Tag Archives: Brazilian excommunications

Amy Welborn rightly points out that when it comes to the Anglo-Saxon secular media’s reporting on things Catholic, especially in non-English speaking countries, the whole picture is rarely given the first time around.  Indeed, we were lead to believe that the mother of the girl and the medical personnel had desired an abortion from day one, and that a “hasty” Archbishop Cardoso Sobrinho (as his own fellow Archbishop Fisichella labelled him) relished the opportunity to drop an  excommunication on them “like an axe.”

In such cases, I personally always appreciate details and firsthand accounts.  While the story is a difficult one, where the rubber of the Church’s moral teaching really hits the road of the world’s opinion, it is only fair to hear the words of those involved.

Amy provides a link to John Smeaton, who reports the point of view of Archbishop Cardoso Sobrinho, and, to be fair, of one of the doctors who performed the abortion.

And what about the biological father of the nine-year old girl?  Amy also links to a Catholic News Agency article that mentions his involvement, as does the website of the French diocese of Frejus-Toulon.  This latter includes a letter from Bishop Dominique Rey, who had just returned from a trip to Brazil, and a testimony from Fr. Rodrigues, the pastor of the girl and her family.  I have provided an English translation of Fr. Rodrigues’ testimony, which is certainly well worth reading.

The gist of these latter sources of information is twofold: that “Carmen’s” biological mother and father, as well as some medical personnel, were originally against the abortion, and that the sad situation of “Carmen” has been used by the pro-abortion lobbies of Brazil as an opening for manifesting the need to liberalize the abortion laws of that country.  But I would add not only: the situation itself has been exploited by the media to attack and/or ridicule the Catholic Church’s “tough stance” on abortion, as Tom Peters predicted way back when the news first came out.

What is truly sad in all this, however, is the lack of unanimity in the Church’s pastors, as the ever-informed Sandro Magister points out (kudos to Matthew Sherry for his translations of this invaluable source of information).  Archbishop Fisichella’s intervention in L’Osservatore Romano is of course the most egregious example.  In such a situation, one might wonder what the reaction of Pope Benedict has been to this whole thing.  The Italian newspaper La Stampa seemed to think that this was hinted at when the Pope spoke these words in his discourse to the political and civil leaders of Luanda:

I must also mention a further area of grave concern: the policies of those who, claiming to improve the “social edifice”, threaten its very foundations. How bitter the irony of those who promote abortion as a form of “maternal” healthcare! How disconcerting the claim that the termination of life is a matter of reproductive health (cf. Maputo Protocol, art. 14)!

While the jumping to conclusions of La Stampa may have been quite irresponsible (in that it is very likely that Pope Benedict did not have the Brazilian incident in mind at all), the same newspaper’s self-correction, so to speak, in a following article reporting the “modifications” of spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi is very confusing as well:

He was absolutely not speaking about therapeutic abortion, he did not say that it always has to be refused: the Pope is against the concept of reproductive health that broadly introduces abortion as a means of birth control.

One wonders where Fr. Lombardi learned theology.  At least the words of a former Pope should have given him pause.

I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written Word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.
No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the Law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself, and proclaimed by the Church.

According to Sandro Magister, Fr. Lombardi also referred to Archbishop Fisichella’s intervention:

In this regard, the considerations of Archbishop Rino Fisichella apply, when he lamented in ‘L’Osservatore Romano’ the hasty declaration of excommunication by the archbishop of Recife. No extreme case should obscure the true meaning of the remarks by the Holy Father, who was referring to something very different.

All in all, it would be nice if the pastors of the Church could agree on this whole matter.  Officials in Rome, far away from the situation, are saying that Archbishop Sobrinho was not acting pastorally.  Those bishops and priests who had any contact with the situation think the contrary (even excommunication is a pastoral remedy).  The former go even further and begin to blur the lines on abortion.  The latter hold firm to the principle that we may never intend direct killing of the innocent.

Proving once more that pastoral-ness should not be identified with “progressivism.”

In addition to an excellent letter from its bishop, Dominique Rey, who had recently returned from a visit to Brazil, the French diocese of Frejus-Toulon has posted the testimony of Fr. Rodrigues, the Pastor of the nine-year-old girl and her family.  My own translation of the French version of his testimony (which I imagine is itself a translation of the Portuguese version) is below:

Testimony of Fr. Rodrigues, Pastor of Alagoinha

“What the press doesn’t tell you.”

10 March 2009

Our village was shaken by tragic news: a nine-year old child, victim of sexual abuse by her stepfather, was pregnant with twins.  Her older sister, age 13, had suffered the same physical abuse.  This horrible story had been going on for almost three years.

