The New Republic

Whatever tiny shred of moral authority the catholic church may have once had vanished the minute they became complicit in an international conspiracy to cover up and further enable the sexual torture of children. Why anybody listens to anything the vatican has to say mystifies me.

- Tristan

May 16, 2012 at 1:15pm

Despite the best efforts of casuists both secular and religious, the sinfulness of abortion is clearly implied in and easily inferred from the Gospels, and was explicitly condemned literally within the first generation after the composition of the New Testament (possibly even earlier, depending on how you date a certain document), something Garry Wills surely knows. Admittedly, contraception is a little more problematic.

- timteeter

May 16, 2012 at 1:37pm

And btw, while not in the least denying the social dimension of the teachings of Jesus, I think that to say that the social gospel "is the Gospel" is remarkably uncatholic.

- timteeter

May 16, 2012 at 1:40pm

This is not new. The Vatican has been more or less overwhelmingly concerned with control and power vis a vis the Social Gospel for hundreds of years, give or take a couple of Popes, one of whom was quickly assassinated after coronation because he wasn't going to toe the line like the Cardinals wanted. Now, we just have a new bit of evidence, further condemning the Church.

- GSpinks

May 16, 2012 at 1:41pm

Garry Wills is RC, and the author of several insightful books on Christianity (What Jesus Meant, What Paul Meant, et al.), books that have been helpful to me and many others. For Wills to make such pithy comments about the Vatican must be painful.

- rayward

May 16, 2012 at 1:42pm

Of course abortion is a sin. As is working on the sabbath, taking the Lord's name in vain, not honoring your mother and father, and adultery. Yet we don't see laws passed against THOSE sins. The point being, sometimes people get themselves into situations where they need to choose among the lesser of two evils. If our society made it easier to have access to contraceptives, and adoption, and medical support for 9 months of carrying a baby, perhaps abortions wouldn't be resorted to as often as they are. As long as the child's life is inextricably intwined with the mother, it's the mother's choice.

- AllanL5

May 16, 2012 at 1:57pm

Pithy indeed. The Social Gospel is actually one small group's interpretation of scripture (though not the gospel itself, which is essentially that the Kingdom of God is right here, right now, in the person of Jesus Christ, and available to anyone who wants it). The Catholic church's teachings on abortion and contraception are also based on intricate, convoluted interpretations of selected passages of scripture, but also outside the gospel. It's sad that even most Christians can't get the gospel right. It's simple but not always what people want to hear.

- Erik_S

May 16, 2012 at 2:10pm

I think Wills' general point, which clearly some would like to misread or ignore, is that the Vatican here comes out looking like a prickly boss with a tendency to uncritical-self-regard looking around for reasons to attack someone else for particular offenses in order to distract attention from his own.

- ironyroad

May 16, 2012 at 3:03pm

I don't think abortion is a sin. Bringing unwanted children into the world, now that is a sin. And I say that as someone who adopted two abandoned infants.

- roidubouloi

May 16, 2012 at 3:30pm

I think Wills' general point is that the Vatican distorts the meaning of "Gospel" as necessary to pursue its agenda against the nuns who, to this Jewish observer, have a far keener and more intimate understanding of its meaning than do the princes of the Vatican. It should never be forgotten that the curia is a vestige of the Roman state, and acts like it.

- roidubouloi

May 16, 2012 at 3:32pm

What Roi said.

- Sophia

May 16, 2012 at 4:08pm

If you think humans have an immortal and noncorporeal soul which is the seat of their identity and personality, then it makes perfect sense to suppose that you are killing a person when performing an abortion, and thus that to do so is sinful. But if you believe that humans have an immortal and noncorporeal soul which is the seat of their identity and personality, you are basically subscribing to ignorant superstition that flies in the face of all we have learned about life and personality in the last 3 or so centuries. All who wish to so believe are welcome in our society to do so, but they have absolutely no business imposing these superstitions on anyone else. Period.

