A vocal advocate of abortion rights during his political career, Father Drinan memorably supported President Bill Clintons veto of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in 1996. They don't need to be rewritten. To be a Catholic Christian is to be Pro-Life. Now, faith can be defined as belief, but even more accurately, faith involves the complete submission of ones intellect and will to God. Do I HAVE to Raise My Kids in the Catholic faith. ago. Of course, all unborn children belong to the human species, and this would justify granting them the right to life and consequently prohibiting abortion. One general religious argument in defense of legal abortion claims that because God is pro-choice (i.e., he gave humans free will), he would want humans to But Catholic teaching also provides ways for voters to evaluate candidates on the basis of abortion and of other serious issues like the pandemic or racism. There have only been four Catholic nominees for president from a major party. McQuillan wouldn't live to see the movement she gave birth to grow beyond its infancy. Find clergy who may have served abroad in the Philippines. Now, it is true that the state cannot, in the words of the Second Vatican Councils document Dignitatis Humanae, impose upon its people, by force or fear or other means, the profession or repudiation of any religion, but this is irrelevant to the issue of legal abortion. I may still like the Church; I might have fond memories of my days in the Church; I may agree with a lot of things about the Churchthose are all good things. First, I never intend this column to be a bludgeon with which we (or I) attack any unsuspecting individual of group of individuals. It may surprise many Catholic voters to know that church teaching does not prohibit a Catholic from voting for a pro-choice candidate. Pope John Paul II said, A law which violates an innocent persons natural right to life is unjust and, as such, is not valid as a law. A group of Catholic theologians and activists arranged an open letter in the New York Times, with some 100 priests, nuns and theologians asserting that "a diversity of opinions regarding abortion exists among committed Catholics," and that "a large number of Catholic theologians hold that even direct abortion, though tragic, can sometimes be a moral choice.". As Jon O'Brien, the current head of Catholics for Choice Pope John Paul II gave communion to two abortion rights supporters Tony Blair, then the prime minister of the United Kingdom, and the mayor Rome. Now, someone could say, No it doesnt. Last week in a YouTube video, Father James Altman of St. James the Less Catholic Church in La Crosse, Wisconsin, denounced Mr. Biden over his pro-choice voting record when he represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate. . If you are the site owner (or you manage this site), please whitelist your IP or if you think this block is an error please open a support ticket and make sure to include the block details (displayed in the box below), so we can assist you in troubleshooting the issue. Missionary Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament Sullins aptly describes this cohorts desire to be closer to the truth, which some priest-converts described as coming home to the Catholic church. The choice is between allowing the baby to live and actively taking steps to end the childs life. The Church doesnt want you to leave. Photo by Robert Cheaib/Creative Commons This week, Catholic bishops will meet for a conference in Baltimore, and they will talk about who should be able to take Communion. Can or should Catholics be so entirely certain of their own moral position in this regard that they should insist that their own hierarchy of values with regard to fetal life must be incorporated into the civil law? he asked rhetorically. WebPriests L.B.S.F. In addition to a popular figure like Holtz, some Catholic media have also made incorrect statements on abortion. The Catholic Case for Abortion Rights Getty Images Ideas By Jon O'Brien September 22, 2015 4:37 PM EDT Jon O'Brien is the head of Catholics for Choice, a pro-choice Catholic nonprofit. Today we know that a biological human organism is not formed like a clay model, but possesses a human genetic code. He's cautioned against politicizing the sacrament. Some Roman Catholic priests and bishops have taken to social media to chide parishioners considering voting for Democrats, in general, and presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden, in particular, by reminding them of the churchs opposition to abortion. Your bishop and your priests, your brothers and sisters in the Church love you and want you to come back. Soon after, the redoubtable archbishop of New York, Cardinal John OConnor, rebuked Drinan in his weekly column inCatholic New York: You could have raised your voice for life; you raised it for death. The 2024 presidential race begins: Will it be a repeat of 2020? You can make an impact in the fight for reproductive freedom. No, you cannot be Catholic and pro-choice. Catholic healthcare often denies patients the opportunity to receive the full scope of healthcare services. You can listen to, https://bulldogcatholic.