Was excommunication the right response to the Arizona abortion?

A moral theologian weighs in on the response to the abortion that took place at a Catholic hospital. 

Guest blog by Patrick McCormick

Bishop Olmsted and the Vatican claim that every
"direct" abortion is always wrong. They base their assertion on one
traditional reading of the moral principle of "double effect," a
reading condemning every physically "direct" attack on innocent human
life, but permitting "indirect" abortions (like excising a tumor from
a pregnant woman with uterine cancer) when it is the only way to save the life
of the mother.

Still, for more than 40 years a growing consensus of
Catholic moral theologians have questioned this narrow reading of the principle
of "double effect" and argued that the bishop and Vatican's absolute
moral distinction between "direct" and "indirect" abortions
does not hold. As the late Father Bernard Haering argued, the tragic termination
of a pregnancy to save the life of the mother is justified not by the
"indirectness" of the medical procedure, but by the fact that the
grave threat to the mother's life can be resolved by no other means. No one
"intends" to kill a fetus in this case, only to save the one life that
can be saved.

Catholic teaching allows for "direct" killing
in self-defense (even when a mentally disturbed assailant is not culpable of
any guilt or sin), and for the death penalty–in both cases when and only when
there is no other means of resolving a grave and imminent threat to life. In
light of these positions and the widespread, longstanding, and expertly
informed dissent from the teaching that every "direct" abortion is
immoral, it is difficult to be certain that Sister Margaret McBride and the
Ethics Committee of St. Joseph's were wrong. Many Catholics and moral
theologians are no doubt persuaded that they were not.

Bishop Olmsted also reports that, according to Canon Law,
anyone formally cooperating in a "direct" abortion incurs an
automatic excommunication, so Sister Margaret McBride and the unnamed Catholic
members of the Ethics Committee and medical team that conducted the abortion
are now excommunicated for having dissented from official Catholic moral
teaching on abortion, raising at least two questions.

First, if the purpose of excommunication–the most
extreme moral and spiritual punishment available to Catholic pastors–is to
address the threat of public scandal or oppose attacks on human dignity and
life, why then is excommunication not used to stem the scandal of priest
pedophilia or to oppose Catholics who support unjust wars, government
sanctioned torture, or the indiscriminate use of weapons of mass destruction?
Is this punishment, as many now suspect, reserved for offenses associated with
women and sexual morality?

Second, if Sister Margaret McBride, the Ethics Committee of
St. Joseph's Catholic hospital, and leading administrators of its parent group,
Catholic HealthCare West, along with a majority of practicing Catholic moral
theologians question or dissent from official Catholic teaching condemning all
"direct" abortions to save the life of the mother, is excommunication
really an adequate or even serious response?

Bishop Olmsted and the Vatican
have a grave pastoral problem. Catholic moral teaching on this question has
become unpersuasive (even unintelligible) to a large number of committed and
educated Catholics, and excommunicating a nun will not resolve this pastoral
problem, only worsen it, for it suggests that the bishop and the Vatican do not
have clear, cogent, and persuasive answers to tough moral questions. That is not
"good news." It is a scandal.


Guest blogger Patrick McCormick, S.T.D. is the Culture in Context columnist for U.S. Catholic and a professor of Religious Studies at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. He earned his Doctorate in Sacred Theology from Gregorian University in Rome. 

Guest blog posts express the views of the author. They do not necessarily
reflect the views of
U.S. Catholic, its editors, or the
Claretians.