The Church is evil. Who’d have thunk it.

Hitler was never excommunicated.

Priorities: THEY DON’T HAS THEM

Hey, give the archbishop credit. He’s not excommunicating the girl, even though the little tart probably led her stepfather on. How merciful is that?

It’s just amazing to me that people can come out with pronouncements like this and expect to be taken seriously as moral authorities.

There really isn’t anything you can to evil like this, is there. 

Part of me would like to know how a defender of the church, say Dana The Pandagon Troll, would explain why this was good and proper, but another part of me realizes that nothing good could come from that knowledge.

If these incidents can’t convince Catholics (and really, christianists in general) to see the light, there’s nothing the rest of us can do to save them from their masochistic desire to live under somebody’s thumb in the name of “god”...

*sigh*

I am NOT defending the Catholic Church here.  But you need to distinguish between “excommunication” and “being forgiven”.

In doctrine, there’s only one unforgivable sin. It isn’t abortion, rape or murder.

Excommunication is an extreme form of censure. It is an exile from the church community, but can be forgiven.  It is a reaction from the Church *as* a community.

More to the point, there’s a set list of sins which have evolved as reasons for excommunication - they all centre around protecting the rights and privileges of the Church AS an entity, along with anti-abortion and protecting women from forced marriage.  Rape and murder ain’t on the list, unless you do it to a bishop or above.

Having abortion, and, for that matter, forced marriage on the list are anomalies.  Otherwise, it’s more akin to an immigration law for the Catholic Church.  In theory, excommunication “is the privation of all rights resulting from the social status of the Christian as such” - a murderer or rapist is still a *Christian* murderer or rapist; an abortionist can no longer be a Christian.  Look at it this way - very few acts will get an American’s nationality stripped away from them.

You can feel contempt for the Pope for trying to tell women what to do with their wombs, but I don’t think you should be feeling anger because murderers and rapists are not excommunicated.

I’m almost surprised that they didn’t try to weasel around it, since the church actually has some theology available for justifying the killing of fetuses as long as it’s just collateral damage, and it was clear that the 9-year-old’s life was in danger. But nah, not under this pope.

The father? He goes to confession and admits that he was tempted, just as Adam was by Eve. Promises not to willingly do it again, and he’s good…

If you grant the thesis “abortion is murder” then in fact, murder IS an excommunicationable offense.

Which means if they wouldn’t excommunicate someone for committing murder, they have no business excommunicating an abortionist. They are then literally affording a fetus more rights than the infant the moment after birth.

which is, incidentally, counterindicated by the bible.

I am NOT defending the Catholic Church here.

If you have to preface your comment with that, then it’s pretty obvious that you are and just won’t cop to it.

I’m getting tired of the argument I keep reading from apologists that the church isn’t actively excommunicating anyone; that the people involved invoked excommunication by their very act. As if the church had no agency in creating the list of excommunicate-able offenses in the first place. As if the church leaders in question have not chosen to go very public with this particular instance of excommunication. It has a “you made us do it” sort of vibe. Really, it seems to me like a wider systemic version of an abuse narrative.

The fact is that this incident highlights the bizarre priorities of the contemporary Catholic church. Phoenecian, you’re right, the abortion and forced marriage items on the list are anomalous. The next and most important question, which I’m noticing that apologists keep deflecting, is why do these particular anomalies exist. I see a theme in them, and I’m guessing the rest of us see it as well.

Phoenecian, I’m not ascribing any position one way or the other on this to you personally, btw. I do appreciate that the issue of excommunication is not well understood by the general public. But understanding better what the term actually means doesn’t seem to me to change the fundamental issue here. It’s about priorities. And it’s also about who the Catholic church is willing to use as a high-profile cultural whipping boy and who escapes public censure. One person’s alleged sins are allowed to fly under the radar. Another person’s alleged sins become the matter of public commentary. That’s the real world effect of excommunication, and it’s a problem.

Actually, Blue Fielder, it’s pretty safe to take PiatoR at his word on that one, even if it sounds insensitive to you. I don’t know that I agree that it’s the right thing to say right now, but I don’t think that he is or would be defending the church for this.

