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Yellow_Belle
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Source?
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tuviskazinai
Guest
The more I think about this tragic situation, the more I feel the bishop was right; but I believe that we can learn different things, first from empathizing with the bishop, and then from empathizing with the mother. Unless we try to empathize with both of them, our understanding of the predicament will remain incomplete.
From the bishop’s point of view:
Someone posted near the beginning of this thread that the goal of excommunication is not to send someone to hell; it is to inform them, and society, of their wrongdoing, but also, more importantly, to urge them to repent. I think that is truly operative here. Where is the justice and mercy here, this poster asks? Well, the bishop called for justice to be done by forbidding the abortions, and if the family and the abortionist repent, then I have no doubt that the bishop will mercifully welcome them back into the Church.
That said, looking at it from the mother’s point of view:
I think that this poster is correct to ask whether it’s occurred to us that the mother “may not have been thinking clearly.” Everyone on this forum has charitably refrained from criticizing the mother too harshly, but still, the point deserves to be made. Who here knows the state of the mother’s soul leading up to these events? She may have been the militantly pro-abortion sort who would even have brought her daughter to an abortion mill even if the girl had been 18…or, she may have been devastated by this awful situation, driven half-mad by guilt at not having been able to stop it – she may have been up for nights on her knees in prayer – she may have been given conflicting advice from doctors, friends, even priests – in a word, driven to wits’ end…
So the bishop had a job to do: to impart the teaching of the Church on the issue of abortion, namely that no matter how much a person thinks and worries about it beforehand, it is wrong. Ok, so that is one aspect of the situation, and it is appropriate, I guess, us to be very firm and clear on a forum like this which discusses the abstract morality of the situation itself.
But the black-and-white wrong vs right aspect is only one dimension of the problem. I always get frustrated in my ethics courses when our philosophy professors give us these silly “trolley problems”: like, let’s say a trolley is about to kill 5 people on a railroad track, but you can throw the switch so that the trolley goes onto a different track instead and only kills one person. Would you do it? And then they get even more elaborate: let’s say you could turn a switch which would give you a 20% chance of killing a mass murderer who if the trolley didn’t kill him would otherwise be 90% likely to kill three people in Mississippi, one of whom was the trolley driver’s father and is having a birthday next Tuesday…
I mean, it just gets ridiculous. And I am always thinking to myself, "Ok, maybe there is a right and a wrong answer in all this mess. But imagine you are the poor soul who had to make that heart-rending decision. If we are here to learn about ethics, isn’t the most important thing to learn how to comfort and forgive that traumatized soul rather than to waste our time turning love into a hard science?
I am not saying that this abortion situation is irrelevant or that any answer goes. The bishop has discerned the truth and we have every right to go on debating it. But in response to the poster asking “where’s the mercy?”: I am sure that everyone here who considers the abortion to have been a crime would change their tone if they actually had to speak to the mother. I am sure that no one here would heap abuse on her head and ask why she just didn’t “get it” and give her assigned readings on Catholic theology; I think that they would say, “We understand the tragedy of this decision, we desire your reconciliation with the Church, and we are with you in prayer; confess your sins and your sorrows to God, and let Christ bear this Cross with you, so that you don’t have to bear it alone.”
Catholic teaching is great because it allows us to analyze what is right in difficult situations; but it is even greater because it offers us redemption when we have failed to do what is right. Catholic blogger Michael Sean Winters writes:
“I recall a lecture when a Monsignor was asked what the Catholic position was on the following scenario: Authorities arrest a man who knows how to locate and stop an atomic bomb that is set to go off in midtown Manhattan. Can we torture him to save millions of lives? The monsignor replied that the catholic position was to torture the man but then go to confession.”
It sounds like a punchline to a joke or a flip remark at worst, but I actually think it’s the best response to a situation like this. No matter what decision was made in the end, it is never to late to ask forgiveness from God.
Peace,
+AMDG+
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tm30
Guest
Really - how do you know this? If your clumsy, drug-addicted next door neighbor owns handguns, and an “expert” told you it’s likely someone in your famliy will be killed by a stray bullet, would that justify killing your neighbor to prevent a tragedy that may or may not take place?
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Yellow_Belle
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Middleman
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The fact is, we do not have access to the child’s medical chart, we don’t know much about the attitude of the first doctor and whether he/she was willing to risk the life of the child, we only know what the mass media is telling us. We know that she went for a second opinion, that’s all we know. For all we know the first doctor was wrong in his judgement.
As far as your incredibly cavalier attitude toward this poor little girl, unfortunately for her there is no easy way out. She is scarred for life. And she will probably not be raised within the Catholic Church after this excommunication of her poor mother, who is also probably a victim of abuse.
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st_lucy
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Here is the sight that states that mother went looking for an abortion.
And as for your idea that I have a “cavalier attitude” toward this poor child, is rather disturbing. You don’t know how I feel about this child, or how closely I can relate to her pain. But the fact is now this child has not only been abused by her stepfather but also by her doctors. She is now a mother of twins who have been brutally murdered. Do you think that having those babies butchered will ease her pain of being sexually abused? Do you think that now that she has done she will be okay? It is just a pill on to her already existing pain. Now because of this she will have life long emotional and physical pain. This abortion could leave her body so badly injured that she may never be able to have children which will bring back the memories of her stepfather abusing her, and the fact that her children are now died.
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Yellow_Belle
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Your source just says that the first doctors ‘reportedly’ said the child’s life was not in danger. It offers no proof of that. Can you perhaps cite an interview with the first doctors that confirms that this was their opinion?
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Michael96
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Today’s Gospel reading seems rather appropriate.
