“Is the Church going crazy. I am totally against abortion but in the case of this girl her life and that of the twins themselves was in danger... And the church suggests to the judge to do a caesarean on a 9 year old!!! Crazy. U Alla jbierek dak li stupraha..kien ilu għaddej minn meta kellha 6 snin .. Ebda kelma dwar att faħxi bħal dak. Sorry ktibt hekk imma vera nirrabja meta l-Knisja li nħobb issir biss id-dispensur tal-liġijiet.”
A few days ago, I received this email from a friend of mine who is a very good Catholic. The story, which is briefly described in the email I received shocked Brazil and whoever read it wherever in the world. Doctors at a hospital in Recife, Brazil, performed an abortion March 4 on the girl who was made pregnant with twins from her step father. The girl’s family had given their consent for fear that the 80-pound girl would not survive a full-term pregnancy.
This is what the book says
After the abortion, Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of Olinda and Recife was quick to point out that the mother who authorised the operation and the doctors who performed the abortion were excommunicated in accordance with the Code of Canon Law, which stipulates the penalty of automatic excommunication for anyone complicit in abortion.
“God’s law is above any human law,” Archbishop Cardoso said. He told different media outlets that, while it was true the child ran health risks if she continued the pregnancy, "the end does not justify the means. The good aim of saving her life cannot justify the killing of two other lives."
The controversy that ensued was intense. The Vatican’s prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, joined the fray. He said excommunication against those responsible for the abortion was legitimate. In an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa March 7, the cardinal underlined that according to canon law anyone who procures an abortion incurs automatic excommunication.
Love more than the book
Fortunately, in the Church there are prelates who in such terrible circumstances do not throw the book at people but prefer to show them love. One of these is Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life. He criticized what he called a "hasty" public declaration of the excommunication of the girl's mother and the doctors who aborted the girl's twins. The girl "in the first place should have been defended, hugged and held tenderly to help her feel that we were all on her side" he wrote in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, March 15.
"Before thinking about excommunication, it was necessary and urgent to protect her innocent life and bring her back to a level of humanity of which we men of the church should be expert witnesses and teachers," he said.
"Unfortunately, this is not what happened and it has impacted the credibility of our teaching, which appears in the eyes of many as insensitive, incomprehensible and devoid of mercy," he said.
Archbishop Fisichella criticized the way Archbishop Sobrinho handled the situation.
He said that because of the Brazilian girl's young age and her "precarious state of health her life was in serious danger" by continuing the pregnancy.
"How should one act in these cases?" he asked, underlining that the girl's case represented an "arduous decision for doctors and moral law itself."
Doctors deserve respect for the difficult decisions they must often grapple with, he said, adding that no one nonchalantly makes life-and-death decisions and to even suggest it "is unjust and offensive."
He said the Catholic principle that upholds the sanctity of life is unshakeable and "abortion has always been condemned by moral law as an intrinsically evil act." However, because excommunication is incurred automatically at the moment a direct abortion is carried out, "there was no need to declare with such urgency and publicity a fact that occurred automatically," he said.
Archbishop Fisichella said the church can still be firm with its moral principles and at the same time reach out and show mercy toward others.
“We are on your side.”
He told the young girl in his written article: "We are on your side. We feel your suffering and we would like to do everything that would help you restore the dignity that you have been deprived of and the love that you will still need.
"There are others who deserve excommunication and our forgiveness, not those who have allowed you to live and who will help you regain hope and trust despite the presence of evil and the wickedness of many people," he said.
I have only one comment to add: thank God for people such as Archbishop Fisichella!
Till next time I wish you all good-bye and good luck.
PS. In the writing of this blog I gathered information from a number of Catholic news agencies, mainly Catholic News Service, Catholic World News as well as from several secular agencies such as Agence France Press, Time magazine and BBC.