Life Isn't Easy

A few months ago, a nun had been excommunicated for allowing an abortion at a Catholic hospital in Arizona. The participants in a similar case in Brazil have been excommunicated for permitting an abortion for a pregnant nine year old girl last year. These events have drawn particular focus on the issue of abortion, if it is possible that any greater emphasis can be placed on it.

Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted has put the question in proper perspective: there are always two lives at stake with a pregnancy, and each has equal moral value. The end can never justify the means, and one innocent life cannot be directly taken even to save another. It is as simple as that.

The circumstances may indeed be tragic. The girl in Brazil was the victim of such. The woman in Arizona, pregnant with her fifth child despite a known health issue, may also be, but the case is less clear there. Presumably she knew of her condition yet allowed herself to become pregnant, and that is most definitely a mitigating circumstance which must be considered. But the bottom line is that we are not dealing with the big bad Catholic Church acting without concern for human life. Indeed we at dealing with Her instructing the faithful in very real and human terms: addressing the issue of the sacredness of life itself.

The answers are not always easy, but, every Christian his cross must bear. We were never promised that life would be easy. The supporters of the nun's decision speak as though she and her associates did a great good; yet a life was lost, directly and by a conscious decision no less. That is not being readily addressed by the public, and it is the salient point. The matter is very grave, a point which certainly the principals involved would concede. Yet the only moral option was clear, and it was not followed.

Every Christian his cross must bear. We will not always like the result, but there are times where we have no moral choice but to let things play out. It's often sad, yes, even regrettable, but we live in a fallen world. We do not improve it by submitting to that fact. We only make it worse.