Religious post, cut-tagged as per SOP
Mar. 8th, 2009 07:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerThis article has been commented on by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
catsittingstill and others, and the tone is much as one might expect.
The Catholic church's position on birth control and abortion is wrong. it was wrong when they first articulated it, it has if anything become even more obviously wrong over the years, and it will remain wrong. As one commenter pointed out, it is not sanctioned by the Bible, and it is surely clear to the bishops and to the current Pope that it will have to be reversed at some point if the church is going to retain any credibility at all. They're all just hoping it won't be they who have to do it. They are old, and cowardly, and fond of their power, and they have (as I commented elsewhere) lost their God. And I think, sometimes, they know that.
I wanted to say that, because I am quite sure Cat and others are expecting me to defend or at very least excuse the church here. I do not. I condemn it utterly. I actually only ever defend religious belief, not churches, but I understand that if one is unable consistently to distinguish between the two it can be hard to tell.
So, having said that, some facts:
The church excommunicated nobody till after the abortion had taken place. So there is no question of the church forcing (or "sentencing") the girl to carry the foetuses to term, even if it had the power so to do. It does not.
The girl was not excommunicated, because of her age. So there is no question of the church punishing her at all. It did not.
The stepfather rapist has been arrested and will be tried by secular authorities. So there is no question of the church "letting him off." It cannot. (The secular court can, of course, but that is a separate problem.)
Excommunication is a purely religious punishment: the excommunicated person is forbidden to receive communion (EDIT: and other sacraments such as confession or last rites). That's it. They are not barred from attending mass, and no other penalty is imposed on them. I can see why a very devout Catholic (the sort who would never consider assisting in an abortion) might consider that a cruel and heinous punishment, but to an atheist I'd have thought it would seem like being let off school. (EDIT: I may be erring on the side of secularism here, askeristor points out below. There are places where excommunication could still bite. However, see my reply to him.)
The President of Brazil, who has unequivocally condemned the bishop's action, is a Catholic himself. I have seen nothing about any move to excommunicate him.
With this decision, the Catholic church has yet again shot itself in the foot. It will alienate more churchgoers and attract nobody. It will hasten the day when believers realise that churches are an irrelevant intrusion between themselves and their God. If there were anything in the future still to interest me, it would be that day.
It's not all good, though. This article mentions another girl, eleven years old this time, who is seven months pregnant by her adoptive father and apparently does not intend to seek an abortion. If that is because of her religious upbringing, and it seems likely that it is, then the church is responsible for whatever suffering she undergoes and should be held to account, as it should for the suffering of every woman forced to undergo pregnancy against her will. I hope that more Catholics of conscience like the President of Brazil will speak out against decisions like these. The church fathers (ha) certainly won't pay any attention to a bunch of atheists, agnostics and Protestants.
And someone ought to try to bring them back to God.
catsittingstill and others, and the tone is much as one might expect.The Catholic church's position on birth control and abortion is wrong. it was wrong when they first articulated it, it has if anything become even more obviously wrong over the years, and it will remain wrong. As one commenter pointed out, it is not sanctioned by the Bible, and it is surely clear to the bishops and to the current Pope that it will have to be reversed at some point if the church is going to retain any credibility at all. They're all just hoping it won't be they who have to do it. They are old, and cowardly, and fond of their power, and they have (as I commented elsewhere) lost their God. And I think, sometimes, they know that.
I wanted to say that, because I am quite sure Cat and others are expecting me to defend or at very least excuse the church here. I do not. I condemn it utterly. I actually only ever defend religious belief, not churches, but I understand that if one is unable consistently to distinguish between the two it can be hard to tell.
So, having said that, some facts:
The church excommunicated nobody till after the abortion had taken place. So there is no question of the church forcing (or "sentencing") the girl to carry the foetuses to term, even if it had the power so to do. It does not.
The girl was not excommunicated, because of her age. So there is no question of the church punishing her at all. It did not.
The stepfather rapist has been arrested and will be tried by secular authorities. So there is no question of the church "letting him off." It cannot. (The secular court can, of course, but that is a separate problem.)
Excommunication is a purely religious punishment: the excommunicated person is forbidden to receive communion (EDIT: and other sacraments such as confession or last rites). That's it. They are not barred from attending mass, and no other penalty is imposed on them. I can see why a very devout Catholic (the sort who would never consider assisting in an abortion) might consider that a cruel and heinous punishment, but to an atheist I'd have thought it would seem like being let off school. (EDIT: I may be erring on the side of secularism here, as
keristor points out below. There are places where excommunication could still bite. However, see my reply to him.)The President of Brazil, who has unequivocally condemned the bishop's action, is a Catholic himself. I have seen nothing about any move to excommunicate him.
With this decision, the Catholic church has yet again shot itself in the foot. It will alienate more churchgoers and attract nobody. It will hasten the day when believers realise that churches are an irrelevant intrusion between themselves and their God. If there were anything in the future still to interest me, it would be that day.
It's not all good, though. This article mentions another girl, eleven years old this time, who is seven months pregnant by her adoptive father and apparently does not intend to seek an abortion. If that is because of her religious upbringing, and it seems likely that it is, then the church is responsible for whatever suffering she undergoes and should be held to account, as it should for the suffering of every woman forced to undergo pregnancy against her will. I hope that more Catholics of conscience like the President of Brazil will speak out against decisions like these. The church fathers (ha) certainly won't pay any attention to a bunch of atheists, agnostics and Protestants.
And someone ought to try to bring them back to God.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 09:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-08 12:18 pm (UTC)Actually, this is a cyclical phenomen. Arguably, Catholicism *was* the first to fragment, back in the days of the reformation, albeit over a different set of issues. It has done so again (in a less splashy way) several times since over various issues, and the various fragments it produced have themselves undergone various fragmentations... This is all just part of the lifecycle of churches/denominations.
Recent example: The house-church movement was an evacuation from various protestant/evangelical denominations and independant churches, primarily over the issue of exercising gifts of tongues, prophecy etc., but also over the more direct issue of church authority, where it came from and why the heck should any particular bunch of people have it. These folks didn't have priests: They had convenors (whose houses were used for meetings) and apostles (who were respected for their wisdom and teaching, but who had no formal authority over anything).
20 or 30 years on, after the memberships got too big to have their monthly lets-all-get-togethers in anything smaller than a huge custom built auditorium, and the buzz of hero worship around the apostles has effectively (but unofficially) handed them all the authority they weren't supposed to have, it's quite hard to distinguish the house churches from a generic protestant denomination, except in a few details of practice and theology and their staunch insistence that they *aren't* one.