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Ship of Fools
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Hospital administrator, a nun, excommunicated for consenting to abortion (Page 1)
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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Hospital administrator, a nun, excommunicated for consenting to abortion
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
Story here and widely reported elsewhere.
Too harsh? Or should Sister have expected no less?
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
Story here and widely reported elsewhere.
Too harsh?
Yes.
quote:
Or should Sister have expected no less?
No. The old boys club likes to kick the girls around. Now if the bishop and pope were women....
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
I find it odd that the story's headline mentions "rebuke," but not the sister's "automatic excommunication." I would think the nun in question would find that latter response far more harsh than a mere rebuke.
It appears that the committee was unanimous in its judgment that there was no way to save both mother and child.
Personally, I think she made the right decision, but if the reporting on RC abortion doctrine is correct, she clearly broke with the teaching of her church.
At times, I'm afraid -- and I mean no offense to Shipmates of the Catholic persuasion -- I find the RC church's stances inhuman. This is one such occasion.
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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hamletta
Shipmate
# 11678
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Posted
I doubt the sister expected any less, but I kinda think she didn't care. She saved that woman's life.
But I disagree with no_prophet's concept that if the Pope were a woman, this wouldn't happen.
Plenty of female assholes to go around. I find the argument that if women ran the world, we'd have world peace and no hunger rather unconvincing.
Posts: 108 | From: Nashvegas | Registered: Jul 2006
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Evangeline
Shipmate
# 7002
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Posted
quote:
I doubt the sister expected any less, but I kinda think she didn't care.
The sister probably expected no less, but I would be very surprised if she didn't care. She had chosen to spend her life working in the church and I think it would be heartbreaking to be excommunicated. I assume the sister acted in the only way that her conscience would allow, and the church excommunicating her for doing this must be all the more heartbreaking.
Posts: 2871 | From: "A capsule of modernity afloat in a wild sea" | Registered: May 2004
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hamletta
Shipmate
# 11678
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Posted
Evangeline, you're right. That was a terribly glib remark on my part.
Posts: 108 | From: Nashvegas | Registered: Jul 2006
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
This story shows that when the 'law' of the Church is wrong and goes against all conscience then you should break it.
The nun did the right thing.
And paid dearly for doing so ![[Frown]](frown.gif) ![[Votive]](graemlins/votive.gif)
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
A mafia boss threatens (convincingly) that he will shoot both a mother and the baby in her arms. Unless that is if you smoother the baby with a pillow until it stops breathing, in which case he will let the mother go. You have no chance to overpower the mafia boss. Will you kill the baby, or not?
This is the same dilemma, rendered into a form making explicit that the RCC believes that the unborn child is an innocent human being with all human rights. (Of course, many people do not believe that. But the easy way out of declaring the fetus to be merely an ensemble of human cells is not, or should not be, available to the people involved here. So let's set that aside.)
Utilitarianism suggests that you should kill the baby to minimize the harm done. Natural moral law says that killing an innocent human being is great evil, and evil may not be done in order to achieve good. Therefore, you may not murder the baby in order to save the mother. The former is a global view of the situation, the latter is a local view of yourself. The best that can be done vs. the best that you can do.
Interestingly, most people tend to utilitarianism in the abstract, and natural moral law in practice. Thus it is one thing to declare in an utilitarian mode that you would kill the baby, and another thing to actually do it. You may consider that either as a failure or success of the human heart...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Forthview
Shipmate
# 12376
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Posted
The bishop states the general Catholic principle that a Catholic who 'formally co-operates' in procuring abortion is automatically excommunicated.Excommunication is (unlike the abortion carried out)not a sentence of death.It can be revoked by the bishop.
Do we know from the article quoted whether the bishop actually excommunicated all those Catholics ( and presumably there were more than the good Sister).If these people saw themselves for ethical reasons obliged to carry out the abortion they may not consider themselves to have been excommunicated and it would need a clear word from the bishop to that effect.
Posts: 3444 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2007
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
However, in real life equivalent situations, people do sometimes (?often?) kill the baby - take for example this story of the bear lake massacre.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Doublethink.
Ship's Foolwise Unperson
# 1984
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Posted
However, my-Dad-who-is-sitting-next-to-me says, that the real issue for the RCC (as he understands it) is that to kill the child to save the mother - both privileges this life over the eternal survival / salvation of the soul, and is to commit to a certain death caused voluntarily as an act of will over an uncertain death not caused by an act of will.