Okay,  even if you’re fucked up enough to believe that the rape of a child isn’t as “serious” as an abortion to save said child’s life, wouldn’t it logically follow that if this shitbag had kept his hands off the little girl in the first place, she never would have needed to have an abortion?

This isn’t the first time the Vatican has essentially called open season on the bodies of women and little girls. They made a big stink over abortion services for rape victims in Darfur, if I recall.

...allegedly raped

I’m rather disturbed by the fact that “allegedy” was placed before “rape”, as if a 9-year-old can consent to sex… a careful editor should have caught this.
On another note…
So, if an abortionist “murders” unborn “children”, they get excommunicated… but what about those who murder pregnant women? This makes the “you made us do it” theory rather stunted in its potency.
Furthermore, rape in and of itself is particularly heinous and should be at least punished legally with more severity than animal abuse/cruelty; rape of a child is even more heinous… not to mention the suspect is her STEPFATHER.
This whole “don’t punish the innocent child” bit is fallacious. Don’t 9-year-olds count as innocent children? I thought that humans are born unto sin…. I guess if they aren’t born they remain innocent, so if you look at it that way, aren’t abortionists doing the Church a favor?

The fact is that this incident highlights the bizarre priorities of the contemporary Catholic church. Phoenecian, you’re right, the abortion and forced marriage items on the list are anomalous. The next and most important question, which I’m noticing that apologists keep deflecting, is why do these particular anomalies exist.

I’ll take “Because the Popes saw them as particularly evil and weren’t consistent” for 10 points, Alex. You don’t get excommunicated for genocide, either - presumably no Pope has yet considered it a common enough problem to be worth throwing an inappropriate measure at.

I think the analogy with stripping a person of their citizenship is a good one, though.

Well, lets look at what the consequences of this are ... socially, emotionally,financially.

If it is little or no penalty outside of the limited stupid of the Church, then who cares - church gets major douchebag points, people kicked out are better off.

If it means no employment, social stigma, disenfranchisement, etc.  then we need to hold the church accountable for the douchebaggary.

That poor girl and her mom are better off away from the church. This isn’t a slam against individual Catholics or most local parishes, but the leadership - now, those guys are unapologetically at the head of a decrepit, decadent pedophile machine. The bastards responsible for this decision can rot among their treasures and Prada pajamas.

That poor girl and her mom are better off away from the church. This isn’t a slam against individual Catholics or most local parishes, but the leadership - now, those guys are unapologetically at the head of a decrepit, decadent pedophile machine. The bastards responsible for this decision can rot among their treasures and Prada pajamas.

which would totally be true in a culture with religious pluralism was whole heartedly embraced and enshrined as ironically sacrosanct.

Which Brazil is not. About all they have going for them is they were very good to the jews fleeing the inquisition 500 years ago.

being forced out of church can genuinely knock you to second class citizenship in THIS country if you happen to be in a strongly religious part of the country. it can no doubt be worse in countries where that whole “freedom FROM religion” thing hasn’t been solved with a “shut up, Liebermann.”

and that’s ignoring the fact that just because we find a belief in hell laughable doesn’t mean that those involved do. This is doubly for a child who was obviously religious enough that she was identified as Catholic.

You know what’s cool? Telling a 9 year old girl “You’re going to hell because your stepdaddy raped you and you got pregnant.” yeah, class acts.

Phoenician I don’t know where or when or if you went to catechism but you are seriously downplaying the severity of excommunication.

Excommunication is the Catholic death sentence condemning the excommunicated soul to hell. There is no personal salvation in the Catholic church anymore than there is a personal relationship to God. Salvation only comes through the sacraments. The excommunicated are denied the sacraments. There is no confession for the excommunicated, without confession there is no Eucharist. The excommunicated cannot do penance for their sins for penance only comes from within the church community which they are no longer a part of. At death the excommunicated soul will not receive Unction, Confession or Viaticum and they will not be buried on sacred ground. Without penance their souls will go to hell.

So that is the punishment dealt to the mother and the doctor.

The father who raped his nine-year-old daughter. Well, that’s a different story. He can still go to confession receive penance and the Eucharist. Depending on whether he goes to the Heavy Penance Priest or the Easy Penance Priest he has a clean soul after a dozen Hail Marys.

