WASHINGTON (BP)–The battle among Roman Catholics regarding pro-choice politicians who belong to their church is spreading.
While the focus has been on Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, the controversy recently has engulfed New Jersey’s governor and a prominent cardinal in the church.
Newark, N.J., Archbishop John Myers sent a message to Catholics in his diocese that prompted Gov. James McGreevey, a Democrat, to say he would not take communion at public masses. McGreevey not only supports abortion rights but has signed legislation to provide state funds for a research center designed to experiment on embryonic stem cells. Such research destroys embryos.
On May 5, Myers issued a five-page statement saying abortion is the “foremost” of injustices Catholics should address.
“On this grave issue, public officials cannot hold themselves excused from their duties, especially if they claim to be Catholic,” Myers said. “Every faithful Catholic must be not only ‘personally opposed’ to abortion, but also must live that opposition in his or her actions.
“From the perspective of justice, to say ‘I am personally opposed to abortion but …’ is like saying ‘I personally am against slavery, but I cannot impose my personal beliefs on my neighbor.’”
According to The Newark Star-Ledger, McGreevey told reporters the same day that the archbishop’s statement was “unfortunate” but the governor said, “I will respect the archbishop’s request.”
“I will continue to go to mass with my family,” McGreevey said, according to The Star-Ledger. “I will continue to practice my faith. It’s a faith that I love. And I believe this is a false choice in America between one’s faith and one’s constitutional obligations.”
Quoting from a 1990 pastoral letter he wrote, Myers said Catholics who openly oppose the church’s pro-life doctrine “should recognize that they have freely chosen by their own actions to separate themselves from what the church believes and teaches.”
He also said, “To receive communion when one has, through public or private action, separated oneself from unity with Christ and His church, is objectively dishonest.”
Meanwhile, a pro-life organization with Catholic leadership is taking out ads critical of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C., for taking a position on communion for pro-choice Catholics that appears to conflict with a recent statement from a Vatican official.
In full-page ads in The Washington Times, the American Life League has quoted McCarrick as saying April 27 he has “not gotten to the stage where I’m comfortable in denying the Eucharist.”
The ALL ad calls McCarrick’s comments: “Comforting words for John Kerry, Susan Collins, Nancy Pelosi and the 67 other pro-abortion ‘Catholic’ politicians in Congress.
“But cold comfort for the 1.3 million babies surgically aborted every year.”
On April 23, Cardinal Francis Arinze, a leading official at the Vatican, said priests should refuse communion to pro-abortion politicians. In presenting a new document on the mass, Arinze was asked about “unambiguously pro-abortion” Catholic politicians such as Kerry. Those politicians, Arinze said, are “not fit” to receive communion, LifeNews reported. “If the person should not receive it, then it should not be given,” Arinze said.
Kerry, who has been a longtime advocate of abortion rights, had a meeting with McCarrick this spring. McCarrick heads a task force of American bishops who are pondering how to handle politicians who violate church teaching, but that panel is not expected to issue a report until after the November election. Catholic priests and bishops have differed on how to handle abortion advocates in the church.
Kerry partook of communion at the Paulist Center in Boston on Easter Sunday.
Susan Collins is a Republican senator from Maine, and Nancy Pelosi, from California, is the minority leader in the House of Representatives. Pelosi has said she intends to continue to take communion.
METHODISTS VOTE — The general conference of the United Methodist Church voted against the creation of embryos for destructive research in action May 6.
The delegates voted 708-171 against the production of embryos “with the intention of destroying them for research purposes,” according to United Methodist News Service. In its statement, the conference also said, “Neither should we, even for reproductive purposes, produce more embryos than we can expect to introduce into the womb in the hope of implantation.”
The UMC delegates, however, also approved a statement in support of people “who wish to enhance medical research by donating their early embryos remaining after in vitro fertilization procedures have ended.”
Meeting in Pittsburgh, Pa., the conference voted 467-421 to establish a panel to study artificial insemination and other reproductive technologies, according to UMNS. The task force will report to the conference in 2008.
BIOETHICS CHAIR RESPONDS -– Leon Kass, chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, has defended the panel’s latest report against criticism from pro-life bioethicists.