So essentially, in doing absolutely anything to keep someone alive you display a lack of faith in the value of eternal life. In killing you imperil your own soul. And you create a certain death, where before there would only have been the probability of a death.
He wishes it to be clear this is not his view of the situation.
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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. George Orwell
Posts: 19219 | From: Erehwon | Registered: Aug 2005
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
That kind of certainty is pretty terrifying I think.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Moth
Shipmate
# 2589
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Posted
I think that these dilemmas are more complicated than just 'choose who is to die' as if there were no other factors. For the record I would not kill the baby in IngoB's scenario because both of the potential victims are persons. I do not regard the fetus as a person, although it is human, although I realise that is not accepted by RCCs as a moral position. The most moral position is to offer your own life in place of the intended victims'. I have absolutely no idea if I'm brave enough to do that, and I pray that I never have to find out!
In the scenario in the OP, I would want to know about the whole situation. Are more children involved - in other words, was she already a mother? What did she want to do? I think there is an argument that the welfare of existing children might outweigh the life of the potential child. Also, I think the decision is the mother's rather than anyone else's. At my time of life, I would sacrifice my own life rather than have an abortion, but I might not have chosen that a few years ago when I had two little dependent children.
I suspect this makes me a pragmatist rather than any kind of moralist, but I'm comfortable with that.
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"There are governments that burn books, and then there are those that sell the libraries and shut the universities to anyone who can't pay for a key." Laurie Penny.
Posts: 3446 | From: England | Registered: Apr 2002
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pjkirk
Shipmate
# 10997
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moth:
The most moral position is to offer your own life in place of the intended victims'.
Not really applicable for the mother here, since the baby was only 11 weeks into gestation.
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Dear God, I would like to file a bug report -- Randall Munroe (http://xkcd.com/258/)
Posts: 1177 | From: Swinging on a hammock, chatting with Bokonon | Registered: Feb 2006
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New Yorker
Shipmate
# 9898
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Posted
So the nun is excommunicated. What happens next? She can go to confession and God, being merciful, will forgive even if she is only imperfectly contrite. Or she can refuse to reconcile herself to the Church and wander in limbo.
The other question is whether the Church will let her continue as administrator if it has the say so.
[ 16. May 2010, 11:50: Message edited by: New Yorker ]
Posts: 3193 | From: New York City | Registered: Jul 2005
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Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Forthview:
Do we know from the article quoted whether the bishop actually excommunicated all those Catholics ( and presumably there were more than the good Sister).
No, but Bishop Olmstead has exercised his authority to excommunicate before, as reported here.
It is noteworthy, I think, that the priest in question was excommunicated not for debauching youth (which he appears to have done in spades), but for establishing a non-denominational youth center.
A year ago, when Arizonans voted on a proposition that would have allowed same-sex marriage, Bishop Olmstead recorded a sermon to be played at all masses in the diocese, ostensibly on the topic of the sanctity of marriage but in reality a diatribe against the proposition and instructing all Catholics to vote against it.
The bishop also denies the cathedral as a venue for performing groups who number gays among their members.
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"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
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Gentleman Ranker
Shipmate
# 15518
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Posted
Bearing in mind that this is only one outsider's view ... should have expected no less.
If I understand what it is to be a nun (and perhaps I don't), it is somewhat akin to being on active duty in a volunteer military. You take the shilling, you play by the rules. Sometimes the rules will be harsh, and sometimes you'll get caught in them through no fault of your own, but you've chosen to be subject to those rules, and should therefore play by them. Particularly since, unlike any military, one can simply walk away from the rules at any time should one decide that one doesn't wish to play anymore.
This is particularly true, IMHO, where the rules in question are receiving much attention and the rule makers have felt it necessary to hold a firm line on them.
Note that I do not address the issues of abortion, the RCC itself, utilitarian morality, or any other issue but what sister McBride should have expected in this situation. Neither do I express an opinion on whether her decision was right or wrong.
regards,
GR
Posts: 66 | Registered: Mar 2010
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Chesterbelloc
Tremendous trifler
# 3128
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Posted
Actually, no-one has excommunicated the nun in question, as far as I can see - she excommunicated herself by her very participation. The excommunication is latae sententiae.
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"[A] moral, intellectual, and social step below Mudfrog."
Posts: 4199 | From: Athens Borealis | Registered: Aug 2002
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Sean D
Cheery barman
# 2271
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
A mafia boss threatens (convincingly) that he will shoot both a mother and the baby in her arms. Unless that is if you smoother the baby with a pillow until it stops breathing, in which case he will let the mother go. You have no chance to overpower the mafia boss. Will you kill the baby, or not?