Don’t forget the Pope can absolve an excommunication or, perish the thought choose not to proceed with an excommunication.

O, and one other thing to chew on. Since members of the church are forbidden from associating with the excommunicated the girl is sinning when she is with her mother. Since Arch-Bishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho has already proven his hardassedness by going ahead with the Excommunication he can likely make that poor girl’s life even more miserable.

There is no defending this one Phoenician, It is a despicable move by two Bishops (the Bisop of Rome and the Bishop of Pernambuco) and a church which seems intent on joining the Mullahs in dragging the world back to the 13th Century.

Like I said on the previous thread, you don’t want to be part of a club like this.

which would totally be true in a culture with religious pluralism was whole heartedly embraced and enshrined as ironically sacrosanct.

In a country where it’s assumed everybody’s Catholic, nobody cares if you’re in or you’re out. The only people who go to church on a regular basis are weirdoes, elderly women, and the occasional parent trying to set a good example.

Ms Kate: If it is little or no penalty outside of the limited stupid of the Church, then who cares - church gets major douchebag points, people kicked out are better off.

Colorado Dave: Excommunication is the Catholic death sentence condemning the excommunicated soul to hell. There is no personal salvation in the Catholic church anymore than there is a personal relationship to God. Salvation only comes through the sacraments. The excommunicated are denied the sacraments. There is no confession for the excommunicated, without confession there is no Eucharist. The excommunicated cannot do penance for their sins for penance only comes from within the church community which they are no longer a part of. At death the excommunicated soul will not receive Unction, Confession or Viaticum and they will not be buried on sacred ground. Without penance their souls will go to hell.

Dave, meet Kate. Kate, meet Dave.

Kate: If it means no employment, social stigma, disenfranchisement, etc.  then we need to hold the church accountable for the douchebaggary.

You’re looking it as a social or legal penalty.  Again, I give the analogy with citizenship - it strips the person of their right to be considerd a Christian. If you’re a believer, then you’re in big big trouble. if, on the other hand, you consider the Pope a medieval thinking guy in a dress, it’s not all that exciting.

“a church which seems intent on joining the Mullahs in dragging the world back to the 13th Century”

QFT

Nice try Phoenician but you didn’t address my points.

People in the vatican are still fucking creepy, nutbags.  Film at 11.

Repeat daily.

which would totally be true in a culture with religious pluralism was whole heartedly embraced and enshrined as ironically sacrosanct. Which Brazil is not.

There likely will be social ramifications for the girl if she doesn’t attend a Catholic Church, but that doesn’t change the fact she’s better off without it.

The only way she and her mother could have remained part of the church is if that girl had risked her own life to bear the children of her rapist. The other option – to seek an abortion – is what got her mother and her doctor excommunicated, effectively cutting the girl off from that faith community as well.

And the Catholic Church did what it always seems to do in cases of pedophilia, excusing the perpetrator and punishing the victim. Whatever that little girl believes and fears right now, she’s still better off without that nonsense. 

I hope one day she will grow strong enough and bold enough to throw down, hauling those depraved, pompous, profligate old bastard church “leaders” – the ones responsible for this debacle, and their replacements – before the Brazilian court of public opinion to reveal them for the pathetic rape apologists they are.

I am NOT NOT NOT defending the church here. I think what they did is despicable.

Just one quibble about Brazil. While Brazil remains majority Catholic, evangelical and other Christian churches have made huge in-roads. Not being Catholic is not that unusual in Brazil.

How much of an issue this is for the girl depends mostly on how her family views the church and the ex-communication.

Okay, even if you’re fucked up enough to believe that the rape of a child isn’t as “serious” as an abortion to save said child’s life, wouldn’t it logically follow that if this shitbag had kept his hands off the little girl in the first place, she never would have needed to have an abortion?

Katie Joy, this was exactly my first though. How is the step-father not ultimately responsible for the abortion?

It parallels closely with what Amanda said in the comments of the Saletan post:

More data for my theory that unintended pregnancy is often a direct result of being unable to negotiate safe sex practices with men.

The Catholic Church perpetuates a patriarchal worldview with significant power inequalities between women and men. THEY need to take responsibility for their significant contributions to the abortion rate. Especially in this case, considering the Church’s history of child rape and how they “dealt” with that.

