Will the Catholic Church Ever Stop Trying to Criminalize Sin?

[rug]

James Heffernan
Posted: 05/09/2013 12:38 pm

Here we go again.

Last October, a pregnant Indian woman died in an Irish hospital after being denied an abortion that might well have saved her life. To prevent any more such deaths, the Irish parliament is now considering a bill that would legalize abortion under very strict conditions. Aside from being allowed to terminate the pregnancy of a woman who would otherwise commit suicide, doctors could abort a fetus if -- and only if -- two doctors (one of them an obstetrician or gynecologist) certified that continued pregnancy posed a "real and substantial risk" to the life of the woman.

But this scrupulously humane bill has been roundly condemned by the Roman Catholic church.

In a joint statement, the Irish Catholic Bishops have called it "a dramatically and morally unacceptable change to Irish law." In other words, regardless of her conscience, her religious beliefs, her personal values and her elemental will to live, the bishops are determined to sacrifice on the altar of fetal sanctity any Irish woman whose pregnancy threatens her life.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-heffernan/will-catholic-church-ever-stop-trying-to-criminalize-sin_b_3225592.html

[goldent]

1. The title is misleading...

If you consider these three sets...

1. Things that the Catholic Church consider sins
2. Things that are illegal
3. Things that the Catholic Church are trying to criminalize

and then drew a Venn diagram, you would get one of those complicated ones where there is partial overlap among all of them.

Everyone has a reason why he or she might want to criminalize something -- whether they call it bad, unfair, inhuman, immoral, or a sin, etc, really doesn't matter. It is no surprise that for the Catholic Church it would be a sin.

In any case, the Catholic Church need to think more about their position on this Irish law, particularly in the difficult cases where it is no easy answer to respecting life.

[IrishAyes]

2. Forgive me, but

I'm going to fall back on a secular statement; I'll believe men have a right to pass judgment on such things when they start to have babies themselves for real and not before.