- IowaBeauty

May 16, 2012 at 4:32pm

A beautiful and telling quote. Too bad it does not reflect reality. Neither "gospel" exists, in the sense of being a reliable link to the historically authentic events of first century Palestine. Three of the gospels were written by non-participants, at least one generation removed from the real people who saw what happened, and none were written in the language of the real participants. The fourth (John) doesn't even pretend to be an account of what Jesus said and did. It's all about how wonderful and holy Jesus was, with next to nothing about what he said and did. So in the current context, it's true enough tp say that the gospels don't say a word about divorce or abortion. But they don't say much about anything else that's reliable either. We're left with a choice between highly embellished texts from the late first century or highly embellished theology from the third through the twenty first century. What an attractive and meaningful choice. I choose "none of the above."

- gwcross

May 16, 2012 at 4:40pm

The question, roid, is not what you think is a sin. The question is whether or not the Catholic church teaches that abortion is a sin as a direct consequence of what can be broadly defined as the Gospel, and whether or not Garry Wills is scoring cheap rhetorical points. It does and he is. And I write as someone who is not a Roman Catholic, is no fan of its hierarchy, and has some sympathy for the nuns. Though I do subscribe to ignorant superstition.

- timteeter

May 16, 2012 at 4:44pm

Actually, timteeter, it's not about sin. There is no actual "sin" in devoting oneself to a different set of priorities from those currently laid down by the Vatican or other parts of the church establishment. "Thou shalt obey the dictates of central office without demur" is not one of the commandments, last time I looked. As I noted above, Wills' basic point is easily graspable and it's about scouring the neighborhood for someone to blame.

- ironyroad

May 16, 2012 at 5:03pm

The RCC in Europe, even Ireland, is all but dead, and it's on its way out in the US. In Latin America Catholics are abandoning the Church in droves to turn Evangelical Protestant. The only place where the Church is gaining ground is Africa. Black Pope in the next century?

- AaronW

May 16, 2012 at 5:15pm

At the mo, I'm reading Autobiography of Benvenuti Cellini. They don't make Popes like they did in the 16th century! You got your torture, unlawful imprisonment, arbitrary execution... You got Popes showering favors on their bastard sons--whom everyone knows are their sons... You got Popes fighting wars, egging their gunners on as the literally cut the enemy in half...

- AaronW

May 16, 2012 at 6:25pm

A few months ago I toted up the number of books that I have read by Garry Wills and it came to thirty. Wills is an immense talent and I have hugely profited from reading him. Also, ray, Wills has written at least four books on Augustine, which I have read. In my right phase I read about two dozen books by the late William F. Buckley Jr. and in my far left phase, I read about the same number by Noam Chomksy. Wills is a better guide to the world than either of them are. Excellent comments all the way around, except for the notion that the Catholic Church is dying in America. It certainly isn't what it once was, but it is nowhere near death here. As for Western Europe, it isn't just Catholicism that is dead or dying there, it is any form of Christianity.

- liberalref

May 16, 2012 at 7:15pm

That should be Chomsky.

