Can raped girls abort?

[Rence]

To put this in the light of faith, for the benefit of Catholics, I would pose this question. How can we believe that bread and wine cease to be bread and wine at the moment of consecration and become the ACTUAL body and blood of Christ, the same body and blood that was sacrificed at Calvary, but we disbelieve the Church’s teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death?

If the Church’s faith in the dignity of human life from conception to death is faulty, how do we know that her faith in the physical change of bread and wine is not faulty?

It is much easier to believe in the dignity of life, than it is to believe that a host is the same God who created life.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

I’m sorry, but not to me it’s not. It’s much easier for me to believe that the Host is God. One does not have to believe EVERYTHING the Church says in order to believe in the Eucharist. But getting into that would take this thread way off course.

 

[limerick]

***The question is: “Can raped girls abort?” The answer is, yes, it is legal in the U.S. at this time.

The poster should have asked the more pointed question, “What are the moral, spiritual, ethical consequences for a Catholic woman to have an abortion?” Just asking “can it be done” is like asking, “can you please turn down the heat?”

Limerick***

 

[SugarMagnolia]

And how many rapists have needed to take anything to prevent any possibility of infection when the woman he raped had an abortion?

You can even use round numbers!

A million dollars to anyone who can decipher the above question.

 

[Rence]

A million dollars to anyone who can decipher the above question.

typo maybe?

 

[JReducation]

I’m sorry, but not to me it’s not. It’s much easier for me to believe that the Host is God. One does not have to believe EVERYTHING the Church says in order to believe in the Eucharist. But getting into that would take this thread way off course.

But one has to beleive everything that she teaches on matters of faith and moral to be Catholic. Abortion is a moral teaching. What’s even more interesting is that it is a moral teaching on which Catholics and non-Catholics agree. Look at the Manhattan Declaration. It is a moral declaration that is taught by the Catholic Church, therefore it requires the assent of all Catholics. But it is rooted in a shared belief about human dignity, which goes beyond Catholicism.

The law of the Church is that one may not go to communion if one supports or tolerates abortion. Because if one believes that the Host is the Creator of Life, then one cannot make judgments against life. To do so would be to make judgments against that which the Host created. The Eucharist and abortion go hand in hand. They are inseperable, because it’s the Lord and Creator of Life who is the Eucharist. And it is a life that he created that is being terminated in an abortion. It begs the question, how can one adore the God who created life, but tolerate the termination of innocent life that this God, whom we adore, called into existence?

What I’m saying is that we must be very careful not to paint outselves into a conflict with Christ in the Eucharist. Because the law forbidding abortion at any time, comes from the Christ in the Eucharist. The Church did not pull it out of its sleeve. As we know, the Church has declared it as an infallible teaching. That takes us to another area. To disagree, one would have to take the position that one does not believe in infallible moral teaching. But if we take that position, then we also place ourselves outside of the Church. Those are spiritually dangerous positions for any Catholic or Orthodox to take.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[Rence]

But one has to beleive everything that she teaches on matters of faith and moral to be Catholic. Abortion is a moral teaching. What’s even more interesting is that it is a moral teaching on which Catholics and non-Catholics agree. Look at the Manhattan Declaration. It is a moral declaration that is taught by the Catholic Church, therefore it requires the assent of all Catholics. But it is rooted in a shared belief about human dignity, which goes beyond Catholicism.

The law of the Church is that one may not go to communion if one supports or tolerates abortion. Because if one believes that the Host is the Creator of Life, then one cannot make judgments against life. To do so would be to make judgments against that which the Host created. The Eucharist and abortion go hand in hand. They are inseperable, because it’s the Lord and Creator of Life who is the Eucharist. And it is a life that he created that is being terminated in an abortion. It begs the question, how can one adore the God who created life, but tolerate the termination of innocent life that this God, whom we adore, called into existence?

What I’m saying is that we must be very careful not to paint outselves into a conflict with Christ in the Eucharist. Because the law forbidding abortion at any time, comes from the Christ in the Eucharist. The Church did not pull it out of its sleeve. As we know, the Church has declared it as an infallible teaching. That takes us to another area. To disagree, one would have to take the position that one does not believe in infallible moral teaching. But if we take that position, then we also place ourselves outside of the Church. Those are spiritually dangerous positions for any Catholic or Orthodox to take.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

My priests have never turned away anyone from communion just because they disagreed with some aspect of the Church and it’s teachings. Certainly we see every day that politicians are very public about their views and about disagreeing with the Church and yet, they attend mass and go to communion. Clearly the Church is tolerant about people disagreeing with them, in plain sight. I don’t believe that one has to agree with everything the church teaches in order to be a good catholic. You pointed out things from the catechism, but the catechism also says you must follow your conscience.