When the council of Alagoinha discoverer the facts, it tried to put everything in place to help the children and the parents.  On February 27, the court entrusted the children to the Medical Institute of Caruaru in the state of Pernambuco.  Some other complementary tests were performed (by sexologists, psychologists) afterwards at the Children’s Medical Insitute of Recife.  It was at this place that the victim met a social worker by the name of Karolina Rodrigues, and her colleague Marie-José Gomes.  This latter refused the hypothesis of abortion in the name of her Christian conscience.  Karolina Rodrigues decided to bring the case for this before the council of Alagoinha.  The five village councillors refused for the same reasons.  They sent their judgment to the Medical Institute of Caruaru.  One copy was given to Karolina Rodrigues in my presence and in the presence of the father of the victim, Mr. Erivaldo.

On Febuary 28, I was invited to participate in the council of the Children’s Medical Institute of Recife in company with Marie-José Gomes and two members of our parish.  We took advantage of the opportunity to go visit the victim and her mother.  They were on the fourth floor of the establishment, in isolated quarters.  Access was very restricted.  I was obliged to remain in the corridor, but I did manage to speak with the mother of the little girl.  She admitted to me that she “had signed some papers.”  I was worried, since this woman was illiterate.  As she was unable to write her signature, her fingerprints were taken.  I asked her what she thought of the proposal of abortion.  She showed some very motherly sentiments and above all an extreme preoccupation for her daughter.  She answered: “I do not want my daughter to abort…”  The mother spoke to me of the state of her daughter’s health: “It’s going well, she is playing with some dolls that people have given her.”  We left with the firm conviction that the mother was totally unfavorable to the abortion of her little grandchildren.  “No one has the right to kill a person,” she added.  “Only God can have command of life…”

On March 2, we returned to the Institute of Recife.  We were authorized to ascend to the fourth floor to visit the victim.  But, having arrived at the first floor, an official of the institute forbade us from going up any further.  He asked us to see the social worker in aonother building.  We came face-to-face with Karolina Rodrigues.  I was in the company of Marie José Gomes and Mr. Erivaldo, who was opposed to “the abortion of his little grandchildren.”  When the social worker discovered my identity, she said in front of everybody: “We are dealing with a medical matter, even if the priest here feels that we are dealing with a moral question.”  We asked Karolina Rodrigues about the state of the child’s health.  She affirmed that everything was already resolved with the agreement of the mother.  The medical procedure would follow its course.  She insisted on her critical condition without providing any facts from a doctor’s point of view.  She also backed herself with the law: “In this case, the better thing is to save the life of the child.”  We answered: “There’s not just one life to save, but three!”  She didn’t want to hear any of it.  Karolina Rodrigues asked Mr. Erivaldo to speak with him privately.  For about 25 minutes.  On leaving, this latter revealed to me that he had changed his mind with regard to the abortion.  “The social worker has warned me that my daughter was threatened with death… If she is in danger, it is necessary to save her…  Even if it means removing the fetuses from her,” he murmured.

Thus, everything seemed finished.  It is at this point that the Archbishop of Recife, dom José Cardoso, and the bishop of Pesqueira, dom Francesco Biasin, got involved in the procedure.  Monsignor Cardoso convoked a group of doctors, attorneys, psychologists, and lawyers in order to study the legality of this matter.  At this meeting on March 3, at the residence of the Archbishop, the director of the Children’s Medical Institute of Recife, Antonio Figueiras, was also present.  He publicly acknowledged the pressures that were exerted by Katerina Rodrigues.  He contacted the hospital to suspend the abortion.

A little later, the archbishop of Recife received a call from Mr. Figueiras informing him that a feminist group—Curumin—had convinced the mother to accept a transfer of her daughter to another hospital.  We returned to the spot with Maria Gomes.  They had made her wait under the pretext of the rotation of the teams (the child was already transferred).  No one dared tell her anything.  How was a person in danger of death able to obtain a permit of leave?  How was the state of the victim able to change so rapidly?  What could Curumin have said to the mother?

On March 4, we learned that the child was committed to the CISAM hospital (the Amaury and Medeiros General Health Center, specializing in pregancies at risk).  This hospital is located in the north of Recife.  Our hope of seeing the two babies alive brutally disappeared.  All because of a manipulation of conscience and a lack of respect for human life.  I have recounted all this so that people may know the truth.