- liberalref

May 16, 2012 at 9:13pm

Here just a piece of the Catholic Church's historically varying positions on abortion: http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_hist.htm 4th Century BCE TO 1st Century CE (Various beliefs): In ancient times, the "delayed ensoulment" belief of Aristotle (384-322 BCE) was widely accepted in Pagan Greece and Rome. He taught that a fetus originally has a vegetable soul. This evolves into an animal soul later in gestation. Finally the fetus is "animated" with a human soul.This latter event, called "ensoulment," was believed to occur at 40 days after conception for male fetuses, and 90 days after conception for female fetuses. The difference was of little consequence, because in those days, there were no tests to detect the start of pregnancy or to determine the gender of an embryo. Ultrasound devices and pregnancy test strips were millennia in the future. Thus abortions were not condemned if performed early in gestation when the embryo had a vegetable or animal soul. It was only condemned if the abortion was done later in pregnancy that a human soul was destroyed. By coincidence, this 90 day limit happens to be approximately equal to the end of the first trimester, the point at which the US Supreme Court decided that states could begin to restrict a woman's access to abortion. The 40 and 90 day limits also bear a striking resemblance to the 40 and 80 day periods when a woman was considered ritually impure after birth in Judaism (Leviticus 12:2-6). Both concepts denigrated females at the time. The Jewish faith was generally opposed to both infanticide and abortion. An exception occurred if the continuation of a pregnancy posed a risk to the life of the pregnant woman or to her other children. In such cases, the pregnant woman is actually obligated to abort the fetus; the fetus is then considered "radef" -- a pursuer. Early in the 1st century CE, a well-known Jewish philosopher -- Philo of Alexandria -- (20 BCE - circa 47 CE) wrote on infanticide and abortion, condemning non-Jews of other cultures and religions for the widespread, unjustified practices. 2nd Century CE TO 4th Century CE (Abortion = Murder): * * * The Apostolic Constitutions (circa 380 CE) allowed abortion if it was done early enough in pregnancy. But it condemned abortion if the fetus was of human shape. "Thou shalt not slay the child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is begotten. For everything that is shaped, and his received a soul from God, if slain, it shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed." 7:3:15 This document claimed to have been written by the apostles. However, it was actually written late in the 4th century CE at about the time that Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and serious oppression of Paganism started. 5th TO 16th Century CE (Various beliefs on whether abortion is murder): St. Augustine (354-430 CE) reversed centuries of Christian teaching in Western Europe, by returning to the Aristotelian Pagan concept of "delayed ensoulment." He wrote that a human soul cannot live in an unformed body. Thus, early in pregnancy, an abortion is not murder because no soul is destroyed (or, more accurately, only a vegetable or animal soul is terminated). He wrote extensively on sexual matters, teaching that the original sin of Adam and Eve are passed to each successive generation through the pleasure generated during sexual intercourse. This passed into the church's canon law. Only abortion of a more fully developed "fetus animatus" (animated fetus) was punished as murder. Augustine had little influence over the beliefs of Orthodox Christianity. They retained their original anti-abortion stance. St. Jerome (circa 340 - 420) wrote in a letter to Aglasia: "The seed gradually takes shape in the uterus, and it [abortion] does not count as killing until the individual elements have acquired their external appearance and their limbs" Starting in the 7th century CE, a series of penitentials were written in the West. These listed an array of sins, with the penance that a person must observe as punishment for the sin. Certain "sins" which prevented conception had particularly heavy penalties. These included: --- practicing a particularly ineffective form of birth control, coitus interruptus (withdrawal of the penis prior to ejaculation) --- engaging in oral sex or anal sex --- becoming sterile by artificial means, such as by consuming sterilizing poisons. Abortion, on the other hand, required a less serious penance. Theodore, who organized the English church, assembled a penitential about 700 CE. Oral intercourse required from years to a lifetime of penance; an abortion required only 120 days. Pope Stephen V (served 885-891) wrote in 887 CE: "If he who destroys what is conceived in the womb by abortion is a murderer, how much more is he unable to excuse himself of murder who kills a child even one day old." "Epistle to Archbishop of Mainz." Pope Innocent III (circa 1161-1216): He wrote a letter which ruled on a case of a Carthusian monk who had arranged for his female lover to obtain an abortion. The Pope decided that the monk was not guilty of homicide if the fetus was not "animated." Early in the 13th century he stated that the soul enters the body of the fetus at the time of "quickening" - when the woman first feels movement of the fetus. After ensoulment, abortion was equated with murder; before that time, it was a less serious sin, because it terminated only potential human life, not human life. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) also considered only the abortion of an "animated" fetus as murder. Pope Sixtus V (1471-1484) issued a Papal bull "Effraenatam" in 1588 which threatened those who carried out abortions at any stage of gestation with excommunication and the death penalty. Pope Gregory XIV (1535-1591) revoked the Papal bull shortly after taking office in 1591. He reinstated the "quickening" test, which he determined happened 116 days into pregnancy (16½ weeks). 17th TO 19th Century CE (Abortion becomes murder again): In the 17th century, the concept of "simultaneous animation" gained acceptance within the medical and church communities in Western Europe. This is the belief that an embryo acquires a soul at conception, not at 40, 80. or 116 days into gestation as the church was teaching. _____________________ And so forth and so on. And all this is somehow in the Gospels, contradictions and all? Glorious thing religion. How many angels CAN dance on the head of a pin anyway? Does it require music?

- roidubouloi

May 16, 2012 at 9:39pm

Roid, All interesting (and it wouldn't be the first time Jerome got something wrong), but all of which misses the point. The question is not whether abortion is murder (though it is usually cast that way, I'll admit), but whether it is a sin, regardless of whether or not the fetus has received a soul. That the fetus is something holy--something for which God has intentions other than destruction--from conception is the natural conclusion drawn from the birth of Isaac to the Annunciation. Variations in penitential discipline tend rather to prove the point. The earliest specific Christian condemnation of abortion can be found in the Didache (2.2), variously dated from as early as contemporary with the New Testament to around 100 (and generally regarded as the earliest of so-called church orders of which the Apostolic Constitutions is a descendant). And to my knowledge, how many angels could dance on the head of a pin was never, in fact, a serious question. FWIW, I've admired some of Will's work in the past. But he should go back to political reporting.

