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Catholic Church View on Abortion The numerous traditions of our society are made of various beliefs and customs. However, the world evolute's, and once in a while there is a need for the review of some of them. One of the most controversial issues nowadays is the problem of abortion, and how the Catholic Church views it. Due to the fact most Roman Catholics dont practice the belief, and the worlds population is at a high contraception's are out-dated and are actually a good thing. The Catholic belief is that artificial contraception such as condoms or ortho-tricyclen is wrong is founded on the basis of several reasons. It gives a bad message to people because they can be sexually free, which is an understandable reason coming from a form of Christianity; however, they also believe that abortion is the focal point of artificial contraception's.
Abortion is the fruit of contraception. Abortion is completely different than birth control. Are Roman Catholics proclaiming that using an artificial contraceptive is the same as having an abortion? If using a condom were considered a form of abortion, almost everyone in the world would have had an abortion. Using birth control prevents a female from being put in a position where there would be an opportunity to kill the fetus inside of her. They also think that the shot or the pill is a poison given to a woman for the purpose of sexual pleasure.
Spouses should realize that marital love is a participation in Gods creative act and the babies are good, not burdens to be avoided at all costs; especially the cost of poisoning women with dangerous chemicals so they can be available for sexual pleasure. If this was a poison, than why arent women dropping left and right? Why are there very few, if any, side affects for taking birth control? The decision shouldnt be up to some ninety-year-old men in a little city in Rome on whether or not a woman wants to use birth control because she is the one that has to carry the baby around for nine months. This means that the Catholic belief that birth control is a poison should not be up to the woman whether or not she wants a child is completely bias. It is also no true because there is no form of proof that this poison harms the females body.
A natural contraceptive like knowing their mates cycle should be used instead. Isnt the idea and purpose the same between natural and artificial contraceptives if a husband and wife dont want to have children? Maybe that is why eighty percent of Catholic couples use artificial contraceptives. However there are several prepositions to abortion, which allow us to consider the issue in more details. Here is one of the examples. Mary, a nice Italian girl from the Bridgeport area in Chicago is raped by her father one night after returning home to find him drunk and coming on to her.
She learns three weeks later that she is pregnant. Completely petrified with nowhere to turn, Mary goes to her church. She sits down with her pastor, and he quietly comforts her, and tells her it will be all right. She brings up the idea of having an abortion and he calmly excuses her from the office without discussing this idea. He calls the life beginning to grow inside of her a baby, and claims that baby needs not to be killed but to be loved. What should Mary do?
She is carrying her fathers child and is told that this is OK and must be embraced. In looking into the opinion the Catholic Church holds regarding abortions, even cases of rape and incest, I have found out that the church is adamantly against them. However while researching, I also found some interesting facts regarding practicing Catholics and their views on this topic. Interestingly enough, the majority of Catholics that have been questioned on this topic were opposed to the church's harsh rules, and thoughts. The angle that the church takes is molded from an idea of respect for human life; all human life.
All human beings, from their mothers womb, belong to God who searches them and knows them, who forms them and knits them together with his own hands, who gazes on them when they are tiny shapeless embryos and already sees in them the adults of tomorrow... (Michaelson). This idea suggests that all children are born into gods image and are created by god. If this is true than i had to question whether or not the Catholic god was an advocate for rape and incest ual actions. Helen Alvare believes that: The more humane and more Christian response to a violated mother... is more lovejoy death!
as she explained in her article, Abortion: What the Church Teaches In the Catholic Update, a bi-weekly newsletter. She explains the Catholic church's idea that not only should abortion be illegal in normal cases of pregnancy but in cases of rape and incest as well. She considers there to be to many implications made by making exceptions to the rules for abortion: It would send them [children] the message that peoples value depends upon their physical condition, the circumstances of their conception or others perception of them (Alvare). She also spoke to the idea of abortion as doing more harm than good, if not only to the fetus, but to the soon-to-be mother as well.
She claims, Abortion doesnt end with the baby. It should also be remembered that no matter how many times abortion is proposed as a solution to a difficult situation, abortion has a way of creating new, long-lasting problems of its own. She follows by speaking to a mothers loss, According to post-abortion women, abortion taints the expected good result Even some post-abortion women who became pregnant as a result of rape or incest report that the abortion made them feel further violated. Of the other 99 % of post-abortion women, many report that instead of feeling free or happy after the abortion, they feel burdened with guilt and loss. After reading this I wanted to see her sources and where she got her percentages but they were nowhere to be found.
In further research I wanted to know what the Church believed about those who wanted to have abortions I found an idea called Culpability. Here, it explains that the church views the act of killing an unborn child is wrong But It does not say that those who seek abortions are bad as well. Alvare explains this as a difference between condemning an act, and judging the guilt of the actor. Only God can judge these women. To the woman who has had an abortion the Church says instead: How can we reconcile you? How can we help you, first, to face honestly what happened, repent, and be reconciled to the child, to yourself, to your family and to God?
Surprisingly enough, I found that most Catholic dioceses in the United States sponsor programs of healing for post-abortion women. (Alvare) She goes on further to say a bottom-line minimum for respecting human life is not killing it! As our Holy Father puts it, the first right that everybody has is "the inviolable right of every innocent being to life. Everyone has, in other words, a right not to be killed. But do those who are violated have the right to stop the further violation?
In a study in Time/CNN June 3 - 4, 1992 performed by Yankelovich, Clancy Shulman 81 % of Catholics believe that abortions are all right when the mothers life is at stake, and 79 % believe it to be fitting after cases of rape and incest. How could the catholic people as a majority be so opposite of what thier church believes and teaches. While the Church says make abortion illegal, according to CBS News / New York Times October 1992 44 % of Catholics feel that Abortion should generally be available. In my search to find the answers to this question of abortion when rape and incest were factors i found myself getting very little information.
It seems that while the Church has strong ideas about abortion, when touchy factors are placed in and the church is asked to respond, they seem to keep quite unavailable. When the Roman Catholic Church was organized, one of their main purposes was to spread Christianity. It was important for Catholic women to have many children because the goal of the church was to spread Christianity all over the world, which required many people to go to many places. However, in the twenty-first century, the world is starting to have a population problem. People need to slow down the population growth and start focusing on how to solve the endless social problems this planet is faced with everyday to accommodate with the large population.
American families have slowed down to an average of one and a half children per family. America is dominantly Christian but not catholic. However, Mexico is eighty-nine percent catholic and has two and a half children per family. In a nation where forty percent of the population is in poverty, families should not have children if they cant afford them, especially if poverty is one of the worlds leading social problems. The Roman Catholic traditional beliefs about birth control are archaic. It is irrational because of their hypocritical beliefs are bias and arent scientifically accurate.
It is an engaging nuisance toward a high population and increasing the poverty level in some countries. This traditional idea about contraception has no usefulness and should be formally resolved. Bibliography: Alvare, Helen. Abortion: What the Church Teaches.
Found online at: web Yankelovich, Clancy Shulman. Abortion Study. Time. June 3 - 4, 1992 Michaelson, Konrad K.
The Gospel of Life. New York: United Church Publishing, 1998.
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Research essay sample on Catholic Church View On Abortion
