Just a quick question for the Catholic buffs.
Abortion, and the facilitation of abortion result in automatic excommunication (I looked it up earlier in relation to the Brazil story).
Murder doesn’t as far as I can see.
Why not?
Whats the difference, and why is abortion worse then murder?
(For those who can’t escape stereotypes - I am indeed Irish, which of course means I was raised Catholic, but I’m now an Athiest (the nice kind) so yes, I should know, but I don’t.)
Good question. I don’t know the answer myself, but I’m not past a wild assed guess: murder, of course, is one of those acts which human beings from time immemorial recognize as being gravely wrong and therefore not to be engaged in. Abortion, not so much. The latae sententiae (canon law jargon for “automatic”) excommunication for Catholics underscores the Church’s teaching against abortion and serves as a deterrent to those who might otherwise commit or facilitate an abortion.
Ah, and of course you realize that you are yourself an excommunicated Catholic latae sententiae (or maybe that should be “lata sententia”; I’m a long way from my high school Latin study) on the grounds of apostasy.
As another ex-Catholic turned atheist, I often answer the question, “What’s your religion?” with “Excommunicate Roman Catholic.” That tends to confuse the questioner long enough for me to make my escape. 
Cheers,
bcg
IANAC, but a possible reason might be the conflation of murder and killing. If “murder” in this particular case and from the cites you’ve read is simply a catch-all term for killing, then it would make sense to say that there are certain situations in which killing is, if not good, then not horribly bad. That would make abortion a subset of murder, rather than both abortion and murder being subsets of killing. In that sense, it seems reasonable to me for abortion to be considered worse than “murder” with that definition.
I’m not a canon lawyer, but in civil (i.e., non-canon) law “murder” is not a catch-all term for “killing”. “Homicide” is a catch-all term for “killing” (of a human being, of course). “Murder”, “manslaughter”, and “justifiable homicide” are all subsets of “homicide”.
Cheers,
bcg
Sure, and I personally wouldn’t consider them the same thing at all. But the writers of your cites might think differently, and as you point out, there’s a difference between civil law and Catholic doctrines.
Here’s an answer given to this question at ETWN (Eternal Word Network), a Catholic cable station, forum.
Question:
"I know that a woman who has an abortion is automatically excommunicated; along with all those who help her procure the abortion. Is someone who commits a murder automatically excommunicated? If not, why not? Thanks "
Response by Robert J. Flummerfelt, J.C.L:
"Hi Donald,
My answer is speculative so please bear with me. My sense is that the lawgiver wanted to emphasize the extreme wrong that a person does and the most grave sin that is committed when an innocent life is terminated. Hence the penalty attached in canon law. Why not attach a latae sententiae excommunication to the crime of murder? Well, I think that civil society places a strong disincentive on murder and therefore civil society does it duty in teaching that murder is always wrong. Hence, there is no need to catechize the faithful about the grave immorality of murder - we already know it!
Plus civil law provides a just penalty for those who murder, it does not for those who procure abortions. These are just my thoughts on this.
Know that however there are many mitigating factors which can prevent a latae sententiae excommunication from applying to a woman who has an abortion. These mitigating factors are noted in canons 1321-1325." (Unauthorized Request Blocked)
Also, more information on how the excommunication isn’t exactly automatic:
http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/Abortio2.htm
Back in the late 50’s early 60’s, I arranged for an abortion at the request of an old buddy who’d knocked up his girl friend.
A Roman Catholic, I told the priest of my sin in confession and I was forgiven.
Nobody excommunicated me.
As someone who grew up RC, I asked this question of one of the nuns at school. The explanation that I was given was that the baby (sic) being aborted had no opportunity for baptism, therefore going to limbo (older nun, this would not have been the case after Vatican II).
Well, yes, someone did excommunicate you. Namely, you. That’s what an excommunication latae sententae means. It’s automatic, immediately upon commission of the sin for which canon law specifies excommunication latae sententae as a penalty. Just as I excommunicated myself when I decided that Catholicism was false and became an atheist.
When you went to confession and received absolution for that sin, the excommunication was lifted (again, automatically). And if I decided tomorrow that Catholicism is true, and confess my apostasy to a priest and receive absolution for that sin, I can lift my own excommunication, too. But that doesn’t change the fact that by canon law, until I do so I’m still excommunicated.
Note that excommunication doesn’t require some sort of positive action by the Church. In the case of such sins which incur the penalty of excommunication latae sententae, the excommunication occurs immediately upon commission of the sin in question. If someone in clerical authority (a priest or bishop) were to come to know of the sin, he could set a process in motion by which a competent church body would issue a declaration that the sinner is excommunicate, but that would be a recognition of the already existing excommunication, not an act which accomplishes the excommunication.
Cheers,
bcg
This is (at least the first paragraph of his answer) more or less my own wild assed guess. I don’t know if (as an atheist) I should be satisfied or not that I’m thinking along the same lines as a canon lawyer.
[More to the point, he and I are both thinking like lawyers, since I do have a law degree even though I long ago left the profession, myself.]
Cheers,
bcg
I do not hink of abortion as Murder any more than killing in self defense or in War.
One cannot judge why a woman sees the need to abort.
Some think a fertile egg is a human being but would not be happy if you sold them a dozen fertile eggs for a dollar and called it chickens, or a bushel of Apple blossoms and called it apples.
The best way to avoid abortions is to have good birth control methods or the morning after pill available. It would be less costly for the woman and for the state.
