This is part of why I’m still Christian, but feel like I can never go back to the Catholic Church.
I mean,
Wow.
As I understood it, the RCC church did not consider an abortion wrong if it was to save the life of the mother, that it was her choice. I do not know if, or when the rules changed,but that was always my understanding.
Of course it does – as a plus for him. :rolleyes:
He didn’t order the abortions. He was creating more catholics.
The RCC considers abortion to be an “evil” at all times.
On the other hand, if a surgical operation to save the mother results in an abortion, that is considered an inadvertant evil and is not generally considered a sin. (Operations to address ectopic pregnancies and uterine cancer are performed in Catholic hospitals all the time.)
The bishop in this situation is taking a particularly narrow interpretation of the situation that appears to ignore most of the relevant moral theology.
Which is why there is a chorus of Archbishops, Cardinals, and even the Pope himself admonishing him.
Oh wait.
Well, there won’t be, either.
The RCC runs on a practice of letting pastors make pastoral decisions. There are probably some undetermined number of bishops who are in complete agreement with his decision. There are probably some undetermined number of bishops who are horrified at his decision.
I have no idea how many bishops or theologians are in agreement or disagreement with his declaration, but it is a fact that we will never really know the numbers because the RCC does not make it a practice to solicit or encourage public comments across jurisdictional boundaries.
VERY narow…I think he sounds like a nut.
Preach it!
The RNC lobbied, and got tightened regulations for abortions here. Much tighter, apparently, that in Brazil. I don’t consider myself a Catholic anymore (I am a flaming atheist), and I don’t believe abortion is a crime, for the most part.
I should not have any more children for health reasons, I don’t want any more children and damnabit if I am not gonna get one should my birth control fail. None of the methods I can use are accepted by the church (although legal here). So I guess I will have to invite the RNC faithfuls to get in line and kiss my fat, brown ass.
*Bolding mine.
This is an honest question; have they said why not?
They might have when the tradition began several hundreds of years ago, but it is not an official rule and I have seen no declarations explaining why.
At a guess, it would be a matter of figuring that the local pastor has more relevant information than any outsider. With the change to the world with modern communications, that may change, but I don’t look to see it happening.
I kept reading the rest of the thread, but I can’t figure out what you’re saying is the real issue here.
Well, what the hell is the Pope for, then? If the interpretations of all bishops are equally valid, the only reason to have a Pope and cardinals is pomp and circumstance.
tom can I make sure I understand what you are saying?
Other bishops will not cross boundaries to comment but the comment from above, from the Vatican, the note of support from Cardinal is not crossing boundaries and is valid as an expression that such is in keeping with and appropriate to official Church positions. OTOH a hypothetical Vatican representative stating that the bishop was narrowly and rigidly applying the rule and that a statement of declaring excommunication was excessive would have had power. Yes?
What power do you think such a statement would have wielded? What power do you think the comment from the cardinal quoted, above, exerts?
Cardinals are just the top bureaucrats in various church organizations and their declarations have no specific weight unless they are speaking for their particular diocese or congregation. (That is why, when the archbishop of Vienna got lured by the creationist Discovery Institute into publishing some nonsense about Intelligent Design in the New York Times, it made all the Catholic scientists spit out their coffee, (and a few commented publicly on his error), but it had no effect on Catholic schools teaching evolution instead of ID. That is why, when some idiot cardinal, following the breaking of the pedophilia scandal, urged a witchhunt for homosexuals in the priesthood, he was cheered in some homophobic areas and ignored otherwise.)
I am not pretending that the Brazilian bishop is some lone loon. Some undetermined number of Catholics will agree with him or disagree with him. Some will say that the pregnancy should have been permitted to advance until the girl’s life was in imminent danger, at which time a caesarean delivery should have been attempted. Some will say that people should have just prayed that the preganancy did not turn out as badly as the doctors feared. Some will say that the correct procedure was followed.
Had the bishop simply kept his mouth shut and allowed the medical procedure to go forth unremarked, you also would not have seen any official condemnation of his lack of actions from the Vatican, (although you might have found a grumbling personal comment from one bureaucrat or another).
Well I was asking an honest question. If I misunderstand then please educate. I thought he Church functioned top-down and that the current Church was trying to exert more authority that way. If a Vatican representative says something I thought it meant something of some authority.
A lot actually. I don’t know whether the Vatican disagreeing with the Brazillian bishop’s viewpoint would have had any appreciable effect on this situation.
But here’s the message it currently sends: If you save the life of a prepubescent rape victim you are morally evil and are no longer allowed in our churches. If you’re the one raping your own daughter, you’re still ok.
