2) Public excommunication is the result of publicly denying Church teaching. If rapists were going around claiming that there were cases in which rape was morally good or justifiable, the Church would excommunicate them as well.

3) There was no right solution to this case. Risking the child’s life is evil; taking the lives of her babies is evil. The archbishop chose to defend the most defenseless lives in this case — the lives of her babies.

And yet… the Church hasn’t excommunicated him as they have the mother and doctor. Whether his standing with the church is “not good” or not, the church has declared him to be worthy of their continued association.

The instigator of these events, the one who caused potential fatal injury to a child, who definitely cause severe emotional trauma to both the child and to her mother, is welcome at services. The victims are not.

This is blatantly obvious in the case of the Brazilian girl. Either the embryo was going to die, or the embryo and the girl; therefore pro-life options simply did not exist.

I’ll join you.

Just suicides.
Riddle me THAT, batman.

I want to believe you’re playing advocate for the church position here, and not actually arguing that abortion is worse than rape.

Because if you are arguing this point yourself, I’ve got a word or two to say in response.

*BUT* – the church does not automatically excommunicate murderers! They chose to make a specific statement about specific people who made a choice in a specific circumstances.

And they did not merely declare that this was a sin, that required confession (or whatever the heck they call that sacrament – reconciliation?), but excommunicated the people involved.

Unless these people were loudly proclaiming that having an abortion is and should be consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church, I don’t see why they pulled out the big guns for this.

Now, I don’t know about

Indeed. Power means money. And the Church is stinking rich. It reeks of power and money. Reeks, I tells ya.

More evidence that the real goal isn’t to provide spiritual guidance or support, to help people in need, to answer questions. But instead to impose a close-minded doctrine where the prime directive is stifle dissent and keep the populace in afraid and in line.

The Church and many politicians are quite alike in that regard.

J.

Sperm is potentially half of human life. I’m only half-joking when this sounds like more patriarchal nonsense.

Thank goodness I’m an atheist.

Amen, brother.

They did what they knew was right despite knowing the penalty they would pay.

Isn’t the Church supposed to celebrate that kind of martydom?

When you follow the logic of any organized religion, it doesn’t hold up. Bottom line is that you can’t confine god with a formula including the catholic formula.

Anyone who is excommunicated by the church has been done a favor.

Hell yeah.