As you may have read --- it's been in the news --- the Vatican, after years and years and years of blather and evasion from these sisters, launched an attempt to do a "doctrinal assessment" and reform of the LCWR (basically the US sisters' overall leadership group). This was greeted with a lot of hand-waving, howls of "Omigod, it's the Inquisition!" and indignant editorials in the liberal press.
The result?
I don't know.
::::::Sigh::::::
Stay tuned.
“Which brings us back to Sister Simone Campbell. Before taking the podium at the DNC to denounce the moral failings of the Republican candidates, she was asked by John McCormack of the Weekly Standard whether she believed that performing abortions should be illegal. Her response? ‘That’s beyond my pay grade. I don’t know.’”
Sister Simone is clearly confused. While abortion is clearly beyond the Catholic Church’s pay grade, she has drawn the wrong conclusion from this fact.
To recap, the prohibition against abortion in Holy Scripture is rooted in two principles. The first is prohibition against idolatry and witchcraft, since in the Old Testament abortion was usually carried out by those who practiced witchcraft or acted as priests to false gods like Moloch. The second root is the Commandment “Thou shalt not kill.”
The first root comes under the Divine Positive Law. The second under the Natural Law. Because both the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law are authored by God, as revealed in Holy Scripture, they are not subject to change by man. This is what is meant by abortion being beyond the Church’s pay grade.
For this reason, the Church cannot change its teaching on abortion. For ultimately this teaching comes not from the Church but from God. Thus the Church can only practice and defend the teaching. The Church cannot change it.
I still remember the scene in Saturday Night Fever where a friend of John Travolta’s character has knocked up his girlfriend and asks Travolta’s older brother, the priest, whether he could request a dispensation from the pope for an abortion.
The answer is no. A pope can only dispense from Church law. He cannot dispense from God’s law. Because life and death judgment over the innocent belongs to God alone, and because a child in the womb is innocent life, it is beyond the pope or any church official’s pay grade to allow abortion.