- timteeter

May 16, 2012 at 11:25pm

"But he should go back to political reporting." That's what he was doing.

- ironyroad

May 16, 2012 at 11:31pm

It doesn't miss the point at all, timteeter, because if the doctrinal status of abortion can be all over the place in the course of time, as it has been, from murder to a trivial sin requiring 120 days of penance, it is not possible to claim that abortion IS a sin or that the nature of this sin can be found in the Gospels. God's intentions in this matter are obscure, to say the least. I expressed above my opinion about the matter (which is of course God's view). One useful definition of moral behavior is how people of high moral character behave. That leaves out the Catholic Church and its hierarchy in their entirety, with the obvious exception of its Sisters throughout time. The attempt to locate the current iteration of abortion doctrine in the Gospels is ridiculous. The attempt to locate a life of compassion expressed in service is not. I think Will makes that point quite successfully in a handful of words. As for his political commentary, not so good. He would do better to stick to matters of religion. As for what God intends, that would would argue for Christian Science, no? If God causes you to fall ill or suffer injury, who is man to intervene for a different outcome?

- roidubouloi

May 16, 2012 at 11:36pm

Should have read: The attempt to locate there a life of compassion expressed in service is not.

- roidubouloi

May 16, 2012 at 11:38pm

Roid, you're not going to get me to defend the RC hierarchy. Dante put several popes in hell, and (if it were up to me) so would I. And once again, good for nuns, I say. Nor is this the place for a debate about theodicy, whatever Christian Scientists believe (though I should think that the story of the good Samaritan might apply to question of interfering after someone suffers injury). I simply maintain that just because canonical penalties have varied over two thousand years does not alter the church's fairly consistent position. In fact, that there are always penalties, whether severe or (from our standpoint) trivial attests to that consistency. I'm not an RC, but if you want the official line (and something of a response to the website you quoted), here's an excerpt: "Canon law does not determine the morality of abortion. It always assumes this and proceeds to determine how the Church, as a community, should deal with members who are guilty of abortion. The very fact that there have always been canonical penalties for abortion is a reflection of the Church's position that abortion is a grave evil; for canon law never prescribes penalties for venial sins —prayers and good works have always been regarded as sufficient for their remission. A second distinction separates official Church teaching from the expressed opinions of individual ecclesiastical writers. The Church may consider various opinions without adopting them as her official teaching. For example, in 1679 a decree of the Holy Office, under the authority of Innocent XI, condemned the positions of two important writers of that century: Thomas Sanchez and Joannis Marcus. Sanchez, a Jesuit theologian, held that abortion is lawful if the fetus is not yet animated when the intention is to prevent a girl, detected as pregnant, from being killed or defamed. Marcus, the Proto-physician of Bohemia, claimed that the fetus lacks a rational soul until birth.3 If Church teaching is to remain clear and consistent, it is a necessary to exclude confusing and contradictory opinions. At the same time, if Church teaching is to develop, it is necessary that there be research and debate. No one familiar with the development of the Church's teaching on abortion throughout history could fail to recognize that it is indeed clear and consistent and has, in fact, developed in an atmosphere of meticulous research and lively debate." For the whole thing, you can go here: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=3361 Like I said, I've admired Wills in the past. I'm not a member of the club, so I'm not going to criticize his criticism of the Catholic church--I can do that myself. I just found the quote both arguable and arch rather than witty.

