Could this man have avoided censure from the RCC by beating her until she miscarried instead of helping her to get an abortion?
I don’t think so, not if the intent was to induce an abortion. The church would just consider it an alternative procedure.
Now, maybe if the doctors had hired a couple of thugs, and gave them the general instructions to “give her a good beat down for the sin of seducing her father”, without mentioning abortion, and it just happened that a miscarriage ensued, I think everyone would have been happy.
Well, except the girl.
My mom got excommunicated. It doesn’t seem to have bothered her much, nor the rest of her family who are still Catholic. She’s 83 now, goes to church nearly every Sunday, gives money to the church…I think the Catholics lost out when they kicked her out. One of my goals was to be the first non-pregnant bride in our extended family…almost made it, but one of my cousins beat me to it by a few months. But she was like the fifth one to get married…
And that annoys me quite a bit.
“Sorry bub, I’d like to help you, but rules are rules.”
Somewhere along the way, the rules became more important than the right and wrong of it.
You must be interpreting what I cited differently then, because it seems to explicitly assign no blame to the doctors or mother (it is not directed at the girl, whom no one has condemned at any point), rather it lauds them for the act that saved the girl. It specifically indicates that they do NOT merit excommunication.
I believe what he’s saying (though not clearly worded) is that abortions that result in excommunication receive it automatically with the act. But not all abortions do result in excommunication, according to RCC law, and this one does not. Even if it did deserve excommunication, why would anyone feel the need to announce something as if it were a ruling, when no ruling is required? Mercy and common sense should have ruled this scene, and for the bishop in question, it did not. While there are some who deserve excommunication, it is NOT the doctors and mother.
Where we diverge is that I read it as all abortions DO result in excommunications, automatically, but there’s some kind of ex post facto means of “do over”. A Cardinal, or a religious panel of some kind, can look at individual circumstances and rescind them when appropriate.
I must admit to some curiosity about how that all works. Do people have to “appeal” their excommunication and file some find of papers to get on the docket of a ecclesiastic court?
Also, what happens, according to church doctrine, if one of these doctors dies before his, er, restoration?