roe, would never do anything to endanger the rule in Roe, strongly supported the right to choose abortion, thought abortion was just dandy, etc. etc., then it seems to me he would fall within the canon. Just saying you personally oppose abortion, but then assuring voters that you will do everything necessary to make sure abortion rights are not limited, may well not be enough to keep you from being excluded, assuming the canons were enforced, which is obviously another matter.
posted by thomas at 6/29/2004 03:14:00 PM
