rjs1:
Dear Fr Ambrose,
Again I am amazed at your allegation that the Catholic Church has somehow had a less definite stand regarding abortion than the Orthodox Church.
Well, given the strict stance of today I can well understand your amazement. But the teaching has changed.
Let me paste in something I was discussing in another thread. You will find it odd and even a liitle unbelievable.
I like to take an interest in the Lives of the old Irish Saints and one of the very curious things one encounters is their strange attitude to abortion. Four of the Saints have Lives in which they are responsible for some sort of abortions: Saint Brigid, Saint Kieran of Saigir, Saint Aed of Killarien, and Saint Kenneth of Aghaboe.
In the case of Saint Kieran of Saigir, a local king named Dima abducted Bruinnech, a vowed virgin, from Kieran’s monastery.
“Sanctus quoque Keranus, tanti facinoris immanitatem detestans ac remedium apponere cupiens, ad domum sacrilegi, quesiturus ab eo puellam, accessit. . . . Reverente vero vir Dei cum puella ad monasterium, confessa est puella se conceptum habere in utero. Tunc vir Dei, zelo iustitie ductus, viperium semen animari nolens, impresso venri eius signo crucis, fecit illud exinaniri.”
Translation:
“St. Kieran, despising the enormity of such a crime and wishing to apply a cure, went to the house of sacrilege to seek the girl from there. . . . When the man of God returned to the monastery with the girl, she confessed that she was pregnant. Then the man of God, led by the zeal of justice, not wishing the serpent’s seed to quicken, pressed down on her womb with the sign of the cross and forced her womb empty.”
**Notice a very interesting detail ** because it bears out what I posted earlier about the early Western (Catholic) theory of the distinction between a quickened (animated) and unquickened (not yet animated and therefore abortable) foetus – **Not wishing the serpent’s seed to quicken -viperium semen animari nolens - **
Saint Kieran did not believe he was causing the abortion of a live foetus. It had not yet “quickened” in his eyes and so it was not a sin for the Saint to bring about an abortion.
Bruinnech then resumes her previous status in the community until Dima returns to the monastery to abduct her again. The very sight of the king causes her to die, and in response Dima
threatens Kieran with exile for killing his “wife.” Kieran’s holy power then causes two of Dima’s sons to die, which thus removes Dima’s threat to Bruinnech and Kieran’s community. Kieran then restores the sons and Bruinnech back to life, and neither she nor Dima is mentioned again.
The two women who received such abortion services from Saint Aed of Killarien and Saint Kenneth of Aghaboe are not named, nor are the exact circumstances leading to the pregnancy detailed; they appear in the vitae exclusively as the occasion for
the saints to perform such a “miracle” upon them.
Saint Aed noticed that the womb of one of the consecrated virgins serving him
“grew quickly without food, as if it might flee from that place. Then the virgin confessed before all that she had sinned secretly and she did penance. St. Aed blessed her womb, and at once the baby in her womb disappeared as if it did not exist.”
The Latin text for the above:
“…cito surrexit ille sine cibo, ut ab isto fugeret. Tunc illa coram omnibus confessa est quod occulte peccasset et penitentiam egit. Sanctus autem Aidus benedixit uterum eius, et statim infans in utero eius evanuit quasi non esset.”
The virgin in Saint Kenneth’s vita had “fornicated secretly,” became pregnant, and asked Kenneth to bless her womb. When he did so, “at once the baby in her womb vanished without a trace.”
“…occulte fornicavit . statim infans in utero eius non apparens evanuit.”
There is not a hint in the hagiographies that the monk scribes found anything reprehensible in these saintly abortions. Indeed they are used as evidence of the miraculous powers of the Saints.
. Having seen the ultrasound of my babies in the womb at 12 weeks and less, and seeing them fully formed, I have a difficult time accepting all this stuff about being able to abort babies up until 20 weeks etc.
