Abortion

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thinkandmull

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With the presidential election coming up, the question of abortion is on the minds of many people. The GOP candidate was pro-life for many years, and may have changed his position for political reasons. Obama has a record that includes indifference to the murder of babies who survived partial-birth abortions (a fact that people should talk more about this election).

However, how can we Catholics present a case against abortion which is truly reasonable? After all, we believe in a Bible in which God commands Abraham to kill his full-grown son; under God’s command, God’s warriors in the Old Testament killed many babies. What can we truly say to someone who believes in their conscience that God is allowing them (due to reasonable circumstances) to terminate a pregnancy? Further, how can we be certain that the Church’s teaching on abortion is infallible? The Vice President, probably not knowing what he was talking about, called it de fide teaching, but the Church’s bishops have never been literally unanimous about this.

I use to have peace about my pro-life stance, now I feel like I am being judgmental
 
Ah, I was just having a conversation with my friend about this topic and we thought there might be replies by now on here, but ohwell…

We are thinking along these lines: if God is the author of life, and death is truly just the exiting of one state of life into another, then God can have the right to command an abortion, just as he commanded the death of gentile infants and Isaac in the Old Testament. But it would have to be a direct command from God to someone who has a special relationship with God. Otherwise any murderer could claim that he prayed and God told him to kill…

The fact however that it does not contradict the internal nature of our conscience to take life at the command of God seems to show that killing is not intrinsically wrong, but depends upon the authority with which one acts.
 
God never permitted Abraham to kill Issac. this Biblical passage is a foreshadowing of Jesus. Issac carried the wood to what was going to be his death and Jesus would carry the wooden cross to his death Abraham also says to Issac that God will provide a lamb for this sacrifice and he did, Jesus who is the lamb of God.
 
KP3243 said:
God never permitted Abraham to kill Issac. this Biblical passage is a foreshadowing of Jesus. Issac carried the wood to what was going to be his death and Jesus would carry the wooden cross to his death Abraham also says to Issac that God will provide a lamb for this sacrifice and he did, Jesus who is the lamb of God.
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Unfortunetly, your position is modernism. Read Genesis 22. If the Bible says God commanded something, then it is so. Your position, which sadly was adopted in a This ROck magazine once, can be used to justify any explaning away of scripture.
 
Two past governments were afraid of babies. The survivors, Moses & Jesus, are God’s way of letting us understand how manic governments get over babies. I still do t get why the governments were so scared of babies … Nor why our current government and such (Planned Parenthood) teach us to be scared of babies.

Please, stop killing my generation!!!
 
thinkandmull said:
However, how can we Catholics present a case against abortion which is truly reasonable? After all, we believe in a Bible in which God commands Abraham to kill his full-grown son; under God’s command, God’s warriors in the Old Testament killed many babies. What can we truly say to someone who believes in their conscience that God is allowing them (due to reasonable circumstances) to terminate a pregnancy? Further, how can we be certain that the Church’s teaching on abortion is infallible? The Vice President, probably not knowing what he was talking about, called it de fide teaching, but the Church’s bishops have never been literally unanimous about this.
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God’s commandments to Abraham do not apply to us as Christians…those were very special circumstances and I can almost guarantee that what God commanded Abraham to do (and stopped him before he did it!) would never be expected of us. What does apply to us, however, is the fifth commandment: Thou shalt not kill.

As for infallibility, I believe abortion would very likely be infallible according to the ordinary magisterium of the Church:
The Second Vatican Council teaching states that four conditions must be met for an
infallible exercise of the ordinary magisterium of bishops around the world. These are:
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  1. That the bishops be in communion with one another and with the pope.
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  1. That they teach authoritatively on a matter of faith or morals.
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  1. That they agree in one judgment.
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  1. That they propose this as something to be held definitively by the faithful.
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I don’t know of a single Catholic bishop that openly proclaims to support abortion while I’m sure the overwhelming majority are vocally opposed to it. Furthermore, every pope that I know of has been diametrically opposed to abortion… I think it would be a very steep case to argue that abortion is not an infallible teaching…

Don’t worry, you can rest assured that the Church’s teachings are more reliable then anything else on this planet! 🙂

God bless!
 
1 Samuel 15:3

3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel…

We as Catholic’s have to be careful not to take God’s sovereignty over life. He can take life, and so he can put that power in our hands. This whole issue of the Old Testament does seem to expose much about the human conscience. The Catechism of Trent says that the patriarchs of the Old Testament are not to be blamed for having many wives. Although they had our nature, the desire for several women held sway over their conception of the unitive nature of monogamy. Similarly, I think there is ingrained in our minds the idea that there is something special about birth. Did not Jesus say about birth, that there is rejoicing, because man has entered into the world?
 
Again, I am not for abortion. I can see however how someone’s conscience can convince one that, after pray and thought, God is ok with them having one.
 
thinkandmull said:
Unfortunetly, your position is modernism. Read Genesis 22. If the Bible says God commanded something, then it is so. Your position, which sadly was adopted in a This ROck magazine once, can be used to justify any explaning away of scripture.
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Are you suggesting the Bible says Abraham killed Issac???
 