I am not a utiliatarian and I believe that human life begins at the moment of conception. I would not smother the baby, but I do think that abortion to save the life of the mother is permissible. The principle of double effect (the distinction between foreseen and intended consequences) applies in the one case but not in the other.
The reason for this is that your analogy is far too inexact. With respect to the abortion, the act which saves the life of the mother and that which (you anticipate) will end the life of the fetus is necessarily precisely the same act whereas with respect to the mafia boss, the act of smothering the baby is not inherently salvific of the mother. If the fetus by some incredible miracle somehow survived the procedure, you would be ecstatic. With the mafia boss, if the baby somehow survived, you would be horrified because now he was going to shoot both mother and baby. That is, your intention in the first case is not to end the life of the baby but to save the mother, in the second case you intend to kill the baby.
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postpostevangelical
http://www.stmellitus.org/
Posts: 2126 | From: North and South Kensington | Registered: Feb 2002
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Josephine
Orthodox Belle
# 3899
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Posted
Olmstead is quoted as follows:
quote:
While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother's life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means.
Yet abortion is permitted for Catholics in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, is it not? That is a situation where the means of saving the mother's life is by directly killing her unborn child. There's no other way to do it.
What was different in this case? Did the bishop believe that the baby could have been saved (if not the mother) if the pregnancy had been allowed to continue? That perhaps a C-section at 24 weeks would have given the baby a 50/50 chance, and the mother could perhaps, with intensive care, have survived that long?
The Catholic Church also, as I understand it, does allow one person to kill a second person in order to protect the life of a third person, even when there is no absolute, 100% certainty that the second person is in fact going to kill the third person. A police officer can shoot and kill someone who is pointing a gun at the clerk in a convenience store, without having to ascertain first that the gun is real, loaded, and the suspect is a good enough shot to actually kill the clerk. It seems to me that the particular abortion in question would fall under the same principal. It's not like the mafia boss analogy that IngoB used. In that case, the mafia boss is threatening the life of the mother. In this case (as in the case of an ectopic pregnancy), it is the baby that is threatening the life of the mother. Unwittingly, unwillingly, in all innocence, of course. That's what makes things like this so painful for all concerned.
I don't see how the nun could have chosen otherwise.
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I've written a book! Catherine's Pascha: A celebration of Easter in the Orthodox Church. It's a lovely book for children. Take a look!
Posts: 10273 | From: Pacific Northwest, USA | Registered: Jan 2003
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k-mann
Shipmate
# 8490
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no_prophet:
No. The old boys club likes to kick the girls around. Now if the bishop and pope were women....
Which is just old, dried out male bovine excrement.
quote:
Originally posted by Moth:
I think that these dilemmas are more complicated than just 'choose who is to die' as if there were no other factors. For the record I would not kill the baby in IngoB's scenario because both of the potential victims are persons. I do not regard the fetus as a person, although it is human, although I realise that is not accepted by RCCs as a moral position.
I just have to ask you: Why don't you regard it as a person? Is there any reason, or do you simply don't think it is? And the most important question: Do you know that it isn't a person?
Because if you don't know, morally you have no right to perform an abortion.
Consider this: (1) Either the fetus is a person or it isn't. (2) Either you know that the fetus is a person or you don't. This gives us four - and only four - options:
1. The fetus is a person and you know it.
2. The fetus is a person and you don't know it.
3. The fetus isn't a person and you don't know it.
4. The fetus isn't a person and you know it.
In the first case an abortion would be Murder One.
In the second case an abortion would be like shooting into a bush and accidentally killing your fellow hunter.
In the third case an abortion would be like no. two.
In the fourth case an abortion would be ok.
So the only way an abortion is morally ok is if the fetus isn't a person and you know it.
(Of course assuming that killing innocent persons is wrong.)
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"Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt."
— Paul Tillich
Katolikken
Posts: 1314 | From: Norway | Registered: Sep 2004
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pjkirk
Shipmate
# 10997
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Posted
Don't drag this into Dead Horses please.
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Dear God, I would like to file a bug report -- Randall Munroe (http://xkcd.com/258/)
Posts: 1177 | From: Swinging on a hammock, chatting with Bokonon | Registered: Feb 2006
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
How interesting that a sterile word like "utilitarian" should be invoked to justify allowing a mother and child to die when it is possible to save one of them.
The mafia boss thing is NOT analagous. The mafia boss might actually be trying to get you to kill the child, and if you refuse might not kill either (or might kill you). He could kill the mother anyway after you kill the baby. Someone who would set up such a situation is perfectly capable of lying. His intentions are inscrutable. In such a situation it would be impermissible to kill the baby.