- timteeter

May 17, 2012 at 12:04am

Here is Fr Johnstone: Timteeter, This claim that you quote: "The very fact that there have always been canonical penalties for abortion is a reflection of the Church's position that abortion is a grave evil; for canon law never prescribes penalties for venial sins —prayers and good works have always been regarded as sufficient for their remission." appears to be untrue. "In 1591 Pope Gregory XIV had restricted the canonical, legal penalty for abortion to abortion of the animated foetus. In 1869 Pius IX issued a list of legal penalties. In this list, the distinction between the unanimated foetus and the animated foetus was abandoned. This meant that the legal, canonical penalty (excommunication) was no longer applied only to the abortion of the animated foetus (“late abortion”), but also to the abortion of the unanimated foetus (“early abortion”). This legislation was incorporated into the Code of 1917 and is maintained in Canon 1398 of the present Code. This was a matter of church legal discipline, not moral teaching as such." Perhaps Pope Gregory was unfamiliar with the Gospels. It is a problem for organized religion that it both wishes to present its "truths" as timeless and unchanging while changing them. Hence, it makes changes while representing that things are fundamentally unchanged and immutable. I like the Jewish view that the law may be God's but it is the job of man to figure out what it means and how it is to be applied concretely. There is some old story about rabbis arguing. One says, something like, "If I am right, may God cause A to happen" and it does. Then another calls for B to happen and that does. The third replies (something to the effect), "It is not in heaven." "The Torah explains "not in Heaven" understood justifies man's authority to interpret the Torah. The Talmud explains, "(The Torah) is not in Heaven" means that the meaning of the Torah itself is to be uncovered not by prophets, or even God's miracles or words, but by man's interpretation and decision-making. In the story of the Oven of Akhnai,[3] "Rabbi Yehoshua affirmed the independence of man's interpretation from divine intervention since this is what God wills. In support he adduces the biblical statement that the Torah is 'not in heaven' (Deuteronomy 30:12)."" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_in_Heaven In any case, I don't see how the current Church view of abortion can plausibly be presented as being "found" in the Gospels.

- roidubouloi

May 17, 2012 at 12:24am

I can't speak for Fr. Johnstone, but to quote my source again: "Accordingly, in 1591, Pope Gregory XIV rescinded some of the harsher penalties of his predecessor and returned absolution to the local ordinary." Fr. Johnstone thus just might be in error or misleading. Then again, it's certainly possible that Pope Gregory the XIV WAS unfamiliar with the Gospels. Wouldn't surprise me. You'd have to find a lot more popes than that to convince me that the church's position has not been broadly consistent. As for the Gospels, I repeat and elaborate: it is the obvious and natural conclusion of the many miracle stories regarding pregnancy and birth (in both Testaments) that the fetus is something holy, whatever its exact status and whatever the various penalties for aborting it. It's a bit difficult to read Luke and come to any other conclusion, at least for me. (Although it is apparently easy for others--but then, some people can look at, say, economic data and come to very different conclusions than you do. Doesn't mean they're not idiots.) And as for immutable truths, welcome to the world of finding spiritual authority in a revealed religion. There is an irreducibly subjective element to all of this. Can't be helped. However, that a Jew and a Protestant are arguing over Catholic consistency has to be one of the more entertaining features of TNR blogs. Nevertheless, I'm going to bed.

- timteeter

May 17, 2012 at 12:50am

There is more than an irreducible element of subjectivity. The question is whether there is anything else. I frankly have exactly zero tolerance or patience for the religious of all stripes who claim that their opinions carry more weight than anyone elses because of divine origin. God has told me they are all wrong. Their opinions are merely their opinions no matter how they try to drape them in supernatural origin in order to claim privilege for them. Hence, I can state with quite as much authority as the Catholic Church that, in my opinion, abortion is not a sin, bringing unwanted children into the world is. And I am willing to defend my opinion by relating it to conditions in the world, the experience of people, and the behavior of ethical people, which is a lot more than the Catholic Church is willing or able to do for its opinions when simply declaring that they are given by God, no less in writings where an objective observer can find no hint of same.

- roidubouloi

May 17, 2012 at 10:38am

Good morning, roid. Anyway, as far as any of this is about me, you can relax, because I don't think that my opinions carry any more weight in public policy than yours or anyone else's, despite the divine origins of some. The reasoning behind appeals to authority in a revealed religion is inevitably circular, and I got over that a long time ago. That may be a problem for some people, but not me. I'm happy to restrict arguments about, say, global warming or the effect of economic stimulus to empirical data (though when it comes to defining what is or is not fair in a society it gets a little stickier). But this did, after all, start out as a discussion of a quote about bishops and nuns, both of whom presumably share at least some common assumptions about the divine origins of their missions and authority. That you (and I) have more sympathy for the nuns than the bishops is irrelevant as regards those assumptions.

