Throughout church history and in fact all of human history people have had their own unique ideas of how life should work and function in reality. This is especially true of Catholics in particular. Certain Catholics have had thoughts about how Catholic teaching should reflect theology and morality that ended up being different then what the actual faith they professed to be a part of actually taught. Folks such as Arius, Martin Luther, Fr. Charles E. Coughlin, Fr. Leonard Edward Feeney, and Jamie L Manson of Catholics For Choice.
Recently Jamie got together her group CFC together to go and counter protest against pro-lifers at the Catholic center for the March for Life 2022, The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception – the largest Roman Catholic Church in North America. This is what happen.
During a pro-life vigil Mass ahead of the March for Life, a group of self-proclaimed “Catholics for Choice” projected massive pro-abortion signs on the exterior of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
While faithful Catholics prayed for the unborn inside at the annual National Prayer Vigil for Life, the pro-abortion group remained outside the Mass. They came prepared with several pre-designed signs and a projector that would mark the sacred building with messages advocating more abortions.
“PRO-CHOICE CATHOLICS, YOU ARE NOT ALONE,” read one projection. “1 IN 4 ABORTION PATIENTS IS CATHOLIC,” read another. And a third: “STOP STIGMATIZING, START LISTENING.”
‘Catholics for Choice’ Put Pro-Abortion Signs on Cathedral During Pro-Life Vigil – CatholicVote org
Who Are Catholics For Choice? Here is how they describe themselves.
Everyone deserves equal access to the full range of reproductive healthcare services, including safe and legal abortion. The majority of Catholics believe that abortion should be legal. When navigating Catholic teachings on abortion, your conscience is the ultimate authority.
Now what does the church teach on the topic of abortion?
Official Catholic Teaching: CCC 2271 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:
You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.
God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.
That’s pretty darn direct.
What is the Church teaching about conscience?
CCC 1783 Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened. A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgments according to reason, in conformity with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator. The education of conscience is indispensable for human beings who are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings.
1786 Faced with a moral choice, conscience can make either a right judgment in accordance with reason and the divine law or, on the contrary, an erroneous judgment that departs from them.
So, Catholics For Choice advocates for a position that is against Catholic teaching. If you say you belong to a particular religion, you say you belong to something higher than yourself. So if you decide that your particular faith’s teaching on such and such really isn’t true or worth listening to, and you go out of your way to officially teach that as a viable option for belief, you’ve basically become a leader of a different religious worldview without officially leaving your religion.
You as a mere layperson can’t just change the current belief system because you think the official teaching is against your own convictions of how things should be run. Joe Jehovah’s Witnesses can’t suddenly teach that receiving blood or celebrating Christmas is AOK because he thinks those teachings are unreasonable and wants a visit from St. Nick on Christmas Eve. Jane Doe Mormon can’t suddenly decide that it is not just fine to drink coffee and beer just because 1 out of 4 mormon’s might drink them.
Catholics For Choice makes as much sense as..
- Catholics For Polygamy
- Catholics For Racism
- Catholics For Clown Masses
- Catholics For Bashing Pope Francis
- Catholics For The Symbolic Presence In The Bread.
The last one you could broadcast on a church, that just one-third of U.S. Catholics agree with the church that the Eucharist is body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. And so what? The church should just then change the teaching? If the church was discovered to be mostly racists, should we then change the church teaching to reflect that?
Jamie went on to say…
We went to the Basilica to draw attention to the fact that women in the church have abortions. These are likely the women who serve as his lectors and Eucharistic ministers; who sew his vestments and wash his dishes. To ignore them is to betray them.
To which Fr. Matthew P. Schneider LC responded…
Catholics have committed all kinds of sins. The proper response to sinning is to go to confession, not claim the sin is not a sin. There are things the Church should discuss, but I see little point in rehashing a teaching that has been consistent for at least 1900 years.
Catholic President Joe Biden also disagrees with the church’s official position on abortion. Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said he wouldn’t deny him communion. This caused a lot of folks to blow their stack. But he also said this in regards to what happen at the cathedral.
“The true voice of the Church was only to be found within The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception last evening. There, people prayed and offered the Eucharist asking God to restore a true reverence for all human life. Those whose antics projected words on the outside of the church building demonstrated by those pranks that they really are external to the Church and they did so at night – John 13:30.”
I also found this article from America insightful and interesting.
I know that not all Catholics who are pro-choice are willing to commit sacrilege to get their message across. But what happened last night isn’t helping. Using a church as a mere backdrop on which to project messages violates a fundamental trust we must maintain in one another.
It is no secret that many Catholics are pro-choice, President Joe Biden most prominent among them. But those who gathered inside the basilica for the vigil, praying for our government to respect the sanctity of life, certainly were not likely to be convinced by the antics.
Repeating church dogma is unlikely to get everyone on the same page. Despite what some may claim, the church’s position on abortion is not evolving. Life begins at conception, a sacred moment when a unique set of DNA unites to create a new human being. Leaders of the church have proclaimed this position for years but have nevertheless failed to convince the many Catholics who support abortion rights.
J.D. Long-García The Catholics for Choice basilica stunt was shocking. Sacrilege often is. January 21, 2022, America Magazine
To sum up what I’ve been talking about in this particular article, you can’t change the teachings of a religion that you claim your a part of. Abortion is against Catholic teaching, so calling yourself Catholics For Choice is not logically possible. Saying abortion is OK when it is not is also denying the teaching authority of the church. If you want to start your own church, that’s one thing, but you can’t change a church started by God himself when he has given you no authority or revelation to so.
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