Medical science is far less inscrutable, however. It changes its mind only slowly and after much research. True it deals mostly in probabilities, but some situations are encountered often enough that the probabilities are firmly based on past experience. There is something of a spectrum in "kill the foetus to save the mother" cases, ectopic pregnancy being at the far end (I think), and while this case doesn't maybe go that far, it seems perverse to say that medical opinion about the odds doesn't matter and let the two of them die.
Then again much about Catholic moral theology seems perverse.
[ 16. May 2010, 15:41: Message edited by: mousethief ]
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
Complicating IngoB's scenario is that both baby and mother are no longer potential lives but actual ones.
While there's the potential, there is no certainty, at 11 weeks of pregnancy, that the fetus will survive to term and actually be born.
There is the possibility that the unborn child might survive in the womb long enough to kill the mother AND lose its own life, dependent on the mother, in the process.
In this situation, at least one life was saved. And I agree that, if this woman already had other dependent children, that factor should be taken into account.
I guess that I don't understand valuing potential over actuality, which, IMO, is what the church's stance does with the abortion question here, while it appears to do the reverse in the case of the nun, i.e. valuing the actuality of her decision versus the potential good she may have done.
[ 16. May 2010, 15:44: Message edited by: Apocalypso ]
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Spiggott: Everything I've ever told you is a lie, including that.
Moon: Including what?
Spiggott: That everything I've ever told you is a lie.
Moon: That's not true!
Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
Perhaps I am missing something here. Does Olmstead have a medical degree? If so, had he examined the patient personally?
Posts: 1540 | From: Illinois, USA | Registered: Nov 2008
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five
Shipmate
# 14492
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Posted
Here's what I don't understand. The sister was a member of the ethics committee, which ruled in favour of the abortion. I'm presuming the committee was a vote, and I'm also presuming that the sister, as a Catholic sister on an ethics committee stated the RC position on such things, which like it or not and there are reasons to do both, is quite clear and common knowledge.
My presumptions then continue that obviously, the sister was overruled.
If this is the case, why would she be excommunicated, even latae sentiae?
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And Jesus said 'the greatest commandments are these: Love the Lord your God with 10% of your time and energy, and Pamphlet your neighbour with tracts' - Birdseye
Posts: 1250 | Registered: Jan 2009
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Carys
Ship's Celticist
# 78
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Posted
The thing IngoB's analogy misses is the fact that the foetus cannot survive without the mother.
But I'm wandering if there isn't a misunderstanding of how Catholic theology works. Presumably were the nun to go to confession and be absolved she would be reinstated? We see excommunication as a major thing and about keeping the rules and being pronounced by someone, but is that really how it should be seen in RC theology? Is it not more that certain actions have excommunication seen as the default response but the the sacrament of reconciliation is there to make it right. I would say that this was a case of choosing the lesser of two evils (the options seem to have been one or two dead humans) and this reminds us that whilst the lesser evil it was still not good.
Carys
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O Lord, you have searched me and know me
You know when I sit and when I rise
Posts: 6896 | From: Bryste mwy na thebyg | Registered: May 2001
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
Why couldn't the abortion be done at another hospital not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church? Surely a Roman Catholic hospital isn't the only place in a city the size of Phoenix that a woman can get an abortion. She was only eleven weeks pregnant.
She is Roman Catholic nun. The Roman Catholic teaching on abortion is clear. She has authority in a Roman Catholic hospital. If she couldn't follow the Roman Catholic teaching, she should have resigned and done something else. Instead, the nun allowed the abortion knowing that it was contrary to Roman Catholic teaching and that she would probably suffer some sort of repercussions.
I disagree somewhat with the Roman Catholic teaching on abortion. I would want a hospital owned by my church to allow this abortion. However, I'm not Roman Catholic.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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k-mann
Shipmate
# 8490
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Apocalypso:
Complicating IngoB's scenario is that both baby and mother are no longer potential lives but actual ones.
While there's the potential, there is no certainty, at 11 weeks of pregnancy, that the fetus will survive to term and actually be born.
First; this assumes that the fetus is a potential life, and not a actual life. This distinction between 'potential' and 'actual' life isn't accepted in the Church. The fetus is actualized from the beginning of conception. Of course it might die, but that doesn't make it a 'potential life' any more than a fifty year old dying in a car crash is a 'potential life.' In both cases — speaking here from a Catholic perspective — one deals with an actual life dying.