 

[JReducation]

My priests have never turned away anyone from communion just because they disagreed with some aspect of the Church and it’s teachings. Certainly we see every day that politicians are very public about their views and about disagreeing with the Church and yet, they attend mass and go to communion. Clearly the Church is tolerant about people disagreeing with them, in plain sight. I don’t believe that one has to agree with everything the church teaches in order to be a good catholic. You pointed out things from the catechism, but the catechism also says you must follow your conscience.

It is true that people do not get turned away from the communion line for disagreeing. But the Church expects individuals to be honest and avoid receiving, not because they are going to be run off, but because they are being honest with themselves and are trying to be honest with God.

I think that a problem that we have, not just Catholics, but the world, is that we tend to listen and obey only when someone threatens us. When we are told what is right and wrong and are told to follow out of pure love, not out of fear, we put that on the shelf. And that’s unfortunate. People should not be run-off from the communion line. People should honestly say, “I can’t receive communion, because I belief that Christ is wrong on the issue of abortion. We disagree and therefore, we’re not in communion,” meaning the individual and Christ.

Because the person with whom one is disagreeing is with Christ. It is Christ who says, “Whoever hears you, hears me.” It is Christ who says that human life is sacred and who shows us this through his compassion for the woman caught in adultery. He saves her life. It is Christ who saves the life of Cain after he kills Abel. Yes, it is Christ. The OT is about Christ.

I think that the idea of conscience has been abused by many Catholics, more than any other faith group. The Church tried to defend the rights of conscience; but she never said that conscience was to be free of Church authority. The Church makes it very clear that conscience has to be well formed and for the Catholic that means that it must be formed according to the faith and teachings of the Church. She never said that Catholics have a right to form their own conscience. Catholics have a moral duty to inform their conscience according to revealed truth. The fulness of truth subsists within the Catholic Church, not in the individual. Therefore, the individual cannot form conscience, because he is not in posession of the fullness of truth. It is the Church who has that gift. That’s why we remain in the Church, to be in touch with the fulness of truth.

To remain in the Church, but to deny parts of the truth doesn’t really help the individual and certainly does not even make sense. The truth that has been revealed to us is that human life is sacred from conception to natural death. If we belong to the Church, presumably we remain because we believe that the fullness of truth is there. Otherwise, why stay?

Conscience has a moral duty to embrace truth. But conscience does not produce truth. Truth is revealed by God. Conscience passes judgment on our actions against the backdrop of truth. When the Church says that we have an obligation to follow conscience, she is assuming that the person is making judgments against the backdrop of the truth that she teaches, not what we believe to be true. There is no such thing as a diversity of truths. As John Paul II said, “Truth does not contradict truth.” Either you’re right or the Church is right, but one of you is wrong. The question is, which one has access to the fullness of truth?

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[Rence]

I think that the idea of conscience has been abused by many Catholics, more than any other faith group. The Church tried to defend the rights of conscience; but she never said that conscience was to be free of Church authority. The Church makes it very clear that conscience has to be well formed and for the Catholic that means that it must be formed according to the faith and teachings of the Church. She never said that Catholics have a right to form their own conscience. Catholics have a moral duty to inform their conscience according to revealed truth. The fulness of truth subsists within the Catholic Church, not in the individual. Therefore, the individual cannot form conscience, because he is not in posession of the fullness of truth. It is the Church who has that gift. That’s why we remain in the Church, to be in touch with the fulness of truth.

Ok, so what you’re saying is, the Church defends our rights of conscience but ONLY if it conforms to the teaching of the Church because we don’t have the right to form our own conscience. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make sense to me at all. So according to you, the Church says you have the duty to follow your conscience…ONLY if it agrees with them and the individual ‘cannot form a conscience’. Which means, the church can’t be defending our rights of conscience at all. I’ll be honest, I’ve never heard of this until I came to this forum, and I was raised in a Catholic environment all my life. I’m going to go ahead and just stick to the Catholic environment I was raised in.