That’s the message they send. Not just for Brazil, but for all Catholics, everywhere in the world. This is the official stance of not just a “fringe” group of Catholics led by a renegade Bishop but by the Pope and his Cardinals themselves. The Pope’s word is law.
So yeah, it makes a bit of difference.
Surely there is no local information that can make a difference in a case when a 9 year old is raped and becomes pregnant?
I did not think that your question was either dishonest or snide. I simply wished to understand it better.
In point of fact, the Catholic Church is a lot more analogous to the Democratic party than to the Republican party. There are a (very) few actions that will get one thrown out in a very public way, but it is not a feudal kingdom, (however much it may look like one to the outside), and it tolerates a lot more dissension and contrary views than its reputation portrays.
It took eighteen years and a specific act violating the rules before the Vatican dumped Lefebvre and his crowd, even though Lefebvre had spent twenty-five years attacking the church. Hans Küng was allowed to teach what many considered heresy for almost nine years before he finally made a point of extending a specific challenge to the authorities that got his permission to teach as a theologian at a Catholic university yanked. Even then, he was not further disciplined, keeping his job as a professor, (with a limit on the subjects he could teach), and incurring no sanctions against his priestly status.
Individual events regarding the imposition of church rules are liable to look quite contradictory to the outside observer, but that is because there are over 1650 years of canon law, (and over 1950 years of tradition), behind most of the conflicts and many of them are decided on issues that are never seen by the public.
There is a top-down hierarchy to the church, but it is not, and has never been, a simple matter of the pope making decisions and enforcing them through his minions at every level. In many ways, the pope is the first among equals of the bishops rather than simply the boss and there are many regulations that govern how he will instruct the bishops to carry out his will. There is also a fair amount of leeway in having the bishops either challenge or ignore the pope–again, subject to a lot of traditions and a number of actual rules.
Maybe.
Here’s what I mean:
You’re absolutely correct that this is a near-classic case of unintended secondary effect, and that this principle means that no grave sin attaches to the procurers of this particular abortion.
But canon law provides a latae sententiae excommunication in the case of procuring an abortion.
How can both be true?
A latae sententiae excommunication is imposed automatically, the instant the forbidden act occurs. It is not a sentence handed down by a tribunal; it simply exists the instant it’s triggered. This is sort of analogous to statutory rape, which is most often a “strict liability” crime. For a conviction for statutory rape, we don’t have to prove that the actor knew how old the victim was, or even if he should have known how old she was. We just have to prove that the victim was under the statutory age, the prepetrator was over the statutory age, and that the sex act occurred. Period.
Now consider this thought experiment: let’s imagine a very believably old-looking 15-year-old, who has run away from home, procured a fake birth certificate, used it to get a driver’s license, passport, and an apartment, and has found a job tending bar. In fact, she gets her new passport back in the mail and opens it at work, sharing her commiserations with a customer about how her photo makes her nose look. So this guy sees her tending bar, and has a good chance to see her U.S. passport with a birth date that shows her to be over 21. He flirts with her, and sure enough, a few dates later, she invites him up to her apartment where they get busy.
Now, legally, on those facts he’s guilty of statutory rape. It would not be wrong to make that claim. He became guilty, automatically, the instant the sex act began.
But it would be a terrible miscarriage of justice to prosecute him on those facts. In this case, we would hope that, should it ever come to the attention of the authorities, that the prosecutor would exercise his discretion and decline to pursue charges.
Now let’s consider the case before us. Like the innocent barfly above, the actors before us are legally covered by the edict that a latae sententiae excommunication is incurred automatically by anyone who procures or assists in an abortion. But since, in this specific case, the intent of the parties was to save a life, and the abortion was an unintended secondary effect, lifting the penalty (which again is reserved to the Holy See, and NOT an individual pastor or bishop) is the correct exercise of discretion.
Concerning unintended secondary effects, here’s how a very intelligent and knowledgable and devout Catholic explained it to me. (Doesn’t guarantee she was right, of course!) If a lady has an ectopic pregnancy, then she may not have the fetus killed directly, but she is allowed to have the part of her body the fetus is stuck to (suddenly I forget what this very common and easy word is) removed. The intention is to save the action taken is not designed to kill a fetus. Unfortunately, the fetus does die, but that is not the intended effect of the action.
Seems like a stretch to me, but anyway, that’s how she says the logic goes.
If that’s right, then if the doctors took action directly to kill the twins in this case, then it appears they are Catholic-legally culpable. For they took action designed to kill a fetus.
I suppose removing the entire womb (would that be possible medically?) would have been “okay” so to speak.
-FrL-