Some bioethicists, while applauding much of the April 1 report on reproductive technologies, expressed disappointment it recommended a ban on human embryo research but only when 10 to 14 days have passed after fertilization. The panel also chose not to call for a comprehensive ban on human cloning. It urged Congress to prohibit efforts to produce a child by cloning but did not make a specific recommendation on cloning for the purpose of experimentation.
In an interview with the Family Research Council, Kass said the council has already addressed embryonic stem cell research and cloning in previous reports.
“It is a mistake to read the council report’s silence on early embryo research or cloning for biomedical research as even an implicit endorsement of those practices,” Kass said. “The report proceeds by setting limits where limits can now be placed, while leaving open the path for further restraints in the future.
“We are not endorsing embryo research at earlier stages; we are simply trying, for the first time, to limit it where it proceeds rapidly at present utterly without any limits whatsoever.”
The council is divided on stem cell research, Kass said. In presenting “recommendations based only on what we do agree on, we neither endorse nor condemn it,” he said.
In its 2002 report on cloning, the panel issued unanimously a request for a federal ban on cloning to produce a child and by a majority a call for a four-year moratorium on cloning for research purposes, Kass said.
The panel’s latest report, titled “Reproduction and Responsibility: The Regulation of New Biotechnologies,” may be accessed at the council’s website, www.bioethics.gov.
President Bush appointed the council’s members.
OUT OF THE FREEZER -– Orlando, Fla., triplets born after being frozen as embryos for nearly 12 years have given hope for other children in storage for many years after being conceived by in vitro fertilization.
Angelina, Justin and Matthew were born last July after they were donated as embryos to Chris and Sylvia Mangsen, according to an April 8 report in the Orlando Sentinel. At nine months of age, all three appear to be healthy, the Sentinel reported.
“We were in uncharted waters,” said fertility doctor Mark Trolice, who provided the three donated embryos to the Mangsens, according to the report. “We never thought embryos of this age would be as viable and potent. To have all of them survive after implantation is quite remarkable.”
Since their birth in July, an Israeli woman has given birth to twins who, as her own embryos, had been frozen 12 years, the Sentinel reported.
It is estimated there are about 400,000 embryos resulting from in vitro fertilization in freezer storage in the United States, but only about 2 percent are donated to infertile couples, according to the Sentinel.
With destruction or destructive research awaiting many of those frozen embryos, some pro-lifers are seeking to provide life and homes for them. Nightlight Christian Adoptions, based in Fullerton, Calif., is a leader in such efforts. It has a website, www.embryoadoption.com, funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
SURROGATE WINS CUSTODY -– A surrogate mother in Pennsylvania has won custody of triplets she gave birth to for an engaged couple.
On April 2, Erie County Judge Shad Connelly granted legal custody to Danielle Bimber, 29, of the babies she gave birth to in November, according to the Associated Press. Bimber told Connelly she decided to seek custody after she observed how the biological father, known as J.F., and his fiancé treated the triplets after they were born. They did not name the children, failed to visit them in the hospital and returned to their home in another state shortly after the triplets’ births, she testified, AP reported.
Bimber is the legal mother because she “carried them in her womb and then gave birth to them,” Connelly said, according to AP. Connelly expressed a desire for the state legislature to address the surrogacy issue. Pennsylvania is one of 19 states without a law regarding surrogacy, according to AP.
EMT FIRED -– The American Center for Law and Justice filed a lawsuit May 7 in federal court against an Illinois ambulance company for firing an employee who refused to transport a woman to an abortion clinic.
Stephanie Adamson, who was an emergency medical technician for the Superior Ambulance Service in Elmhurst, Ill., responded to a non-emergency call in August to take a woman from Mt. Sinai Hospital in Chicago to an abortion clinic, according to the ACLJ. After Adamson verified the woman was to have an elective abortion, she informed her employer it would violate her religious beliefs to transport her for the procedure, ACLJ reported. Another crew was dispatched to transport the woman and Adamson was fired, according to the religious rights organization.
“Our client became an EMT to save lives, not take lives,” said Francis Manion, ACLJ senior counsel. “The law is designed to protect –- not punish –- employees who hold religious beliefs. Under both federal employment discrimination laws and Illinois state laws, employers cannot simply fire an employee who objects to participating in a medical procedure that is contrary to the employee’s religious beliefs.”
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