So here's the story...
A nine year old girl in Brazil is pregnant with twins, and has an abortion. The pregnancy, aside from being the result of rape, threatened the life of this very young girl (rape and life of the woman/girl are the only grounds for legal abortion in Brazil). On top of this the man who got the girl pregnant: her stepfather.
So the Catholic archbishop excommunicated: the girls mother and the doctors who performed the abortion. The girl's rapist stepfather...not so much. And now the Vatican defends this.
It's no wonder that church attendance has been declining in developed nations, or that people are in greater numbers saying that they are not religious (often that would be spiritual, but not religious). This is the Catholic church basically saying that raping a 9 year old girl is not as bad as her having an abortion...an act that in this case will most likely help her mental well being and potentially saved her life, and at the very least minimized the potential for harm to her.
No matter your position on abortion, the Catholic church here is very much in the wrong, and will drift further out of relevance. If they want to make a difference when it comes to things like violence, war, poverty, hunger, abuse and other issues that are universally held as valuable, then they need to stay the fuck away from abortion and birth control and sex. That doesn't mean they should say those things are ok, but excommunication and repeated public statements are hurting, not helping with their overall cause. Especially when most people compare this with the Church's expressed level of anger when priests were raping altar boys.
No comments:
Post a Comment