If public figures can defend the rights of individuals and still receive communion, disagreeing with the Church is evidently allowed. They know the world is watching them. If people are really excommunicated, a Bishop wouldn’t be giving that person communion on public display. Again, I’ll stick to how I was raised.

Thanks for pointing out all the catechism for me. Sorry I didn’t reply to it that much. I had lots and lots to say and many questions, but that would just open up another can of worms and result in another 700 flaming posts about something not even related to the original topic.

 

[JReducation]

Ok, so what you’re saying is, the Church defends our rights of conscience but ONLY if it conforms to the teaching of the Church because we don’t have the right to form our own conscience. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make sense to me at all. So according to you, the Church says you have the duty to follow your conscience…ONLY if it agrees with them and the individual ‘cannot form a conscience’. Which means, the church can’t be defending our rights of conscience at all. I’ll be honest, I’ve never heard of this until I came to this forum, and I was raised in a Catholic environment all my life. I’m going to go ahead and just stick to the Catholic environment I was raised in.

If public figures can defend the rights of individuals and still receive communion, disagreeing with the Church is evidently allowed. They know the world is watching them. If people are really excommunicated, a Bishop wouldn’t be giving that person communion on public display. Again, I’ll stick to how I was raised.

Thanks for pointing out all the catechism for me. Sorry I didn’t reply to it that much. I had lots and lots to say and many questions, but that would just open up another can of worms and result in another 700 flaming posts about something not even related to the original topic.

The Church’s teaching on conscience has never changed. Conscience must be rightly formed and that is the job of the Church and that’s why we go to the Church. To get her help in forming our consciences correctly.

**Lumen gentium 36 § 4

Because of the very economy of salvation the faithful should learn how to distinguish carefully between those rights and duties which are theirs as members of the Church, and those which they have as members of human society. Let them strive to reconcile the two, remembering that in every temporal affair they must be guided by a Christian conscience, since even in secular business there is no human activity which can be withdrawn from God’s dominion. In our own time, however, it is most urgent that this distinction and also this harmony should shine forth more clearly than ever in the lives of the faithful, so that the mission of the Church may correspond more fully to the special conditions of the world today. For it must be admitted that the temporal sphere is governed by its own principles, since it is rightly concerned with the interests of this world. But that ominous doctrine which attempts to build a society with no regard whatever for religion, and which attacks and destroys the religious liberty of its citizens, is rightly to be rejected**

Christian conscience is not formed through private revelation, but through revealed truths found in the Church’s deposit of truth. That’s where this comes from. I don’t know what you were taught or how it was taught, but the conscience of the Christian must conform to the truth found in the Church. Otherwise, it’s not a Christian conscience.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[Doc_Keele]

Doc Keele

Sounds like you’re getting bored. Maybe if you’d throw in some new arguments, you’d get some new answers?

Right, this coming from the man who repeats the same “argument” (slogan) hundreds of times? Yeah, right:thumbsup:

I’m bored with tedious throw-away comments, that’s for sure.

 

[vz71]

I don’t have issue with any laws that govern our country that I know of. Which laws violate the rights of citizens? You may be thinking of something specific, but sorry at the moment, I can’t. Usually laws protect citizens’ rights and their right to autonomy. Laws protect one’s person and one’s property from violation of another. One person’s rights end where another person’s begins. There could be, but I don’t know of any laws that I would have issue with.

That is demonstratably untrue from your own responses in this thread.

 

[o_mlly]

Dunno, and the legal answer may be different from the medical answer.

Does the legal definition matter in a discussion of morality? I thought we dismissed the law as always instructive with the legality of the Nazi death camps? If the medical or scientific answer is, “I don’t know” then sans a definitive diagnosis does not at a minimum “primum non nocere” obtain?

Further, if the scientific answer is arbitrary – sometime during the birthing process, we’re not sure exactly when, a non-human becomes a human – should we not consider other answers especially if they are not arbitrary but reasoned?

Here’s a reasoned argument for human life at conception. The key argument for proponents of procured abortion is that a woman has a right to her own body. (The morality of that claim is disputed but let’s allow it for the sake of progress in the present argument.) However, the unborn baby is a distinct individual. Its DNA is completely its own, and different from its mother’s DNA. From the moment of conception, it is an entirely separate genetic individual. Since the mother’s body is different from that of her baby, does it matter what a group of men in the US Supreme Court said about the issue in Roe v. Wade?

