|
In the Heart of the Church |
ON THE SEPARATION OF SENSE AND STATE:
A CLARIFICATION FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE CHURCH IN NORTHERN COLORADO
Archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput. OFM Cap.
August 25, 2008
To Catholics of the Archdiocese of Denver:
Catholic public leaders inconvenienced by the abortion debate tend
to take a hard line in talking about the "separation of Church and
state." But their idea of separation often seems to work one way. In
fact, some officials also seem comfortable in the role of
theologian. And that warrants some interest, not as a "political"
issue, but as a matter of accuracy and justice. Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi is a gifted public servant of strong convictions and
many professional skills. Regrettably, knowledge of Catholic history
and teaching does not seem to be one of them.
Interviewed on Meet the Press August 24, Speaker Pelosi was asked
when human life begins. She said the following:
"I would say
that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I
have studied for a long time. And what I know is over the
centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make
that definition . . . St. Augustine said at three months. We
don't know. The point is, is that it shouldn't have
an impact on the woman's right to choose."
Since Speaker Pelosi has, in her
words, studied the issue "for a long time," she must know very well
one of the premier works on the subject, Jesuit John Connery's
Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective (Loyola,
1977). Here's how Connery concludes his study:
"The
Christian tradition from the earliest days reveals a firm
antiabortion attitude . . . The condemnation of abortion did not
depend on and was not limited in any way by theories regarding
the time of fetal animation. Even during the many centuries when
Church penal and penitential practice was based on the theory of
delayed animation, the condemnation of abortion was never
affected by it. Whatever one would want to hold about the time
of animation, or when the fetus became a human being in the
strict sense of the term, abortion from the time of conception
was considered wrong, and the time of animation was never looked
on as a moral dividing line between permissible and
impermissible abortion."
Or to put it in the blunter words of
the great Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
"Destruction
of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right
to live which God has bestowed on this nascent life. To raise
the question whether we are here concerned already with a human
being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is
that God certainly intended to
create a human being and that this nascent human being has been
deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but
murder."
Ardent, practicing Catholics will
quickly learn from the historical record that from apostolic times,
the Christian tradition overwhelmingly held that abortion was
grievously evil. In the absence of modern medical knowledge, some of
the Early Fathers held that abortion was homicide; others that it
was tantamount to homicide; and various scholars theorized about
when and how the unborn child might be animated or "ensouled." But
none diminished the unique evil of abortion as an attack on life
itself, and the early Church closely associated abortion with
infanticide. In short, from the beginning, the believing Christian
community held that abortion was always, gravely wrong.
Of course, we now know with
biological certainty exactly when human life begins. Thus, today's
religious alibis for abortion and a so-called "right to choose" are
nothing more than that - alibis that break radically with historic
Christian and Catholic belief. Abortion kills an unborn, developing
human life. It is always gravely evil, and so are the evasions
employed to justify it. Catholics who make excuses for it - whether
they're famous or not - fool only themselves and abuse the fidelity
of those Catholics who do sincerely seek to follow the Gospel and
live their Catholic faith.
The duty of the Church and other
religious communities is moral witness. The duty of the state and
its officials is to serve the common good, which is always rooted in
moral truth. A proper understanding of the "separation of Church and
state" does not imply a separation of faith from political life. But
of course, it's always important to know what our faith actually
teaches.
Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Archbishop of Denver
James D. Conley
Auxiliary Bishop of Denver
This page is the work of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and
Mary
|
