I am not a cradle Catholic so it is possible that that my view is overly simplified. My understanding is that having, facilitating or promoting abortion is defined by the church as a mortal sin. When someone commits mortal sin, the person severs their connection to the Holy Spirit. Many Catholics commit mortal sin throughout their lives and repair their connection to the Holy Spirit through reconciliation.
It is good that Pro-Choice proponents who are Catholic continue to attend church and are exposed to the true presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. I believe that Mary would encourage Pro-Choice Catholics to participate in Eucharistic Adoration as well. Certainly St Paul strongly cautioned those in mortal sin against receiving communion but did not kick them out of the church.
This thread is sort of disturbing to me in that it seems to be a discussion of “Why do Pro-Choice Catholics stay in the Church?” In my experience the church embraces both liberal and conservative ideas. Abortion should be a practice that is rejected by both liberals and conservatives as infanticide was rejected by all early Christians.
I second your position. (I’m also a convert to Catholicism.) I’d also point out that while pro-choicers are at risk of losing their souls, so too are climate change denialists, especially now that we are on the brinking of triggering massive extinction, maybe even the end of all life on earth (and humanity just doesn’t seem up to the task of ceasing and desisting in this path, and taking another less harmful path). There are lots of sins that we need to be cognizant of, and we shouldn’t focus solely on abortion, esp since it makes us look like hyprocrites and neither helps to reduce abortion nor the other ways in which we kill and harm people.
I just saw the 2nd episode of CATHOLICISM, about “Be Happy.” It ended with the Prodigal Son. Maybe liberals are like the prodigal son, but conservatives are like the older brother.
Both liberals and conservatives (not referring to Catholic traditionalists…far from it) buy into the same anti-Catholic, anti-human threads of our modern culture, which is heavily based on Enlightenment thinking – which arose partly out of opposition to government and Church oppression at a time when sociopolitical complexity and authoritarianism were increasing (in other words, such thinking is understandable, but it went too far in its direction, tho the Church as responded to its legitimate complaints & now supports the ideal of subsidiarity and talks of freedom & rights, but in context with solidarity).
Enlightenment thinking arose before advances in modern sciences and social sciences and doesn’t have knowledge or foundation in human ecology – the very deep interconnections of humans to nature, and humans to humans. Its concept of person is based on autonomous, self-contained individuals (without mothers, families, society) who came together in a social contract to form society. But science and social science will tell us that humans have always had society, and arguing which came first, the individual or society would be like the chicken-and-egg connundrum. Enlightenment thinking focuses on original rights, and how these were not abridged when creating society. It says almost nothing about duties and responsibilities; these would be quite secondary to rights. Our modern tech has perhaps even blinded us more to how we are truly dependent on nature and each other…to the extent that I don’t think even modern-day Christians really think they are dependent on God, or they have fashioned God in their own twisted image.
Most traditional societies around the world, on the other hand, including the Catholic Church and its adherents, have emphasized both duties and rights – you cannot have rights without duties & responsibilities. The 10 Commandments were about duties to God and others, not about rights. There was a profound understanding of being emeshed in society and the created world, not self-contained and totally apart from these.
Now both conservatives and liberals are into this rights talk, blinded to their duties and responsibilities to others. It’s just that they stress different rights. Conservatives emphasize rugged individualism & rights not to be taxed or controlled by government, while liberals speak of reproductive rights. Both hate the idea of interdependence and its fundamental reality.
I think the conservatives are as much at risk of losing their souls as the liberals, perhaps more so, because they seem more blinded to their “sins of the right.” Pushing out liberals for their “sins of the left” and not welcoming them in is no solution, and will not help either to gain heaven.
The Catholic idea of freedom, as CATHOLICISM’s host pointed out, is about discipline and obedience so as to do God’s will, not about doing whatever one wants.
