Pepperdine Professor Wrongly Denied Communion Over Obama Support

Professor Doug Kmiec, Pepperdine University faculty on constitutional law, was denied the Eucharist over his public support of Barack Obama for the 2008 presidential election. Obama’s decision to have a Catholic advisory committee is outrageous considering his belief that human life – babies – are a punishment for sexually active teenagers but even more surprising is that there are Catholics who want to see him elected and want to be on a committee of a candidate that has the support of NARAL.

Canon lawyer Edward Peters says Professor Kmiec is due an apology from the Church . Read his explanation here.

Tony Blair’s Confirmation On Becoming Catholic

UPDATE: Tony Blair says faith issue is unresolved.

Tony Blair to meet with Pope Benedict XVI on his conversion of England’s prime minister to Catholicism, and an update that he will not become a deacon. Interestingly, Tony Blair was receiving communion on a regular basis while still Protestant until Cardinal Hume intervened.

Mr Blair is likely to discuss his conversion with Pope Benedict XVI, with whom he will hold talks in Rome tomorrow after attending his last summit of European Union leaders in Brussels.

Aides say that in the private one-to-one meeting, he will also discuss his plans to set up a Blair Inter-Faith Foundation aimed at fostering closer links between people from different religions.

There have been persistent rumours that the Prime Minister would convert to Catholicism but Downing Street has always insisted that he remains a member of the Church of England.

Now friends say Mr Blair will formalise his already close affiliation to the Catholic Church. They say his “spiritual guide” in making the decision has been his wife, Cherie. They have brought up their four children as Catholics.

Before he became Prime Minister, Mr Blair regularly took communion with his wife and children at a Catholic church in Islington, north London. He ceased doing so in public after an intervention by the late Cardinal Hume, when he was leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.

It is believed that Mr Blair decided to remain an Anglican while he was Prime Minister because of the possible legal and political difficulties of converting while in office.

Although Britain has never had a Catholic prime minister, the church has said there would be no constitutional bar to Mr Blair joining while he was still in office. But some lawyers believe the 1829 Emancipation Act, which granted civil rights to Roman Catholics, may still prevent a Catholic from becoming Prime Minister. It says that no Catholic adviser to the monarch can hold civil or military office.

Some constitutional historians have said a conversion could affect the relationship between church and state. As Prime Minister, Mr Blair makes recommendations to the Queen on the appointment of Church of England bishops – a role that Gordon Brown intends to hand back to the church when he succeeds Mr Blair as part of a raft of constitutional reforms. Church officials say this is a state role rather than a religious one and that the Prime Minister’s own affiliations need not be a difficulty.

If he had converted while Prime Minister, Mr Blair might have faced questions about whether his religious views had affected his decisions.

Friends dismissed speculation that Mr Blair would become a deacon, a lay role within the Catholic Church, which would have allowed him to preside over ceremonies including marriage but not communion.

Tony Blair To Convert And Become A Deacon?