The Won says “You Catholics, you don’t have to pay for abortions and birth control. The insurance companies do!

Of course, you have to pay for the insurance, either in employee wages or tax dollars. Oh, you don’t pay tax, that’s right. Well, we’ll fix that soon enough!”

Look, there’s something that people don’t understand; maybe I ought to clear this up.

If you are a shriner, and you get off your decked out Harley, and take off your fez, you are still a shriner.

If you stop playing WOW for a while, and go out and buy a pink tricycle and ride it up and down the street in diapers, you’re still a gamer.

if you put on a fur suit and get down on all fours and bark like a dog, meow like a cat, or bray like a jackass, you are still a human.

There are a lot of things you can do that do not affect the nature of who you are; and in fact it is often possible to do things that are contrary to your nature, and retain your nature. Like the specious concept that ‘If we do X or Y, we become JUST LIKE THEM!!’ If I were to bitchslap everyone I heard utter that ignorance, the population of the world would be much smaller. Hundreds of thousands of men you see every day went off to war and committed acts that would put you on your knees puking up your guts, and came home to be loving husbands and fathers and people you respect, if you like it or if you don’t.

There ARE organizations that have these pesky things called “Rules”. Sure, some organizations are more forgiving if you break their rules, some less. There are some organizations with rules which, by breaking them, automatically separate you from that organization.

The Catholic church is one such organization. Oh, sure, there are a lot of rules you can break and it’s not as big a deal. Stealing hubcaps or lying to mom about whether you did your homework or filling your kids school supplies needs out of the supply cabinet at work are all what are considered venal, minor things. Not that it makes them any less reprehensible, but they’re not such a big deal.

On the other hand, there are actions so egregious that the mere act excommunicates you from the church. if, for instance, you marry, and divorce, and remarry without seeking a church anulment, you are automatically excommunicated. If you commit an act of violence to a cleric, you are automatically excommunicated. Here follows a hunge discussion mostly in latin- but the bottomline is, your own actions separate you from communion with the church. The forms of excommunication you may be familiar with are the dramatic hollywood excommunications like the one seen here in the most excellent movie Becket. This “external” excommunication is the one that the Church imposes from without, and which is visible to all. The other excommunication is internal, and is visible only to the individual (as a general rule)

So when a Catholic votes for a “pro choice” candidate, that action separates him or her from the church, and by definition, that person is no longer a Catholic. They are still bound by the churches laws, and in the church Forgiveness and Redemption are of course always available, but you have to bring yourself back, nobody can do it for you.

This is the way Canon law is written in order to keep the body of the church as unblemished as it can be- when you commit an act egregious enough to self-excommunicate, you are no longer a member of the body of the church, you are no longer, technically, a Catholic.

Of course once you are a real Catholic you can as soon start being a hippo as stop being a Catholic, but you voluntarily separate yourself, and participating in the sacraments, for instance, is further sin- an example of this is the kiddy diddlers in the priesthood. They have by their actions voluntarily excommunicated themselves, and in doing so separate themselves from participating in the sacraments. Continuing to do so after having voluntarily excommunicated yourself is a very, very serious matter. This is why I try not to get too worked up about idiots like Fr Michael Pfleger, because a much better reckoning awaits him than I can possibly deliver.

So to all the people who are saying “Catholics did this” I have to say, no, In fact, you are wrong. Anyone who participated in this bullshit- at ANY LEVEL of the church, is by definition and by their own action, not a Catholic.Catholics didn’t do this. idiots did.