POLITICS & SOCIETYIN ALL THINGS
Catholic sisters join the Women’s March on Washington
 
Teresa Donnellan
January 22, 2017
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Deborah Troillett of the Sisters of Mercy.
Early this morning crowds of women donning pink hats and carrying protest signs with slogans like “I’m with her” and “Love trumps hate” gathered in groups around capitol hill in Washington, D.C., as well as in cities across the country, to prepare for the Women’s March on Washington and its sister marches.

Over 500,000 men and women filed in to listen to women speak on a host of social justice issues, from immigration reform to environmental responsibility. While the exclusion of pro-life feminist groups from the march’s list of sponsors discouraged some Catholics from attending this event, several groups of women religious came to champion their respective social justice causes. Sr. Simone Campbell of the NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice even spoke at the rally that preceded the march.

For some of these Catholic groups, the day began with a Mass at St. Peter’s on Capitol Hill celebrated by Rev. Jordan Kelly, O.P. He pointed out the providential sign that this march should fall on the feast of St. Agnes, who, having vowed her life to Christ against the wishes of her father, walked naked through her village to protest her betrothal.


“This little girl shows us the dignity of womanhood,” said Fr. Kelly, who also cited the work of religious sisters as a powerful influence in his life and the lives of others.

The power of Christ can change the hearts and minds of men and women, Rev. Kelly told the church filled with people about to go out and protest for that change.

While he didn’t care for some of the more “grotesque” protests signs he saw on his way to church, some of the protesters’ signs caused him to think, “You’ve got one person thinking today,” adding, “that’s a start.”

Sr. Deborah Troillett of the Sisters of Mercy was at the Mass with about 15 women from her community. “We’re here in light of our charism of mercy,” Sr. Deborah said. “We’re here because we stand for justice for those who are most affected by the kind of divisions and racism and inequalities that we seem to be more and more aware of and more and more affected by in terms of who’s being left out.”

“We want to be faithful to Pope Francis’ call in this new year to act with nonviolence, to be peacefully gathered, to stand in unity, to stand in prayer, to stand based in our belief in the gospel and what Jesus calls us to be,” Sr. Deborah added. “Pope Francis, in his letter to President Trump, called all of us in this nation to claim our deepest values, respect for human dignity and freedom. So we want to stand in that place with women and with all people who in any way experience inequality or the lack of opportunity to live their God-given dignity.”

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Sister Patricia Chapell walked alongside her fellow Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur while also walking as the executive director of Pax Christi USA, the national Catholic peace with justice movement in the United States, and as an African-American Catholic woman.

“I believe in the social teachings of the Catholic Church. We basically want to be able to say to our newly elected president that we certainly believe in social justice issues,” Sr. Patricia said. “And particularly as women we’re concerned about the economic and racial polarization that has been a byproduct of what has happened.”

“We come together in solidarity to say we are marching for human rights, we are marching for civil rights, we are marching to take care of creation and the climate, and we are also marching because we’re not about racial or religious polarization,” Sr. Patricia continued, “We’re here to be a united, solid front.”

We’re here to be a united, solid front.
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The Sisters of St. Joseph, an order devoted to social justice work also participated in the march. Sr. Helen Kearny, president of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Brentwood, N.Y., said, “Our mission is one of unity, and we feel very strongly that being together with people who respect life, dignity, peace [and] justice, [and] that powerful witness of everybody to speak positively, certainly to our elected government, but to one another, and to say that we have the power to stand up for the things that we believe in, that will foster the common good, that will help our environment, that will help bring peace to our world and also [help] to avoid the discrimination and poverty that is so rampant.”

Sr. Karen Burke, C.S.J., who organized her community’s trip to Washington, added, “It was important for us to be in community with all of our sisters, and knowing that it’s a large group and a diverse group, and we want to embrace all of our sisters today. It gives us a lot of energy for the work that we do when we see all of these women together supporting us, and hopefully we’re supporting them.”

