Christifideles

Thanks to Bob L. for the following. http://www.americanpapist.com/2008/09/breaking-usccb-releases-2-page.html

The American Papist reports that the US conference of Catholic bishops has written to clarify Catholic teaching in response to the mistaken beliefs of Nancy Pelosi.

Here's the source:
http://www.usccb.org/prolife/constantchurchteaching.shtml

Fact sheet by the USCCB Committee on Pro-Life Activities.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law" (No. 2271). 

In response to those who say this teaching has changed or is of recent origin, here are the facts:

• From earliest times, Christians sharply distinguished themselves from surrounding pagan cultures by rejecting abortion and infanticide.  The earliest widely used documents of Christian teaching and practice after the New Testament in the 1st and 2nd centuries, the Didache (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) and Letter of Barnabas, condemned both practices, as did early regional and particular Church councils. 
  
  
• To be sure, knowledge of human embryology was very limited until recent times.  Many Christian thinkers accepted the biological theories of their time, based on the writings of Aristotle (4th century BC) and other philosophers.  Aristotle assumed a process was needed over time to turn the matter from a woman's womb into a being that could receive a specifically human form or soul.  The active formative power for this process was thought to come entirely from the man — the existence of the human ovum (egg), like so much of basic biology, was unknown. 
  
  
• However, such mistaken biological theories never changed the Church's common conviction that abortion is gravely wrong at every stage.  At the very least, early abortion was seen as attacking a being with a human destiny, being prepared by God to receive an immortal soul (cf. Jeremiah 1:5: "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you").
  
  
• In the 5th century AD this rejection of abortion at every stage was affirmed by the great bishop-theologian St. Augustine.  He knew of theories about the human soul not being present until some weeks into pregnancy.  Because he used the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, he also thought the ancient Israelites had imposed a more severe penalty for accidentally causing a miscarriage if the fetus was "fully formed" (Exodus 21: 22-23), language not found in any known Hebrew version of this passage.  But he also held that human knowledge of biology was very limited, and he wisely warned against misusing such theories to risk committing homicide.  He added that God has the power to make up all human deficiencies or lack of development in the Resurrection, so we cannot assume that the earliest aborted children will be excluded from enjoying eternal life with God.
  
  
• In the 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas made extensive use of Aristotle's thought, including his theory that the rational human soul is not present in the first few weeks of pregnancy.  But he also rejected abortion as gravely wrong at every stage, observing that it is a sin "against nature" to reject God's gift of a new life.
  
  
• During these centuries, theories derived from Aristotle and others influenced the grading of penalties for abortion in Church law.  Some canonical penalties were more severe for a direct abortion after the stage when the human soul was thought to be present.  However, abortion at all stages continued to be seen as a grave moral evil. 
  
  
• From the 13th to 19th centuries, some theologians speculated about rare and difficult cases where they thought an abortion before "formation" or "ensoulment" might be morally justified.  But these theories were discussed and then always rejected, as the Church refined and reaffirmed its understanding of abortion as an intrinsically evil act that can never be morally right.
  
  
• In 1827, with the discovery of the human ovum, the mistaken biology of Aristotle was discredited. Scientists increasingly understood that the union of sperm and egg at conception produces a new living being that is distinct from both mother and father.  Modern genetics demonstrated that this individual is, at the outset, distinctively human, with the inherent and active potential to mature into a human fetus, infant, child and adult.  From 1869 onward the obsolete distinction between the "ensouled" and "unensouled" fetus was permanently removed from canon law on abortion.
  
  
• Secular laws against abortion were being reformed at the same time and in the same way, based on secular medical experts' realization that "no other doctrine appears to be consonant with reason or physiology but that which admits the embryo to possess vitality from the very moment of conception" (American Medical Association, Report on Criminal Abortion , 1871).
  
  
• Thus modern science has not changed the Church's constant teaching against abortion, but has underscored how important and reasonable it is, by confirming that the life of each individual of the human species begins with the earliest embryo.
  