- timteeter

May 17, 2012 at 11:06am

I wasn't referring to you at all, timteeter. I had in mind the curia. When it comes to appeals to divine authority, I think hypocrisy is relevant as, one assumes, God is not a hypocrite. (But then, who knows?) To my mind, that was Wills' point, the invocation of particular received texts as divine authority for whatever proposition they want, even for propositions that would appear to be in conflict with it. The bishops can believe whatever they want and believe that everything they believe is exactly as God orders. That doesn't mean that I have to accord their beliefs any respect or perceive them as being consistent with either each other, the church's prior positions, or the texts that they claim as authority. I can just think it is tendentious bull. And do. But I am ecumenical about it. I feel pretty much the same way about just about everything that is claimed by someone as the Word of God. Because God tells me that that isn't what He said at all.

- roidubouloi

May 17, 2012 at 12:52pm

And despite their common assumptions about the divine origins of their missions and authority, they manage to come to rather different conclusions. I don't really care what motivates their behavior, from what beliefs it springs. I care about what they do in the world, however they may justify and explain it to themselves which is not particularly any business of mine until they make claims upon the rest of us (as with abortion). That is why I have great sympathy for the nuns and very little for the bishops, although I don't share the beliefs of either.

- roidubouloi

May 17, 2012 at 12:57pm

Back in Ireland in the late 1960s and 70s, there was a famous political columnist who wrote in the Irish Times under the name Backbencher. His style was very unusual for the place and the time, tending at moments almost to a kind of Hunter Thompson "gonzo" tone, without the ingestion of chemical substances. He turned me onto politics, in many ways, when I was a teenager. At the time, long before the collapse of the Church's stature in Ireland, Catholic bishops were in the habit of issuing statements on many matters of public concern, and they often went beyond theological and pastoral limits to be essentially statements on public policy. The bishops enjoyed a lot of respect then, so that counted with people. One of Backbencher's well-known rhetorical moves -- which earned him a lot of hostility -- was to refer to bishops doing that in the same casual way that he referred to politicians, e.g. prime minister Jack Lynch was "Honest Jack" in his columns, so Bishop Charles Murphy who had just issued a statement on health policy would become Charlie Murphy. This was a calculated piece of disrespect in a society that still treated the Catholic hierarchy with awe. Backbencher defended it on the grounds that, as soon as a bishop clearly entered the political arena, then there was no justification for treating him with any extra deference. Bishops were, of course, entitled to enunciate political positions and perspectives, but they were not entitled to have political positions and perspectives treated as if they weren't such, but rather something higher, deserving of uncritical regard. Gary Wills' comments seem to me to be a legitimate report/review on a matter of politics -- the Vatican's desire to come down hard on a group of nuns in the U.S., the terms they couched that move in, and the motives one might infer from such terms.

- ironyroad

May 17, 2012 at 1:40pm

The sinfulness of abortion is by no means at all clearly implied in any of the Bible, old or new testament. I am less familiar with the apocrypha, but I'd be surprised. The early church fathers actually adopted a stance more similar to Roe v. Wade than anything else, defining it as a sin only after quickening, not before. And that wasn't much based on any specific biblical passage. Most of the usual proof texts for life beginning at conception actually speak to God's foreknowlege even BEFORE conception.

- miceelf

May 17, 2012 at 3:01pm

I should be clear that I am not saying it would be carzy to infer opposition to abortion. I am mainly disputing the "clearly implied." Timeteer, your rationale and interpretation is a reasonable one although certainly not one I would come to. So I wasn't menaing to denigrate your rationale. i just don't think it's clearly implied.