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tuviskazinai
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MarcoPolo
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It appears to me the families’ doctor-shopping efforts contributed to the excommunication:Although doctors at the hospital where the girl was initially admitted, Imip, reportedly said that her life was not in danger, her mother reportedly transferred her to another hospital, Cisam, that was willing to do the abortion, which is not penalized under Brazilian law because the girl was raped. (link)
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Yellow_Belle
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Thank you for the clarification about the monsignor’s statementI see what you mean. And yes, you are right, of course – it is not acceptable to sin with the presumption that you can just go to Confession afterwards and forget about it.
But I think that the Monsignor was giving an example of a morally ambiguous scenario where he doesn’t know what’s right, and does only the best that he can, acting on what he thinks is right. He said “go to Confession afterwards” not as an excuse to do something wrong, but as an admission of the fact that sometimes even when we do what we think is right,
a) we could be wrong in our thinking;
b) we may have brought harm to people all the same – harm which is justified by the greater good but which we should regret all the same;
and c) over the course of our decision-making process, we may have been influenced by negative motivations (in this case, hatred of the terrorist) even if our end result was an expression of our good will (in this case, to save the people in Manhattan).
And all of those are good reasons to go to Confession.
I don’t mean to delve into a discussion of the theology of Confession, which I’m not qualified for – and I don’t mean to say that the Monsignor’s example and the Brazilian example are identical. All I meant to say were two things:
a) that the woman may have acted according to her own conscience, out of love for her daughter; and if that’s the case, she still has to admit she was wrong in the end, but she was a victim in this situation, too.
but also b) even though she was a victim, and even if she did what she thought was right, that’s no reason to fight the bishop’s excommunication and refuse to go to Confession.
You’re right, maybe it wasn’t the best point for me to make…but that’s what I understood the Monsignor to mean.
Peace,
+AMDG+
It has helped me to think about this tragic case in a different way.
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Gerry_Hunter
Guest
Age itself does not preclude a cesarean procedure. As for the risk of a cesarean, they are opted for (in cases of medical complications) where that risk is justified, through comparison with other risks that have become evident. (I say nothing here about cases where the procedure is carried out ostensibly for convenience.)
Blessings,
Gerry
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savienu
Guest
There was a 5 year girl in the 1930s who delivered by c-section. Granted, it was only 1 baby, not 2, but she was also 4 years younger, and it was 70 years ago. youngest_mother.tripod.com/
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Jordan_Francis
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Why is the rapist father not ex-communicated? We need a more comprehensible policy for ex-communication. This makes the Church look pathological over the abortion question and callous to a young child’s grave predicament. There would have been no attempt at an abortion had the father not raped his step- daughter. IMO, he should bear more guilt than anyone else.
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chosen_people
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I am relying like all of us on the media. For the sake of argument, let’s presume that the girl would have died if the pregnancy was not terminated. Would you then argue, as has been done here by some, that the moral action was to allow this to happen in order to possibly allow the birth of the twins? If this is your attitude, then the condemnation of the Brazilian church and the excommunications are also, in your opinion, moral acts. Jewish law and ethics are quite clear that in the case where the mother would die, the moral action would be to terminate the pregnancy.
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Apryl
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… and the abortion was yet again another violation… and to think: at the hands/direction of her mother.
So, how do you think she (this 9 year old child) will rationalize the questions of life and death, abortion, conception, motherhood, choices, and who knows what else?
Someone is bound to notice she is the subject of the story and the whispers and the conflict.
The problem isn’t that the church has excommunicate the mother. That is out outpouring from the original problem.
The problem is that now, Miss Nine Year Old, can go through the rest of her life with the, ‘because of ME, my mother had to get ME an abortion’. Great! And Miss Nine Year Old can always wonder what she did to cause this man, the husband of her mother, the man her mother brought into their home and loved, what did SHE, Miss Nine Year Old, do to cause him to behave as he did.
I think that’s much worse than her being pregnant.
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Apryl
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By what reasoning do you say ‘give her life’? You are assuming that the pregnancy would end her life, or at the very least, cause her great physical harm.
Where do you get your information?
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Apryl
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Please offer your proof…or at least your anecdotal reasoning - for saying that the pregnacy was a threat to the life of the girl.
Pretty please.
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chosen_people
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The various press reports are that the abortion was “life saving” as the nine year girl “did not have the pelvis necessary to support the gestation of twins”. The question remains whether, if this is a given, i.e. that non termination of the pregnancy would have led to the death of the nine year old mother but on the other hand, the twins would have been born alive, what is the Catholic moral position? Would this position change if the chance for the twins being born alive was slim or non existent? Once again, Jewish law would opt in these circumstances to save the mother and to terminate the pregnancy.
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Belgarion
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You do everything you can to save the babies.
Plain and simple.
There are risks for certain things, but if the babies die, you were trying to save them.
If an evil act is done for good intentions, then its still evil.
If you give the children the chance to live, it becomes a good act done with good intentions. The end may be unfortunate, but its not evil.
Intent, method, and end. If ANY of these is evil, it becomes immoral.
(Keep in mind, a bad end result that is unforeseen isn’t EVIL, it may be bad, and perhaps a venial sin, but I don’t believe its mortal)
Plain and simple.
There are risks for certain things, but if the babies die, you were trying to save them.
If an evil act is done for good intentions, then its still evil.
If you give the children the chance to live, it becomes a good act done with good intentions. The end may be unfortunate, but its not evil.
Intent, method, and end. If ANY of these is evil, it becomes immoral.
(Keep in mind, a bad end result that is unforeseen isn’t EVIL, it may be bad, and perhaps a venial sin, but I don’t believe its mortal)
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