Statement of the U.S. Bishops:
Bishops respond to House Speaker Pelosi's misrepresentation of Church teaching against abortion
WASHINGTON--Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the U.S. Bishops Committee for Pro-Life Activities, and Bishop William E. Lori, chairman of the U.S. Bishops Committee on Doctrine, have issued the following statement:
In the course of a Meet the Press interview on abortion and other public issues on August 24, 2008, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi misrepresented the history and nature of the authentic teaching of the Catholic Church against abortion.
The Church has always taught that human life deserves respect from its very beginning and that procured abortion is a grave moral evil. In the Middle Ages, uninformed and inadequate theories about embryology led some theologians to speculate that specifically human life capable of receiving an immortal soul may not exist until a few weeks into pregnancy. While in canon law these theories led to a distinction in penalties between very early and later abortions, the Church's moral teaching never justified or permitted abortion at any stage of development.
These mistaken biological theories became obsolete over 150 years ago when scientists discovered that a new human individual comes into being from the union of sperm and egg at fertilization. In keeping with this modern understanding, the Church has long taught that from the time of conception (fertilization), each member of the human species must be given the full respect due to a human person, beginning with respect for the fundamental right to life.
More information on the Church's teaching on this issue can be found in our brochure "The Catholic Church is a Pro-Life Church www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/abortion/teaching.shtml <http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/abortion/teaching.shtml> .
Background on history of Church's teaching re: Abortion
Respect for Unborn Human Life: The Church's Constant Teaching
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law (No. 2271).
Because some public figures have denied this claim, it is worth reviewing the facts:
- From earliest times, Christians sharply distinguished themselves from the surrounding pagan culture by rejecting abortion and infanticide. The earliest widely used documents of Christian teaching and practice after the New Testament, the Didache ( Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) and Letter of Barnabas, condemned both practices, as did the early Church councils.
- Knowledge of human embryology was of course very limited until recent times. Many Christian thinkers accepted the biological theory of pagan philosophers like Aristotle (4th century BC), who thought a process was needed over time to turn the unformed or passive matter from a woman's body into a being that could receive a specifically human form or soul.
(The active formative power for this process was thought to come entirely from the man -- the existence of the human ovum [egg], like so much of basic biology, was unknown.)
- This Aristotelian theory came to the attention of Christians through the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. Here Jewish scholars influenced by Greek philosophy inserted Aristotle's distinction between the formed and unformed fetus into a passage about accidentally causing a woman to miscarry, to say that the penalty for homicide applied here only if the fetus was formed (Ex. 20: 21-23). This faulty translation led some Christians to think the theory of delayed ensoulment had support in Scripture.
- However, this mistaken biological theory never changed the Church's conviction that all abortion is gravely wrong. At the very least, early abortion was seen as attacking a being with a human destiny, being prepared by God to receive an immortal soul (cf. Jeremiah 1:5: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you [emphasis added] ).
- This rejection of abortion at every stage was maintained by the greatest bishop-theologian of the Church's first millennium, St. Augustine. He knew of the formed/unformed distinction and (relying on the faulty Septuagint translation) thought it was implied in the Old Testament. But he also held that human knowledge of biology was very limited, and he wisely warned against misusing it to risk committing homicide. He added that as God has the power to make up all human deficiencies or unformed features in the Resurrection, no one could presume that the earliest aborted children would be excluded from enjoying eternal life with God.
- St. Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the greatest theologian of the Church's second millennium, made more extensive use of Aristotle's theories and refined his delayed ensoulment theory. But he also rejected abortion as gravely wrong at every stage, observing that it is a “sin against nature to reject God's gift of a new life.
- During these centuries Aristotle's distinction did influence the setting of penalties for an abortion in Church law. In this legal context the benefit of any factual doubt had to be given to the individual, and objective proof was needed that a new human life had existed and then been destroyed in a given case. In an age before pregnancy tests and ultrasound,quickening (the felt movement of the child in the mother's womb) was the first evidence of life and thought to coincide roughly with formation (ensoulment). Penalties were more severe for an abortion after this stage, though abortion at all stages continued to be seen as a grave moral evil.
- From the 13th to 19th centuries, some moral theologians also speculated about rare and difficult cases where they thought an abortion before formation might be morally justified. But these theories were discussed and then always rejected, as the Church refined and reaffirmed its understanding of abortion as an intrinsically evil act that can never be morally right.
- In 1827, with the discovery of the human ovum, the mistaken biology of Aristotle was overthrown. Scientists increasingly understood that the union of sperm and egg at conception produces a new living being that is distinct from both mother and father. Modern genetics demonstrated that this individual is, at the outset, distinctively human, with the inherent and active potential to mature into a human fetus, infant, child and adult. By 1869, canon law was revised to drop the obsolete and inaccurate distinction between the formed and unformed fetus.
- Secular laws against abortion were being reformed at the same time and in the same way, based on secular medical experts realization that no other doctrine appears to be consonant with reason or physiology but that which admits the embryo to possess vitality from the very moment of conception (American Medical Association, Report on Criminal Abortion, 1871).
- Modern science has not changed the Church's constant teaching against abortion, but has underscored how important and reasonable it is, by confirming that the life of each individual of the human species begins with the earliest embryo.
- Given the scientific fact that a human life begins at conception, the only moral norm needed to understand the Church's opposition to abortion is the principle that each and every human life has inherent dignity, and thus must be treated with the respect due to a human person. This teaching is the foundation for the Church's social doctrine, including its teachings on war, the use of capital punishment, euthanasia, health care, poverty and immigration. Conversely, to claim that some human lives do not deserve respect or should not be seen as persons (based on changeable factors such as age, condition, location, or lack of mental or physical abilities) is to deny the very idea of inherent human rights. Such a claim undermines respect for the lives of many vulnerable people both before and after birth.
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