(WWJD Disclaimer: Before any of y'all go getting your knickers in a twist here, let's all keep in mind that I'm NOT denigrating Christianity. In point of fact, I respect and honor Christianity. It's CHRISTIANS that I have a problem with...those who call themselves "Christians" but in actuality know as much about the teachings of Jesus Christ as they do about running the West Coast offense. Christianity is not about power, control, and reaction...though you'd never know it from listening to most- not all- Christians.)
A senior Vatican cleric has defended the excommunication of the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old girl who had an abortion in Brazil after being raped. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Catholic church's Congregation for Bishops, told the daily La Stampa on Saturday that the twins the girl had been carrying had a right to live.... "It is a sad case but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated," he said. Re, who also heads the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, added: "Life must always be protected, the attack on the Brazilian church is unjustified.".... The row was triggered by the termination on Wednesday of twin foetuses carried by a nine-year-old allegedly raped by her stepfather in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco. The regional archbishop, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, pronounced excommunication for the mother for authorising the operation and doctors who carried it out for fear that the slim girl would not survive carrying the foetuses to term.... "God's law is above any human law. So when a human law ... is contrary to God's law, this human law has no value," Cardoso had said.
If there was any doubt at all about the attitude of the Catholic Church towards the distaff half of the human population, this story ought to remove any and all uncertainty. The idea that a woman (or, in this case, a nine-year-old girl) who has been impregnated through an act of sexual violence- a rape- must carrying the baby to term is repulsive beyond words. That an inflexible celibate male is passing judgment on a nine-year-old girl, who has been violated and degraded is simply and unimaginably disrespectful of the girl. Compassion? Christian charity? Nah, not when you rule the Catholic Church. It's all about keeping the flock in line.
Even worse, the woman's stepfather wasn't excommunicated for raping and impregnating the woman (boys will be boys, no?). If you follow the logic of Cardinal Battista, the rapist actually possesses MORE rights in this scenario than the unfortunate victim. Both Sobrinho and Battista may talk about "God's law" trumping "human law", but the reality here is that "God's law" was in fact written by humans. All that's really being enforced here is an intolerant, Conservative, and horribly insensitive morality based largely on the abject hatred of women. How is this even remotely related to the teachings of Jesus Christ? How does this intolerant, hateful bastardization of Christianity have anything to do with anything spiritual? The short answer is that it doesn't. It's about power. It's about control. More than anything else, it's about a Church so thoroughly out of touch with the teachings they profess to believe that they're willing to place the rights of an unborn child- a child fathered by raping a nine-year-old girl- over the rights and well-being of the woman they expect to carry the child to term. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, women are receptacles and vessels- nothing more. As such, they essentially have no right to have any control over their own bodies. That right devolves to the Church and the men who control it- ergo, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, women of all ages are property.
Suffer the little children, indeed....
Somewhere, Jesus is weeping....
