What is the rationale for abortion being grounds for excommunication?

[tqualey]

Hi, PermanentMarker,

Christ gave Peter the power to bind and lose (Matt 16). I realize that you think that the Catholic Church has acted in a manner that you do not understand or apparently accept as not being arbitrary.

The basic idea is that we are following Christ through the Church He founded on Peter. Ultimately, the Church is acting in the proper way in protecting unborn life by clearly identifying that one can not be a Catholic and destroy innocent life.

Yes, there are serious crimes - and the Church determines how it will handle each one.

That’s the way it is.

God bless

That seems hardly an adequate basis for singling out abortion out of many moral evils. I could agree that a child in the womb is purely innocent, but that fact alone does not contain a principle which rules out other moral evils worthy of excommunication.

This is why there must be some misunderstanding on our part as to the nature of excommunication itself. It cannot be the case that excommunication is about taking a moral stand. Otherwise, it is morbidly arbitrary and all the blustering blowhards who criticize the Catholic Church for not excommunicating Adolf Hitler suddenly have a point. For if ever a moral stand needed to be made… you get my point.

I always thought of excommunication as analogous to treason in civil law. Being a serial rapist or murderer does not remove you from the body of the Americans, but committing treason does. Similarly, evil acts do not necessarily remove you from the body of Christians, but being an apostate or heretic does. But abortion throws a wrench into that analogy.