“I think one of the things we might have been discouraged about was we didn’t hear enough about ‘We the people’ in this last election cycle,” concluded Sr. Janet Kinney, C.S.J., and executive director of Providence House. “And so it’s really important to people that we try to mend the wealth and inequality gaps that are throughout this country and that we stand behind every marginalized group of people that needs our support and our help.”
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More: WOMEN RELIGIOUS / SOCIAL JUSTICE / WOMEN'S ISSUES / PRO-LIFE / ABORTION

Teresa Donnellan
Teresa Donnellan is an O'Hare Fellow at America.

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The Pope’s abortion comments have provoked confusion. The Curia could have avoided this
by Ed Condon posted Tuesday, 22 Nov 2016

Pope Francis (CNS)
The furore caused by Misericordia et Misera is a damning indictment of those surrounding the Pope

Pope Francis is not an expert in canon law. I do not think His Holiness would mind me putting it that bluntly. In fact I rather suspect that, given his personal style, he would happily agree. It is far from heresy to point out that a pope might not be a born canonical expert, anymore than it would be unreasonable to suggest that Donald Trump has no particular natural expertise in American constitutional law.

The Pope wears a number of different hats (three, if you take a look at the papal coat of arms) and he is sometimes speaking as a priest, sometimes a teacher, and sometimes as the head of a coherent legal society. The roles are not distinct in how they are exercised, or at least they shouldn’t be, and what he does, or wants to do, as one necessarily has a direct impact on the other two. It is the job of those around the Pope to take his instructions and turn them into a statement that is coherent pastorally, legally, and theologically; that’s the proper function of all those well-dressed monsigniori gliding around the Vatican. Unfortunately they let the side down badly this week and the results have been totally unnecessary confusion.

Yesterday Pope Francis released the apostolic letter Misericordia et Misera. In it he extended the special provision he made for the Year of Mercy which granted every priest the faculty to lift the censure for the grave crime of abortion. That at least was what it should have said. In fact Misericordia et Misera stated, as did the original letter for the Year of Mercy, that the Pope was granting all priests “the faculty to absolve those who have committed the sin of procured abortion”.

Before trying to dispel the confusion which has, predictably and unnecessarily, grown up around it, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: the language of this statement is wrong – simply, avoidably and basically wrong. And while that is enormously frustrating, it is not the end of the world. It is, however, a damning indictment of those around the Pope who seem either unable or unwilling to ensure even a minimum of theological and canonical coherence in some of what is presented for the papal signature.

The Curia’s entire purpose is to assist the Pope in putting what he wants into practice, that means when he says “I want every priest to be able to deal with the situation of abortion for the Year of Mercy and beyond”, his minions are supposed to swing into action and prepare the necessary text to reflect what is going to actually happen. This is supposed to go somewhat beyond simply pressing *copy*, *paste*, *print* when they get the original memo from the Pope.

While the meaning of what the Pope wrote is pretty easy to guess if you’re a canon lawyer, it’s legal nonsense in and of itself. So when secular journalists read it and, absent any context for the subject, take the letter at face value, they can be forgiven for (wrongly) assuming that the Pope has changed something regarding the Church’s teaching on the sin of abortion.



Actually, even before the Year of Mercy, 99 per cent of priests already had the power to “absolve” the “sin” of abortion. Any priest who has the power to sacramentally forgive sins has the power to forgive all sins (the one exception to this is a priest cannot absolve his accomplice in a sim against the sixth commandment). The only priests who could not “forgive” the “sin” of abortion already were those who have had their faculty to hear confessions revoked and thus can’t forgive any sins, except in danger of death.

How the faculty to hear confessions and forgive sins works, in canon law, is like this: a priest gets the “power” to forgive sins through his ordination, but to validly use this power he needs the faculty to exercise it (c. 966 §1). He gets this faculty from the law itself in some circuмstances, like in danger of death for the penitent (c. 976), but the normal process is for him to be given the faculty by his bishop for use in the diocese (c. 969 §1). Once he has the faculty from his bishop to hear confessions and forgive sins in his diocese, the law then extends that faculty to apply anywhere in the world (c. 967 §2). In short: if a priest has the faculty to hear confessions and absolve any sins, he can absolve all sins, and if he has the faculty to do this somewhere he can do it anywhere.