Second; it assumes that it is permissible to kill a 'potential life' to save an 'actual life.' But in Catholic doctrine that is never permissible. One cannot do what is wrong to accomplish what is right.
And this is important, as the topic under discussion isn't abortion in and of itself. This is a discussion about a nun being excommunicated — or rather; excommunicating herself — for allowing abortion; for acting contrary to the doctrines of the Catholic Church.
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"Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt."
— Paul Tillich
Katolikken
Posts: 1314 | From: Norway | Registered: Sep 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
The Roman Catholic teaching on abortion is clear. She has authority in a Roman Catholic hospital. If she couldn't follow the Roman Catholic teaching, she should have resigned and done something else.
If this is the Roman Catholic teaching on how to handle such a case, I don't see how any self-respecting medical professional can agree to follow the Roman Catholic teaching. On any reading but a Roman Catholic one, it is better to save one life than lose two. I can't see how any doctor could think otherwise, Catholic or no. Their job is to save lives.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Erin
Meaner than Godzilla
# 2
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Posted
A couple of years ago I had to have a procedure, during which I was advised that I should have a tubal ligation because becoming pregnant would be life-threatening for me. At the time, my employer had sold our hospital to the local Catholic hospital and was leasing it until our new hospital could be built. I had to have it done in the clinic's ambulatory surgical center because St. V's would not allow the doctor to perform a medically necessary tubal ligation on their campus. So I believe any fool thing that the Catholic church does when it comes to women's reproductive rights.
For the record, I am pretty vociferously against abortion on demand, but even I can see that there are occasions when it is necessary.
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Commandment number one: shut the hell up.
Posts: 17140 | From: 330 miles north of paradise | Registered: Mar 2001
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
This is a classic point of traditional C20 Catholic theology. There's a novel, I think called the Cardinal, from somewhere round 1950 that makes a big issue of it. It wasn't though, I don't think, traditionally directly part of the abortion debate. It was more about an obstetrical dilemma that arises less frequently now with better obstetrics than was the case forty + years ago.
In those days, this issue arose fairly frequently, particularly where mothers were weakened by having a series of pregnancies, and continuing to produce children at uncontrolled intervals well into middle age. So it was quite likely to mean that following the doctrine would leave other children motherless.
The classic dilemma, was where at point of delivery, it was possible to deliver the baby alive, only or almost predictably only, at the cost of the mother's life. In these circumstances it was quite often also possible to save the mother's life, but in ways that would either almost inevitably mean the baby died, or even the procedure itself would have that effect. So which life do you save?
The Catholic position was that the baby always, as a matter of authoritative doctrine, took priority.
I think this was on the basis that the mother had already lived and had the opportunity to achieve salvation. On the other hand, if the baby died, he or she was automatically condemned to limbo or worse, without being given the opportunity to be saved.
The Protestant position was much more nuanced and had to be decided on the most likely moral outcome at the time. It would for example, take into account the relative likelihood of either of them surviving. It would also be normal to expect the mother to express her view if able to engage in the process, and certainly her husband, rather than simply taking the line that doctrine decided for them. Moral responsibility rested on those involved, and could not be decanted from a stock of ethical regulations.
I do not know what the Orthodox position was.
I suspect in the case cited in the OP, this tradition is influencing the line taken by this diocese.
As a non-Catholic, I would be troubled that the implication is that the hierarchy should assume that moral responsibility for taking this decision lies either with the hierarchy or the sister, rather than with the mother and/or her husband.
I recognise this statement may horrify some shipmates. However, to me, this approach to decision making has slightly the flavour of sola Tridentine Mass in Latin, the ethical equivalent of following Archbishop Lefebvre.
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Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Max_Power
Shipmate
# 13547
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Then again much about Catholic moral theology seems perverse.
OTOH, it is comforting, in this world of moral relativism, to have at least one organisation acting as a 'hard right shoulder'.
God only knows how much deeper into the 'Culture of Death' we'd be if not for the Church.
Posts: 58 | From: Aylmer, QC | Registered: Mar 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Max_Power:
God only knows how much deeper into the 'Culture of Death' we'd be if not for the Church.
And since God only knows it's pointless to speculate. This is bordering on shark repellant. Maybe it would be better, since people weren't reacting to the entrenched and blind position of the RCC? Anyway I think you have a unrealistic opinion of the influence of the Catholic Church, at least in the USA.
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Josephine
Orthodox Belle
# 3899
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
She is Roman Catholic nun. The Roman Catholic teaching on abortion is clear. She has authority in a Roman Catholic hospital. If she couldn't follow the Roman Catholic teaching, she should have resigned and done something else.
