A doomed effort
A Catholic woman priest is trying to convince herself that the bishop of Phoenix didn’t mean what he of course necessarily did mean. She’s not having an easy time of it.
When I was a teen, I saw a movie that depicted a bishop, the brother of a pregnant woman, who loved his sister, but when the chips were down and it was her life or the baby’s life, the choice was his to make and he chose the baby. I will never forget how horrible I felt that his sister was powerless in this situation, and that the decision was her brother’s to make.
Quite – and in the bishop’s case, it wasn’t even a matter of choosing the baby, because that choice wasn’t available. It was a matter of choosing – insisting – that the fetus and the mother should die instead of the fetus only.
So today, here we are again, reflecting on the controversy surrounding the mother in Phoenix whose life was saved by the the ethical team at St. Joseph’s Catholic Hospital. As directive 47 indicates, one is obliged to save both lives, but if that is not possible then the moral principle is to save the life that can be saved. Surely, Bishop Olmsted of Phoenix is not implying that the hospital should have let the mother die when her life not only could be but was saved! Hopefully, Bishop Olmsted, Bishop Niederauer will clarify their positions in this kind of tragic situation when pregnant women’s lives are at risk.
Oh yes he is – that’s exactly what he’s implying, or rather, simply saying. He knows perfectly well that that’s the issue, because that is the issue. It can hardly have escaped his attention!
OB,
I saw that you linked to this on FB,
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aclu.org%2Ffiles%2Fassets%2F2010-11-22-bishopletter1.pdf&h=c782a
The only issue he seems to comprehend is his own authority. He has spoken, he simply can’t conceive of anything beyond that.
Don, yup. He just curdles my blood with horror.
On the official Catholic view it seems that intentionally killing the fetus is unacceptable. It doesn’t matter if the fetus will eventually die “naturally,” or if both fetus and pregnant woman will die “naturally,” or if intentionally killing the fetus will save the pregnant woman’s life
Here’s something that Archbishop Cormac Murphy-O’Connor once said involving “Jodie” and “Mary,” two infant conjoined twins, both of whom would die unless Mary was removed from Jodie, which in effect would kill Mary, but save Jodie’s life:
“It would set a very dangerous precedent to enshrine in English case law that it was ever lawful to kill, or to commit a deliberate lethal assault on, an innocent person that good may come of it, even to preserve the life of another.”
Since a fetus is considered an innocent person, according to the Catholic Church, then the same reasoning would apply to aborting a fetus to save the pregnant woman’s life.
Wasn’t that film The Cardinal? I remember the film had a priest who refused to consent to an abortion for his sister (who was unconscious) and let her die.
That sounds right, Ernie. I don’t know; I haven’t seen it.
I commented on the post. I wonder if Bridget Mary will answer. She seems to be a reasonable person; she deserves a better church.
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I’m a bit confused – isn’t “Catholic woman priest” a contradiction in terms? One would think that this blogger should have no problem grasping how highly the Catholic church values women, since she herself must have had personal experience of it.
Being as, by the Army’s own admission, substantial numbers of innocent people were killed in Iraq and Afghansitan, he needs to ex communicate any Catholic soldier involved in those actions.
The catholic church regards the ordination of women to be one of the worst sins imaginable!
The woman priest in this article has most likely already been excommunicated; even the ‘bishop’ that ordinated her is subject to immediate excommunication.
Well it’s easy being a celibate bishop, living in a palace, with no real contact with ordinary people and no experience of real-life. Olmsted has two millenia of tortuous totally theoretical theological thinking to draw upon. All the answers, however impractical, are there cut and dried. No excuses, no exceptions. One ‘moral’ law fits all people and all cases. Meanwhile the rest of us have to muddle through as best we can with only our own principles to guide us. Why on earth do church members put up with these drones?
Sigmund, quite. Yet she clings to the very church that considers her a much more serious criminal than child-raping male priests.
And it appears that she’s not going to respond to my comment yesterday, which is a bit pathetic. Meanwhile she has an authoritarian dogmatist (surprise surprise!) commenting on a new post wondering if the pope will change his mind about women priests. You reap what you sow.
Remember, of course, that priests with sexually abused nuns will get abortions to conceal their crimes.