The World of Religions, May-June 2009 —
The excommunication pronounced by the Archbishop of Recife against the mother and medical team who performed an abortion on the 9-year-old Brazilian girl, who was raped and pregnant with twins, has sparked an outcry in the Catholic world. Many faithful, priests, and even bishops have expressed their indignation at this disciplinary measure, which they consider excessive and inappropriate. I too reacted strongly, highlighting the flagrant contradiction between this brutal and dogmatic condemnation and the Gospel message, which advocates mercy, attention to people, and transcending the law through love. Once the emotion has subsided, it seems important to me to return to this affair, not to add to the indignation, but to try to analyze with perspective the fundamental problem it reveals for the Catholic Church.
Faced with the emotion aroused by this decision, the Brazilian Episcopal Conference attempted to minimize this excommunication and to exempt the girl's mother from it, under the pretext that she had been influenced by the medical team. But Cardinal Batista Re, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, was much clearer, explaining that the Archbishop of Recife was ultimately only recalling canon law. This law stipulates that anyone who performs an abortion places themselves de facto outside the communion of the Church: "Whoever procures an abortion, if the effect follows, incurs excommunication latae sententiae" (Canon 1398). No one needs to officially excommunicate him: he has excommunicated himself by his act. Certainly, the Archbishop of Recife could have avoided adding to the hype by loudly recalling canon law, thus provoking a worldwide controversy, but this in no way resolves the fundamental problem that has scandalized so many of the faithful: how can a Christian law—which, moreover, does not consider rape to be an act sufficiently serious to justify excommunication—condemn people who try to save the life of a raped little girl by having her have an abortion? It is normal for a religion to have rules, principles, values, and to strive to defend them. It is understandable, in this case, that Catholicism, like all religions, is hostile to abortion. But should this prohibition be enshrined in an inviolable law, which provides for automatic disciplinary measures, ignoring the diversity of concrete cases? In this, the Catholic Church distinguishes itself from other religions and other Christian denominations, which have no equivalent to canon law, inherited from Roman law, and its disciplinary measures. They condemn certain acts in principle, but they also know how to adapt to each particular situation and consider that transgression of the norm sometimes constitutes a "lesser evil." This is so evident in the case of this Brazilian girl. Abbé Pierre said the same thing about AIDS: it is better to fight the risk of transmitting the disease through chastity and fidelity, but for those who cannot do so, it is better to use a condom than to transmit death. And it must also be remembered, as several French bishops have done, that the pastors of the church practice this theology of the "lesser evil" on a daily basis, adapting to particular cases and accompanying people in difficulty with mercy, which often leads them to break the rule. In doing so, they are only implementing the Gospel message: Jesus condemns adultery in itself, but not the woman caught in the act of adultery, whom the zealots of religious law want to stone, and to whom he addresses these words without appeal: "Let he who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her" (John 8). Can a Christian community that intends to be faithful to the message of its founder, as well as to remain audible in a world increasingly sensitive to the suffering and complexity of each individual, continue to apply disciplinary measures in this way without discernment? Should it not recall, at the same time as the ideal and the norm, the need to adapt to each specific case? And above all, bear witness that love is stronger than the law?