I was under the impression that the RCC permitted abortion in certain rare cases, where it is necessary to save the life of the mother -- ectopic pregnancy, uterine cancer, and the like.
Is that not true? And if it is true, what is different about this case? Why is it allowed (if it is) for an ectopic pregnancy, but not for this?
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Posts: 10273 | From: Pacific Northwest, USA | Registered: Jan 2003
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Max_Power
Shipmate
# 13547
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Max_Power:
God only knows how much deeper into the 'Culture of Death' we'd be if not for the Church.
And since God only knows it's pointless to speculate. This is bordering on shark repellant. Maybe it would be better, since people weren't reacting to the entrenched and blind position of the RCC? Anyway I think you have a unrealistic opinion of the influence of the Catholic Church, at least in the USA.
Entrenched? Sure, although not in the perjorative sense which you would have it.
Blind? According to whom?
As for my '...opinion on the influence of the Catholic Church, at least in the USA...', well, I don't have one and not being an American, am not terribly fussed about it.
What I am pointing out is that in the West, where we seem to have lost moral compass, the Church has staked out a clear position on this issue. That, IMO, is a good thing, because she is not being swayed by the times and the fashion of the day.
Posts: 58 | From: Aylmer, QC | Registered: Mar 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Well I'm confused. On the one hand you say:
God only knows how much deeper into the 'Culture of Death' we'd be if not for the Church.
Then you say you don't have an "opinion on the influence of the Catholic Church".
If the RCC isn't influencing the culture, in what way is it keeping us from being deeper into the 'Culture of Death'?
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Max_Power
Shipmate
# 13547
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Well I'm confused.
Yes, you would seem to be.
I was not writing about America, I was writing about the West as a whole. Again, being neither American, nor having any experience of Catholicism in America, I cannot speak to the influence of the Church in America.
Back to the original premise, however, I would suggest that having the Church stake out a clear position on the sanctity of life is a good thing. You, obviously, disagree with either the notion that life is in fact sacred and to be cherished, or you disagree with the Church's position on the question.
Posts: 58 | From: Aylmer, QC | Registered: Mar 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
I was not asking about America, I was giving you the opportunity to reduce your opinion to just America if you so chose. Hence "at least America" and not "in America". A subtle difference; maybe not all are able to get it on a first reading.
And you have not answered the question. In what way has the Catholic Church kept the "Culture of Death" from being worse than it might be? What evidence can you present for this? Or is it just so much "what if" gas?
If you say I disagree with the Catholic Church's position on this, you would be right. But I thought I had made that clear so I'm not sure why you're confused.
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Seeker963
Shipmate
# 2066
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Posted
I suspect that my comment might risk being too close to "dead horse" but it seems to me that this particular case - assuming that the facts of the mother's health were absolutely correct - is a case that demonstrates that there is no such thing as morality and ethics without a context.
For those who see an unequivocal choice here of the mother's health over the baby's, I wonder how an 11-week-old fetus is expected to be brought to term by a dead mother?
It seems that in the US Roman Catholic environment, the Sister probably could have expected nothing less but that she still did the right thing and chose to save one life rather than to passively stand by and facilitate the death of two lives. Good on her.
This case is not a triumph for morality at all. It's a triumph for the mindset that human beings are not capable of morality unless rigid legality is applied even to the point of doing terrible harm in exceptional circumstances.
This kind of mindset is a wolf in sheep's clothing and it's how evil and immorality triumph in the lives of good people.
[ 17. May 2010, 03:11: Message edited by: Seeker963 ]
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"People waste so much of their lives on hate and fear." My friend JW-N: Chaplain and three-time cancer survivor. (Went to be with her Lord March 21, 2010. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.)
Posts: 4152 | From: Northeast Ohio | Registered: Dec 2001
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Porridge
Shipmate
# 15405
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by k-mann:
quote:
Originally posted by Apocalypso:
Complicating IngoB's scenario is that both baby and mother are no longer potential lives but actual ones.
While there's the potential, there is no certainty, at 11 weeks of pregnancy, that the fetus will survive to term and actually be born.
First; this assumes that the fetus is a potential life, and not a actual life. This distinction between 'potential' and 'actual' life isn't accepted in the Church. The fetus is actualized from the beginning of conception. Of course it might die, but that doesn't make it a 'potential life' any more than a fifty year old dying in a car crash is a 'potential life.' In both cases — speaking here from a Catholic perspective — one deals with an actual life dying.