  
• Given the scientific fact that a human life begins at conception, the only moral norm needed to understand the Church's opposition to abortion is the principle that each and every human life has inherent dignity, and thus must be treated with the respect due to a human person.  This is the foundation for the Church's social doctrine, including its teachings on war, the use of capital punishment, euthanasia, health care, poverty and immigration.  Conversely, to claim that some live human beings do not deserve respect or should not be treated as "persons" (based on changeable factors such as age, condition, location, or lack of mental or physical abilities) is to deny the very idea of inherent human rights.  Such a claim undermines respect for the lives of many vulnerable people before and after birth.

For more information:  Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Declaration on Procured Abortion (1974), nos. 6-7; John R. Connery, S.J., Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective (1977); Germain Grisez, Abortion: The Myths, the Realities, and the Arguments (1970), Chapter IV; U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, On Embryonic Stem Cell Research (2008); Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (1995), nos. 61-2.

This news is even older but maybe someone hasn't heard of it. The Vatican has ruled that the divine name is no longer to be heard in the liturgy, effectively nixing at least one popular song that (at least in its original form) uses the Y-word. Citing Jewish and first-century Christian practice, the Vatican said that the name is unpronounceable. "Avoiding pronouncing the tetragrammaton of the name of God on the part of the Church has therefore its own grounds. Apart from a motive of a purely philogical order, there is also that of remaining faithful to the Church's tradition, from the beginning, that the sacred tetragrammaton was never pronounced in the Christian context, nor translated into any of the languages into which the Bible was translated."

This is pretty funny because just the other day we were discussing the Tetragrammaton in bible study (we're in Exodus) and I was reflecting on my tendency to agree with the Jews that it should not be pronounced. I was thinking of asking the priest leading it what he thought but first I asked if a certain word in the text was the Tetragrammaton, not wishing to pronounce it. He said it was, and asked me to explain to the group what the Tetragrammaton was. I hesitated since I thought he was asking me to pronounce it, but he only wanted the letters. He then went on into uncomfortable detail about how to pronounce it, which answered my unasked question.

There is a danger in violating the commandment not to take the name of the Lord in vain when we bandy about the Divine Name, even if it is for ostensibly legitimate purposes. It should be treated with the utmost respect, just as the Ark of the Covenant was. So the easiest way to do this is simple to not pronounce it.

This news is a little old but a priest in Naples is organizing a contest designed to raise awareness of the religious sisterhood. The goal is to fight the stereotype that sisters are all old and dour. Visitors to his blog will be allowed to "vote for the nun they consider a model." "External beauty is gift from God, and we mustn't hide it," he said. Profiles will feature information about the sister's life and vocation, as well as a photograph.

Scholars are planning to put the Dead Sea Scrolls online (NYTimes registration required) so that anyone can view them. The scrolls are already starting to deteriorate and photographs of them have been taken only once before. It's slated to take one to two yeas. The scrolls were only published in their entirety in 2001 so this is a big deal. Now anyone so inclined will be able to view them.

Yeah, yeah, long time, no post. It's been kinda slow in the news department.

Today I have an entry in the Catholic Answers Live Monday morning quarterbacking edition. I keep meaning to do more posts on this but I don't think I've ever gotten around to it. In this feature I pontificate on a question asked on Catholic Answers Live. This one pertains to this show with Jim Blackburn aired August 19th. The question came from a very zealous union man that was upset that the attention formerly paid to unions was no longer being paid in the Catholic Church. He wanted "union priests" to return to extol the virtues of unions. Blackburn's answer was basically that different people have different views and are free to express them. My take on this is that labor unions have largely (though not completely) outlived their usefulness. (Hopefully my cousin Robert won't read this.) Used to be that unions worked to eliminate 12-hour days six days a week, dangerous conditions, abysmal safety, and all sorts of fundamentally unjust conditions. Labor unions were necessary to accomplish this. Today labor unions are about ensuring that no one is allowed to move anything in the office without getting a union laborer to do it and spending labor union dues on gay rights and abortion. Corruption is rampant and laborers are shafted more by their union leaders than they are by employers. The bottom line is the injustices that existed before have been largely reduced or eliminated altogether and labor unions are often about ensuring entitlements and extorting money out of employers.

That being said, let me re-emphasize that there are still remaining injustices (lack of health care is one example that comes to mind) and businesses still try to take their employees for a ride. But no one gets passionate about defending the rights of a worker to move all of the office furniture, or supporting a corrupt and self-serving organization. That is why I think ardor for unions has waned.