Lifesitenews has published a translation of a letter of a number of officials of the Diocese of Recife in response to the intervention of Archbishop Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, regarding the excommunications that were declared in their diocese.  While the entire letter is certainly worth reading (particularly due to its explanation of pastoral closeness to the girl and her family in the days leading up to the March 4th event), I will only quote part of it here for those who do not have time to read the whole letter:

The affirmation [in the article] that the fact was made public in the newspapers only because the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife rushed to declare the excommunication is false. It suffices to notice that the case was made public in Alagoinha on Wednesday, February 25; the Archbishop made his pronouncement to the press on March 3; and the abortion was performed on March 4. It would be too much to imagine that the Brazilian press, before a fact of such gravity, would have silenced during the period of six days. Therefore, the news of the pregnant girl (“Carmen”) was made public in the newspapers before the consummation of the abortion. Only after that, when asked by journalists, on March 3 (Tuesday), the Archbishop mentioned canon 1398. We are convinced that the disclosure of this therapeutic penalty (the excommunication) will do much good to many Catholics, making them avoid this grievous sin. The silence of the Church would be very prejudicial, especially considering that fifty million abortions are being performed every year around the world, and in Brazil alone one million innocent lives are ended. The silence may be interpreted as collusion or complicity. If any doctor has a “perplexed conscience” [as the article says] before performing an abortion (which seems extremely improbable to us), he should – if he is a Catholic and wishes to follow the law of God – seek a spiritual director…

The author believed he could speak about [a situation] he did not know, and, what is worse, he did not even have the trouble of first speaking to his brother in the episcopate, and, for his imprudent attitude, he is causing great scandal among the Catholic faithful in Brazil who are believing that Archbishop José Cardoso Sobrinho was rash in his pronouncements. Instead of seeking his brother in the episcopate, he chose to believe in our openly Anti-clerical press.

Senator Cossiga’s earlier open letter to the Archbishop, the whole of which may be read below, already responded in a similar vein

You have wished to join the chorus of condemnations pronounced upon the poor bishop of Recife from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, beginning with the federal president of Brazil, President Lula, a great populist leader formed in the school of Liberation Theology.  Among the proponents of this theology was Dom Helder Camara, [former] bishop of Recife, great Christian utopianist, who did much good for the lower classes of South America, but who is also responsible, along with many others, for the great confusion that reigns in that continent, not only at the theological level, but also among simple faithful, regarding the nature and mission of the Church in the world, bringing many Catholics to respond with violence to the violence of the ruling classes and dictatorships, and objectively contributing to that spiral of violence that still lays waste to that suffering continent between dictatorships and terrorism, even “Christian” terrorism.

These statements are particularly pertinent because the Archbishop’s own intervention, which may also be read below, despite its protestations of the need to stick to the essentials, seemed to imply that Bishop Sobrinho was rash in declaring the excommunications, not taking adequate account of the very particular circumstances that, in Fisichella’s judgment, have made this declaration inopportune.

I am leaving aside right now the other shortcomings of the Archbishop’s intervention, adequately pointed out by both of these responses, in that, while the intervention repeats that abortion is an intrinsic evil, it definitely makes it seem that if a doctor is anguished enough, he is sometimes right in choosing it.  Indeed, the closing of the Archbishop’s intervention is hard to interpret in a way that indicates that the Archbishop really believes his own words on the intrinsic evil of abortion.  This made for sensational headlines in the secular media.  But if, abstracting from this, we pretend that the intervention was just on the innopportuneness, based on the circumstances, of declaring the excommunications, we now have two responses to the Archbishop’s letter that suggest that maybe he was the one not taking the circumstances into account.

Sometimes in public actions, the circumstances also include the possible good done to the community, and not just the individuals in question.  This is part of the notion of the remedial aspect of justice (See Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 87, a. 3, reply to the second).  And while this could be reprehensible if concern for the individual were completely steamrolled, such was certainly not the case in the Brazilian event.   On the contrary, the pastoral attention to the girl and her family was quite extraordinary, as the letter of the Diocesan officials recounts.

But then, of course, there is the question of the global scandal, aggravated mostly, I think, by the fact that there is no canonical penalty for the girl’s nefarious stepfather.  That brings us into the whole moral discourse on scandal given, scandal taken, etc.  That will have to be the subject of a future post.  For now, suffice it to say that I think we better get used to the fact that the Brave New World is going to be scandalized by the Catholic Church quite often, even when Her pastors are not at fault.

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HUGE UPDATE:

THE CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH ORDERS PRINTING OF A RETRACTION REGARDING FISICHELLA’S INTERVENTION

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President of the Pontifical Academy for Life Archbishop Rino Fisichella wrote an intervention in L’Osservatore Romano regarding the Brazilian excommunications in connection with the abortion of the twin children of a nine-year old girl.  I was not able to find a complete English translation on the Internet of Fisichella’s letter, so I offer my own below.

