1
Duluth, MN (OpEdNews) October 31, 2010 Abortion is a hot-button issue. As is well known, the Roman Catholic bishops in the United States have for years been inciting antiabortion anguish, based on their debatable moral reasoning about human life beginning at the moment of conception and their debatable claim that taking the life of the innocent fetus should not be permitted, even though abortion in the first trimester is legal. But the Catholics bishops are not satisfied to urge that no Catholic should have an abortion in the first trimester. No, the Catholic bishops urge that no non-Catholic should have an abortion in the first trimester, even though abortion in the first trimester is legal. But where do the Catholic bishops get off trying to urge that non-Catholics should not have abortions in the first trimester? In know, I know, it's a free country, and they should be allowed free speech, just as those who oppose them in the debate about abortion should.
Certain issues in the abortion debate were in sharp relief recently in Dallas. The conflict that emerged started when an announcement was issued at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, a private university. But about one-fifth of the undergraduate students there are Catholic. The announcement stated that the Maguire Public Scholar Lecture would be delivered on October 28, 2010, by the Reverend Charles Curran, Professor of Human Values at SMU and an ordained Roman Catholic priest whose home diocese is not the diocese of Dallas.
Before Curran joined the SMU faculty in 1991, he had been fired from the Catholic University of America because he had dissented from certain moral teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Curran recently wrote about those experiences in the "My Turn" column in NEWSWEEK magazine dated June 5, 2010. His one-page column titled "Banned by the Pope" shows that Curran is still unrepentant about what happened to him as the result of his dissent. Is he asking for trouble, or what?
Moreover, the announcement of his Maguire Public Scholar Lecture stated that he planned to criticize the Catholic bishops in the United States for claiming too much certitude for their position on abortion. Is he asking for trouble, or what?
The Irish-born bishop of Dallas, Kevin J. Farrell (no relation), issued a statement about the announcement. His statement in turn got the attention of the NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER. As a result, NCRonline ran two stories by Tom Roberts about the conflict, one before the lecture scheduled for October 28th and the other after the lecture: "Fr. Charles Curran draws fire for SMU lecture" (Oct. 27) and "Curran: How bishops challenge abortion laws is "flawed'" (Oct. 29).
It may take a lot of interest out of this conflict to learn that Curran stopped well short of challenging Catholic teaching about abortion, as I myself would challenge it. He challenged only the certitude with which the Catholic bishops make their claims. Unfortunately, Dallas Bishop Farrell exemplified such certitude in the very statement that he issued.
Dallas Bishop Farrell's Statement
Nevertheless, the very terms in which the bishop framed his statement about the announcement are instructive to examine and show how unreasonable Dallas Bishop Farrell's position is. Here is the text of the bishop's statement as it was posted at the SMU Catholic Campus Ministry website (I've changed double quotation marks in the quoted text to single quotation marks, but I've made no other editorial changes):
"It has come to my attention that the Reverend Charles Curran, Professor of Human Values at SMU, will give the Maguire Public Scholar lecture on October 28th. As the announcement states the Lecture will criticize "the bishops of the U.S. for claiming too much certitude for their position on abortion'. The invitation goes on to say that there should be room for different positions on the issue within the Catholic Church.
"I wish to point out that the Bishops of the US have never changed their position on the question of abortion. The act of directly taking an unborn life is wrong and has always been wrong. This has been the constant teaching of the Church.
"There is room in the Catholic Church for different positions on many issues. However, on the taking of innocent human life there is no room for ambiguity. This teaching is not proposed as an opinion of the Church but has been affirmed by Pope Paul II as an expression of the official Teaching of the Church. In his encyclical, EVANGELIUM VITAE, he stated,
""Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral. This doctrine, based upon that unwritten law which man, in the light of reason, finds in his own heart (cf. Rom. 2:14-15), is reaffirmed by Sacred Scripture, transmitted by the Tradition of the Church and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium. (Pope John Paul II, EVANGELIUM VITAE, March 25, 1995)
"I regret that Father Curran has chosen to criticize the position of the Bishops of the United States on this matter. Let us pray that, not only Catholics, but all people of our country, will soon recognize that every human life is a gift to be cherished."
Comments on Dallas Bishop Farrell's Statement
Let me repeat that Curran did not directly challenge the teaching against abortion, as I myself would challenge it. Instead, he challenged the certitude with which the bishops state their position the very kind of certitude that Dallas Bishop Farrell unfortunately exemplifies in his statement when he says that "there is no room for ambiguity." If you think "there is no room for ambiguity," then there is no room for debate. But of course there is debate about when human life begins, and abortion in the first trimester is legal, the Catholic bishops to the contrary notwithstanding. Thus the very claim about which Bishop Farrell declares that "there is no room for ambiguity" contains a highly debatable point because there is debate about when human life begins.
Let's examine Dallas Bishop Farrell's complete sentence: "However, on the taking of innocent human life there is no room for ambiguity." According to the reasoning in this sentence, there is no room for ambiguity about the taking of innocent human life by American aggression in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Civilian noncombatants represent innocent human life.