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/umd-newman-logo-373x230px.png, Copyright All Rights Reserved 2023 | website by. In fact, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops stated years ago that, No Catholic can Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, speaks to reporters during a news conference in New York, Thursday, Oct. 6, 2016. "Because President Biden is Catholic, it presents a unique problem for us," Kansas City, Kansas, Archbishop Joseph Naumann recently told The Associated Press. JOHN PAUL KIMES: That means that I know in this moment that I am not guilty of any grave sin that I have not already confessed. There are Catholics who dont understand that and think theyre Catholics We believe that if you dont accept what the Church teaches in the grave matters of faith and morals, then youre not in communion with what the Church teaches and therefore you shouldnt go to Communion. The document says the humanity of the unborn child from conception has been confirmed by modern genetic science, and this fact is true apart from any discussion about when a human embryo receives an immortal soul. Iverson is a priest of the diocese of Dallas, at the time temporarily serving at Kirkham's parish. Samantha Maldonado, The Supreme Court also ruled in Prince v. Massachusetts (1944) that a childs right to life and good health supersedes his parents right to practice their religion. Over Labor Day weekend, Bishop Richard Stika of Knoxville, Tennessee, reanimated suggestions that Mr. Biden is not a faithful Catholic because the former vice president supports legal abortion. 1 in 4 abortion patients is Catholic, which means abortion is a part of the life of the church. The phrase pro-choice Catholic is ultimately a contradiction in terms. A: That is a big question. The U.S. Catholic Bishops meet in Baltimore this week to discuss issues including whether Catholics who support abortion rights should take Communion. They Haven't Delivered. Instead, it is about power. The truth is, you can be pro-choice and Catholic and indeed, most Catholics are. MCCAMMON: In September, Pope Francis called abortion homicide, while also saying that he had never denied the Eucharist to anyone. (SOUNDBITE OF TEEN DAZE'S "SUNRISE OVER LA"). As McQuillan noted, the Catholic Church had held various opinions about when a fetus is "ensouled," and that for much of its history, it had considered abortion before the fetus had a soul a sin of the flesh on par with contraception, not murder. If my conscience leads me to the place where I think it is okay for a person to be able to murder another innocent person, then Im not Catholic. That sounds pretty clear. A push to deny Communion to pro-choice Catholic politicians is symbolic of denial of care in other forms. First, the what to do only has to do with killing her baby. But the 2020 election season has lured clergy to their digital pulpits. Choice is a highly American value and its a church value, he declared. Ive been trying to think of an analogy that would be helpful here. "How can he say he's a devout Catholic and he's doing these things that are contrary to the church's teaching? Say that, after much consideration, you join the GSWA. You would also be obliged to acknowledge that you had (for all practical purposes) left the GSWA. Writing in The Catholic Lawyer in 1968, Father Drinan argued that Catholics should move away from any line of reasoning or species of rhetoric which suggests that the proponents of abortion are advocating homicide.. At bottom, it's not even about abortion. Conscience is the flagship publication of Catholics for Choice. And last month, Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island, observed on Twitter that 2020 marks the [f]irst time in awhile that the Democratic ticket hasnt had a Catholic on it a jab at Mr. Biden, an avowed Catholic who supports abortion rights. A second step is more expansive: A Catholic should ask if there are serious reasons that could justify voting for a candidate who supports the legal right to abortion. By this reasoning, a Catholic can be pro-choice and allow other people to choose abortion while he remains personally opposed to the practice. It is used because it implies an association with freedom and liberty. Abortion is the killing of innocent life. When he ran for president in 2004, Massachusetts senator John Kerry said, I cant take my Catholic belief, my article of faith, and legislate it on a Protestant or a Jew or an atheist.The standard line for pro-choice Catholics is that abortion is wrong for them because the Church forbids it, but they cannot in good conscience impose their faith upon unwilling non-Catholics by making abortion illegal. Here is a memo to clueless baptized Catholics out there: You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat. Vicar General of the Diocese of Fort Worth, has issued a new memorandum to priests, But it is a smoke-screen. The mere fact that a lawwhether it is a ban on lynching or a ban on abortionhappens to align with a widely held religious belief does not mean that such a law is unconstitutional. They're simply people who lack the social awareness and PR skills to avoid saying publicly what most Catholic Democrats think. So how should we respond to family and friends who claim that there is no contradiction in being Catholic and supporting legal abortion? Pro-choice Catholics offer an effective counter-narrative to the idea that all people of faith oppose abortion. One of the movement's landmark moments came when New York Archbishop John O'Connor criticized vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro shortly before the hotly contested presidential election of 1984 for having signed a letter from CFFC that said the Catholic position on abortion wasn't monolithic. Although the many reasons that motivate women to choose abortionsuch as poverty and lack of familial supportare important to address at a social level, morally, the issue of abortion comes down to one question: what are the unborn? If the unborn are not human beings, then abortion is harmless surgery. MCCAMMON: And how priests and bishops should deal with Catholics they believe to be engaged in it - Kimes points to one historical example - the New Orleans Archbishop Joseph Rummel, who excommunicated three prominent segregationists in the 1960s after warning them that their relationship to the church was at risk if they didn't change their ways. He also serves as the Director of the Office of Youth Ministry for the Diocese of Duluth. Some people