The AP posted a misleading article titled “Vatican prelate, defends abortion for 9-year-old“.
I’m assuming there’s more to the story than what is in the AP article. AP Is notorious for its liberal slant and I’m sure they are just taking the opportunity to confuse people on the Catholic position on abortion. But even if the facts are as stated in the article, the prelate, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, head of the Vatican Pontifal Academy of Life, did NOT defend the abortion despite the article headline (which just shows how outrageously incompetent and/or dishonest the AP’s journalists and editors are).
What Fisichella did was criticize how the excommunication was handled. Quote from the article:
But Fisichella criticized the archbishop’s public denunciation, writing that the girl “should have been above all defended, embraced, treated with sweetness to make her feel that we were all on her side, all of us, without distinction.”
Fisichella stressed that abortion is always “bad.” But he said the quick proclamation of excommunication “unfortunately hurts the credibility of our teaching, which appears in the eyes of many as insensitive, incomprehensible and lacking mercy.
..”There wasn’t any need, we contend, for so much urgency and publicity in declaring something that happens automatically,” Fisichella wrote.
[emphasis added]
Ok, first read this article from the Catholic News Service “Abortion results in excommunication for mother, doctors in Brazil“:
Note that according to the CNS article:
[C]anon law indicates several conditions — for example, not yet having turned 17 years old — that would render an individual exempt from the penalty of excommunication.
Note that the excommunication was of the MOTHER not the 9 year old girl who is too young to be capable of being excommunicated. But Fisichella’s comments above regarded the girl. And his comments seem to be directed at the way the excommunication was handled – that it was done publicly and quickly, suggesting that for appearances sake it it could have been done more quietly and more deliberatively or even not at all since it is the act of procuring an abortion gives rise to an automatic excommunication But to me it is highly understandable in this case that the local Bishop would want to proclaim a public excommunication so that Catholics would understand that even in this case one cannot directly kill a baby to save the life of the mother. And the Bishop should have acted quickly since after the store passes any teaching opportunity would have passed.
While the Church’s teaching on abortion when saving the life of the mother is quite clear – the direct killing of an unborn baby can never be done, as the long as the intention is not to kill the baby, a doctor can separate the baby from the mother in order to save the mother’s life. Here’s a good article on the subject of double effect as it is known.
Since we don’t have the full text of the quotes from Fisichella (the AP article is highly suspect here – they haven’t even named what newspaper it is, only saying it is was published in “the Vatican newspaper on Sunday” suggesting it is the official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, but that paper doesn’t come out on Sunday. The last issue was March 11 and it doesn’t have the interview.
My guess is that this is a combination of the Vatican’s naivite regarding the press, and the media’s desire to jump on anything it percieves as wavering on the subject to confuse Catholics and non-Catholics alike on what the Church’s position is.
UPDATE:
Apparently the ex-communications have been revoked: Brazilian bishops have cancelled the excommunication of the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old girl who had an abortion after being raped.
The National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB) decided on Thursday that the child’s mother acted “under pressure from the doctors” who said the girl, pregnant with twins, would die if she carried the babies to term.
CNBB secretary-general Dimas Lara Barbosa told reporters the mother therefore could not be excommunicated. “We must take the circumstances into consideration,” he said.
As for the doctors, there was no clear case for expelling them from the church either, he said – contrary to the position taken by Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, who announced the excommunications earlier in March.
Also see this.
This whole thing seems like it was badly mishandled. I could see a case for excusing the mother, but still I would hope she has had a personal discussion with a priest if not a confession – it would seem so if they are saying it was under duress. For the Doctors, I see no excuse, it certainly seems they should have had a better understanding of what their obligations were ; then again, maybe upon investigation they were not well versed in the Church’s teachings or were given incorect guidance. Sometimes the double effect teaching is misunderstood to permit direct killing of babies in these circumstances. In any event, I just can’t understand for the life of me why the priests and bishops in these cases so badly bungle the public relations. It gives mixed signals everywhere. They have a responsibility to clearly set forth the teaching of the Church as well as to minister to their flock. The proper thing to have done would to have been request a meeting with the mother and doctors individually to investiage the facts and then make the decision of a public pronouncement. The local bishop might well have done that – I hope it’s not the case that the hierachy is just buckling under the secular pressure. Then again, maybe the secular media is again badly misrepresenting what’s gone down.