Once more, the words of Pope Francis have been taken out of context to color him as some type of heretic. Once more, Where Peter Is shows as much as clear the air.
On November 28, 2022, America Magazine published the text of an exclusive interview with Pope Francis. The interview was conducted by a team of 5 representatives from America Media and touched on a wide selection of issues from the Russian war on Ukraine to the role of girls within the Church. Among the many representatives from America was Gloria Purvis, a speaker and podcaster who’s a widely known advocate for the correct to life and for racial justice.
Purvis’s first query was about abortion and the way it’s heavily politicized within the Church and is a source of division amongst Catholics in the USA. Before addressing this specific issue, nevertheless, Pope Francis began his response by speaking concerning the morality of the act of abortion itself, saying:
On abortion, I can let you know these items, which I’ve said before. In any book of embryology it is claimed that shortly before one month after conception the organs and the DNA are already delineated within the tiny fetus, before the mother even becomes aware. Due to this fact, there’s a living human being. I don’t say an individual, because that is debated, but a living human being. And I raise two questions: Is it right to eliminate a human being to resolve an issue? Second query: Is it right to rent a “hit man” to resolve an issue? The issue arises when this reality of killing a human being is transformed right into a political query, or when a pastor of the church uses political categories.
This primary a part of the response closely resembles the best way he’s discussed abortion before. He commonly tries to border the problem when it comes to its scientific reality – that the act of abortion is taking a living human life – and never a matter of theology or philosophy or religious principles. He has done this throughout his papacy, and he’s been consistent about this.
Unfortunately, a lot of the standard critics have jumped on the words, “I don’t say an individual, because that is debated, but a living human being.” They argue that in saying “that is debated” that he’s denying the personhood of a human life from the moment of conception.
The simple response is to indicate that he is solely acknowledging that there is a debate on whether the unborn child is a “person.” Because there’s. Google “personhood debate” and you’re going to get plenty of results.
The essential idea behind the argument that a human embryo or fetus will not be a “person” is that even though it is alive, possesses the genetic markers of a novel human life, and has begun to grow to be a fully-formed human being, it can not achieve “personhood” until a certain stage of development. Within the realm of the abortion debate, many abortion-rights advocates only recognize personhood status at birth or – chillingly – shortly thereafter. Age, health, quality of life, mental and physical ability, and other aspects are used to deem whether a human being is a “person” or not.
Because this line is unavoidably relative or arbitrary, the personhood debate is used to justify other acts of killing, equivalent to euthanasia or the death penalty. At its most extreme, the denial of personhood could be applied to the disabled and racial or ethnic groups. Some, equivalent to Princeton’s Peter Singer, recognize the “personhood” of some animals while denying it in some human beings. Singer has said that “a chimpanzee, dog, or pig, as an example, can have the next degree of self-awareness and a greater capability for meaningful relations with others than a severely retarded infant or someone in a state of advanced senility … we must grant these animals a right to life nearly as good as, or higher than, such retarded or senile humans.”
Francis’s point is that reasonably than getting caught up in sifting through all of the mental gymnastics involved in that debate, we must always start with the elemental reality: abortion is evil since it is killing a human life.
This will not be recent. For instance, in 2014, he said in a gathering with the Italian Catholic Physicians’ Association:
Repeatedly in my life as a priest, I actually have heard objections. “Tell me, why, for instance, does the Church oppose abortion? Is it a spiritual problem?” — “No, no. It’s not a spiritual problem” — “Is it a philosophical problem?” — “No, it’s not a philosophical problem”. It’s a scientific problem, because there’s a human life there and it will not be licit to eliminate a human life to resolve an issue. “But no, the trendy school of thought…”. — “Listen, within the old and the trendy schools of thought, the word kill means the identical thing!”. The identical is true for euthanasia. Everyone knows that with so many elderly people on this throw-away culture, euthanasia is being performed in secret. There may be also one other. And that is saying to God: “No, I’ll end life, as I see fit”. A sin against God the Creator: think hard about this.
On the return flight from Mexico in 2016, he was asked if abortion could possibly be considered a “lesser evil” than birth defects that would potentially be brought on by the Zika virus. The pope responded, “Abortion will not be a ‘lesser evil’. It’s against the law. It’s wiping out one to save lots of one other. That’s what the mafia does. It’s against the law, it is totally evil.” He went on to claim once more that opposition to abortion will not be just grounded in religious conviction:
Abortion will not be a theological issue: it’s a human issue, it’s a medical issue. One person is killed with a purpose to save one other — in one of the best case scenario — or with a purpose to live comfortably. It’s against the Hippocratic Oath that physicians take. It’s an evil in and of itself. It will not be a “religious” evil, to begin with, no, it’s a human evil. Evidently, because it is a human evil — like all killing — it’s condemned.
