U.S. Bishops vs the Vatican

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abortion, Catholic Church, Pope Francis, President Biden, rite of communion, U.S. Bishops

President Biden and Pope Francis

Anyone who has read my Sex and Herbs and Birth Control or browsed in previous blog posts knows that I am not always negative about the Catholic Church.  I have fond memories of the openmindedness of my secondary school teachers (Sisters of Notre Dame) fifty years ago.  In addition, I have acknowledged numerous saints, theologians, and even a Pope for their compassionate understanding of the reasons why women might need to terminate a pregnancy.  The 16^th-century Jesuit cleric Thomas Sanchez was able to conceive of several situations in which ending a pregnancy in its early stages (approximately first trimester) might be necessary, and he condoned abortion in the later stages of pregnancy if there was no other way to save the life of the woman.  Elizabeth of Hungary, Hildegard of Bingen, St. Bridget of Ireland, and many other nuns, clerics, and saints who popularized and added to the folk pharmacopoeia of post-coital fertility regulation do not seem to have seen any contradiction with their religious beliefs.  Peter of Spain, who became Pope John XXI in 1276, wrote a book which featured a long list of early-stage abortifacients, including rue, pennyroyal, and other mints. 

Indeed, it is well known among historians (though often disputed by dogmatic Church theologians) that only in 1869 did the Catholic Church take an official stand against abortion at all stages of pregnancy (but even then without actively opposing so-called “therapeutic abortions”).  It was only in 1930 that Pope Pius XI categorically forbade all therapeutic abortions even in cases in which the woman would die if the pregnancy continued. 

The latest example of anti-abortion hysteria by the Catholic hierarchy (but in this case not the Vatican) is the 73% vote of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in favor of drafting guidelines that would deny the sacrament of the Eucharist (commonly known as communion) to prominent Catholics, such as President Biden, who publicly support abortion rights. This stance puts the USCCB at odds with Pope Francis and many Catholic prelates worldwide, who are increasingly uneasy about using denial of communion as a political weapon in the so-called “culture wars.”  The Vatican fears that USCCB’s politicization of the rite of communion is more likely to cause a further decline in the number of observant U.S. Catholics than it is to dissuade President Biden and others from supporting women’s reproductive rights.  After all, opinion polls in the U.S. consistently show that the majority of those who identify as Catholic disagree with the Church’s stance on abortion.  Even those who identify as extremely observant believe that abortion should be allowed under at least some circumstances (such as rape or to save the life/health of the woman).  The extreme position of the USCCB is dangerously divisive among U.S. Catholics.   

There is a marked difference between the extremism of the majority of U.S. bishops and the more moderate stance of the Vatican and many leading prelates worldwide.  Outside of the U.S., most prelates would consider it unthinkable to deny communion to Catholic politicians for their advocacy of legal abortion.  In a famous example, Pope John Paul II publicly offered the Eucharist to Francesco Ratelli, a former mayor of Rome and candidate for prime minister who supported abortion rights.   

This past January, Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the USCCB (whom Pope Francis has repeatedly refused to promote to cardinal), publicly castigated incoming President Biden for his advocacy of “policies that would advance moral evils.”  By contrast, on the same day the Vatican sent Biden a congratulatory telegram encouraging him to pursue policies “marked by authentic justice and freedom.” 

 In a sense, the vituperative posturing of Bishop Gomez and the 73% of U.S. bishops who support him are sound and fury signifying nothing.  Ultimately, the decision on whether to offer communion to pro-abortion rights politicians remains with individual bishops.  And Cardinal Wilton Gregory, archbishop of Washington, D.C. and the nation’s first African-American cardinal, has vocally opposed the denial of communion to Biden and other politicians. 

(Sources consulted include New York Times articles by Elizabeth Diaz and Jason Horowitz, and a Vox piece by Cameron Peters.)

