This is what pro-life looks like. (via).
Launching his first papal pilgrimage to the Americas, Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday issued a strong condemnation of abortion and immediately touched off a firestorm by suggesting Catholic politicians who legalize it have excommunicated themselves from the church.
The flap began hours before his plane even touched down here, when he spoke to reporters in flight from Rome during his first full-fledged news conference as pontiff.
Asked whether he agreed with excommunication of Mexican legislators who recently legalized abortion in Mexico City, Benedict replied, “Yes.”
“The excommunication was not something arbitrary,” he continued. “It is part of the Code [of Canon Law]. It is based simply on the principle that the killing of an innocent human child is incompatible with being in Communion with the body of Christ. Thus, [the bishops] didn’t do anything new or anything surprising, or arbitrary.”
So who gets excommunicated for the 80,000 women who die from illegal abortion every year — and the 80,000-plus fetuses that die with them? Anti-abortion laws kill women, and don’t prevent the termination of pregnancies. Latin America has a pretty high abortion rate despite it being illegal almost everywhere, and a pretty high death rate from abortion-related complications. Now, I know these are women we’re talking about and not the “innocent human child,” and I get it that born women are way less important than the innocent fertilized egg (or zygote or embryo or fetus), but don’t their lives count for something? Doesn’t killing them lose you some heaven points, too? Or is it only fetuses who will get you in trouble? How about all the people who have HIV because the Catholic Church discourages condom use?
The Catholic Church has enabled the deaths of a whole lot of people. Pope Benedict continues to promote policies that kill women — you can agree with his policies all you want, but there’s not really any debate over the fact that when abortion is illegal, women die much more often from the procedure. Are you only excommunicated if you kill a “person” who was never actually born? Are we permitted to grieve for someone like Geri Santoro (disturbing image; via)? How about for the two children she left behind?
80,000 women a year. 219 women every day. 1 woman every 6 minutes.
Touching on another potential friction point, he also responded to questions about liberation theology, a leftist interpretation of Christianity that emphasizes working for the poor and that was also highly politicized. As Ratzinger, he led the crackdown against its proponents, most of whom were in Latin America. Yet the doctrine remains popular in parts of Brazil, especially at the grass-roots level.
Benedict said followers of liberation theology were “mistaken” but that condemning them does not mean a lessening in the church’s commitment to social justice.
The pope acknowledged that his message was often falling on deaf ears, here and elsewhere.
“It is not just a problem in Brazil — there are many people who don’t want to listen,” he said. “We have to become more dynamic.”
Damn those liberal theologians and their silly theories about helping the poor and the downtrodden! We all know that The Good News was actually about oppressing women, not about “peace” or “loving your fellow man” or any of that other hippie crap.
Conservatives who have been in ascendancy in the church leadership for more than a decade, and who have Benedict’s ear, want to see more pious Catholics who attend Mass every Sunday and inject the word of God into their daily lives. Liberals, who still have a large following in Latin America, want the church to give more emphasis to social justice.
In other words, liberals want to use one of the most powerful institutions in the world to help people. Conservatives want to use it to simply demand that people stay in line, worship authority and the hierarchy, and don’t think for themselves.
Unfortunately, God did give us free will, so we’ll see how well this one turns out.
The Catholic Church is and has always been a political institution. But they’re taking it to an extreme here. The fact is that individual Catholics and individual religious leaders do wonderful work all over the world. There are Catholic leaders across Latin America who have make great strides in helping women to access health care, and in poverty relief and health issues in general. This is not a condemnation of everyone in the Church — it’s a condemnation of the Church’s leadership, and the policies that leadership promotes.
Although I look forward to the day when the Church excommunicates every politician who supports the death penalty, and every prosecutor who works in a state where the death penalty is an option. I won’t hold my breath.