Leaving aside for the moment the terrible but rare occurrence of pregnancy thorugh rape, we should remember that the overwhelming number of abortions in the US are done for convenience. As the State of California reported, “. . .abortions for medical reasons are extremely rare …”
os.dhhs.gov/dab/decisions/dab665.txt

 

[Doc_Keele]

I just said I didn’t know, not that the issue hasn’t been decided.

 

[Apryl]

A million dollars to anyone who can decipher the above question.

Oooh… Me! Me! Me!

Ok… the above question relates to the fact that women, when they have an abortion, wind up taking antibiotics to prevent possible infections.

I was asking if any one (that includes you) knew of a rapist, the male involved in creating that child, ever had to take a single antibiotic to prevent HIM from getting a possible infection.

You see, the abortion, that kills the baby, and could possibly affect the mother physically beyond her time on the table, does NOT, in any way, affect the male involved.

You need my bank routing number?

 

[kage_ar]

A million dollars to anyone who can decipher the above question.

The answer is zero.

Please donate the million dollars as follows

Half to Catholic Answers, half to Priests For Life.

 

[kage_ar]

So why can’t a rape victim, who has taken emergency contraception in the emergency room immediately after the rape, go to confession, and be reconciled?

That is compounding the sin with the sin of presumption (look it up in the Catechism).

Those who gave her the pills or advised her to take them are also in grave sin and could not receive communion, and would have to repent as well of the sin of presumption. They would also have to firmly resolve to never commit that sin again.

 

[kage_ar]

I realize that it’s not your own, nor is it mine. It is God’s. This is an infallible teaching. Truth does not change because we disagree with it. That would be a non-truth.

**Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, n. 57: “Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral. **This doctrine, based upon that unwritten law which man, in the light of reason, finds in his own heart (cf. Rom 2:14-15), is reaffirmed by Sacred Scripture, transmitted by the Tradition of the Church and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.”

The Catholic Church also has a canon, in canon law that says that any baptized Catholic who has an abortion or supports abortioin is excommunicated, thus placing himsef/herself outside of the Catholic Church. It is not me making a law for you. I’m just pointing it out to you. Now, you can argue with the law, if you wish. There is a tribunal at the Vatican where these laws can be challenged. If you disagree with the canon, you can file a petition to hear your case heard. Everyone has that right. What we cannot do is deny that the canon exists. Denying its existence will not make it go away.

Those Catholics who promote abortion are automatically excommunicated for two reasons. First, they have fallen into the sin of heresy by believing that abortion is not always gravely immoral **(canons 751 and 1364). **Second, these Catholics are providing substantial assistance for women to obtain abortions by influencing public policy to make abortions legal, and to keep abortions legal, and to broaden access to abortion. Those who provide such substantial assistance commit a mortal sin and incur a sentence of automatic excommunication (canon 1398).

They can terminate a life. But it remains unjustifiable. Peter has already stated that above, “It is gravely sinful.” Grave sin is never justifiable, otherwise it would not be sin.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

Preach it, BROTHER!!!

Remain baffled how many here embrace relativism.

You cannot be a moral relativist and be a practicing Catholic.

 

[Apryl]

I just keep coming in here, hoping, PRAYING, that Rence and the others who are trying (and in some cases, doing a very good job of!) to explain that rape is a horrible act, and the woman would be justified to not want to carry the pregnancy that was the result of a rape to term.

… I am hoping and praying that they can understand that no amount of hurt, pain, embarrassment, depression, self-loathing, or anger can make it OK for a person to end another life.

Some one else asked if abortion is ok in other instances; so far, I have not seen the reply to this question. (Lots of, ‘I’ve already answered’, though)

An unplanned or unwanted pregnancy is just that: unplanned or unwanted. That doesn’t make it any less of a pregnany, or any less of a human being, or any less of a child of God.

I am still trying to understand if the people who support abortion in the case of rape understand that what the propose would be equal to saying ‘if you are hurting, it’s ok to play god’.

Do you?

What am I missing?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Doc Keele

*I’m bored with tedious throw-away comments, that’s for sure. *

And one tedious comment I will never have to worry about hearing from the pro-choice party is that it’s common sense we should kill our own children. Never heard it yet and never expect to hear it.

So why be pro-choice if *it’s not common sense *that we may kill the children?

 

[Doc_Keele]