A New Book Describes the Women’s Wing of the U.S. Anti-Abortion Movement

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anti-abortion movement, anti-abortion violence, Catholic Church, Catholic women, Crisis Pregnancy Centers, Evangelical men, terrorism

Marissa Haugeberg

I just wrote a review (for a librarians’ journal) of Women against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century by Karissa Haugeberg, an assistant professor of history at Tulane University. At first, I was put off by the subtitle, because the idea of dignifying anti-abortion zealotry with a term like “moral reform movement” is abhorrent to me. I myself would never use such a phrase for the same reason I never call opponents of abortion “pro-life” — like many feminists, I am sickened by the hypocrisy of that term.

As it turns out, however, one should not judge a book by its cover — or its subtitle. This is a nuanced, sophisticated, and balanced account of three decades of anti-abortion activism in the U.S. on the part of overwhelmingly white, largely working class Catholic and Evangelical women. By the end of the book Haugeberg has made it abundantly clear that there is nothing the least bit moral about the terrorist violence of the anti-abortion movement.

Haugeberg argues against the widespread notion that most acts of violence against women’s health clinic personnel have been committed by white Evangelical men. She demonstrates that women were coordinating violent “rescue” actions (vandalizing and bombing clinics and assaulting and terrorizing staff and clients) “long before Evangelical men joined the movement.” In large part, the Catholic women’s early turn to “rescue” violence was prompted by their frustration with most Catholic priests’ and nuns’ disinclination to actively oppose Roe v. Wade. Juli Loesch, for instance, cut off her relations with a group of Benedictine nuns because of their ambivalence about abortion.

Haugeberg repeatedly notes that most of the (Catholic) women who embraced anti-abortion activism initially went to some effort to portray themselves as seriously interested in women’s welfare. The crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) were set up by these women supposedly as a more female-centered alternative to the male-led and Evangelical-dominated anti-abortion groups, which were overtly anti-feminist, if not misogynist, and which put fetal personhood at the heart of their rhetoric.

But the CPCs quickly degenerated. Though still employing a discourse of concern for women’s health and wellbeing, the CPCs have unashamedly turned to “deception, coercion, and terror” in their attempts to prevent women from accessing abortion. CPC personnel routinely lie to women about how long they’ve been pregnant (thus moving them past the time limit for legal abortion in many states). CPC staff show fabricated abortion videos, make outrageously inaccurate claims about abortion hazards, intimidate and terrorize women seeking abortions, and publish confidential information about them and their families.

Haugeberg’s book is fascinating and well written. But it is not an easy read. She uses their own words as much as possible in chronicling violent anti-abortion fanatics such as Shelley Shannon (attempted murderer of Dr. George Tiller and intimate friend of the killers of Dr. Tiller, Dr. David Gunn, and others). Those words are smug and self-righteous, and it takes a strong stomach to read the sanctimonious justifications of their violent attacks.

Haugeberg criticizes the distinctions often made by scholars and the media between supposedly peaceful arms of the anti-abortion movement such as the CPCs and the terrorists who over three decades have killed eleven people, attempted to kill another 26, and committed close to 2000 acts of arson and vandalism. Violent anti-abortion activists move freely among the various factions of the movement, and their terrorism is virtually never condemned by the national organizations. The actions of female anti-abortion terrorists have met with tepid response by state and federal officials as well. All too often, their repeated violent acts do not lead to criminal charges and rarely result in jail time.

How to Lie without Lying

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abortion, Catholic Church, ensoulment, sophistry, Thomas Aquinas

The May 11, 2017 New York Times carried a brief letter from Father Michael P. Orsi that is worth quoting here. Orsi objects to an earlier column (“A Christian Abortion Doctor” by Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times, May 7) that said that Thomas Aquinas’ theology allowed for abortion. Orsi writes:

“In the Summa Theologica, his magisterial opus, the saint never writes directly on abortion but speculates on ensoulment for the fetus, which did not challenge the traditional prohibition [against abortion].

