Cardinal: Church could face world court

Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo

A top Vatican official fears the Roman Catholic Church some day will be brought before an international court because of its stands on family related issues.

Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said in an interview with the Italian magazine Famiglia Christiana that "speaking in defense of the life and for the rights of the family is becoming in some societies a type of crime against the state, a form of disobedience to the government, a discrimination against women," reported LifeSiteNews.com.

One day, he said, the church will be brought "in front of some international court" if more radical demands are listened to.

TRENDING: Voters blame Biden for border crisis, ready to punish Democrats, poll says

Trujillo – speaking ahead of the Fifth World Meeting of Families, inaugurated in Rome by Pope John Paul II in 1994 – touched on the church's view of embryonic stem-cell research.

The cardinal said any church member involved in embryonic stem-cell research, which kills human embryos, incurs excommunication.

Asked about excommunication in the case of abortion, he responded that the doctors, the nurses and the mother involved all incur excommunication. The father also would be excommunicated if he agreed with the procedure.

Asked if that excommunication also applied to Catholics who do embryonic stem-cell research, the cardinal responded, "Sure. It is the same thing. To destroy the embryo is equivalent to abortion."

The excommunication also applies to parents, doctors and investigators "who eliminate the embryo," he said.

Speaking about politicians who support abortion, Trujillo said that they should "not approach the Eucharist."

The cardinal pointed out Pope Benedict specifically asked him to explain this to politicians, adding "sometimes they change their minds."

As WorldNetDaily reported last year, a Catholic lawyer pressed heresy charges against Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass; Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and others for advocating abortion. Denunciations for "Heresy, Sacrilege, and Scandal" also were pressed against Tom Harkin, D-Iowa; Susan Collins R-Maine; and former New York Governor Mario Cuomo by Marc Balestrieri, a canon lawyer and director of the Los Angeles-based non-profit group De Fide.

"Senator Kerry is not the only pro-choice Catholic politician," Balestrieri told WorldNetDaily. "He's just one of a number who have directly and incoherently, as Catholics, publicly professed the right to murder. Not only is it incoherent, it's heretical."

Balestrieri filed his case against Kerry with the Archdiocese of Boston in June 2004, during the presidential campaign.

As A Dominican theologian and consultor to the Vatican wrote a letter to Balestrieri stating his opinion that Catholic politicians who support abortion rights already have excommunicated themselves by their actions – a message that suggested Kerry was no longer a member of the church.

Balestrieri said the letter from Rev. Basil Cole of the Dominican House of Studies in Northeast Washington provided a basis to declare that any Catholic politician who says he is "personally opposed to abortion, but supports a woman's right to choose," incurs automatic excommunication.

Related offer:

Kelly Hollowell's brilliant expose of the abortion lobby, "Struggling for Life: How Your Tax Dollars and Twisted Science Target the Unborn," is available now at WND's online store.

Previous stories:

Heresy case pressed against Kerry, othersIs Kerry excommunicated?