Meditrina

I saw a bumper sticker and it made me wonder if it is true. (If this is in another thread, I couldn't find it).

You cannot be Catholic and Pro-Abortion.

I am trying to figure out what I do believe and if it fits any religion. Is this a true statement? If you say you are Catholic, does that mean you have to be pro-life? I do not want to start any debates, I just need to know if this is true.

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tecoyah

I was Catholic....I am pro abortion....I am no longer Catholic


But that may not mean anything......just thought I would severely cloud the issue

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Ustwo

To be true to the Catholic faith, you would have to adhere to its rules. Killing the unborn is murder to the Catholic faith and as such if you were 'pro-abortion' it is no different than saying 'pro-murdering-children' to the Church. So yes you can not be truely Catholic and be pro-abortion. You would be 'unsaved' and have a ticket straight to hell unless you repented.

I'm not sure if there is any major faith that is pro-abortion.

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kramus

You want to enter their house you play by their rules. If you want to be out under the sky, and go visit friends, and enjoy your own house then that would be different. But their house, their rules.

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ObieX

Technically you can *have* an abortion and still be Catholic. They're all about forgiving, you know. That's the reason they dont want to kick priests out who have diddled a kid's wang-doodle-jabber. Being "pro-abortion" is a slightly different matter, since you're basically preaching the opposite of what the pope wants you to preach, however you can still be welcomed back into the flock and forgiven if you wanted to be.. you'd have to change what you preach tho.

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We Must Dissent.

Ustwo

Not quite.

If you had an abortion and then said 'oh father forgive me for I have sinned' unless you MEAN it, you don't get a ticket back into the realm of the saved.

I think thats what people don't understand about the forgiveness aspect and salvation by Catholic doctrine. Saying you repent and being repentant are two different things.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

kramus

As in most things, being true and authentic works. If it isn't really so, don't say it. The church takes this stuff seriously.

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noodles

yes, you can be catholic and pro-choice.

the two are a very unlikely combination if we're talking about someone with genuine faith, but its still possible.
its not a sin to be pro-choice. its only a sin if you partake.
and just because one is pro-choice doesn't mean someone is going around preaching about it.

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Killconey

[QUOTE=Ustwo]
If you had an abortion and then said 'oh father forgive me for I have sinned' unless you MEAN it, you don't get a ticket back into the realm of the saved.
QUOTE]

Wait a minute, I thought all you had to do was confess to a priest! No one ever said anything about meaning it!

On a more serious note, it might also depend on the degree of your being pro-choice. Some people consider it an all or nothing deal and so they might think that if you think that abortion in extreme life or death circumstances is acceptable then you must be pro-choice. I think that it would then be more reasonable for a Catholic to be slightly pro-choice and still consider himself or herself to be following the dogma.

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thingstodo

And this is another good example of why I don't belong to any organized religion. there is always some interpretation of something that I can't agree with. Guess that's why there are soooooo many different Christian religions out there. If not, there would only be one.

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MSD

/me busts out "1001 questions and answers about Catholicism."

Page 140: "Certain sins, such as apotasy, incur ipso facto excommunication. The priest must then defer absolution until he has the permission of a higher ecclesiastical authourity. In danger of death or grave emergency, the priest is authorized to absolve from the sin and the censure of excommunication without recourse to higher authority."

In layman's terms, if at any point you renounce a teaching of the church, that renunciation effectively excommunicates you from the church. To remain a member, you must fully acept all of its teachings.

Another fun fact: the criteria for forgiveness include a desire to repent, not just asking for forgiveness. When in danger of death, it is sufficient to repent simply out of fear of divine punishment (hell.) If a clergyman is not able to reach the dying person in time, asking God for forgiveness directly is acceptable. Additionally, the last rights can be administered by a clergyman for some time after physical death, with the justification being that since some of the body's systems can continue to function after brain activity ceases, we cannot rule out the possibility that the soul remains in the physical body for some time after physical death.

Voltas

As far as I know it....

The Pope says abortion is wrong and that is Catholic law...

So, no, you can't be an upstanding Catholic and be pro-choice...

All the other Buts... listed here are all just based on the forgiveness factor and the likes...

But thats like saying 2+2=6 but only when you add 2 more... well sure that makes sense but never does 2+2=6. If you get my drift.

There are many degrees of faith and lack there of and the church is a forgiving entity...but in the end per the dictate of the church, God does the final deciding no mater what the church says....so....

If you want to be a "practicing" catholic your pro-life, if you want to believe in Cathoic ideologies, well thats free for all! If you want to get into heaven after you die, thats you and God and brownie points are said to help...but thats just us guessing.

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I can't really back up anything I say....

