The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is morally wrong. But the majority of Catholics in the developed world – who are educated, emancipated and enlightened – still exercise their own choice on the matter.
In the US, 53 per cent of white Catholics and 55 per cent of non-whites believe that most, or all, abortions should be legal. It is a position reflected throughout Europe and the Western world. Seventy per cent of British Catholics believe that a woman should have the right to choose whether to have an abortion. In Ireland, 70 per cent of Catholics voted to repeal the ban on abortion two years ago. In other Western countries from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany and France to Australia and New Zealand, the majority of Catholics differ from the official position of their Church on abortion.
In states which are predominantly Catholic, laws governing access to abortion need not – and, indeed, do not – adhere to the official Catholic position. Every country in Europe has passed laws which trust women to make a choice – their own informed choice – about abortion and their reproductive health. Choosing to follow their own conscience is the course adopted by the majority of Catholics.
The Catholic Doctrine of Reception (that for a Church law to have binding force it must be accepted by the faithful) has highlighted that many of the Church’s teachings on reproductive issues, from contraception to abortion, have not been “received” by them. “If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law”.
In Catholic theology there is room for the acceptance of policies that favour access to the full range of reproductive health options, including abortion. All except one country in the European Union have passed laws to permit abortion. Is it any wonder that when the European Parliament passed legislation recently to address the COVID-19 pandemic, it treated Malta’s views on contraception and abortion as an outlier to be dismissed with barely concealed disdain?
Melita contra mundum, indeed.
In Catholic theology there is room for the acceptance of policies that favour access to the full range of reproductive health options, including abortion
At the heart of the Catholic Church’s teaching in the catechism on moral issues is a deep regard for an individual’s conscience. [Note: As the catechism uses only the masculine in its text and choice is essentially a matter for women, I have substituted the words ‘woman,’ ‘she,’ or ‘her’ in the following extracts].
The catechism states: “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of their conscience. Deep within her conscience woman discovers a law which she has not laid upon herself but which she must obey. For a woman has in her heart a law inscribed by God. Her conscience is woman’s most secret core and sanctuary. There she is alone with God whose voice echoes in her depths”.
“Woman has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make a moral decision. She must not be forced to act contrary to her conscience. Nor must she be prevented from acting according to her conscience, especially in religious matters.”
Catholics are obliged to know the Church’s teaching. It takes conscience so seriously that, even in cases of conflict with its moral teachings, Catholics must follow the dictates of conscience rather than the teachings of the Church.
Contrary to what Chief Justice Emeritus Vincent De Gaetano implied in his article of May 12, nowhere did I state that the Catholic position on freedom of conscience came about solely as a result of Vatican Council II.
Nor was I unaware that the Catholic view of conscience had long preceded Vatican II and Cardinal Newman’s epigram in 1875: “I shall drink – to the pope, if you please – still to conscience first, and the pope afterwards”.
What De Gaetano failed to mention was that the pope in question was Pius IX (1846 to 1878), a man infamous in papal history for his illiberal and conservative views and his (Trump-like) ‘Syllabus of Errors’– a position far removed from John Henry Newman’s enlightened moderate Catholicism.
If De Gaetano had been genuinely objective about quoting the Catholic Church’s earlier views on freedom of conscience, he would have chosen that giant of the 13th century, the Catholic philosopher and theologian St Thomas Aquinas.
Aquinas held that conscience is always binding and people must always follow their conscience in order to do what is right.
He declared (in Summa Theologiae) that “Conscience, including an erroneous one, is always binding, and anyone who acts against conscience is committing a sin”.
De Gaetano’s contention that those in favour of abortion do so as “a matter of convenience,” when my whole argument was clearly posited on the supremacy of the exercise of conscience, is both patronising and self-serving. To then in the same breath try to use this to demean “the pro-choice campaign” as a “multimillion [euro] ‘service’ industry” – when it exists, like many hospitals, to provide specialist reproductive health services for women, in all conscience, taking difficult, highly personal moral and ethical decisions – is frankly a calumny and specious and unworthy.
The trap which De Gaetano and others have laid for themselves is in seeking to dispute the supremacy of conscience – as explicitly defined in the Catholic faith – which lies at the heart of the exercise of choice.
And not merely in the Catholic Church. Freedom of conscience is the fundamental right of all men or women of faith, or of none. It is the very essence of being free and practicing freedom of choice.
At the heart of Catholic teachings on moral matters though is the paramount regard for an individual’s conscience. “Have the courage to use your own reason”.