ARTICLES

No Penalty?

Are Pro-Abortion Politicians Excommunicated?

By Skip O'Neel

Sacramento-area residents recently opened their newspapers to learn that for the first time since he entered congress, Representative John Doolittle (R-Roseville) would have a primary challenger. While the man challenging the five-term congressman had many choice words for his primary opponent, one comment that stuck out was his characterization of the Roseville representative's pro-life stance: "His hard anti-abortion stand is unacceptable," said Auburn urologist Dr. Bill Kirby. "I'm a Catholic, but I believe what a woman does with her body should be between her and her God, not the government."

If successful in his bid to oust Doolittle, Kirby would join a host of other Catholic elected officials from the Bay Area who profess beliefs directly contrary to their Church's teachings, particularly on the issue of abortion. Indeed, none of the Bay Area Catholics who hold state or federal elective office is pro-life. For instance, state senator Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento) recently authored senate bill 780, which greatly hampers pro-lifers' ability to protest at abortion clinics. Only eight of the legislature's roughly 40 Catholics did not vote for the bill, and three of those were merely abstentions. Every Bay Area Catholic -- including assemblymembers John Dutra (D-Fremont), Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro), and Fred Keeley (D-Santa Cruz), plus senators Jackie Speier (D-San Mateo) and Tom Torlakson (D-Walnut Creek) -- voted for the measure.

Another Ortiz bill procures a full range of Medi-Cal services -- including abortions -- for public school students. The bill passed by 10 votes, and once again Catholics provided the bill's margin of victory. The legislature also passed a resolution calling upon the federal government to uphold Roe v. Wade: All but one of the senate's Catholics voted for the measure, and 18 of the 26 Catholics in the assembly cast an aye vote. Bay Area Catholics once again voted en masse for these measures. During the debate over the resolution, assemblyman Dennis Mountjoy (R-Arcadia) gave an impassioned speech against abortion. Immediately afterward, Catholic assemblyman Kevin Shelley (D-San Francisco) rose in support of the bill, saying, "Mr. Mountjoy, your God says abortion is not ok. My God says it is ok."

Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) recently became the highest-ranking woman in congressional history partly because she is reliable on matters of national Democrat Party orthodoxy, including its pro-abortion position. Several other Bay Area representatives have been singled out for their uncompromising pro-abortion stance by dailycatholic.org as "Herod's Heroes," after the biblical king responsible for the slaughter of the Holy Innocents. Included on this list are representatives Mike Thompson (D-Napa), Anna Eshoo (D-Palo Alto), George Miller (D-Richmond), and Ellen Tauscher (D-Walnut Creek).

According to issues2002.org, each voted no on banning family planning funding in US foreign aid; on making it a federal crime to harm a fetus while committing other crimes; on banning partial-birth abortions; and on barring the transporting of minors to get an abortion. The pro-abortion group EMILY's List has lauded Tauscher, and during the 2000 election, Planned Parenthood took the unusual step of running television ad's supporting her candidacy.

That so many Catholic elected officials in California refuse to stand with their Church on the abortion issue has caused many of the faithful great distress. Three years ago, this frustration led Sacramento pastor Monsignor Edward Kavanagh to write that ostensibly Catholic Gray Davis "has brought on himself automatic excommunication from the Church." Currently, several groups have joined forces in petitioning the Holy See to pronounce excommunication on prominent pro-abortion politicians such as senators Ted Kennedy and Tom Daschle.

But do Catholic politicians who publicly reject the teachings of their faith automatically incur excommunication? Paragraph 2272 of the Catechism seems quite clear: "Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life." To the minds of many of the faithful, voting for "reproductive rights" and for Medi-Cal abortion funds is tantamount to cooperation in an abortion. Thus many believe a pro-choice Catholic politician incurs excommunication ipso facto.

But according to several canon lawyers, the issue is not so black and white. "Canonically speaking, formal cooperation involves the doctor who performs the abortion, the nurse who assists, the woman having the abortion, the man who agrees to take his wife or girlfriend, the person who drives the woman to the clinic, and even that last one is questionable," says Phil Gray, a canon lawyer who teaches at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio. "With legislators, what you have is probably best termed material cooperation. I think pro-choice politicians, what they do is serious enough to be a grave evil and a mortal sin, but my opinion is they do not incur excommunication."