Liber-T-Man

If you're in the midst of trying to figure out what you believe, you're in a tough spot. You're in a tougher spot if you're looking at religions with the idea of seeing how they fit with what you think you believe. Unless you start your own religion, you're not going to find one that fits you like a glove.

Even after starting your own, you'll encounter hypocrisy in your own dogma a few years down the road when you learn more about the world and your relationship with it.

StanT

I'd argue that no one is really "pro-abortion", lot's of us believe that abortion is a lousy option that ought to be safe, legal, & rarely used. The term pro-choice describes that better.

John Kerry is pro-choice and Catholic. While several bishops refused to offer him communion, there were no calls for excommunication. I take it that it is not a grevious enough sin to get ejected from the faith.

Meditrina

Thanks. This describes how I feel. pro-choice. Things are finally starting to make sense to me now.

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"Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles." ~Alex Karras

WillyPete

Too many people tend to think of their religion as a political party.
You can be democrat and pro guns, but it's a bit harder when your chosen route to whatever salvation you believe in states very clearly that a certain act or choice is against the will of its God.

But you can fiddle kids and be catholic, you just have to be prepared to move around a lot as the Cardinal plays hide the paedo.



j/k There's bogeymen in every religion.

Marvelous Marv

Even that statement has its problems. If abortion is merely the act of ridding oneself of a useless blob of cells, why does it need to be rare?

chickentribs

sports widow - The pope also refused the catholic churches in Africa leniency to distribute birthcontrol (condoms) to parishes that saw 40% - 60% of the adults HIV Positive. The God they worship created a world were disease and society change dramatically, but not the church? Maintaining status quo only supports the power structure running the organization.

You take your tithing of what little money they have, you let them build churches instead of hospitals, for what? Call them sinners and stand around watch them die? Pro-life. huh.

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and most oft there Where most it promises
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StanT

I don't want to turn this into another abortion thread, but preventing pregnancy will always be safer and less controversial than abortion. We ought to do a better job.

TexanAvenger

Hamlet; Act III, Scene iii

MSD

Not to derail, but if you're using WHO standards for diagnosing AIDS rather than actual HIV blood tests, this number may be much higher than reality. It's still a problem, but it may be overstated.

Ustwo

Runs it in a Catholic translator....

I'd argue that no one is really pro-murdering-children, lot's of us believe that murdering children is a lousy option that ought to be safe, legal, & rarely used. The term pro-choice-to-murder-your-child describes that better.

John Kerry is pro-choice-to-murder-your-child Catholic. While several bishops refused to offer him communion, there were no calls for excommunication. I take it that it is not a grevious enough sin to get ejected from the faith.

You really can't have it both ways.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

Bauh4us

I don't know about this one. On the one hand ustwo makes a point with the whole murdering children bit. But then again, finding a faith where one believes everything that is taught is next to impossible without creating your own faith. I am catholic, and I don't really know where I stand on abortion. I think it is wrong, but I think it is just as wrong to tell others what they can or cannot do with their own bodies. Also I believe in abortion when in cases of mortal peril. Does this make me pro-choice? I think by the catholic definition it does, but when I really think about it I feel no guilt whatsoever for feeling this way, hence I don't believe it to be wrong... I guess I did not answer anything, but this is how I feel.

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roachboy

ustwo's position does reflect the attitude of rome under ratzinger and jp2, and would probably reflect that of the american catholic church as a whole if these guys had yet been able to manage to reign it in--but they haven't--so there remains a range of possibilities within the church on political issues, including abortion. but i would think that, were you still actively involved in the church and were also prochoice that squaring the two would take some effort, depending on the parish you happened to be in of course.

for myself, i still follow what is happening inside cathloicism as a matter of course, as a function of my background--but what i learned from being catholic was that, for me, there was no reason to be catholic. i guess the place that i landed in was essentially like that of pascal without the requirement that nonetheless has to choose to believe.

my real reason for posting here, however, is that the bumper sticker that began the thread reminded me of an old favortie that i hadnt thought of in a long time.
it was around in boston during the early 70s, during one of the periods when the bruins did not suck.

jesus saves and espisito scores on the rebound.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

sixate

Dude, I laughed my ass off when I read that.

Here's why I have never/will never be apart of any religion. People just don't follow their faith. Most people ignore what they don't agree with and act like it isn't a part of their faith. Basically, most catholics are only about 35%-45% catholic. So that means they really aren't catholic, and the same can be said about every other religion. I don't associate with any religious or political group. I make decisions that make the most sense to me, and my decisions don't follow any particular group, so why would I associate with one?

StanT

The question was "Can you be Catholic and pro-abortion?".

