Horrors! The Catholic church is showing some integrity again!

Here is a somewhat snarky and badly thought-through article by Randall Balmer of Religion Dispatches magazine on some welcome news: apparently somebody in the Vatican has decided that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo should be treated the way not only the Roman Catholic church but every Christian communion which takes biblical sexual ethics seriously has always treated public and contumacious sexual sin: by being denied communion.

Cuomo is shacking up with a woman to whom he is not married. In Catholic terms, he is living in mortal sin.

The article also rather lamely attempts to defend the famous "Cuomo dodge" first invented by Gov. Cuomo's dad, Mario, to justify his attempt to pose as a sincere Catholic who accepts his church's teaching on abortion while remaining "pro-choice" in his politics. The idea is that one can believe that something is morally wrong while consistently believing that it should be legal.

This is true- in general terms. The problem is that, according to the Catholic teaching, what  both Cuomos- as well as John Kerry and virtually every Catholic in the Democratic party- profess to disapprove of while defending its legality is murder- and mass murder at that. We are not discussing whether it should be against the law to get a little tipsy in the privacy of one's own home, or to do any of the literally thousands of other things all reasonable people agree should not be against the law even though they are, to some degree, unethical.

The "Cuomo dodge" is the equivalent of saying that, as long as one personally disagrees with murdering Jews (or African-Americans, or gays, or women), it is consistent with Catholic ethics to take the public position that it should be legal to do so.  And that is neither an ethically viable nor even an ethically coherent position.

HT: Real Clear Religion