Edward Peters, former canon lawyer for the diocese of San Diego and currently a professor of canon law for the Institute of Pastoral Theology at Ave Maria University in Ypsilanti, Michigan, agrees. "You can only incur excommunication for a specific offense. Although having an abortion can result in an excommunication, governmental support for abortion is not a similar offense. Canon 1398 says those who procure an abortion automatically incur this penalty. Voting for, lobbying, that sort of thing, are not considered direct procurement."

To the argument that voting for taxpayer dollars that enable poor women to procure abortions is a formal cooperation, Peters replies, "People who make that argument are possibly using Canon 1329, and are trying to characterize these people as accomplices. The problem is that in order to be an accomplice to an action, you have to be able to show that but for this vote that freed up X number of dollars, this abortion would not have taken place. What if the bill passes by two votes? Whose vote do you blame? Canon 18 is clear that whenever you're talking about sanctions, you have to read those canons very narrowly, as narrowly as can reasonably be interpreted and still mean something."

Neither lawyer believes petitioning the Vatican to excommunicate prominent politicians will succeed. "Anybody can request that from Rome," says Gray. "But authorities there will turn to the principle of subsidiarity. Bishops need to address this first. They're there. It's their legislature that's doing this, and they're the ones that need to be doing something about these guys."

Both agree, however, that promoting the culture of death through a pro-choice stance is a grave sin. "If someone takes this sort of public stand while also receiving communion, they put themselves out to be practicing Catholics, even though they're putting themselves at odds with the Church. [It is a grave sin] because they are adhering to a belief that is contrary to the magisterium of the Church and contrary to the natural law. Canon 750 says you are not to hold anything contrary to the truth as taught by the Catholic Church. In fact, it says to avoid the contrary."

The facts show that most Catholics are not avoiding the contrary. Several polls and surveys reveal that the overwhelming majority rejects the Church's stand on life issues. Some argue that for several reasons -- conscience, the doctrine of probablism, and the like -- Catholics are in no way bound by official Church teaching. But as Curtis Martin, a former San Francisco resident who serves as executive director of Fellowship of Catholic University Students in Greeley, Colorado, points out, "Pro-choice Catholics are suffering from a case of collective amnesia that is unprecedented in the modern world."

He says pro-choicers apply probablism -- which holds that where the Church cannot speak definitively on a matter of fact, such as the personhood of a fetus, the conscience of individuals must be primary and respected -- "in a bogus manner. With probablism, the issue at hand needs to be not only open for discussion but historically ambiguous. The Church's position since the beginning -- indeed with all the monotheistic religions and even Buddhism -- is entirely unambiguous. Even if it was, the probable opinion needs to go with what has been traditionally held."

To those who say the Church has not defined for herself when a fetus becomes a person, Martin replies, "This is categorically untrue. For people favoring abortion to say that is running right up against the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that Mary was conceived without original sin. Only persons can have original sin. The Church may not have a specific dogma on the personhood of the unborn child, but it has others that assumes this knowledge." As to the argument of freedom of conscience protecting even someone who formally participates in an abortion from excommunication, Martin says this is again "a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of Church and conscience. It is certainly plausible that someone could in all sincerity do something which would ordinarily be considered a sin who, in their conscience, don't know it to be wrong and thus not have the guilt of that sin applied by Almighty God. But excommunication simply says you are no longer in communion with the Church. The Church has every right to make that call. Again, it's a case of selective amnesia."

Some argue that today's Catholic politicians have an excuse for holding such views given the poor state of catechesis over the last few generations, and the cultural relativism pervasive in society. However, Dr. Germain Grisez, a Christian ethicist at Mt. St. Mary's College in Emmitsburg, Md., disagrees. "If you're an adult and have the Catholic faith, you have an obligation to see to your own Christian formation. It means you try to find out what your faith is and what it requires and what it means and what it asks of you. For someone not to be formed is something there is no excuse for."

Grisez also believes anyone who supports abortion should reconsider seeking public office. "If they say 'I'm personally opposed, but ...,' it seems to me that maybe they're being insincere and saying this because it's politically advantageous. On the other hand, if they're sincere in this, it seems to me they're confused. Opposition to abortion is not a matter of taste. If one is personally opposed to it, it is because one recognizes that it is the killing of an unborn individual and a grave injustice is involved. It makes no more sense than to say I'm against slavery, but slave owners have a right to act as they please. If you were opposed to slavery, that undercuts property rights. Same thing with abortion. If someone thinks otherwise, they're deeply confused. It seems to me that someone that badly confused about something that obvious or who is insincere is not a trustworthy person to hold any public office."

