Editor’s Note: We saw a cartoon recently that showed two men asking a woman at her front door if she had found Jesus. “I’m Catholic,” she said. “We never lost Him.”
Q. A very well-educated fellow Catholic and high school friend recently told me that the Catholic Church has several exceptions to a person wishing to abort her baby. There is nothing in the Catechism on this. One of her alleged exceptions is the “serious fear” of the mother. What can I tell her? — M.S., via e-mail.
A. You can tell her that there are no exceptions — zip, zero, nada — where the Church would allow a woman to abort her unborn child. Here is St. John Paul’s unambiguous statement in his encyclical on human life (Evangelium Vitae):
“I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium” (n. 62).
Now it’s possible that your friend was thinking about exceptions to excommunication of a woman who has procured an abortion. Canon 1398 of the Code of Canon Law says that “a person who procures a completed abortion incurs an automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication.” This means that all those involved in the deliberate and successful effort to bring about a completed abortion, including the doctor, the woman, and family members, friends, and counselors who advised the abortion, would be automatically excommunicated, provided that each of these persons knew the Church’s penalty for this action but went ahead with it anyway.
However, according to canons 1323 and 1324 of the Code, excommunication would not be automatically incurred if a person was truly ignorant of the penalty attached to procuring an abortion, was under the age of 16, thought that the law applied only to the person having the abortion and not to her accomplices, acted out of “grave fear” about parental or societal reaction to the pregnancy, or erroneously believed that the abortion was necessary to preserve the mother’s life.
Q. After the Ordination of a priest recently, I was told that he was given a cloth with which he wiped holy oil from his hands and later passed the cloth along to his mother. Do you know the reasoning behind this practice? — R.W., South Carolina.
A. When the bishop anoints a new priest with sacred oil, the priest wipes his hands with a purificator and later is given that cloth to present to his mother. According to tradition, when the mother dies, the purificator is wrapped around her hands and is buried with her. When she gets to Heaven and Jesus asks her what she did to deserve Heaven, she is to reply, “I gave you my son as a priest.”
Q. A friend of mine who is a devotee of the reported apparitions at Medjugorje in 1981 said that the recent decision of Pope Francis to allow official parish and diocesan pilgrimages to Bosnia-Herzegovina is a sign of pending Vatican approval of the alleged apparitions. Is this the case? — C.J., via e-mail.
A. Not necessarily. The reason for lifting the ban on official pilgrimages, said Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti, was to provide pastoral care to the thousands of annual visitors to Medjugorje.
Referring to an announcement issued by Polish Archbishop Henryk Hoser, the Pope’s apostolic visitor to the shrine, and Archbishop Luigi Pezzuto, the papal nuncio to Bosnia, Gisotti said that the change in policy should not be interpreted “as an authentication of known events, which still require examination by the Church. Therefore, care must be taken to avoid creating confusion or ambiguity from the doctrinal point of view regarding such pilgrimages.”
He said that “considering the considerable flow of people who go to Medjugorje and the abundant fruits of grace that have sprung from it, this authorization is part of the particular pastoral attention that the Holy Father intended to give to that reality, aimed at encouraging and promoting the fruits of good.”
While some of the original six young people claim that the Virgin Mary still appears to them and gives them daily messages, three separate diocesan and national bishops’ conference investigations concluded that nothing supernatural had happened in Medjugorje. A papal commission was convened in 2010 to look into the matter, but its report has not yet been made public. In a flight from Fatima to Rome in 2017, Pope Francis said that the commission has confirmed that there are many spiritual conversions there, but has expressed doubt about the validity of the alleged current apparitions.
As for his own opinion, the Holy Father said that “I am more ‘mischievous.’ I prefer our Lady to be a mother, our mother, and not a telegraph operator who sends out a message every day at a certain time — this is not the mother of Jesus.”
Q. Enclosed is an article from the Chicago Tribune criticizing Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Ill., for prohibiting Holy Communion to Catholic lawmakers who voted for a law expanding access to abortion. The writer of the article is an associate professor in the Catholic Studies Department at DePaul University. Abortion is against the Fifth Commandment, and the Sacrament of Reconciliation and amending of one’s life are necessary to receive the precious Body and Blood of Jesus. Please explain what’s going on with our faith. — A.S., Illinois.
A. The problem is that not all of our Church leaders have the courage of Bishop Paprocki to call Catholic politicians to follow the teachings of their Church. For example, the action of Bishop Paprocki was immediately undermined by Blase Cardinal Cupich of Chicago, who defended giving Holy Communion to pro-abortion legislators because it “would be counterproductive to impose sanctions simply because they don’t change anybody’s minds. But it also takes away from the fact that an elected official has to deal with the judgment seat of God, not just the judgment seat of a bishop. I think that’s much more powerful.”
Canon lawyer Dr. Edward Peters has said that Cardinal Cupich was wrong in several respects. First, Paprocki did not impose a sanction, but rather a “sacramental disciplinary norm” in line with canon 915, which forbids giving Holy Communion to persons “who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin.”
Second, Peters said that the twofold purpose of withholding Communion is to “prevent scandal to the faith community” and to “prevent sacrilege from being committed against the august Sacrament. ‘Changing people’s minds’ has nothing to do with either goal.”
Third, said Peters, is Cupich’s claim “that ‘an elected official has to deal with the judgment seat of God,’ adding that God’s judgment will be ‘much more powerful’ than any here on Earth. In that regard, Cupich is certainly correct. Elected officials will be answerable to God for their acts and omissions. As will bishops. And cardinals.”
It’s interesting that in the Tribune article, the Rev. Stan Chu Ilo called out Bishop Paprocki for his “extreme measures.” Let’s see now, it is “extreme” to withhold Communion from pro-abortion lawmakers, but it’s not extreme to vote for legislation that approves the brutal killing of tiny human beings? Seriously? Paprocki should keep quiet in the face of a law that permits barbaric actions that would be vigorously opposed if they were performed on animals? How do you abort a late-term baby — one who weighs five or six pounds — except by cutting off the baby’s arms and legs and crushing his skull? And they call this abomination “reproductive health care”! Unbelievable!
Rev. Stan quotes Pope Francis as having said that Holy Communion is not “a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.” True, none of us is perfect, but if in serious sin we need to avail ourselves of the Sacrament of Penance before we receive Jesus. As St. Paul said: “Whoever who eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:27).
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