URGES EXCOMMUNICATION OF BRENNAN
By W. H. MARSHNER
THE WANDERER
Our Second Century of Lay Apostolate
February 8, 1973
St. Paul, Minn.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Bishops of the United States are urged to excommunicate Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, according to a statement released January 25th by the Society for the Christian Commonwealth (SCC), a lay Catholic action group.
Issued in reaction to the Supreme Court’s recent abortion decision, the statement of the Virginia-based SCC called upon the Catholic Bishops to excommunicate Justice Brennan, nominally a Roman Catholic, because of his concurrence in the seven-to-two majority ruling which deprived unborn children of virtually all legal protection for purposes of abortion.
The statement also called upon the Bishops to shun “civil ceremonies” as a gesture of protest against the Court decision (unless and until a constitutional amendment is passed overturning the Court’s decision), and to restate their opposition to allowing abortion in Catholic hospitals.
The SCC, a group led by former Triumph magazine editor, L. Brent Bozell, called also upon lay Catholics to take certain steps. For example, Catholics are urged to pay their taxes “only under extreme moral protest,” to avoid taking jobs with the Federal government (which is branded by the statement’s authors as “tyrannical”), and to continue their efforts at picketting or disrupting abortion clinics, regardless of the new-found claim of the latter to civil legality.