If one’s religion doesn’t allow that, then they should pay for the expences etc. of raising a child through adulthood.
monavis, this is General Questions, not Great Debates, IMHO, or the Pit.
Please confine your opinions to the Fora that encourage such activity.
[ /Modding ]
Sorry, I understood it was based on abortion and the RCC church’s stand on it being murder.
Actually, while a great many Catholics do believe that abortion is murder, and the belief that abortion is murder is entirely consistent with Catholic teaching, the church doesn;t actually authoritatively teach that abortion is murder; just that it is gravely wrong.
As for why abortion attracts automatic excommunication and murder doesn’t, I don’t know, but I’d sure like to. The argument taht a heavy canonical penalty is necessary because the civil law in some countries is relatively tolerant of abortion doesn’t wash; the automatic exocommunication long predates the liberalisation of abortion laws in Western countries. And there are other things that Catholic moral teaching regards as intrinsically wrong, and gravely wrong, but that civil law doesn’t restrict at all - like adultery - and they don’t attract automatic excommunication.
The other things which attract automatic excommunication tend to be attacks directly on the faith - like apostasy - or on the church - like murdering the pope. An automatic excommunication for abortion does look anomalous.
The thought crosses my mind that maybe this has something to do, ultimately, with medieval politics, and how important producing an heir to a throne was (see, e.g., Henry VIII of England and his eventually leaving the Church, fueled in large part by his desire to have a legitimate male heir). In those days it was probably considered wise to to discourage a disaffected queen and her attendants from aborting a potential male heir to a throne as a means of showing how pissed off she was at her husband.
And why would the Church care? Because back then the Pope considered himself the supreme temporal ruler (wasn’t that why the Pope crowned the Holy Roman Emperor?), and the ultimate arbiter of such things. It’s merely a case of the capo di tutti capi keeping order among his underlings…
Ok, that’s an even more wild assed speculation than the one I posed upthread (which was more-or-less independently arrived at by EWTN’s staff canon lawyer, though), so I’m not going to insist on it by any means.
Cheers,
bcg
Dammit, missed the edit window on my first response to this.
Anyway, I just wanted to add that this distinction makes perfect sense. The concept of “murder” is strictly a legal one; IANAMoralTheologian, but Catholic moral theology is quite a different beast from the law, and we shouldn’t make the mistake of importing legal concepts into theology (or vice versa).
Cheers,
bcg
It’s good you didn’t insist on it, because abortion didn’t become an offense leading to a latae sententiae excommunication until 1983, so I don’t think your speculation is right.
Damn. Another promising hypothesis torpedoed by fact. (That does, on the other hand, lend support to the view that the penalty is being imposed because the Church thinks the offense to be particularly egregious and Catholics need to be deterred from doing it, and because modern-day civil governments are not doing enough to deter it themselves.)
I wonder what the practice was prior to that, though? Maybe not latae sententae, but if the offense became known would the penalty have been imposed after some sort of action by the local bishop?
The more I think of that, probably only in the most egregious cases (e.g., priest fools around with parishoner, gets her pregnant, then procures abortion to “dispose of the evidence”), if at all.
Hell, nowadays if a Catholic priest got a woman pregnant, the general consensus would probably be relief that he wasn’t diddling one of the altar boys.
Cheers,
bcg
No, no, no. The current canon imposing the penalty of excommunication for abortion dates from 1983, but only because an entire new code of canon law was adopted in 1983. But the code that it replaced - the code of 1917 - also imposed the penalty of excommunication for abortion, and it in turn replaced a still earlier measure which imposed the same penalty. This goes back a long way.
Still, I’m not at all convinced by the queen/succession argument advanced by bluffcityguy. It wouild seem an extraordinarily large hammer to crack a very small nut, and why would popes put so much effort into discouraging abortion by queens while ignoring the much larger problem posed by queenly adultery? It makes no sense. Plus, old and all as the abortion-excommunication rule is, I don’t know that it goes back to the days when popes claimed the authority to affirm or depose kings.
The explanation may be - this is pure guesswork - that, although civil law generally forbade abortion, this was not vigorously enforced and, in the clandestine and private circumstances in which most abortions took place, could not really be enforced. Hence the church considered that some extra canonical penalty was warranted to provide an incentive to respect the civil and moral law in this regard. Plus, many abortions involved some degree of co-operation from medics, nurses, midwives and similare professions - professions which, in many places, were under some degree of control or influence by the church. Hence the church felt it had a particular reponsibility, as an institution, to try to prevent abortions.
You’re right…I’m sorry. Although, I’m looking at 1869’s Apostolicae Sedis which seems to have the penalty of latae sententiae excommunication was inflicted for all abortion. Before that, it seems to have only been the punishment for abortion of foetus animatus (according to Gregory XIV’s Sedes Apostolica in 1591). That was a modification of Sixtus V’s Effraenatum, which also had the penalty of latae senentiae excommunication for abortion. Before that, it wasn’t a seperate offense, but just considered a type of homicide.
So, to summarize
Before 1588-general crime of homicide, which includes abortion
1588- Effraenatum, creates crime of abortion, penalty is a latae senentiae excomm. for performing any abortion
1591-Sedes Apostolica, only abortion of an “animated fetus” punishable by lat. sent. excomm.
1869-Apostolicae Sedis-penalty of lat. sent. excomm for sucessfully performing any abortion (going back to the 1588 penalty).
If I had to guess, it would be that the 1869 stiffening of the penalty was because of increased medical knowledge about pregnancy , and that the fetus was fully formed before quickening.