“Although there is no direct condemnation of abortion in the Bible or by Thomas, he was certainly aware of the scriptural roots of the anti-abortion teaching, as well as in the teachings of the church fathers, who unanimously condemned the practice.”

At first glance, Father Orsi’s remarks seem clear and straightforward. Aquinas and other leading Catholic theologians “unanimously” condemned abortion. End of story.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

At least Orsi was honest enough to admit that the Bible does not prohibit abortion — a fact that most anti-abortion zealots persistently refuse to acknowledge. But Father Orsi implies that Aquinas’ speculations on ensoulment of the fetus have nothing to do with questions of abortion; this is far from the truth. Virtually all Catholic theologians before the 19th century were interested in the question of ensoulment (the point at which a human soul enters the body of a fetus, usually thought to coincide with quickening) in large part because of its relationship to the question of abortion. For most of its history the Catholic church condemned termination of pregnancy only after ensoulment/quickening, but not before. In fact, most theologians didn’t even use the word “abortion” for the ending of pregnancy prior to quickening.

The use of the term “abortion” by early Catholic theologians was very different from the modern use. In fact, the vast majority of abortions in the U.S. today would not have been considered abortions by them, because they occur before quickening.

Several prominent clerics, nuns, and saints, including Thomas Sanchez, Albertus Magnus, Pope John XXI, Hildegard of Bingen, and Elizabeth of Hungary, themselves wrote positively of emmenagogues and early-stage abortifacients. Peter of Spain (later Pope John XXI) compiled a long list of abortifacients in his Book of the Poor, and Hildegard of Bingen promoted the abortifacient properties of tansy, which had not previously received scholarly attention.

The fact is, for close to 1900 years the majority of church writers and Canon lawyers accepted early abortion (approximately first trimester) under most circumstances and all abortion under some circumstances (such as when the life of the woman was threatened). Contrary to Father Orsi’s claim, Thomas Aquinas paid attention to ensoulment precisely because the timing of ensoulment was intimately tied to the question of when termination of pregnancy is an actual abortion. The later ensoulment was thought to occur, the longer the window for ending pregnancy without incurring religious censure.

In the chapter of my Sex and Herbs and Birth Control titled “A Little Bit Pregnant,” I discuss the diversity of opinions on termination of pregnancy among Catholic commentators through the ages. I note that present-day opponents of abortion are completely mistaken in their claims that the Church has implacably opposed all abortion at all stages of pregnancy from the time of Christ until now. But I say that the confusion is in some sense understandable, since definitions of abortion used in the past and at present are not the same, and the average anti-abortion zealot misstates the history out of ignorance rather than deliberate deception.

Father Orsi, however, is an eminent theologian who has written numerous books and articles on bioethics, Catholic family law, and related topics. He is not ignorant of the complex and nuanced stances of his predecessors. He must know full well that his Church did not categorically condemn all abortion under virtually all circumstances until 1869. One is forced to conclude that Father Orsi’s misleadingly worded letter is deliberately misstating the history of Catholic proscriptions on abortion. Father Orsi’s letter is, in fact, an excellent example of sophistry, that is, how to lie without lying.

Reproductive Justice a Theme of Conference in Puerto Rico

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abortion access, Caesarian delivery, Catholic Church, Cuba, doulas, low-income women, natural birthing, Puerto Rico, reproductive justice, women of color

Recently I attended the National Women’s Studies Association meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Among the dizzying array of panel presentations were two of particular interest to me. One focused on women of color creating organizations to support non-medicalized birthing options for poor women. The organizations, Birth Justice Project and Black Women Birthing Justice, sponsor classes for pregnant women in the California state prison system with the goal not only of obtaining better outcomes for their pregnancies but also training them to become doulas (informal birth assistants) after their release. The same panel featured a well-known Puerto Rican midwife, Rita Santiago, who was largely responsible for the resurgence of midwifery on the island. Historically midwives had handled virtually all births and most of the health needs of women and children in Puerto Rico. But when the U.S. assumed the colonial mantle of the Spanish at the beginning of the 20th century, the government and medical profession initiated a concerted campaign against midwives and in favor of hospital births attended by (largely male) physicians. These interventions had disastrous results for women’s health. Even now, Puerto Rican women have high Caesarian rates—approximately half of all babies on the island are delivered by Caesarian. These rates are well above the levels deemed acceptable by the World Health Organization. By comparison, Santiago noted that Cuba’s rates are low; about 8% of Cuban births are surgically managed, yet their maternal and infant mortality statistics are far better than those of Puerto Rico.