will claim that they are not for abortionthey are merely for choice. And, while we must pray for their conversion to the truth concerning this preeminent human and civil Note: Map does not include religious orders and eparchies By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. This person might be pro-choice in order to justify past actions and mitigate feelings of guilt. Along with reason, revelation tells us that abortion is wrong. Jesuit Father Thomas Reese, the former editor-in-chief of America magazine, the Jesuits flagship publication in the United States, famously wrote in 2018 that pro-lifers must consider voting for candidates, even pro-choice Democrats, who will reduce the number of abortions by supporting programs that help mothers and their children.. Demonstrators had been recruited from parishes and parochial schools all over the Northeast and bussed in from as far away as Minnesota to illustrate the clout of the Catholic anti-abortion lobby. Trying to preserve anti-abortion laws or trying to reverse the legalization of abortion is simply not working, Father Reese contended. ", He predicted that "fully half the Catholics in the United States will see this action as partisan in nature, and it will bring the terrible partisan divisions that have plagued our nation into the very act of worship that is intended by God to cause and signify our oneness. For example, a Catholic politician could not force his constituents to accept his views on racial equality that spring from his faith, but he could use the law to stop some of them from committing racist acts of violence such as lynchings. In this way of thinking about voting, abortion is indeed of singular significance. [David E. DeCosse is the director of Catholic and Religious Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. Pope John Paul II (The Gospel of Life, Par. Should the state allow some indigenous tribes or secular philosophy professors who believe that newborn infants are not persons to practice infanticide in accordance with their beliefs? In fact, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops stated years ago that, No Catholic can responsibly take a pro-choice stand when the choice in question involves the taking of innocent human life. Some Catholic leaders have expressed concern that clerical criticism of Democratic platform priorities extends too far, piercing the veil of individual conscience enjoyed by many Catholics in the voting booth. He thought that unborn children progress through vegetable and animal stages of life before their bodies were animated with a rational soul and that they become human beings later in pregnancy. The U.S. bishops' conference uses the term "truly grave moral reasons." He says the church sees abortion as a grave evil. The bishops' posturing is also unnecessary. But if the unborn are growing, they must be alive. Unfortunately, there are many people who call themselves Catholic and yet believe, for one reason or another, they can be pro-choice, or support legal abortion, without compromising their Catholic Faith. "The Catholic Church's stand on abortion is only 100 years old, is strictly political and has nothing to do with religion as taught by Jesus," declared McQuillan. Legionaries of Christ M.Afr. This includes not just unborn children, but also their mothers and fathers. The pro-choice catholic issue is similar. The rules have been there for thousands of years. On an unseasonably warm January day exactly one year after the Supreme Court made abortion legal, a 49-year-old woman clad in ersatz vestments made her way up the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral. All rights reserved. And under canon law, Kimes says, Catholics participating in grave sin should not try to take Communion in the first place. Every donation counts. More recently, he re-affirmed the church's opposition to abortion while noting other issues of similar significance. With Roe v. Wade overturned, your story is more important than ever. Progressive bishops at the opening session Wednesday proposed that every bishop who desired to comment be given the time to weigh in. MCCAMMON: Ruiz lives in Bend, Ore., and she says her Catholic faith is one of the reasons she was drawn to her work as a labor organizer. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. Since 1974, weve kept close tabs on all things related to religious and reproductive freedom. This partisan theology is being used to help re-elect a white nationalist who deploys fear to divide voters and puts his own power before the common good, Mr. Gehring said in a written statement. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. "It can create confusion," he explained. A first-century document called the Didache states, You shall not procure abortion, nor destroy a newborn child (2:1-2). All people deserve equal access to reproductive healthcare services, unencumbered by religiously-based barriers. But there is also no way to prove empirically that a newborn infant, or anyone, for that matter, has an immortal soul, and so this argument from agnosticism proves too much and would justify killing humans at any stage of life. One step is cautionary: A Catholic may not vote for a pro-choice politician if the intention of the voter is explicitly to support abortion. 