Vatican says: Rapist stepfather can still come to church, mom and docs who got 9 year old an abortion? Not so much
In Brazil, the Catholic Church has done the unthinkable: provide a safehouse for the rapist step father of a 9 year old pregnant girl. Oh, he got her pregnant, all right. Her mom and doctors got her unpregnant, an abortion.
The row was triggered by the termination on Wednesday of twin foetuses carried by a nine-year-old allegedly raped by her stepfather in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco.
The regional archbishop, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, pronounced excommunication for the mother for authorising the operation and doctors who carried it out for fear that the slim girl would not survive carrying the foetuses to term.
“God’s law is above any human law. So when a human law … is contrary to God’s law, this human law has no value,” Cardoso had said.
He also said the accused stepfather would not be expelled from the church. Although the man allegedly committed “a heinous crime … the abortion – the elimination of an innocent life – was more serious”.
Battista Re agreed, saying: “Excommunication for those who carried out the abortion is just” as a pregnancy termination always meant ending an innocent life.
The case has sparked fierce debate in Brazil, where abortion is illegal except in cases of rape or if the woman’s health is in danger.
On Friday, President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva hit out at Sobrinho’s decision, saying: “As a Christian and a Catholic, I deeply regret that a bishop of the Catholic church has such a conservative attitude.”
“The doctors did what had to be done: save the life of a girl of nine years old,” he said, adding that “in this case, the medical profession was more right than the church.”
The Catholic Church, the Vatican, a Bishop, all have said that the crime of the mother and doctors is enough to keep them from the ‘body of Christ’, the Holy Communion offered at Catholic Mass.
That’s one problem: the Catholic Church thinks that you can only receive Christ thru Communion in a Mass.
Not true, Christ’s attributes are available to all…
American Catholics, where will they stand on this repulsive, misogynist decision?
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