From the Washington Times: "A Catholic lawyer has filed heresy charges against Sen. John Kerry with the Archdiocese of Boston, accusing the Democratic presidential candidate of bringing 'most serious scandal to the American public' by receiving Holy Communion as a pro-choice Catholic."
This is Pete-bait, if any story be. Pete Vere, if you still exist -- your comments on the merits of the case?
FYI, here's the article.
I had lunch with Pete yesterday, so I know he still exists - he's in the stages of moving back to Ottawa though, so his internet connectivity may be an issue these days.
The plaintiff, attorney/canonist Marc Balestrieri, is an officer of the French pro-life organization "Droit de Naitre".
I added the link -- sorry about that.
Eric,
I think you forgot </a>.
That's amazing -- do you refresh CL every two minutes, Coward? It's fixed.
I love you, though.
The documents in the case are on-line at http://www.defide.com.
You can read the actual document at www.defide.org (not ".com," as the article said). As a (non-canon) lawyer, it looks pretty well drafted to me.
Oops -- ".com" appears to work, too. So both addresses will get you there.
I wanna be a canon lawyer too! They have all the fun!
And all the girls, I hear.
FYI, Edward Peters has a post on his blog about this. He doesn't discuss the chances of success but whether such an action can be brought under the current Code of Canon Law.
Gee... maybe we could do electronic filing as frineds of the ecclesiastical court?? Probably end up as a ping pong match between Rome and Boston...it's still outstanding!!!!!!
I would question whether Kerry's view - though clearly wrong, and possibly something against which a canonical action could still be brought? - is "heresy" in the strict sense. Not all denial of infallible teaching is heresy. I blogged a couple posts about this yesterday on HMS.
Hi, Kevin. Mr. Balestrieri's argument in para. 40-44 of the complaint seems to require that the Fifth Commandment is _de fide_ teaching by itself, quite apart from the Pope's having confirmed the teaching in EV. He may be right, for all I know. Do you think it's a tenable argument?