Will John Kerry be excommunicated from the Catholic Church? Some hope so and are working to make it happen. Marc Balestrier, head of the conservative Catholic group De Fide, has been pushing for it and has apparently received a document from the Vatican that he thinks will help his case.

Contra Costa Times reports:

"Senator Kerry, and all pro-choice Catholic politicians, who publicly call themselves Catholic yet who blatantly violate canon law by continuing to profess heresy and receive Holy Communion, must publicly reject their abortion advocacy for the sake of their own souls, and the others they have scandalized," Balestrieri said in a statement. "They have been excommunicated."

The letter to Balestrieri, written by another American canon lawyer at the request of a Vatican official, says that "if a Catholic publicly and obstinately supports the civil right to abortion, knowing that the church teaches officially against that legislation, he or she commits that heresy" and is "automatically excommunicated."

So, Kerry has been excommunicated? Perhaps not:

Canon law experts say that Vatican officials frequently receive questions about matters of church doctrine. They can choose to answer those questions officially, giving their answers the weight of church law, or they can choose to answer them unofficially, delegating the matter to a canon lawyer not affiliated with the Vatican.

In Balestrieri's case, the undersecretary of the office, the Very Rev. Augustine di Noia, asked a friend, the Rev. Basil Cole, an associate professor at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, to write an "unofficial" response to Balestrieri's question, Cole said in an interview.

So, this is an "unofficial" response to the question about whether a legislator who supports abortion rights commits heresy and is excommunicated or not? If so, what does that really mean? It doesn't represent an official excommunication, that is true, but the letter says that such people are automatically excommunicated — hence, an official excommunication isn't necessary.

It seems to me that the question isn't so much whether this is an official or unofficial response, but whether it represents official policy or is the private opinion of someone. If it is a private opinion, then it might be mistaken and doesn't describe what Kerry's real status is. If it's official policy, even if expressed in an unofficial manner, then it does describe Kerry's real status.

So, which is it?

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