The Catholic Church cheered on the murdering, kidnapping and torturing right-wing military regimes in Brazil and the other Condor countries from the the 1960s to the 1980s. So why it has any credibility on “moral” questions there, or anywhere else, is a mystery to me.

This, friends, is yet another reason many Catholics have had it with the reign of Prada Papa Ratzi.

Catholics in the industrialised West, to be more precise. Although, with repulsive stunts like this, the Church is definitely risking its future in countries where rampant poverty, ignorance and tribalism can still provide a solid foundation for the Throne of Peter (or, indeed, any orthodox religious hierarchy).

There’s the rub, Gracchus.  The Church gets most of its money and holds most of its assets in the liberal First World.  It has most of its growth potential in conservative, reactionary parts of the Third World.  The real issue here is “why aren’t First World Catholics hurting them in the pocketbook”.  All those bulging collection envelopes suddenly becoming anorexic might be the one thing that prompts the Church to change.  Morality and decency and consistency won’t; like any other criminals they will respond better to blackmail than to reason or good.

I don’t know how the Catholic Church operates. If the mother submits her child to stepfatherly rape again to re-impregnate her, and nobody obtains an abortion for the child, can the mother earn the right to be re-communicated? Does she need to do this twice to offset the aborted twins? Does it need to be three times so that the good outweighs the bad?

(I’m glad my mom became disenchanted with the Catholic Church when I was 4, so I never had the slightest sense of Catholic identification. I don’t want any part of such a fucked-up woman-hating organization.)

You’re looking it as a social or legal penalty.  Again, I give the analogy with citizenship - it strips the person of their right to be considerd a Christian. If you’re a believer, then you’re in big big trouble. if, on the other hand, you consider the Pope a medieval thinking guy in a dress, it’s not all that exciting.

Well, that makes all the difference- you have the option of not believing in it after all! I’m sure now that was part of the Bishop’s thinking. “Yes, we’re damning that child’s mother to eternal hellfire, but at least we can console ourselves with the thought that neither she nor her daughter likely believes in our horseshit anyway. “

Piator…wow, just wow.

I take your post to basically say, “Sure, the excommunication rules are wrong and inconsistent, but they are what they are, and this bishop was just applying them farly, so why the criticism?”

I will never understand why someone as intelligent as you are can make such patently bad arguments. Let’s just say I give you that the bishop here is an unwilling arbiter of rules that he doesn’t agree with, but his hands are tied. (This is not the case, but I’ll give it to you, just for the sake of argument.)

We should STILL criticize the church. We should STILL rail gainst the excommunication. You say abortion is on the list in all cases? Then it’s a shitty rule and it needs to come off. You actually seem to AGREE it is a shitty rule, but your whole post is sort of a “well, whatchagonnado, the church has bad history to contend with and it’s all a big mire, and ahmirite?” Fine, the church is fucked up. We agree.

Now let’s DO something about it.

Fortunately, I don’t think that the Catholic church leaders represent the beliefs of all the members of the church, at least in the United States.  I know plenty of Catholics who have only two children (and use birth control), and my own mother was raised Catholic but has always been pro-choice.  If there were some way for the church to have leaders who represented the actual congregation, these kinds of things would not happen nearly as often.

Catgirl, they’d have to start by allowing the ordination of women and getting up to a 50/50 M/F split pretty quickly (if not 55/45—don’t women go to church more than men?). And ditching the celibacy thing, which is out of touch. And then they’ll need to have snowball fights in hell. With flying pigs.

You say abortion is on the list in all cases? Then it’s a shitty rule and it needs to come off.

Who cares about changing the rule? Fuck the church.

There’s somehow this ridiculous notion that Roman Catholicism is worth salvaging. Let it wither. Point out the inhumane practices, and laugh at the idiocy.  Change it? No. Better off helping people leave it.

Fuck that retrograde organization.

The real issue here is “why aren’t First World Catholics hurting them in the pocketbook”.  All those bulging collection envelopes suddenly becoming anorexic might be the one thing that prompts the Church to change.

It’s codependent behavior.  I had a priest who got a Masters doing research on just this very thing.  He came up with a solution that had all sorts of ways for the Church to listen to its people and respond to their real needs instead of just trying to boss them around.