Another fascinating panel was organized by the Chicago Abortion Fund (CAF). CAF began thirty years ago with the goal of providing money for low-income women to obtain abortions after the Hyde Amendment cut off federal funds for the procedure. But they have branched out and adopted a reproductive justice (RJ) framework for their activism, which situates abortion access in the context of general health equity for low-income women and women of color. According to a CAF brochure, the broader orientation is necessary because “The mainstream reproductive rights movement has, in some instances, …been elitist and has ignored the needs of women of color and low-income women.” CAF has developed an abortion access toolkit that is widely used by other RJ-oriented activists around the country.

A poignant aspect of the abortion issue was brought to light in the discussion that followed the presentations. A young Latina woman in the audience asked how one deals with feelings of guilt about having an abortion. She is a high school student in a state that mandates so-called abstinence-only sex education, and she said that this, combined with the religious proscriptions drilled into them by Catholic and fundamentalist Christian parents, renders her and her peers unable to easily access birth control, terrified and uncertain where to turn when pregnancy results, and obsessed with the notion that they are betraying their culture or committing an unforgivable sin if they attempt to get an abortion.

The panelists were sympathetic, and CAF’s Latina intern said that she had suffered the same guilt when she terminated her own pregnancy. The advice offered by her and other panelists went along the lines of: remember that it’s your body and your life; you’re the best judge of what is right for you at this time. Certainly these statements are reasonable and can go some way toward assuaging guilt. However, I suggested an additional line of reasoning that might have some effect, especially on the young woman’s Catholic peers and (possibly) on their families. Namely, I pointed out that restrictions on abortion are relatively recent. Until 1869, when the Catholic Church banned the procedure, the Church had a flexible attitude toward abortion. I noted that Catholic saints and theologians (for example, St. Bridget, Hildegarde of Bingen, and Thomas Sanchez) and even a Pope (Peter of Spain, who became Pope John XXI) tolerated abortion, and some developed abortifacients themselves. I don’t know how much this information helped the young woman. But I am convinced that a significant component of making women of similar backgrounds more comfortable with their reproductive decisions is the disseminating of information on the wide acceptance of abortion in many cultures and circumstances both now and in the past.

Fond Memories of My Catholic Education

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Affordable Care Act, Catholic Church, contraception, fundamentalism, high school education, Sisters of Notre Dame, Supreme Court

When I talk with students in my Women as Healers classes about their time in Catholic high school compared to mine forty-five years earlier, we are shocked by how much our experiences diverge. Ironically, it is I rather than they who has the fond memories. In fact, the more I hear their distressing stories of hidebound, doctrinaire priests and nuns, the more I have come to appreciate my own teachers at the Academy of the Holy Angels in northeastern New Jersey, and to marvel at how sophisticated and open-minded they were, in contrast to the religious fundamentalism of many of today’s Catholic school teachers.

My nuns were Sisters of Notre Dame, an order not particularly known for progressive tendencies. Indeed, if the school or the order had had a liberal reputation, my conservative-leaning parents would never have sent me there. But I realize now (much more than I did at the time) that the nuns took a truly catholic (in the best sense of the word) approach to learning. We read Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and even Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy (1963). Performances of The Deputy — which portrayed Pope Pius XII as complicitous in the Nazi Holocaust — were being picketed by conservative Catholics, but the play was required reading in my high school English class. Our film study class included Woman in the Dunes, Roshomon, La Dolce Vita, Pather Panchali, and the Soviet classics Mother and Ballad of a Soldier. The religious observances on the first Friday of every month were only sometimes actual Catholic masses. As often as not the service was presided over by clerics of other denominations: Episcopalian and other Protestant ministers, Greek Orthodox priests, Jewish rabbis, Buddhist monks, even on one occasion a Muslim iman.