On the side of the Brazilian girl

Often the debate on some questions is carried out in a closed manner, and different perspectives do not always allow us to consider how high the stakes really are.  It is precisely in these moments when we must look to the essentials and leave aside for a moment whatever does not touch upon the problem directly.  The case, in all of its drama, is simple.  There is a nine-year old girl—they call her Carmen—whose eyes we must look into without distracting our gaze even for a moment, to make her understand how much she is loved.  At Recife in Brazil, Carmen was repeatedly raped by her young stepfather, she became pregnant with twins, and she would no longer have an easy life.  The wound is deep because the utterly gratuitous violence destroyed her on the inside, and made it so that only with difficulty would she ever again look at others with love.

Carmen represents a story of daily violence, and she has had a place on the pages of the newspapers only because the archbishop of Olinda and Recife was swift in declaring excommunication for the doctors that helped her to interrupt her pregnancy.  A story of violence that, unfortunately, would have gone unobserved, accustomed as we are to the occurrence of facts of an incomparable gravity every day, if it weren’t for the sensation and the reactions aroused by the intervention of the bishop.  The violence on a woman, already grave in itself, takes on an even more appalling character when the one who suffers it is a child, with the aggravating circumstances of the poverty and social decay in which she lives.  There are no words fit to condemn such episodes, and the feelings that arise from them are often a mixture of anger and rancor that only die down when justice has really been done and there is the certainty that the punishment inflicted on the delinquent in question will be served.

Carmen should have in the first place been defended, embraced, sweetly caressed, to make her feel that we are all with her; all, without any distinction.  Before thinking about excommunication, it was necessary and urgent to safeguard her innocent life and bring it up to a level of humanity for which we men of the Church should have been the professional heralds and teachers.  It did not happen so, and unfortunately, this has affected the credibility of our teaching, which in the eyes of many appears as insensitive, incomprehensible, and bereft of mercy.  It’s true, Carmen bore within herself other innocent lives like her own, even if they were the fruit of violence, and these lives were suppressed.  Nevertheless, this is not sufficient reason to give a judgment that falls like an axe.

In the case of Carmen, life and death confronted each other.  Due to her very young age and her precarious health conditions, her life was in serious danger because of the pregnancy under way.  How to act in these cases?  It is a tough decision for the doctor and for the moral law itself.  Choices like this one, even if under different case studies, are repeated daily in intensive care units, and the conscience of the doctor finds itself all alone in the act of having to decide what might be the better thing to do.  Yet no one arrives at a decision of this kind nonchalantly.  It is unjust and offensive even to think so.

The respect owed to the professionalism of the doctor is a rule that has to involve everyone and cannot allow us to arrive at a negative judgment without first having considered the conflict that has been created in his inmost self.  The doctor carries with him his own history and experience.  A choice such as that of having to save one life, knowing that this will put another at serious risk, is never gone through easily.  Certainly, some are so accustomed to these situations that they no longer even experience emotion.  But in these cases, the choice to be a doctor is reduced to a mere trade, lived without enthusiasm, and soon only passively.  Nevertheless, to stereotype would be unjust, let alone incorrect.

Carmen has again presented a moral case that is among the most delicate.  To treat it hurriedly would not render justice either to her fragile person or to those who were involved in different capacities in the event.  Nevertheless, like every unique and concrete case, it deserves to be analyzed in its particularity, without generalizations.  Catholic morality does have principles from which it cannot turn away, even if it would like to.  The defense of human life from the moment of its conception belongs to one of these principles and is justified by the sacredness of existence.  Every human being, in fact, bears the image of the Creator impressed upon it from the first instant, and hence, we are convinced that the dignity and the rights of every person must be recognized as belonging to it, primarily that of its untouchableness and inviolability.

Procured abortion has always been condemned by the moral law as an intrinsically evil act, and this teaching remains unchanged from the very origins of the Church into our own day.  In the constitution Gaudium et Spes—a document of great openness and forethought in reference to our contemporary world—the Second Vatican Council unexpectedly uses unequivocal and very hard words against direct abortion.  Formal cooperation in it constitutes a grave fault which, when it is performed, automatically takes one outside of the Christian community.  Technically, the Code of Canon Law uses the expression latae sententiae to indicate that the excommunication is implemented precisely in the moment itself in which the deed takes place.

There was not a need, we believe, for so much urgency and publicity in declaring a fact that is carried out in an automatic manner.  A need is more greatly felt for the sign of a testimony of nearness to those who suffer, an act of mercy which, while firmly maintaining the principle, is capable of looking beyond the juridical sphere to arrive at that which the law itself foresees as the goal of its existence: the good and the salvation of those who believe in the love of the Father and of those who receive the Gospel of Christ like the children that Jesus called to his side and squeezed in his arms, saying that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.