He once had a homily where he said all the women who worked for the Church should take a week off, b/c there was no way that any Masses could be said without all the support work women do for the Church, mostly unpaid and definitely unrecognized.  He was prepared to hear from the Archbishop after that, but not one person complained.  No woman actually boycotted—I bleam the patriarchy—but no one disagreed with the facts.

People are raised to love the church and most of the people in a community are wonderful, so there are lots of social ties on top of the catechism that bind people to the Church.  What the Vatican does has little effect on most Catholics’ daily lives as parishioners.

As for enforcing the Vatican II reforms which made it crystal clear that priests are called to serve the Church and the Church is the people?  Papa Ratzi is following closely on JPII’s footsteps in trying to undo all of VII.  They certainly don’t believe they should be serving the people; they believe the people should be grovelling and kissing their rings.

Now, what happens when Bishops ignore wealthy parishes?  When a perverted Bishop continues to send his pedophile and embezzling conservative “Corrector” friends to run the wealthiest parish in the Chicago Archdiocese—despite the parish’s requests for a liberal priest?

Donations drop precipitously. 

Suddenly, an extremely liberal priest from a poor parish is elevated to the wealthy parish.

The hierarchy does respond to pressure put on its purse.  Parishes should demand their due more often, b/c they not only deserve it, they can get it.

Personally, I think the hierarchy is too corrupt, too greedy, and too power-hungry to be saved.  Vatican II was an anomaly (although it was the only Church I knew).  And because they refuse to serve the people and meet their needs, they become less and less relevant to people’s lives. 

American Catholics walk away.  They stop attending Mass regularly, become C&E;-ers, then stop altogether.  Protecting pedophiles only speeds up the process.

Again, as with the whole Williamson debacle, I’m glad I’m out.  I truly glad my children, especially my daughters, won’t be raised with a view that their lives are worthless .

The real issue here is “why aren’t First World Catholics hurting them in the pocketbook”.

I think that, slowly (and the Church knows all about “slowly”) they are getting hurt that way. I mean, before Ratzi decided to pull a Dick Cheney and select himself as the “best” candidate for Pope, the last prime contender was a black man from Africa—considering the Church’s history of racism and colonialism, quite a development, even though Arinze’s more conservative than JPII was.

I suspect Ratzi convinced the other cardinals that he could squeeze a few more years of collections out of aging Catholic League bigots in the U.S. before that well runs dry. In a decade, though, the Church’s main source of revenue will be a volume business of small collections in Latin America and Africa, and they’ll need a CEO who looks like the customers.

Nice try Phoenician but you didn’t address my points.

Thought I had. I’m not “downplaying the severity of excommunication”, just pointing out that the people angry at the Pope for not applying it to henious crimes don’t have the right grasp on it.

It’s still a signal to the community who DO buy into it that the person has committed an act that is irredeemable.

Actually, it explicitly *isn’t*.  The excommunicated *can* be redeemed.

Well, that makes all the difference- you have the option of not believing in it after all! I’m sure now that was part of the Bishop’s thinking. “Yes, we’re damning that child’s mother to eternal hellfire, but at least we can console ourselves with the thought that neither she nor her daughter likely believes in our horseshit anyway. “

If you believe that the Reverend Moon is the Messiah, then you’ve also got problems when the little sod starts telling you what to think as well.  Excommunication is a case of the Church actively exploiting the belief of its followers as a tool of social coercion - but my point is that it can’t be held at fault for not applying it to murderers.  Go right ahead in holding it in contempt for applying it to the kid and her mother.

I take your post to basically say, “Sure, the excommunication rules are wrong and inconsistent, but they are what they are, and this bishop was just applying them farly, so why the criticism?”

Then you are wrong.

I’m saying that excommunication is not the same as a secular penalty, and isn’t applied as a secular court would apply sanctions.  Being angry with teh Church for not excommunicatingt criminals shows a bad grasp on the concept.

I will never understand why someone as intelligent as you are can make such patently bad arguments

Have you considered that you’re reacting to your misunderstanding rather than my actual argument?

Again, I repeat the analogy with stripping away a person’s citizenship.

