Kindness has the core of truth in its heart, otherwise it is false and useless. I feel most deeply for this poor woman and her feelings at this moment do count. She needs no posts to tell her her faults, she is only to well aware of them and is grieving for her lost baby. We all know this. If my words were unkind that was not my intention. I feel deeply for herand only wish to push her to confession for her own sake. The sooner she knows Jesus has forgiven her, the quicker she will forgive herself. She is not sugar coating the truth. Charity should be true to itself.
Be very careful, because half of the truth can be worse than none at all. There are three elements necessary for a mortal sin: mortal seriousness in the act, an appreciation that the act is gravely wrong, and full cooperation of the will to choose the act. If you are forced to do something, the sin is only yours to the extent that you chose freely to do it. If you were compelled, then the sin belongs to the person who compelled you, not to you.
If a person is truly compelled to commit an act, the sin is imputed to the person who forced them. Even if they were not fully compelled, the element of force that interferes with the will lessens culpability.
***Can. 1323 **The following are not subject to a penalty when they have violated a law or precept:
4/ a person who acted coerced by grave fear, even if only relatively grave, or due to necessity or grave inconvenience unless the act is intrinsically evil or tends to the harm of souls;
7/ a person who without negligence thought that one of the circumstances mentioned in nn. 4 or 5 was present.*
This woman would not have procured an abortion for herself in a million years. She should not be berated for giving in to the threat of being divorced, put out of her home to raise her child alone, and taken away from her other children. That is beyond the pale. She might have said, “no,” this is true, and yes she ought to have said, “no,” but that would have been a truly heroic resistance to evil on her part. Honestly, if she had let her husband force her to take those pills and put me over a 200 foot cliff because saving her would have cost her her her children, I would be disappointed in her, at worst.** I be blaming her husband 100%, not her.**
Yes, she should see a confessor, because it will take a priest to convince her how much she was driven to do what she did, and to absolve whatever part she had in it (which neither you nor I can know).
I would also suggest she ask around her diocese to see if they have something like a Rachel’s Vineyard Retreat. In the US, these are weekends in which women who have had an abortion–some because of pressure from others, but others of their own volition–go in order to receive whatever absolution is needed but also to help work through the feelings of anger at those who pushed them to do it and grief over the child they lost. Her other children need for her to cope with this as best as she can, so she can attend to them instead of getting so wrapped up in her private grief that she cannot mother them.
She ought to get help from her confessor, too, to figure out how to convince her husband to repent and seek absolution for what he did to his wife and children. Unless he was also compelled in some way (hard to imagine, but not impossible), then his sin was very grave. He ought not receive any of the Sacraments, until he receives absolution, and he ought to seek that without delay, lest he die with this offense held tightly and willfully in his heart.
. I feel so bad for her.
im scared to tell my priest what if he throws me out of church? I love my husband and know why he did this i almost bleed to death on the operating table 6 months ago when my last was born but i wanted this baby too whether its birth killed me or not! I dont know how to forgive myself or my husband over this am i going to hell
