Grace & Peace!
This article is illuminating on a number of counts:
home.earthlink.net/~davidlperry/abortion.htm
A salient paragraph is this one:Many Christians in the medieval period apparently believed in delayed hominization.
The Teaching of an Irish Synod, i.e., Christian clergy (ca. 675): “The penance for homicide is seven years on bread and water… The penance for the destruction of the embryo of a child in the mother’s womb [early abortion?] is three and a half years. The penance for the destruction of flesh and spirit [late abortion?] is seven and a half years on bread and water… The penance for a mother’s destruction of her own child [infanticide?] is twelve years on bread and water…”
Bede of England,
Penitential (ca. 725): “A mother who kills her child before the fortieth day [of gestation] shall do penance for one year. If it is after the child has become alive, [she shall do penance] as a murderer. But it makes a great difference whether a poor woman does it on account of the great difficulty of supporting [the child], or a prostitute for the sake of concealing her wickedness.” (Bede does not explain, though, whether the woman’s motive in obtaining abortion is more important than the stage of pregnancy in which it’s performed.) Another Irish penitential text, ca. 800: “A woman who causes miscarriage of that which she has conceived, after it has become established in the womb, three years and one-half of penance. If the flesh has formed, it is seven years. If the soul has entered it, fourteen years of penance.”
Pope Innocent III and
Pope Gregory IX (ca. 1200) considered abortion to be homicide only when the fetus is “formed.” (Hurst 10-11) This is rather startling, given that many 20th-century Catholics tend to assume that the Vatican has always affirmed “immediate animation.”
The TV show may have been referring to Gregory XIV:
Pope Sixtus V, in
Effraenatum (1588), declared contraception and abortion at any stage of pregnancy, whether the fetus was “animated or not animated, formed or unformed,” to be homicide, a mortal sin, and grounds for excommunication. But in 1591,
Pope Gregory XIV in
Sedes Apostolica recommended “where no homicide or no animated fetus is involved, not to punish more strictly than the sacred canons or civil legislation does.” (Hurst 15)
It’s a very interesting article for the historical data, but it becomes much more clearly pro-choice in the last section. So be warned if you’re not sympathetic to the polemic.
Under the Mercy,
Mark
Deo Gratias!
when I think someone misrepresents the Catholic Church and I like to be prepared incase someone makes a similar comment to me.