Second; it assumes that it is permissible to kill a 'potential life' to save an 'actual life.' But in Catholic doctrine that is never permissible. One cannot do what is wrong to accomplish what is right.
And this is important, as the topic under discussion isn't abortion in and of itself. This is a discussion about a nun being excommunicated — or rather; excommunicating herself — for allowing abortion; for acting contrary to the doctrines of the Catholic Church.
"Potential" was, in this instance, a poor choice of words. From an RCC perspective, I take it, the fetus naturally has as much an actual life as the mother does.
Except, of course, for the inconvenient fact that an 11-week-old fetus cannot survive outside the womb. Neither can it survive inside the womb of a woman who has died from complications of carrying said fetus.
In the abstract, the moral choice made by this nun was to agree to the saving of two lives, of one life, or or of no lives.
In this particular situation, saving both lives was not an option.
Given the age of the fetus, saving the unborn child was also not an option; it was not going to make it to viability, with the attendant possibility of baptism or salvation. Its mother, apparently, would have died before the fetus reached this critical point.
I cannot for the life of me see how preserving the one preservable life in this situation could be more morally wrong than allowing both lives to expire.
I am also wondering if the mother is now excommunicate, as well as her husband. Presumably they had some say in this process.
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Posts: 3925 | From: Upper right corner | Registered: Jan 2010
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Second; it assumes that it is permissible to kill a 'potential life' to save an 'actual life.' But in Catholic doctrine that is never permissible. One cannot do what is wrong to accomplish what is right.
Sorry. Non sequitur. If it is wrong to kill the foetus, it is also wrong to kill the mother. So this is a double bind. The logic of that reasoning is that the only moral course is to let both of them die - but if you have the medical capacity to save either of them, how is that different from killing?
The nun would have been ethically frum, but both patients would have been dead, and the unborn foetus would presumably have ended up in limbo anyway!
For those who see an unequivocal choice here of the mother's health over the baby's, I wonder how an 11-week-old foetus is expected to be brought to term by a dead mother?
Good point.
This case is not a triumph for morality at all. It's a triumph for the mindset that human beings are not capable of morality unless rigid legality is applied even to the point of doing terrible harm in exceptional circumstances.
I agree. A harsh way, perhaps, of describing an approach to moral theology that I do not agree with. It does seem to me that this approach is treating ethical decisions in much the same way as whether one is or is not mixing two threads or when is and when isn't one eating a calf in its mother's milk.
It also seems to me that this approach to moral theology is letting people off responsibility for how they live their lives and the decisions they take. There is a rule. So how is a decisions a good or a bad one?
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Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Forthview
Shipmate
# 12376
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Posted
Everyone here will now know,as Catholics have known for centuries,that the church is a 'church of sinners'. God however grants mercy to repentant sinners.Often that mercy of God is shown to repentant sinners in the Sacrament of Reconciliation(Confession).
However an excommunication,barring one from access to the sacraments,cannot be revoked through a simple confession.the bishop must be involved in this.
Whether the nun in question in this thread,as well as the others who participated in the abortion,excommunicated themselves automatically,is,I think, still debatable,as they may believe sincerely that they were following Catholic teaching in having this abortion carried out.
Miss Amanda mentioned a priest who had been formally excommunicated for opening a non-denominational youth centre.On reading his CV I see that he had already left the priesthood and had already been found guilty of abuse of young people.Presumably there was no Catholic input into hois opening of the Youth Centre but that the church found it better to separate itself completely from him before the church was accused of colluding in this action which might have led to further possibilities of sexual abuse.
Around 1949-50 pope Pius XII engaged in a campaign against Communism in Italy issuing a decree excommunicating those who supported in any way this ideology.The Decree of the holy Office said.:
'the faithful who enroll in the communist party or support it are not admitted to the sacraments, if this support is given freely and with full knowledge.
The faithful who profess the doctrine of communism in its materialistic and antiChristian forms and engage in propaganda are to be excommunicated as apostates.'
Even in this period one had to be aware fully of what one was doing,in particular,knowledge of the anti Christian doctrine of the Communist party.
Unless the participants in the abortion mentioned here believed that their actions were against Catholic christian principles they cannot have condemned themselves.
Posts: 3444 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2007
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Evangeline
Shipmate
# 7002
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Posted
quote:
Quoting k-mann
This distinction between 'potential' and 'actual' life isn't accepted in the Church. The fetus is actualized from the beginning of conception. Of course it might die, but that doesn't make it a 'potential life' any more than a fifty year old dying in a car crash is a 'potential life.'
