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 News from Around the Americas | May 2007 
Pope Causes Stir with the 'E-Word'
 Philip Pullella - Reuters
| | Brazilian soldiers stand guard as Pope Benedict visits Sao Paulo yesterday. The Pope has backed Mexican Church leaders who threatened to excommunicate Catholic lawmakers for voting to legalize abortion. (Tony Gentile/Reuters) |
Sao Paulo, Brazil - Pope Benedict's mere utterance of the E-word, excommunication, when talking about Roman Catholic politicians who support abortion has caused a stir in the Church and could strengthen the hand of conservatives.
Arriving in Brazil on his first visit to Latin America on Wednesday, the 80-year-old Pope said the Church "will not fail to insist on the need to take action to ensure that the family, the basic cell of society, is strengthened." This followed his remarks earlier in the week in which he backed Mexican Church leaders who have threatened to excommunicate Catholic lawmakers for voting to legalize abortion on demand in Mexico City.
"This excommunication" was not an arbitrary decision but one foreseen by the Church. "The killing of an innocent human baby is incompatible with being in communion with the body of Christ," the Pope said during a news conference on the plane taking him to Sao Paulo.
A Vatican spokesman later tried to play down the remarks, saying the Mexican bishops had not excommunicated anyone and the Pope was neither doing so nor threatening to.
But experts said Benedict may have seized the opportunity to send a message.
"What seems to be clear is that the Pope personally thinks that Catholic politicians who support abortion rights should not receive communion," John Allen, author of several books on the Catholic Church, said yesterday.
"This clearly emboldens bishops who have taken a hard line against Catholic pro-choice politicians but it remains to be seen if there will be a disciplinary follow- through or whether individual bishops still decide who can receive communion."
The Church teaches that life begins at the moment of conception and abortion is killing.
Church law says excommunication is self-inflicted by anyone who "procures" an abortion. While this has traditionally been interpreted to mean the woman and the person performing the abortion, there has been recent debate on whether this should be extended to anyone who helps her or legalized it.
During the 2004 presidential election, Catholics in the United States were divided over whether to support Democratic candidate John Kerry, a Catholic who backed abortion rights.
Some Catholics say they would not have an abortion but feel obliged to support a woman's right to choose. The same issue now haunts the campaign of Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor and a pro-choice Catholic, in his bid to be a Republican presidential candidate.
During the 2005 campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in Canada, Fred Henry, Bishop of Calgary, said if it were up to him he would excommunicate Paul Martin, the then-prime minister. The bishop added that Mr. Martin's political views clashed so severely with Church teachings he no longer deserved to receive Communion. Yesterday, conservative Catholics were thrilled to see the Pope simply use the word excommunication.
"Catholic politicians who think they can remain part of the Church after supporting abortion are putting a lie on top of the original offence against justice," said George Weigel, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington and a leading U.S. Catholic theologian.
The Vatican's official transcript of the Pope's comments did not fully correspond to his original words. It eliminated the "yes" in his initial response to whether he supported the excommunication threats as well as references to the Mexican bishops. Other changes were also made.
Spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said it was customary for the Vatican's Secretariat of State to "review and clean up" the Pope's unprepared remarks before publication. In advance of the Pope's visit, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian President, and Jose Gomes Temporao, his Health Minister, took issue with the Church's stance on abortion.
Mr. da Silva said the matter should be treated as a health concern because many Brazilian women die from clandestine abortions. He says he opposes abortion personally, but as Brazilian head of state he views it as a public health issue, because "otherwise it leads to the death of many girls in this country.? I know cases of girls who had their uterus perforated by a knitting needle" during an abortion.
The Brazilian government distributes millions of free condoms. |
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