There is no contradiction in God commanding something, then intervening before the completion of the task, Genesis 22:2 says that God made a command. God cannot command what is immoral. Abraham’s conscience is what is at issue here, and God know that perfectly.
 
thinkandmull said:
1 Samuel 15:3

3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel…

We as Catholic’s have to be careful not to take God’s sovereignty over life. He can take life, and so he can put that power in our hands. This whole issue of the Old Testament does seem to expose much about the human conscience. The Catechism of Trent says that the patriarchs of the Old Testament are not to be blamed for having many wives. Although they had our nature, the desire for several women held sway over their conception of the unitive nature of monogamy. Similarly, I think there is ingrained in our minds the idea that there is something special about birth. Did not Jesus say about birth, that there is rejoicing, because man has entered into the world?
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What Diocese are you in?
 
thinkandmull said:
There is no contradiction in God commanding something, then intervening before the completion of the task, Genesis 22:2 says that God made a command. God cannot command what is immoral. Abraham’s conscience is what is at issue here, and God know that perfectly.
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The angel of the Lord called out to Abraham and stopped him? Read Genisis 22 10-18
 
It’s not that hard to understand: God can’t command what is evil. If God appeared to someone and told them that He would permit the abortion, then there would be no sin involved, for He is the Creator of life, and death is the passage from one state of life to another. But God has not given man that authority to take life nowadays…
 
God is the author of life …

we have life at God’s command and he takes us to Himself when He wants …

you surely do not substitute your own [or any other human] right to determine life or death - do you? … because that is sinful … kind of like making oneself to be God or to be “like God” … that did not bode well for Adam and Eve … and it has not through the ages …

So your compliant is that God command something [IE Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and other biblical stories] - and that equates with our nations sanctioning the murder of babies in the womb of their mothers 🤷 … now thats a leap of some sort … but it is not a leap of faith :rolleyes:
 
Are you arguing that God is permitting people to have an abortion or not?
 
No, I am saying that the pro-life stance seems to take the position that killing is univerally wrong, when, according to the Bible, this is not so. Now surely God has implanted in us an instinct which says “do not kill, but love, your offspring”. But Abraham did not cease to love his son as he tried to kill him! Nor is the “leap” from “wrong, period, to kill innocents” to “God alone has the right to say when we leave for our next stage of existence” simple. Human conscience is not simple
 
Now the God-given instruction to sacrifice Isaac, in violation of what would later be codified in the Law of Moses, can be understood—God had no intention of actually allowing Isaac to die. Instead, He intended to test Abraham’s faith and demonstrate prophetically His intention to offer His own Son, Jesus Christ, on the same mountain hundreds of years later (Ps. 22; Isa. 53). Sadly, the same words that Jesus spoke to the religious leaders of His day can still be said to Judaism which rejects Messiah Jesus: “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me” (John 5:39).1 In the hundreds of years which would separate Abraham’s offering of Isaac on Mount Moriah from God’s offering of Jesus, the ritual slaughter of countless animals within the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, Solomon’s Temple, and the Second Temple all pointed forward to this ultimate offering of Jesus on the cross. Both Solomon’s Temple and the Second Temple were specifically placed on Mount Moriah to show their connection with the ultimate sacrifice of God’s Lamb.
Thus, the Temple Mount is not just a random piece of real-estate contested by some confused religious fanatics. It is a specific location where God Himself ordained that Abraham should act out the event pointing to the crucifixion and the place where the intervening Temples stood.
 
The Offering of Isaac points to the Crucifixion of Jesus

Abraham offered his only son (Gen. 22:2, 12). God offered his only Son (John 3:16).
Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice (Gen. 22:5). Jesus carried the cross for the sacrifice (John 19:17).
Isaac cried out to his father (Gen. 22:7). Jesus cried out to His Father (Mtt. 27:46; Mark 15:34).
Isaac escaped death after three days (Gen. 22:4). Jesus rose from the dead on the third day (Mtt. 16:21; Mark 16:2-4; Luke 9:22).
Abraham indicated God will provide a lamb for the sacrifice (Gen. 22:8). God provided Jesus as The Lamb for the sacrifice (Isa. 53:7; John 1:29, 36; Rev. 5:6+; 7:17+).
God provided a ram, a male sheep, as a substitutionary sacrifice (Gen. 22:13). God provided a male, Jesus, as a substitutionary sacrifice.
The ram was caught by its horns (head) in a thicket (thorns) (Gen. 22:13). Jesus wore a crown of thorns on his head (Mtt. 27:29), a symbol of the sin He bore (Gen. 3:18).
Sacrifice offered at specific location on Mount Moriah (Gen. 22:2, 9). For hundreds of years, sacrifices would be offered from the same spot inside Solomon’s Temple and the Second Temple (2Chr. 3:1). When Jesus is crucified outside the city walls on the same mountain, the veil within the Temple is rent in two (Mark 15:38).
The ram was God’s provision (Gen. 22:13-14). Abraham prophetically named the place pointing to the crucifixion where God made the ultimate provision: the sacrifice of His Son for sin (Heb. 9:26-28).
 
So God could command you to use contraception, than prevent you after you’ve already started? Do you deny that God commanded His people to kill all the people of Canaan, even the babies?

I am NOT saying that God command this nowadays for the unborn, but He can. The Bible is clear: God is the Lord of life
 
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