Ever since the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, some Catholics in America (many of them sincere, good intentioned people) have been trying to figure out how to stay in communion with the the Catholic Church while publicly holding to the position that people should be “free” to choice an abortion.
The trouble for Catholic dissenters, however, is that the Church ruled on this one two thousand years before 1973, concluding that the killing of innocent life is immoral.
Join the culture of life!
The evil of abortion has confronted Catholics since the very beginning. Sociologist and historian Rodney Stark in his recent book The Rise of Christianity, writes:
“The famous Roman medical writer Aulas Cornelius Celsus offered extensive instructions on using (abortion) equipment in his De Medicina, written in the first century.Celsus warned surgeons that an abortion ‘requires extreme caution and neatness, and entails very great risk.’”
Stark goes onto describe the attitude of the Catholic Church to such Greco-Roman practices:
“From the start, Christian doctrine absolutely prohibited abortion and infanticide, classifying both as murder.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is Catholic and supports abortion rights, claimed on a news program in 2008 that “over the history of the church, this (abortion) is an issue of controversy.”
At this point it’s worth letting the Catechism of the Catholic Church take over:
2271 “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.”
And then the Catechism again:
2322 “From its conception, the child has the right to life. Direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, is a “criminal” practice (GS 27 § 3), gravely contrary to the moral law. The Church imposes the canonical penalty of excommunication for this crime against human life.”
