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Defiant Austrialian Pro-Cloning MPs Line Up for Communion Despite Archbishop's Exhortations

By Peter J. Smith

SYDNEY, June 11, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Catholic Parliamentarians in New South Wales lined up for Communion on Sunday despite warnings from the Sydney Archbishop, Cardinal Pell, that they would face consequences for their pro-cloning votes, reports the Brisbane Times.

Deputy Premier John Watkins and National party MP Adrian Piccoli were among the Catholic politicians who dismissed Pell’s warning of consequences for voting for embryonic stem cell research as mere bluster and received Communion at Sunday Mass.

Watkins said he went to Mass with his family and received Communion as usual. The parish priest told him he was happy to give Communion to the Deputy Premier, regardless of his support for cloning/embryonic stem-cell research.

Watkins also told the Times that he wrote to all parishes in his electorate outlining the legislation and explaining the reasons behind his vote.

“Within half an hour of sending it I heard back from one of my parishes, saying I was welcome there any time,” he said. “My office has so far received about half a dozen emails about this issue from people in my electorate, and I expect to receive more. Half were urging me to vote for the legislation, the other half were opposed.”

NSW Premier Morris Iemma, however, missed Mass yesterday, apparently feeling under the weather due to bronchitis and a late Saturday spent in Newcastle inspecting storm damage.

The Premier and other anti-life NSW Catholic MPs are betting heavily that Pell is bluffing and will soon fold under pressure. The Archbishop has thus far stood firm, but these recent events may determine whether or not the MPs have overplayed their hand.

"Certainly, every Catholic politician who voted for this bill should think twice and examine his or her conscience before next receiving Communion," Cardinal Pell wrote yesterday in the Sunday Telegraph.

Pell earlier this week called the “primacy of conscience” trumpeted by anti-life politicians “secularism with a religious face”, and wrote in his Sunday column that the Church is not “a duty-free assembly of free-thinkers” or a tribe into which one is accidentally born. Those who ignore “Catholic teachings - even in areas such as sexuality, family, marriage, abortion, euthanasia, cloning”, Pell said, should expect to be “confronted, gently and consistently, rather than comforted and encouraged in their wrongdoing.”

The embryonic stem-cell/human cloning bill will go to Parliament’s upper house this month. Opposition by the Christian Democrats, Liberals Charlie Lynn and David Clarke, and some faithful Catholic Labor MPs, including the Minister for Education, John Della Bosca, will make a vote on the bill very close.

A copy of Archbishop Pell’s column may be found here:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21877149-5007146,00.html

See related coverage by LifeSiteNews.com:

New South Wales Votes for Cloning, Archbishop Stands Fast
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jun/07060806.html

Australian Archbishop Under Investigation for Telling Anti-Life Catholic Politicians not to Receive Communion
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jun/07060708.html

Catholic Australian Politician would Rather "Go to Hell" than Back Down on Embryonic Stem Cell Issue
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jun/07060607.html

Cardinal May Withhold Communion from NSW Premier for Supporting Cloning
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jun/07060511.html

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