By nature I’m a very emotional and sentimental person. Notwithstanding that or, possibly, because of that I try to govern my life by reason. That may be why I find the present state of the world, of our country, distressing.
This morning on CBS’s Sunday Morning they had a feature on conflicts within the American Catholic Church with a focus on the case of a nun who headed a Catholic hospital that approved a therapeutic abortion. The mother’s compromised health was in danger and the fetus was incapable of surviving without the mother. The bishop of the diocese declared that the hospital was no longer a Catholic hospital and excommunicated the nun.
When I took Catholic moral theology, the decision would have been considered licit. Indeed, a hypothetical example very close to the actual case was used as an illustration of a difficult moral dilemma. I found the bishop’s decision not only cruel, as averred by one of those commenting on the case, but unhinged. His grounds weren’t that the decision was wrong but that the decision created scandal. In other words he thought that the woman’s life should have been sacrificed to make a point.
If creating scandal were grounds for excommunication how many American bishops would already have been excommunicated? The scandal involving child sexual abuse by Catholic priests that is ongoing and has been for nearly a generation is only one of the serious moral failings of bishops. My complaint is not one of hypocrisy. It is cognitive dissonance. Dissociation, even. They’ve lost their minds.
This problem isn’t limited to Catholic bishops. I’m seeing it in politicians, economists, journalists, financiers, labor leaders, business leaders, and on and on, a broad spectrum of American life but, particularly, those in positions of influence and power.
They appear to be in the position of OJ Simpson, ranting about the “real killer”. The problem isn’t that they’re lying or hypocritical. They’ve convinced themselves there actually is a real killer out there.
This was bothersome. I think that there is a large part of the anti-abortion crowd that has decided that any exemptions, including the one for the life of the mother, will be abused. Some have decided to handle that by concluding that by declaring that with modern medicine, the mother’s life is never really at risk, while others have decided that the mother should bear any risk needed. having seen two mothers die when they carried to term in similar situations, I am aware that mothers really can die in childbirth, and that an early abortion is much safer.
But, TBH, I am terribly biased. Having seen people of all ages die, young mothers bother me the most. I hate prom week and having to go tell family that their teen just died from their MVA, but the young mothers, with the whole family there, including the kids, is just the worst. So, for a Catholic bishop to use this for his own internal politics really irks me. Let’s face it, he never moves up the church hierarchy if he does not excommunicate this nun. God bless the nun who did what appears to be the right thing.
Steve
An enduring prejudice of mine, one that has caused me trouble in the past and against which I warn myself, is the assumption that people are knowingly behaving in a certain way. A relatively small percentage of the population thinks an action through. Most jerks are knee jerks.
Another example along the lines of the hospital matter above might be the repeated overreactions of cops and teachers to things we all thought of as part of life, (kid’s mom packs a butter knife in his lunch box, kids kiss in a hallway, etc…) worthy of a warning, maybe, not an arrest or expulsion.
People increasingly believe in policies and legal definitions and literal interpretations rather than common sense. We’re all Torah, no Talmud. (To carry forward the religious references.)
This may be a side effect of what’s perceived as rapid change in social mores. Common sense is harder to define if it changes every year rather than every century. Most people need fixed beliefs, and in the last six or seven decades those fixed beliefs have shifted drastically on gender, sex, race, wealth, work, religion, community, etc… Lacking a “common” sense, people turn to poor substitutes: literalism, legalism.
My dad, a very religious RC, was excommunicated for marrying my mom after divorce. We 4 kids are eternally grateful for the escape. Now we welcome a nun who has crossed over and are happy that she left the bishop behind.
I agree Michael. I also think it is generational.
I thought the bishop said that the nun, by performing the abortion, self-excommunicated and that he was only making that public knowledge. He claimed that her act was evil in itself and that such an act cannot fall within exceptions of dual result, wherein by performing a neutral act, bad things might (or might not) occur.
There’s certainly no clarity of canon law on this. It depends which of two sections of the law is the pertinent one.
There’s an interesting dogfight among Catholic priests on this issue here.
As of yesterday, I could find no statement from the Apostolic Signatura on just which law is applicable. What the lack of a ruling means, I do not know.
Speaking as a former Catholic…
All of them.