Monday, December 11, 2006

Letter from Cardinal Re to Bishop Bruskewitz on Call to Action Excommunications

Ok - I know this will either be hard to read, or impossible. It's the only version I could find and it's a JPG. If you click on it, you may be able to see it better. If someone runs across a PDF file of this on the web, let me know and I'll swap this one out. You should find almost the entire content of the letter in the links I've provided below.



Now, this only applies to the Lincoln, Nebraska diocese. If this kind of thing doesn't start happening in other dioceses Catholics will go on thinking it's ok to belong to organizations which promote open dissent from Catholic teaching with the mistaken notion that there are "two sides to every issue".


From the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska

More from the Catholic News Agency, CNA - the reporting arm of the USCCB.

Original letter of excommunication from 1996 by Bishop Bruskewitz, including the list of other organizations which were included (not known if any others appealed the way Call to Action did)....


All Catholics in and of the Diocese of Lincoln are forbidden to be members of the organizations and groups listed below. Membership in these organizations or groups is always perilous to the Catholic Faith and most often is totally incompatible with the Catholic Faith.

*Planned Parenthood

*Society of Saint Pius X*(Lefebvre Group)

*Hemlock Society

*Call to Action

*Call to Action Nebraska

*Saint Michael the Archangel Chapel

*Freemasons

*Job's Daughters

*DeMolay

*Eastern Star

*Rainbow Girls

*Catholics for a Free Choice

Any Catholics in and of the Diocese of Lincoln who attain or retain membership in any of the above listed organizations or groups after April 15, 1996, are by that very fact (ipso-facto-latae sententiae) under interdict and are absolutely forbidden to receive Holy Communion. Contumacious persistence in such membership for one month following the interdict on part of any such Catholics will by that very fact (ipso-facto-latae sententiae) cause them to be excommunicated. Absolution from these ecclesial censures is "reserved the Bishop." This notice, when published in the Southern Nebraska Register, is a formal canonical warning.

By mandate of the Most Reverend Bishop of Lincoln.

(signed) Reverend Monsignor Timothy Thorburn Chancellor

March 19,1996"