"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.
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