Dr. William May, professor of moral theology at the John Paul II Institute in Washington, DC, agrees. "The point of when human life begins is not a religious belief," he says, "so you can't say you're forcing your religious beliefs on someone. Rather, it is a scientific fact on which there is clear agreement even among leading abortion advocates. Second, the sanctity of human life is not merely Catholic doctrine but part of humanity's global ethical heritage and our nation's founding principle. Finally, democracy is not served by silence. Real pluralism depends on people of conviction struggling vigorously to advance their beliefs by every ethical and legal means at their disposal."

Still, the question remains, if Catholic politicians who oppose their Church on this fundamental matter don't incur excommunication, are they eligible for any penalties at all? "Certainly if someone persists in a grave sin," says Gray, "a bishop can say they can't receive communion. But that doesn't require a penalty; that doesn't even require a bishop. A parish priest could see someone walking up the aisle and make that decision.

"The question is have they been warned? Canon 915 says that those who obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin cannot be admitted to communion. Obstinate means you have to be warned, you have to be told it's a grave sin, you have to be told to stop, and you have to be told what the penalty would be. If you ignore that warning and continue to cling to that sinfulness publicly, at that point several punishments are an option. There's not a Catholic politician who doesn't know what the Church teaches. That means they're conscious of the fact that their support of abortion is a grave evil. Thus they have an obligation not to receive. Still, the lawful authority cannot refuse them until after they've been warned."

Peters agrees there are several options open to a bishop who wants to censure a pro-abortion Catholic politician. "Canon 1369 says 'a person is to be punished with a just penalty, who, at a public event or assembly or in a published writing ... gravely harms public morals or ... excites contempt for religion or the Church.' What if you're speaking on the floor for an abortion bill? You can be punished with anything from a reprimand all the way up to excommunication."

"A bishop can impose excommunication or interdict," says Gray, "but that's not my first choice because that person could become a martyr among dissenting Catholics or non-Catholics. But a bishop could tell someone you cannot receive any sacrament except confession in my diocese. They can refuse communion until the penalty is lifted, and could reserve the right to lift the penalty to themselves. They can even prevent someone from attending Mass."

Few bishops in recent memory have taken such actions. One was Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz in the diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, in the mid-1990s, who excommunicated members of Catholics for a Free Choice and pro-choice Catholic politicians. Just prior to the 2000 election, the late Bishop James McHugh of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, directed his pastors to remove from any parish position those who held "pro-abortion [views] or claim[ed] to be personally opposed to abortion but [were] unwilling to integrate their moral principles with civic responsibilities." He also forbade publicly recognizing pro-choice Catholic politicians. Bishop Robert Carlson of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has personally lobbied US Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) about changing his pro-abortion position. Sacramento Bishop William Weigand had done the same with other politicians.

"The problem," says Weigand's diocesan spokesman, Father James Murphy, "is that so many people vote the party line. Pope John Paul II recently named Thomas More patron saint of politicians. [More] ... didn't vote the party line. He didn't go with a position simply because everyone else did; that's how he got himself martyred."

To persuade more politicians to follow More's example, the US bishops released in 1998 a document called Living the Gospel of Life. In it they affirmed that "Catholics who ... serve in public leadership positions have an obligation to place their faith at the heart of their public service, particularly on issues regarding the sanctity of human life. We urge those Catholic officials who ... depart from the Church teaching on the inviolability of human life in their public life ... to reflect on the grave contradiction of assuming public office and presenting themselves as credible Catholics when their actions on fundamental issues of human life are not in agreement with Church teaching.... No appeal to policy, procedure, majority will or pluralism ever excuses a public official from defending life to the greatest extent possible."

Grisez says that in the final analysis, what sanctions dissenting politicians do or don't receive is immaterial. "We can't do anything about that," he notes. "So do what you can. The greatest contribution you can make is right there in front of you with the people close by who you have a responsibility to influence and instruct, your kids, your neighbors. By all means, if you're into that kind of thing, try to develop a method of political action to get politicians to see the point and behave better in these sorts of things. But this is not something everyone is supposed to do or is in a position to do. Do what you can."

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