Does the US strip away the citizenship of convicted murderers and rapists?

Why are people criticising the Vatican for not excommunicating murderers and rapists?

I am NOT defending the Church’s actions as regards this pair, or in all their other fuckups and idiocies, or in general.  I AM stating that people don’t seem to have a good grasp on what excommunication actually is in their criticisms.

Catgirl, they’d have to start by allowing the ordination of women and getting up to a 50/50 M/F split pretty quickly (if not 55/45—don’t women go to church more than men?). And ditching the celibacy thing, which is out of touch.

As MAJeff says.  I don’t think you should be fighting to reform the institution; you should be fighting to keep people free of it.  Fuck it - let it wither due to its own inhumanity.

“excommunicatingt “

I like how PiaToR gave us the Ratzi pronunciation of “excommunicating”!

Thank you, thank you!  This has been episode 7 of “Cheesy Jokes”!  Buy the DVD!

Being angry with teh Church for not excommunicatingt criminals shows a bad grasp on the concept.

Except NO ONE here is angry at the church for not excommunicatng criminals.

We are angry that the church has stated that an abortion to save the life of a child is worse action than raping said child.

THAT is what we are angry about. Try to stay on point.

Just to clarify something—the 9-year-old girl was not excommunicated.

And this case is actually what has pushed me over the edge from considering myself a “non-practicing Catholic” to a “former Catholic.”

How do good people stay with the Church?  Because my church (locally, I mean) didn’t involve excommunications, intrusions into people’s private lives, preaching against birth control, abortion, or premarital sex.  When I told my (very Catholic, very pro-life) mother that the Church’s poicies in Latin America prevented the use of methotrexate to end a tubal pregnancy, her response was that she didn’t know any priests who would condemn the use of methotrexate.  She probably does not.  I doubt I do either.  For me, growing up, the church was a pro-intellectual environment where priests (and hey, nuns even got to give the occasional talk, usually they were missionaries, and the talks weren’t sermons, but still) would discuss the many possible interpretations of various scriptures, love for fellow man, taking care of the poor, spiritual growth, avoiding pride and a lot of other topics that seemed aimed at keeping us focused on being better people.  Because Catholics aren’t literalists and my Sunday School teachers taught “age appropriate” material, we didn’t read much of the bloody stuff in the bible.  Whenever we did come across it, the response from adults was usually, well, times were different, that was before Jesus, blah, not literally true, blah.  I do not remember ever being afraid of going to Hell.  So for me, growing up Catholic in my community was an overwhelmingly positive experience.  (I realize that other parts of the country are not as free-wheeling as my own.)

The church’s hardened stance against abortion in the late 19th Century and the disastrous adoption of Humana Vitae in the 70’s have wrought much of this current damage.  (Humana Vitae solidified the Church’s position against birth control, although many Catholics thought the prohibition was about to be reversed, because a panel on the subject voted overwhelmingly to reverse, and even when the pope added 15 bishops to the mix to bring the proles in line, 9 of them ended up supporting contraception, 3 voted against, and 3 abstained.)  So we now live in a world where 97% of American Catholic Women have used birth control at least once in their lives, and the support for birth control among even Latin American Catholics, who are accounted conservative, tops 80%.

I think it is easy for First-World Catholics to remain Catholic because it is comfortable for us.  Because the Church does not control our world.  But no matter how much I admire, respect, and just plain like the parish priests I grew up with, I cannot continue to support an organization that does so much harm because of its contraceptive polices, in third world countries, to Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

Essie,

Let me put it this way.  Even if the 9-year-old girl had carried to term, and her stepfather had been convicted of molesting her, he would not be excommunicated.  I think that is PIATOR’s point—just because the stepfather is a criminal doesn’t mean he normally would be excommunicated.  So this isn’t hypocrisy, the stepfather isn’t getting special consideration, which doesn’t make it any less wrong, but bears considering.  (After all, if the bishop was breaking the general rules about excommunication, that would speak volumes.  As he isn’t, it says more about the rules and structure and their corruption than the bishop who is—still problematic for enforcing them under such awful circumstances.)

