Rape row sparks excommunications
A Brazilian archbishop says all those who helped a child rape victim secure an abortion are to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church.
The girl, aged nine, who lives in the north-eastern state of Pernambuco, became pregnant with twins.
It is alleged that she had been sexually assaulted over a number of years by her stepfather.
The excommunication applies to the child's mother and the doctors involved in the procedure.
The pregnancy was terminated on Wednesday.
Abortion is only permitted in Brazil in cases of rape and where the mother's life is at risk and doctors say the girl's case met both these conditions.
Apparently though, they didn't feel the rapist warranted such harsh public rebuke. It seems the Catholic Church is long past caring about anything that was actually taught by Christ. This diary briefly examines some of the history of the Catholic Church's very unchristian teaching on this subject.
Other versions of the story report that the girl weighed only 80 pounds and that there was a serious risk to carry the child to term:
Doctors in the northeastern city of Recife performed the abortion on Wednesday after deciding that the girl could have died if her pregnancy with twins was allowed to continue. According to media reports, the girl was nearly four months pregnant.
Olimpio Moraes, one of the doctors involved in the abortion, said that the girl's circumstances had met both exceptions to the country's abortion ban.
"As doctors, we could not allow a girl of 9 to suffer like this or until she paid with her own life," he said.
And, in a similar case:
A similar case in southern Brazil surfaced Thursday. Authorities in Rio Grande do Sul state told the O Globo newspaper that an 11-year-old girl allegedly raped by her stepfather is seven months pregnant.
The 51-year-old stepfather has been in jail since January while the girl is in a hospital for high risk pregnancies and apparently will not have an abortion.
This is just horrifying stuff. Brazil already has one of the more restrictive abortion laws in the world, but that's still not good enough. The political hacks who have hijacked the Church won't be satisfied until they have completely succeeded in imposing their entire right wing social agenda in the guise of religion.
Most people are aware that the Catholic Church is opposed to abortion. But even many Catholics aren't fully aware of the theological foundations of this teaching. Many assume that the Church has simply always taught the same thing, in much the same way, and is just upholding tradition. But this really isn't the case. The truth is the Church has become increasingly strident on this issue over the last century and a half, after a history in which there was more diversity of opinion and debate within the church.
The current Church position was most recently laid out authoritatively in "Evangelium Vitae: On the Value and Inviolability of Human Life" a papal encyclical issued by John Paul II in 1995. Let's take a look there at how the teaching is supported.
- The texts of Sacred Scripture never address the question of deliberate abortion and so do not directly and specifically condemn it. But they show such great respect for the human being in the mother's womb that they require as a logical consequence that God's commandment "You shall not kill" be extended to the unborn child as well.
Evangelium Vitae Ch. 3, par. 61.
For starters, it is important to understand that under Catholic doctrine, all authentic teachings must come either directly from scripture, or from the traditions of the early church. Thus, the stark admission here that nowhere in sacred scripture is it ever prohibited is significant. And the additional assertion, that scriptures show such great respect for the child in the mother's womb, is also not well supported.
The argument from tradition is stronger:
Christian Tradition--as the Declaration issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith points out so well [6l]--is clear and unanimous, from the beginning up to our own day, in describing abortion as a particularly grave moral disorder. From its first contacts with the Greco-Roman world, where abortion and infanticide were widely practised, the first Christian community, by its teaching and practice, radically opposed the customs rampant in that society, as is clearly shown by the Didache mentioned earlier.[62] Among the Greek ecclesiastical writers, Athenagoras records that Christians consider as murderesses women who have recourse to abortifacient medicines, because children, even if they are still in their mother's womb, "are already under the protection of Divine Providence".[63] Among the Latin authors, Tertullian affirms: "It is anticipated murder to prevent someone from being born; it makes little difference whether one kills a soul already born or puts it to death at birth. He who will one day be a man is a man already".[64]
Throughout Christianity's two thousand year history, this same doctrine has been constantly taught by the Fathers of the Church and by her Pastors and Doctors. Even scientific and philosophical discussions about the precise moment of the infusion of the spiritual soul have never given rise to any hesitation about the moral condemnation of abortion.
But, this account of tradition is also somewhat selective, as for most of Church history abortion, while considered a sin, was generally not considered to be murder.
The Jewish tradition, which would have had a large influence on the early Church, held that abortion was not permitted, but still did not consider the fetus to be fully human prior to birth. And the Babylonian Talmud states "the embryo is considered to be mere water until the fortieth day". (link)
Similarly, a significant number of Church fathers throughout history have held that abortion early in pregnancy was less serious than later on. From Augustine, to Jerome, to Aquinas, it was held that only once the body was formed, and the fetus became animated ("fetus animatus"), was abortion akin to murder. This seems to be the prevailing view by the 5th century. In the early 13th Century, Pope Innocent III held that "fetus animatus" began, and ensoulment occurred, at the time the woman first felt the movement of the fetus. In the 16th Century, Pope Gregory XIV put this at 16 1/2 weeks (116 days). (link)
It wasn't until the 17th Century that the idea of "simultaneous animation", which held that ensoulment occurred at conception, began to gain more support. Then, in 1869, Pope Pius IX dropped the distinction between "fetus animatus" and "fetus inanimatus". In 1886, Leo XIII prohibited all abortions at any stage, even to protect the life of the mother, and required excommunication as punishment. And in 1917, Canon law was revised to refer only to "the fetus".
It is this relatively recent teaching that now dominates. Indeed, Bishop Sobrinho defends his statement on the grounds that he is simply reiterating this teaching. Per one report:
But Archbishop Cardoso Sobrinho has denied media reports that he personally ordered the excommunications. "I simply recalled what is in church canon law. Excommunication is automatic for those who participate in an abortion. I did not excommunicate anyone, just remembered the church’s law which says they are automatically excommunicated," he said.
What stands out though, is how unique this teaching is. There are only a handful of offenses under Canon law in which invoke latae sententiae excommunication. Chief amongst them for a lay person are heresy or apostacy, or sacrilege directly against the consecrated Eucharist. The sin of the rapist does not incur latae sententiae excommunication, nor does murder, or even genocide. Adolph Hitler was never excommunicated. And what stands out about this teaching on abortion is, this sanction is being incurred for a sin which Christ himself never taught against (despite the practice being common in his time), and for which this extreme penalty is of fairly recent invention, not part of any authentic tradition of the Church.
Now, there are plenty of arguments that can be made against even the authentic Church tradition against abortion. Even that tradition cannot be found anywhere in scripture, in the actual known teachings of Christ. And, that tradition very likely was influenced as well by a male dominated culture in which women were treated as property, not given rights equal to men, and valued primarily for their reproductive function. And, there were many other ancient cultures and traditions which held less restrictive views, including popular practice throughout Greece and Rome.
But, it is saying something that, throughout most of this history, a 9 year old victim of rape, 15 weeks pregnant, still would have been treated more justly and humanely than she is treated today by the 21st century Catholic Church in Brazil, where Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho condemns her protectors, with no comment on the monster responsible for impregnating her in the first place.
Note: Diaries on this case were also posted last night by The Sheeping of America and AtlantaJan.