My points were:

Very few people are pro-abortion, however many of us think that everyone ought to have a choice.

The Catholic church did not feel strongly enough about the matter to excommunicate or even censure John Kerry for his very public pro-choice views and campaign platform.

Your point is what?

If the church doesn't have the balls to excommunicate a presidential candidate for publicly contradicting their edicts, then it must be ok for the rest of us, too. The church really needs to clean up their own act before preaching morality to the reat of us.

roachboy

i think the point about ustwo's position is that, as a description of the catholic church in america, he is simply wrong.
as a statement of the positions outlined by jp2 and ratzinger, he is right--but--to the chagrin of the vatican--the two are not identical. it might appear to to ustwo, because i suspect he might agree with this line--but i am not sure about that.
and i wonder if he would have posted that if john kerry was not floating around in the background somewhere.

anyway, i frankly expected ratzinger-cum-benedict to be consistent, so was kind of looking for more pressure to be brought to bear on the us church to get in to line with the vatican--but so far i havent seen much--maybe it's still early.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Ustwo

My point is quite obvious. If you are a pro-choice Catholic you are fooling yourself thinking you can justify what the Church considers murder. There is no 'grey' area when it comes to killing children. The current Catholic dogma is life begins at conception, and as such no amount of sofestry can hide a Catholic from the concept that if they support the 'right' to an abortion, what they are really supporting is a right for a mother to murder her child.

I could go into why the Catholic church in the US is so weak and spineless currently but thats another thread that really has less to do with philosophy and more to do with their don't ask don't tell policy of the 60's.

Some very interesting pieces on abortion from the Holy See

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/co...ortion_en.html

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/jo...al-law_en.html

http://212.77.1.245/news_services/bu...5.2000&lang=ge

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

irateplatypus

as pointed out above... this position is untenable. either you believe abortion to be the act of killing another person, or you do not believe it is killing another person.

you're forced to choose between murder or something similar to an appendectomy. it's either a grave and deadly issue, or one of little consequence.

if the catholic church holds that abortion is tantamount to murder and you profess that it is not, you are not a catholic.

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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

martinguerre

Strawman. The whole of the debate on this issue would indicate that there are positions much more finely tuned than a dichotomy. Arguing someone in to a position that isn't theirs isn't debate.

Perhaps you're not Vatican Catholic...but there are precious few of those. Why is it that you're giving more heed to the guys in the pointy hats? If i had to identify a true soult o Catholicsm, i'd be out among the lay people trying to figure out what was important to them about Catholic tradition...

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StanT

Not that it's anyone's business, but both of my daughters were unplanned and evidence that birth control can fail. Abortion is not a option that I chose for myself. It is not an option that I would recommend to my daughters. However, I am grateful to have had the option and have no interest in inflicting my decision on anyone else.

While this may be a black and white issue to some, it is very complex to me. I have a hard time with legislated morality.

Meditrina

While I know where I stand on the abortion issue, my problem is trying to figure out if I did the right thing by converting, and exactly why did I convert? There are more questions that I need answered before I can figure this out. I appreciate all of your responses to this question, it has helped me realize where I stand on this one particular issue. Of course, there are more issues for me to study before I can decide if what I did was right for me.

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"Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles." ~Alex Karras

Ustwo

Birth control can fail, and thats fine, that doesn't mean you have the right to kill the product of the union.

Abortion is a selfish act, the abortion movement is a 'me first' philosophy. If you want to bring morality into it, you have to decide for yourself when life begins. My family used to work with Catholic Charities and would take in pregnant teens, allow the to have the baby away from their schools and pressures from peers, which they gave up for adoption. They still did class work etc, but they were out of a 'judgemental' enviroment. It took 9 months out of their life in terms of 'me first', but they were happier for it.

On the other side I had a female friend in college who burst into tears one night and confessed she had an abortion at 16. The guilt was tearing her up 5 years later.

If you don't think a child is a human in the womb then you can have a clear conscience, I would still argue its not 'Catholic' but whatever. If you have any doubt, then I can't see how one could support abortion, even as a 'choice' on moral grounds.

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Agents of the enemies who hold office in our own government, who attempt to eliminate our "freedoms" and our "right to know" are posting among us, I fear.....on this very forum. - host

Obama - Know a Man by the friends he keeps.

irateplatypus

i'm not sure you know what a strawman is.

if you can think of a position on abortion that does not entail either...

1) abortion is killing another human being

or

2) abortion is not killing another human being

i'd sure like to hear it. there are certainly many components to the issue, but i doubt you can come to any conclusion that faces the totality of abortion without it falling into one (and only one) of these categories.

__________________
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill