The nation’s largest Lutheran denomination has issued election-year guidelines for congregations and outlined seven issues, from hunger to health care, that reflect the church’s emphasis on social justice concerns.
The guide, “Called to be a Public Church,” from the 5 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, suggests ways for churches to participate in the political process without endangering their tax-exempt status.
But unlike the “Faithful Citizenship” guidelines recently issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Lutheran guidelines generally refrain from addressing specific issues such as abortion. Instead, the document highlights broad topics churches and parishioners could consider.
“This church understands government as a means through which God can work to preserve creation and build a more peaceful and just social order in a sinful world,” Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson writes in introducing the 76-page document.
The moot point is
“Where is the dividing line between a church’s Scriptual teaching and tradition and a church’s providing specific political instruction to its laity?”
It is right for a church to preach that abortion is a sin (except in very limited situations of medical extremis for the mother), but it is wrong within the political process of the United States for a church to tell its laity ‘how to vote’ based upon a specific candidate’s stated political position, let us say, on the issue of abortion.
It is wrong for a priest of the Church Catholic to permit an unrepentant sinner to participate in the Eucharist without that sinner confessing his/her sin, asking for forgiveness and intending to never repeat that sin. Whether this done internally by the sinner in open confession or privately before the priest is moot. However, a priest knowing that he is facing an unrepentant sinner at the altar rail, should deny the Eucharist to that sinner.
The sinner damages his/her own soul by knowingly coming to the altar rail and participating in the full Eucharist while still unrepentant and ‘unconfessed’ of his/her sin(s).
Therefore, when a member of the Church Catholic openly professess that he/she is “pro-choice” or “pro-abortion” that person becomes a notorious sinner. The priest who is aware of the person’s sinful notariety should deny the full rite of Eucharist to that individual.
Ted Kennedy, Ruddy Giuliani, do you hear this?