On the return flight from the 2018 World Meeting of Families in Ireland, Pope Francis responded to a different reporter’s query on abortion, saying:
On abortion, you realize what the Church thinks. The difficulty of abortion will not be a spiritual issue: we aren’t against abortion for religious reasons. No. It’s a human issue and needs to be addressed as such. To contemplate abortion ranging from religion is to step over [that realm of] thought. The abortion query needs to be studied from an anthropological standpoint. There may be all the time the anthropological query of how ethical it’s to eliminate a living being with a purpose to resolve an issue. That is the actual issue. I’d only emphasize this: I never allow the problem of abortion to be discussed starting with religion. No. It’s an anthropological problem, a human problem. That is my considering.
There are lots of other examples, but these three quotes reveal the context through which he consistently frames the morality of abortion – that it’s evil, that it’s killing one other human to resolve an issue, and that the issue of abortion transcends any religious or lofty philosophical questions. His point is that at probably the most basic level, abortion should be rejected since it is a violation of a really fundamental principle: to respect human life.
Personhood and Catholic Teaching
From the start of the Church, the Magisterium has all the time been clear in its condemnation of abortion at any stage as an ethical evil. That said, prior to our modern understanding of fetal development, the Church has not all the time been firm on this query of personhood.
Thomas Aquinas, for instance held a theory of “delayed animation,” which to him meant that ensoulment occurred at quickening – when the fetus began to maneuver. This was believed to be at 40 days gestation for males and 80 days of gestation for females. This theory was based on Aristotle and erroneous medieval notions of embryology. Aquinas’s position on delayed animation was even cited in the bulk decision within the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, which established abortion as a constitutional right within the US (ROE v. WADE, 410 U.S. 113 (1973): IV.3).
Aquinas’s idea was reflected within the imposition of various canonical and civil penalties for early- and late-term abortions. But even still, the Catholic Church has never sanctioned abortion. That has never stopped supporters of legal abortion from using it of their arguments, nevertheless.
This was reenforced by a 1974 document by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Declaration on procured abortion. The declaration acknowledged that there was a personhood debate, but, like Pope Francis, stressed that these weren’t grounds upon which to justify abortion. The congregation stressed that modern science has made it clear when life begins, and that uncertainty about personhood doesn’t justify ending a life (emphasis added):
From the primary fast, there’s established this system of what this living being will likely be: a person, this individual man together with his characteristic points already well determined. Right from fertilization is begun the journey of a human life, and every of its capacities requires time – a reasonably lengthy time – to search out its place and to be ready to act. The least that could be said is that present science, in its most evolved state, doesn’t give any substantial support to those that defend abortion. Furthermore, it will not be as much as biological sciences to make a definitive judgment on questions that are properly philosophical and moral equivalent to the moment when a human person is constituted or the legitimacy of abortion. From an ethical perspective this is definite: even when a doubt existed concerning whether the fruit of conception is already a human person, it’s objectively a grave sin to dare to risk murder. “The one who will likely be a person is already one” (13).
Through the papacy of Saint John Paul II, the Magisterium began to insist that we consider personhood as if it begins in the meanwhile of conception, nevertheless. In Evangelium Vitae, John Paul taught this forcefully: “The human being is to be respected and treated as an individual from the moment of conception; and subsequently from that very same moment his rights as an individual should be recognized, amongst which in the primary place is the inviolable right of each innocent human being to life” (60). A couple of years earlier, the CDF produced a document, Donum Vitae (“Instruction on respect for human life”), which made the same point: “The human being should be respected – as an individual – from the very first fast of his existence” (5.I.1).
Note nevertheless, that each the encyclical and the instruction call for the kid within the womb “to be respected” as an individual from the moment of conception, without definitively teaching that the embryo is an individual. Donum Vitae mentions the personhood debate later within the section, stating, “This Congregation is aware of the present debates in regards to the starting of human life, in regards to the individuality of the human being and in regards to the identity of the human person.” Donum Vitae then quotes from the 1974 CDF document and adds the conclusion, “The Magisterium has not expressly committed itself to an affirmation of a philosophical nature, nevertheless it continually reaffirms the moral condemnation of any type of procured abortion. This teaching has not been modified and is unchangeable.”
In 2008, this point was again reiterated by the CDF, then led by Cardinal William Levada under Pope Benedict XVI. Within the document Dignitas Personae, the Congregation stated, “If Donum vitae, with a purpose to avoid an announcement of an explicitly philosophical nature, didn’t define the embryo as an individual, it nonetheless did indicate that there’s an intrinsic connection between the ontological dimension and the precise value of each human life” (5).
What does all of this mean? Well, for one thing, it is evident that the Magisterium has acknowledged on multiple occasions that there’s a debate about personhood. It is usually clear that the Church has not all the time considered the lifetime of a human person to start at conception, nor has the Church definitively taught this. That said, the Church has all the time regarded abortion to be evil from the moment of conception. More recently, the Church has pushed back against the concept “delayed personhood” is relevant to its position on the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception. It has taught as a substitute that life, from the moment of conception must be treated and revered as a human person. And on this, Pope Francis has all the time been in step with Catholic Tradition.
Image: Adobe Stock. By nobeastsofierce.
Mike Lewis is the founding managing editor of Where Peter Is. He and Jeannie Gaffigan co-host Field Hospital, a U.S. Catholic podcast.