{"id":7894,"date":"2004-02-20T15:36:07","date_gmt":"2004-02-20T15:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/word_from_rome_21.html"},"modified":"2004-02-20T15:36:07","modified_gmt":"2004-02-20T15:36:07","slug":"word_from_rome_21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/word_from_rome_21.html","title":{"rendered":"Word from Rome"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Allen has some thoughts from two moral theologians about the boundaries of a Catholic politician’s political support for abortion<\/a><\/p>\n

\nI put the question to Fr. Brian Johnstone, a moral theologian at Rome\u2019s Redemptorist-run Alphonsian Academy, and Fr. Robert Gahl, a philosopher at the Opus Dei-run Santa Croce University. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the hypothetical: Suppose a Catholic politician was firmly convinced of the church\u2019s teaching on abortion, and was personally involved in efforts to oppose abortion at the social and cultural level. The politician, for example, might give money from his own resources to support unwed mothers, might volunteer at counseling centers to help pregnant women explore options other than abortion, and would make public his opposition to abortion in all circumstances.<\/p>\n

At the same time, this politician is genuinely convinced that legal prohibition will backfire, causing an escalation in unsafe procedures whose impact will fall disproportionately on the poor, and may even result in more abortions as women are scared away from exploring their options for fear of legal fallout. In other words, the politician believes that effective prohibition of abortion may not be achieved through civil legislation.<\/p>\n

Is such a position defensible on the basis of Catholic moral principles?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat position could be argued,\u201d Johnstone said, emphasizing that he did not necessarily agree with it. He noted, however, that such a stance would be virtually impossible to reconcile with recent magisterial documents such as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith\u2019s Doctrinal Note on some questions regarding the participation of Catholics in political life.<\/p>\n

\u201cA politician may never foster laws that open the way to more abortions,\u201d Johnstone said. \u201cBut if a person is convinced that attempts to eliminate abortion by law are not feasible under present circumstances, and genuinely pursues other social means to accomplish that end, that could be judged coherent with Catholic moral thinking,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Gahl agreed, but placed two conditions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Allen has some thoughts from two moral theologians about the boundaries of a Catholic politician’s political support for abortion I put the question to Fr. Brian Johnstone, a moral theologian at Rome\u2019s Redemptorist-run Alphonsian Academy, and Fr. Robert Gahl, a philosopher at the Opus Dei-run Santa Croce University. Here\u2019s the hypothetical: Suppose a Catholic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWord from Rome - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/word_from_rome_21.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Word from Rome - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"John Allen has some thoughts from two moral theologians about the boundaries of a Catholic politician’s political support for abortion I put the question to Fr. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}