Judgement and the Chuch

An excerpt from a timely column from Professor Hadley Arkes over at "The Catholic Thing":

"Scene 1. An old friend, a confirmed Catholic, a seasoned pro-lifer, exasperated with the Republican Party, endorsed Barack Obama during the last election. The news of his defection spread, and it just seemed all the worse when it became clear that Barack Obama was the most radical pro-abortion candidate who had ever run for president. At Mass, my friend went to the altar, and the priest simply gripped his hand. He would not give him Communion. For my friend, it was a jolt as severe as anything he had ever felt. What was taking place became evident to others waiting in line, and from a place further back, an older man spoke in indignation: “Father, are you judging this man?”

I was not told what, if anything, the priest said in response. Were I supplying the lines, I might have had him say, “Sir, are you in turn judging me?” But judging with this difference: The priest was offering a judgment springing from the central teachings of the Church. He was making a gesture of taking, as profoundly serious, the teaching of the Church on the direct, willful killing of the innocent in abortion. He was conveying, in a direct, personal way, the recognition of a man known as a serious Catholic suddenly – and quite publicly – becoming an accomplice in the project of supporting that killing. When the protestor sounded his reproach over “judging this man,” was he now offering as the paramount principle of the Church, “judge not that ye be not judged”? Was it the contention now that the principle of abjuring judgment was the trumping principle – the principle that would override all other principles and teaching of the Church? If so, it was a gesture that would dissolve, in a stroke, every teaching of the Church and make a nullity of the Church’s claim to teach on any matter of moral significance."

Posted by Gibbons J. Cooney