- miceelf

May 17, 2012 at 3:30pm

So I come back after a day to find we're still at it! OK, one last time into the breach. irony, I've been around clergy literally all of my life, all sorts of clergy, including a few bishops. I've loved and admired a few of them. For some others I've had little more than contempt. I've never held them in awe, and I don't blame Garry Wills for not doing so either. But since we were (I thought) discussing a quote from Garry Wills, himself a Roman Catholic, I thought the issue was whether or not an objection could be found to abortion in "the Gospel." Mr. Noah thinks the Wills line is clever. I don't. In that quote, Wills virtually defines "the Gospel" as "the social Gospel." Go back and read it. I have no trouble finding "the social Gospel" in "the Gospel." I simply object to Wills' restriction of what is "the Gospel." It is not at all difficult, at least for me, to deduce a hostility to abortion from the text of the Bible, or even just the New Testament, whereas finding the Nicene doctrine of God—something Wills at least formally adheres to as a Roman Catholic—is, trust me, not easy. Furthermore, that hostility has been consistently voiced by the Christian church for a very long time—since the first century, in fact. Exceptions only reinforce the rule here. miccelf, honorable men can disagree. I'll only point to this, a text from a number of Christian academics (including a few bishops, such as the current Archbishop of Canterbury) on the connection of the sanctity of life from conception to the Gospel: http://www.linacre.org/atheol.html The document is only indirectly concerned with the question of abortion, but it is still on point for the most part. They say it better than I can, so I'll shut up. I've no wish to be moralizing bore. I'll leave that to Republicans.

- timteeter

May 17, 2012 at 11:18pm

Timteeter, the key sentences in the Vatican's letter would appear to be these: "The documentation reveals that, while there has been a great deal of work on the part of LCWR promoting issues of social justice in harmony with the Church’s social doctrine, it is silent on the right to life from conception to natural death, a question that is part of the lively public debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States. Further, issues of crucial importance to the life of Church and society, such as the Church’s Biblical view of family life and human sexuality, are not part of the LCWR agenda in a way that promotes Church teaching. Not exactly "Make my day!" But the Vatican doesn't do pugnacious. However, my reading of his comment is that Wills was summing up this document and making a polemical point, and the point was about authority and hypocrisy rather than a theological point about sin or not-sin. That's really all I was trying to say. Elaborating my own point a little here -- and I don't think you and I are completely at odds over this -- I'd say that while the pithiness of Wills' phrasing is a matter of subjective judgement at the end, the basic thrust of his remarks seems justified in that the LCWR is being indicted for having, in the Vatican's eyes, the wrong set of priorities. The Vatican and the American bishops want abortion abortion abortion all day long (and what's with the euthanasia deal? Is that the Tea Party's death panels or what?) and the nuns want social justice. The Vatican has to concede that the latter is an appropriate focus for pastoral work but wants to bring the hammer down on anything that pushes the envelope on women or sexuality. Fine, say I, but the chain of sexual abuse scandals across the U.S. and Europe (so far) and the long history of cover-ups has not faded from people's minds and all that makes an extremely unconvincing backdrop to tub-thumping and lecturing the LCWR on "family life and human sexuality." The Vatican appears to be sublimely unaware of the ironies here.

- ironyroad

May 18, 2012 at 1:38pm

irony, why do you and others keep supposing that I'm defending the Vatican? When I hear "the Vatican," the first thing that comes to my mind is "the pope's cool digs" and Tom Lehrer's Vatican Rag. If a bunch of nuns want to concentrate on social concerns, I say good for them. My only—repeat only—beef here is with Garry Wills, who has defined "the Gospel" in ways I find untenable. Specifically, he appears to believe that it is a stretch to find a real or implied condemnation of abortion in (whatever he means by) "the Gospel." I don't. I should add that, while we can all try to read Wills' mind, a brief survey of Catholic pro-choice websites suggests that my reading of his remarks is correct—it is apparently a commonplace among prochoice Catholics to assert that the Bible has little or nothing to say about abortion. Sorry, but I just don't buy it, for reasons I have already elaborated or linked to. I would be happy, whether in a Bible study or over drinks at McSorley's, to discuss any of the other issues raised in this thread, but please don't lump me with Curia until they give me a red hat.

- timteeter

May 18, 2012 at 3:06pm

timteeter, having now both limited our limitations, I see what you mean, and I wasn't supposing what you suppose I was supposing. Morbid equine whipping isn't what I want to do, either. Otherwise, were I in your neck of the woods, your offer would be tempting. McSorley's I mean, not Bible study.

- ironyroad

May 18, 2012 at 3:19pm

Karl is unconscious, he is so non-transparent to himself. Above he poses as a consequentialist, writing that actions and not motivations matter. This from someone who swears a blue streak at commenters here and presumably elsewhere, as well. I must say that I think the nuns under assault by the Vatican would much prefer my company to Karl's. I don't believe that FU would go down well with them.

- liberalref

May 18, 2012 at 4:44pm