I attended my all-girls Catholic high school from 1965 to 1969, which was a vibrant time in the history of the Church. My nuns had fully embraced what was often called “the spirit of Vatican II” — the open, tolerant, progressive climate which was encouraged by Pope John XXIII and which continued for several years after his death in 1963. This was a time when many sensitive issues were discussed: female ordination, a possible softening of the Church stance on birth control and even abortion, a “preferential option for the poor” (that is, liberation theology as espoused by the Catholic bishops at the Medellín conference in 1968).

Pope John XXIII in 1959

I remember once the father of one of my classmates, a gynecologist, was brought in to speak to the seniors. He told us that while he himself as a good Catholic could not prescribe contraceptives for his patients, he had no objection to referring them to colleagues who he knew would fulfill the women’s requests for birth control. His belief that he should not impose his religious convictions on his patients (and our nuns’ tacit approval of his position) stand in stark contrast to the stance of present-day officials of Wheaton College and other evangelical Protestants and Catholics who protest against the contraceptive provisions of the Affordable Care Act. The recent decision of the US Supreme Court granting Wheaton College the right to refuse even to give a referral to a student desiring contraception caused me to recall this Catholic doctor’s visit to our school and to think nostalgically of a time when religious fundamentalism and extremism were much less widespread and influential in the U.S. than they are now.

St. Bridget and Abortion

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abortion, birth control, Catholic Church, St. Bridget

This semester, students in my Women as Healers class at Arizona State University are reading Sex and Herbs and Birth Control. One young man, Brian Anderson, was so intrigued by the story behind the title of chapter 3, “Praying to St. Bridget,” that he decided to do further research on the saint for his first essay. (The chapter title comes from the St. Bridget amulet that some Irish women wear to protect themselves from pregnancy — see the post “Loss of Indigenous Knowledge in Veracruz, Mexico”.) Brian discovered a fascinating 2002 article by Judith Maas in the Irish Times. Titled “St. Bridget would vote No if faced with this referendum,” the article expressed opposition to a proposed amendment to Ireland’s anti-abortion law that would increase the punishment for anyone obtaining an abortion to twelve years’ imprisonment. The author pointed out that St. Bridget, though an abbess of the Catholic Church and a patron saint of fertility, was willing to help women in desperate circumstances:

“A symbol of motherhood, Bridget is also known as Muire na nGael — Mary of the Gael. However, if necessary, she did not hesitate to interfere with nature. In the first Life of Saint Bridget, written by Cogitatus around AD 650, a woman in crisis pregnancy came to her for help. ‘A certain woman who had taken the vow of chastity fell, through youthful desire and pleasure, and her womb swelled with child. Bridget, exercising with the most strength of her ineffable faith, blessed her, caused the foetus to disappear, without coming to birth, and without pain. She faithfully returned the woman to health and to penance.’ This account of an abortion cannot be found in current translations of the book. In the 19th century it vanished from the official version of St. Bridget’s life….

“In the early Middle Ages, abortion wasn’t considered a serious crime. The Penitential of St. Finnian states that ‘if a woman by her magic destroys the child she has conceived, she shall do penance for half a year.’ This is mild compared to other penalties and compared to the proposed 12 years’ jail in the current proposal for the abortion referendum.” (Irish Times, 5 March 2002)

It is not surprising that when the Church’s stance on abortion changed in the 19th century (see the post “Questions to Ask Your Priest”), the Church also changed the official biography of St. Bridget. Church authorities have consistently attempted to conceal the fact that earlier Catholic notables such as St. Bridget, Hildegarde of Bingen, Tomas Sanchez, and others had more flexible attitudes toward abortion.