I understand that the RC church doesn't conduct funeral rites for "actual lives" that were not alive outside the womb.
Why is there a distinction between foetuses that never drew breath and those that have?
Posts: 2871 | From: "A capsule of modernity afloat in a wild sea" | Registered: May 2004
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Why is there a distinction between foetuses that never drew breath and those that have?
I'm not an expert on this, but I think it's because it is breathing that makes us people rather than just bodies.
Gen 2:7 God formed Adam out of the dust, 'breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being'.
In Ezekiel 37, the prophet prophecies first to the bones and they become bodies 'but there was no breath in them'. It is only when he prophesies a second time to the wind/breath/spirit, 'Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these corpses that they may live', that they get up and live.
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Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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Evangeline
Shipmate
# 7002
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Posted
quote:
I'm not an expert on this, but I think it's because it is breathing that makes us people rather than just bodies.
Hmm, but that completely undermines the RC position as espoused (probably correctly by K-Mann) that
quote:
This distinction between 'potential' and 'actual' life isn't accepted in the Church. The fetus is actualized from the beginning of conception.
In this argument htere is no difference between a breathing "person" and a non-breathing foetus.
Posts: 2871 | From: "A capsule of modernity afloat in a wild sea" | Registered: May 2004
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Louise
Shipmate
# 30
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Posted
This is something I'd really like to know more about. I too, wondered if RC funerals were done for 11 week fetuses. If someone miscarries at 11 weeks, is a funeral held? The previous posts seem to imply not. If not, why not?
I wonder if the current view is in historical terms fairly new, because the process of fertilisation/conception was not just poorly understood but entirely misunderstood until quite recent historic times - no-one knew that women produced ova to be fertilised. They were just incubators for sperm and ( if I remember what I've read correctly, and I may not as it's off the top of my head) the resulting pregnancy wasn't counted as being a living ensouled thing until 'quickening' supposedly forty days later from the sperm being introduced.
I think there was maybe an older traditional view about the beginnings of life which has been eclipsed somewhere. The Bible is a case in point. People prefer to overlook that a lot of its older texts point to birth or in some cases even later, before recognising a child as having a life to be counted as equal in value to an adults. They do that by taking poetic texts such as the psalm about being 'known in the womb' and giving them a very literal reading and by taking the case of Mary and the annunciation to argue for specialness from conception (again often reading back modern attitudes into the older texts)
I wonder if the modern RC pro-life attitude is tied up in history with the evolution of Marian thought/devotion, but I don't know enough about the history. Must look into it sometime.
Perhaps someone else knows the history better?
L.
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Posts: 6918 | From: Scotland | Registered: May 2001
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Louise:
This is something I'd really like to know more about. I too, wondered if RC funerals were done for 11 week fetuses. If someone miscarries at 11 weeks, is a funeral held? The previous posts seem to imply not. If not, why not?
I don't know the answer to this. But as far as I know, in the UK, a mother isn't permitted to have the body/remains of her child unless it is past a certain number of weeks of gestation (ie if you deliver your baby at such a stange of gestation that it qualifies as still born, you can bury him/her, whereas if you deliver your baby at such as a stage that it qualifies as a miscarriage, from the state's perspective, there is no body to bury. This must be enormously painful for parents the wrong side of the line to be able to have a funeral.)
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Posts: 2950 | From: I cannot tell you, for you are not a friar | Registered: Jan 2006
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Seeker963
Shipmate
# 2066
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
It also seems to me that this approach to moral theology is letting people off responsibility for how they live their lives and the decisions they take. There is a rule. So how is a decisions a good or a bad one?
I think it does. I think that the actual approach which we are seeing more and more of from the hierarchy is something like trying to institute centralized control from the top. In an army, you can't let every solider make his or her own decision and sometimes horrible collateral damage will happen for the sake of the greater good. In my view, this is the approach that is being espoused. If this administrator with responsibility and a professed religious into the boot, makes an exceptional moral decision, it sets an example for others who might not make decisions with wisdom but rather for selfishness. Better to set an example and maintain rigid legality in order to maintain control from the top.
(N.b. This is not to be considered an anti-Roman Catholic remark. It is meant to be a remark of discontent about the current "administration's" direction as I believe I see it.)
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"People waste so much of their lives on hate and fear." My friend JW-N: Chaplain and three-time cancer survivor. (Went to be with her Lord March 21, 2010. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.)
Posts: 4152 | From: Northeast Ohio | Registered: Dec 2001
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