Carmen, we are on your side.  We share with you the suffering you have experienced, we would like to do everything to restore to you the dignity which you have been deprived of and the love which you will need all the more.  Other people deserve excommunication and our forgiveness: not those who have allowed you to live and who will help you to recover hope and trust, despite the presence of evil and the wickedness of many.

Update: Related Posts

• Translation of the letter of Italian ex-president, Senator Cossiga, to Archbishop Fisichella

• Translation of the testimony of Carmen’s parish priest
• Cardoso not granted a platform

My commentary:

• On being “pastoral” and applying the circumstances
• On the failures of Roman Curia officials in this issue

Former President of the Republic of Italy and current senator Francesco Cossiga has written an open letter in the Italian newspaper Il Tempo to Archbishop Fisichella, President of the Potifical Academy for Life, regarding his recent intervention in the L’Osservatore Romano regarding the recent declared excommunications in Brazil.  Below is my own translation of Senator Cossiga’s letter.

A Church of “we’ll see if maybe” against that of “yes” and “no.”

Dear Monsignor and friend!  I have read with much attention, as a believer of the Church and as a friend, your intervention with regard to the painful case of the excommunication of the two doctors that helped a girl have an abortion, a nine-year old girl who had in her womb two little creatures, the wicked fruit of a series of rapes by her stepfather.  You have wished to join the chorus of condemnations pronounced upon the poor bishop of Recife from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, beginning with the federal president of Brazil, President Lula, a great populist leader formed in the school of Liberation Theology.  Among the proponents of this theology was Dom Helder Camara, [former] bishop of Recife, great Christian utopianist, who did much good for the lower classes of South America, but who is also responsible, along with many others, for the great confusion that reigns in that continent, not only at the theological level, but also among simple faithful, regarding the nature and mission of the Church in the world, bringing many Catholics to respond with violence to the violence of the ruling classes and dictatorships, and objectively contributing to that spiral of violence that still lays waste to that suffering continent between dictatorships and terrorism, even “Christian” terrorism.

Certainly, I am not a theologian, but I do know enough Canon Law to make me aware that the bishop of Recife did not “hurl” the excommunication at anyone, but that he limited himself, as was his duty as bishop and ordinary of the Diocese of Recife, to making known to his priests that the two doctors became guilty of a delict provided for by the penal laws of the Church, i.e., procured abortion, for which there is provided latae sententiae excommunication, a penalty which is incurred automatically solely for the fact of having committed a criminal deed.  Certainly, it is striking that the notorious stepfather did not incur an equal excommunication, since it is not provided for.  You concentrate on the fact that the girl was in great danger for her life: may I remind you that if the girl was in grave danger for her life for causes other than her pregnancy, through the moral doctrine of “double effect,” those necessary treatments that might cause an abortion could have been prepared, even if certitude were had about this effect.  But on the other hand, a “procured abortion” would be a different matter.  I understand the human drama; but is it not also a great drama that a woman, for example, a mother of six children who by her death could find themselves in a very sad condition morally and materially—that she might have her own life “threatened” by a new pregnancy and that she might save herself with a “therapeutic abortion”?

And yet I do not believe that You would justify the doctor who through “Christian pity” would procure an abortion, even if requested by her!  And to take it to another level: is it not a great pain that is suffered by two Christians in being denied the Eucharist because, after an unhappy marriage experience, they have been divorced and remarried in only a civil ceremony?  And why not speak then of the pain of Beppino Englaro [translator's note: the father of Eluana] and of many parents who see their little children lying in pain and perhaps without any hope, and who decide to give them a free pass to a “pleasant death”?  And I could go on… In just the past few days, I heard a pastoral letter on the specificity of Christian charity, which is a different thing from “human pity.”

I do not believe that by presenting the Holy Church no longer as the Church of “yes, yes” and “no, no,” but of “perhaps,” and of “we’ll see if maybe…”; as the Church of peace alone, and not also that of “war” for truth and justification—I do not think that any more faithful will be acquired for the Church, nor will those who are still a part of her be preserved…  I thank God for not having given me any theological knowledge, and thus for making me reason with the Ten Commandments and the laws of reason, and beyond this, only with the propositions of the Catholic Catechism and—why not?—even the Catechism of St. Pius X (I’m not a LeFebvrite!), without having to or being able to have recourse to complex theological arguments.

With cordial friendship,

Your most affectionate,

Francesco Cossiga

16/03/2009