Now, do I absolutely agree that if you go around excommunicating people for abortion, you sure as heck should go around excommunicating them for murdering adults or raping children.  Absolutely.  But of course, I don’t think abortion is a sin anyways, so I wouldn’t excommunicate those who procure/perform them anyways.

Ismone, I think it is YOU who is missing the point.

The point, nay, The Point (in big shiny capital letters for everyone who doesn’t get this) is that if ANYONE needed to be excommunicated for this abortion, it needed to be the man who knowingly impregnated a child who could not carry to term. HE is responsible for the “death” of the potential babies, NOT the mother, not the daughter, not the doctors.

The Point is that saying that an abortion on the part of a loving mother who is just trying to save her child is “worse” than raping a girl in such a way that she then ALSO has to go through the trauma of an abortion is EVIL.

Okay? Are we clear? We are saying that the Catholic Church is being Evil. Nothing about excommunication rules or whether rapists should ALL be excommunicated or just the child rapist ones. You are misunderstanding - on purpose? - and it’s pointless to argue in bad faith that this is just a bunch of outrage that the CC doesn’t do something to solve this whole rape thing.

IOW, the CC is (in typical patriarchy fashion) treating pregnancy as a female-only condition.

It’s not the fault of her rapist for impregnating her, because pregnancy is a female issue only. Women can keep from getting pregnant (or not, as the case may be with the CC doctrine), and they can choose to keep the baby or drop it off at the local nunnery for adoption somewhere. Or they can die from the pregnancy, if things go bad.

But all this happens apart from men, apart from any action on their part. Women get pregnant; men don’t MAKE women (or children) pregnant.

The CC statement here COULD have been to excommunicate the man for causing an abortion. He knowingly impregnated a child against her will, knowing that the baby would 100% die. By the CC standards, he is a rapist, a murderer, AND he instigated an abortion.

They chose not to do this. They chose not to cop out and call this situation (rightfully) complicated. No, no, they decided, in their wisdom, to condemn the mother to hell.

We must ask ourselves why they condemned the mother and not the father, when he is certainly far more culpable for the abortion. Our answer is that BECAUSE he is a man, he has the privilege to insert his sperm where he sees fit and walk away from any consequences. Because he did not cause the pregnancy, he did not cause the abortion. Because WOMEN cause pregnancies, they also cause abortions.

The only reason they didn’t excommunicate the girl is because they realized that even THAT would be too, too far.

The father should be in jail.  I don’t care about excommunicating him, because that’s just silly fairy stories anyway.  He should be in jail, and get treatment for his mental illness that led him to even consider doing what he did.

In a way I’m glad the Bishop excommunicated the mom and doc and made such a big deal out of it.  The more Organized Religion gets revealed as the protection racket it is, the sooner people will find other ways of dealing with life.  Hopefully in a more rational, realistic manner than praying to sky fairies.

Shit like this makes me want to buy an island and turn it into a haven for refugees from religious persecution.  (Not that I have the money to, but fuck!wouldthatbecool.)

Does the US strip away the citizenship of convicted murderers and rapists?

yes, PiatoR. we do.

and thieves and thugs and drug users, too.

a single felony conviction permanently strips a whole host of rights. Voting and many poverty relief programs are by statute stripped. there are also defacto rights that get stripped, mostly employment related. a whole host of rules of the bill of rights (namely free association and protections against self incrimination) are waived for years or even in perpetuity as a condition of being allowed out of prison.

We don’t CALL it “stripping them of their citizenship” but when you remove benefits of being a citizen, it is the same thing.

Whether or not this is just is a different discussion, but yes, we do strip citizenship rights from convicts.

karpad…they may lose certain rights, but they are not made stateless.

karpad…they may lose certain rights, but they are not made stateless.

Which is beside the point, because the analogy was merely a distraction. Again, this isn’t about OMG THEY DON’T EXCOM CRIMINALS. It’s about the hatred of women in the church.

It’s about the DEFIANCE. The mother and the doctors are being excommunicated because they are openly DEFYING the church. After Roe vs Wade, the church started seriptitious campaigns to undermine the US government position, since they considered the decision a slap in the face of their control over women—I prefer to think of R v W as a long series of nails in the coffins of many male hierarchies.

Many, many of the anti-choice organizations don’t necessarily realize how much of their funding comes indirectly from the catholic church.