CHURCH STANCE ON ABORTION AND SOUL OF CHILD HAS VARIED OVER TIME
Patsy McGarry. Irish Times Religious Affairs Correspondent
PATSY MC GARRY
(In this article from today's Irish Times, Patsy McGarry taught me a few facts that I had never learned in my 6 years in the seminary and my 36 years as a priest. I am basically anti-abortion in the vast majority of cases but I do believe there are certain cases where a termination is the lesser of two evils - like to save the life of the mother. As this article demonstrates its very important to base our beliefs and arguments on good knowledge and information. Pat Buckley 20.11.2012)
(In this article from today's Irish Times, Patsy McGarry taught me a few facts that I had never learned in my 6 years in the seminary and my 36 years as a priest. I am basically anti-abortion in the vast majority of cases but I do believe there are certain cases where a termination is the lesser of two evils - like to save the life of the mother. As this article demonstrates its very important to base our beliefs and arguments on good knowledge and information. Pat Buckley 20.11.2012)
From the vehement assertions of some on the “pro-life”
side of the abortion debate, it could be assumed their views have always
been Catholic teaching. It is not so.
In fact some of the church’s greatest teachers and saints believed no
homicide was involved if abortion took place before the foetus was
infused with a soul, known as “ensoulment”. This was believed to occur
at “quickening”, when the mother detected the child move for the first
time in her womb. In 1591, Pope Gregory XIV determined it at 166 days of
pregnancy, almost 24 weeks.
The Catholic Church’s current position on abortion was established only
143 years ago, in 1869. Then Pope Pius IX outlawed abortion from the
moment of conception.
This is said to have been influenced by science’s discovery of the ovum
in 1827 and the human fertilisation process in the 1830s, neither of
which gave any indication as to when ensoulment took place.
Among those who had a different view on the matter to that currently
held by the church are some of its most eminent thinkers. These include
at least three of the 33 “super saints” – Jerome, Augustine and Aquinas –
all of them “Doctors of the Church”.
St Jerome (died 420) wrote, in his Epistle, “the seed gradually takes
shape in the uterus, and it [abortion] does not count as killing until
the individual elements have acquired their external appearance and
their limbs”.
St Augustine (died 430) wrote in On Exodus that early abortion should
not be regarded “as homicide, for there cannot be a living soul in a
body that lacks sensation due to its not yet being fully formed”.
St Thomas Aquinas (died 1274) held “the vegetative soul, which
comes first, when the embryo lives the life of a plant, is corrupted,
and is succeeded by a more perfect soul, which is both nutritive and
sensitive, and then the embryo lives an animal life; and when this is
corrupted, it is succeeded by the rational soul introduced from without
(ie by God)”.
This view of Aquinas was confirmed as Catholic dogma by the
Council of Vienne in 1312, and has never been officially repudiated by
Rome. Indeed, in 1974, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith acknowledged that the issue of ensoulment was still an open
question.
It is not an impression given by many on the “pro-life” side of
this debate. What both sides can agree on is that human life begins at
conception. Where there is disagreement is on whether that collection of
chemical elements constitutes a person. It has been estimated that up
to 55 per cent of fertilised ovums miscarry soon after conception. If it
is held that the fertilised ovum is a person why were/are none of these
“people” afforded any funeral rites?
But to look at the issue from another perspective, in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium
Vitae (the Gospel of Life) Pope John Paul II wrote that “no one
can renounce the right to self-defence” and that “legitimate defence can
be not only a right but a grave duty . . .”
He continued “unfortunately it happens that the need to render the
aggressor incapable of causing harm sometimes involves taking his life.
In this case, the fatal outcome is attributable to the aggressor whose
action brought it about, even though he may not be morally responsible
because of a lack of the use of reason”.
He is referring there to someone who, because insane, is morally innocent.
A foetus is morally innocent and yet can be a direct threat to the
life of its mother. Has she “not only a right but a grave duty” to
protect herself?
The situations are similar, but not the same; and this distinction is both morally instructive and crucial. Unlike the insane person in the Pope's hypothetical example, a foetus CANNOT form the intention of taking the life of its mother and CANNOT execute the required steps to do so; it cannot, therefore, constitute an aggressor.
ReplyDeleteThe taking of such life on the pretext that it is 'a direct threat to the life of its mother' can never be morally justified.