2, rue Saint-Charles-Borrome Nord C.P. The idea here is that Catholics should take abortion seriously but also consider the full range of serious issues at stake. Period, Father Altman said. here for reprint permission. As a Catholic feminist, I usually expect bad news from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. But Pope Patricia should be remembered because she gave birth to one of the most overlooked but critical components of the 40-year-plus effort to keep abortion legal in the United States: the Catholic pro-choice movement. American obsession with abortion in the age of Trump also hints at the true concern of the pro-life side: The desire to control womens body and soul, and the demand for Christian women to keep producing (white) Christian children, regardless how the children will grow up. Today, a majority of Catholics support abortion rights and fewer than 20 percent recognize church leaders as the final moral authority on the issue. In 1970, nearly 55 percent of Catholics attended Mass every week. First, it helped excavate and publicize an alternative Catholic theology that contradicted the narrative of the hierarchy that the church had always taught -- that abortion was murder and that Catholics could never support it. ", Since a majority of American Catholics agree that abortion should be legal in at least some cases, it was appropriate for McElroy to then ask: "How many of the faithful will be eligible for the Eucharist by this criterion?". Dolan went on to compare Reeses strategy to arguments employed against abolitionists in the mid-19th century. Many viewed Catholicism in a negative way at the time. ", Celia Viggo Wexler is the author of Catholic Women Confront Their Church: Stories of Hurt and Hope.. A "Pro-Choice" Catholic Is an Unfaithful Catholic. And she sees the focus on abortion by some Catholic leaders as misplaced. Being a Catholic is not a matter of moral goodness, it is a matter of faith. The bishops know full well that Catholic elected officials such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., or Democratic senators like Tim Kaine of Virginia and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York aren't going to switch positions to accede to their demands. McQuillan christened herself Pope Patricia to bring attention to a new organization of pro-choice Catholics that she founded, Catholics for a Free Choice, at a time when it was assumed that most Catholics reflected the view of their leadership and opposed legal abortion. In 2016, it's likely that white Catholics in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania contributed to the 80,000 votes that catapulted Donald Trump into the presidency. If it is wrong to euthanize infants, then veterinarians around the country should be rounded up and put on trial for euthanizing animals with brains that are similar to newborns. The "defense of the innocent unborn needs to be clear, firm and passionate," he saidin his 2018 apostolic exhortation,Gaudate et Exsultate. 470 Joliette, Qubec J6E 6H6 Tel: (450) 753-7596 Fax: (450) 759-0929 E-mail: chancel@diocesedejoliette.org To contact During his U.S. visit, Pope Benedict XVI didn't object when Pelosi received communion at a papal Mass. Once you're baptized into the Catholic faith, nothing can really make you not a Catholic; even ex-communication or you rejecting the faith. In a statement to The Washington Times, La Crosse Bishop William Patrick Callahan said he had applied a fraternal correction to Father Altman, whose video message comes off as angry and judgmental, lacking any charity and in a way that causes scandal both in the Church and in society., Most people expect a decisive move from me, one way or another. No one is kicking me out; Ive already left. Catholics should take abortion seriously but also consider the full range of serious issues at stake. And they're squandering that. By 314, the ecclesial Council of Ancyra thought it was being lenient in reducing a womans penance for procuring an abortion to ten years of fasting (can. Although this approach sounds both fair and practical, in reality, it is neither. The ad generated enormous controversy. Our bishops have wisely but also frustratingly refrained from answering that question, said Mr. White, executive director of The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America. Father Conroy, who served for a decade as chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives, drew a distinction between being pro-abortion and pro-choice, insisting that a pro-choice Democrat isnt a pro-abortion person, and it is an error to judge any pro-choice Democrat as pro-abortion., I want to know the American who thinks the government should take away their choice in any area of their life any area of their life, the priest stated in reference to women. Kimes says the church today sees abortion as a foundational issue, but not the only issue for Catholics in public life. But you may not vote for any candidate who supports abortion rights.". All rights reserved. The majority of Catholics believe abortion is morally acceptable, furthermore 57% of U.S. Catholics believe abortion should be legal. As a white-and-gold cardboard miter emblazoned with a Venus symbol was lowered onto her head, Patricia McQuillan declared herself Her Holiness Pope Patricia the First. However, they claim that this fact should motivate us not toward the approval of infanticide, but the Franciscan protection of the lives of animals. A person does not become Catholic if they are good enough to be Catholic. In this election, these issues certainly include the character of the candidates, the management of the pandemic, racism, the economy, climate change, immigration, domestic and international peace and more. dioceses and orders covering 64.7 million Catholics have released lists. Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting. Vatican warns US bishops: Don't deny communion to Biden over abortion, pro-choice politicians such as President Joe Biden, What Biden's abortion position shows about American Catholicism. Canonical penalties are not far away if my attempts at fraternal correction do not work.. RENEE RUIZ: Born and raised - went through 13 years of Catholic school. Many bishops feel threatened by Biden's thoughtful approach to his faith, in which he makes a distinction between his personal moral code and his obligations as a leader.
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