Garry Wills in the NYTimes

(forgive me if this has already been beaten to death in Blogdom, but I just got back, so give me a break.)

All I am saying is that the bishops have no special mandate from their office to supplant the individual conscience with some divine imperative. For them to say that this is a matter of theology is, simply, bad theological reasoning. If they, as citizens, wish to express their opinion on the natural-reason arguments, they have every right to do so. But that does not give them the right to deny others the same kind of arguing, on the same grounds. The subject of abortion is not a matter of church-state relations, since the bishops as church authorities have nothing distinctive to contribute to the discussion.

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