This means that the actual effect of the Pope’s concession of the “faculty” to absolve the “sin” of abortion to all priests is to grant them a faculty which 99 per cent of them already have. The one-percenters who don’t have the faculty are those who have not already been given it by their bishop, or have had it revoked; those suspended from ministry, for example. Now it is pretty obvious that this is not what the Pope meant, even if it is what he technically said. So what did he mean to say?

What was supposed to be announced, and what would have been announced had his curial assistants done their job, was the concession of the “faculty” to “remit the censure” for the “delict/crime” of abortion.

While every canonical crime is a sin, not every sin is also a canonical crime, though some of the most serious are. Abortion is, for sure, a grave sin. It is also a delict (c. 1398) which carries the penalty of excommunication. To be clear: there is no such thing as a “reserved sin”, but there are “reserved crimes”. A reserved crime is one where only a person with particular authority can lift the penalty. In the case of abortion, only the ordinary of the territory (the diocesan bishop, for all intents and purposes) can lift the censure, in this case of excommunication. It is common practice for some bishops to give their priests this faculty by delegation, along with the faculty to hear confessions. But, since the faculty to lift the penalty is not extended by the law, as it is with absolving the sin, to cover everywhere, but is limited to the territory of the ordinary, the power to lift the censure does not travel with the priest, even if he has it at home.

Putting it as simply as possible: every priest has the power to forgive any sin, by virtue of his ordination; almost every priest (excepting those denied it for good reason) gets the faculty to exercise this power from his bishop, once he has this power in his home diocese he can use it anywhere; if the bishop also gives him the faculty to lift censures for certain reserved delicts (like abortion) he can only use this when he is physically in his home diocese.

What the Pope is actually doing, and I hope this will be clarified in the not too distant future, is giving all priests (excluding, let’s hope, the suspended ones) the faculty to lift the excommunication, always and everywhere and on their own. He did this first for the the Year of Mercy and is now making it permanent.

The Pope has in no way downgraded or mitigated the severity of the sin of abortion, and effectively ending the reservation of the delict is hardly the disciplinary earthquake some people are assuming it is.

Conversely, neither does the Pope’s letter imply that women who went to Confession and received absolution for the sin of abortion before the Year of Mercy did so invalidly – a tragically avoidable fear which has touched more than a few women today.

While canon law seems very out of fashion in some quarters at the moment, this situation highlights it’s essential service of clarity and precision for the help of the faithful. Those around the Pope would serve him and the Church better by remembering this.

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Related stories

Pope extends priests’ special permission to absolve ‘grave sin’ of abortion
The Pope also extended his decree that allows SSPX priests to hear valid confessions

Full text: Pope’s apostolic letter concluding Year of Mercy
The complete text of Misericordia et misera

Pope Francis reflects on Year of Mercy in television interview
The Pontiff said the Year of Mercy affirmed dignity and sacredness of human life
Ed Condon is a canon lawyer working for tribunals in a number of dioceses. On Twitter he is @canonlawyered
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30 years ago, there was no annual commemoration of Roe v. Wade in January.  Ever since 1973, on January 22nd, the WORLD WAS SILENT regarding how much everyone appreciated legalized abortion.  One had to wonder whether anyone appreciated it at all.

So Pro-life groups started having annual gatherings to celebrate life, and put out a positive message that is contrary to the killing spree that is abortion. It was through just such efforts that the original Jane Roe of Roe vs. Wade (Norma Leah McCorvey) was gradually converted by compassionate pro-life activists.  She became instructed and baptized in the Church and remains Catholic today.  In other words, if the case would be reheard today, she would have no part of supporting child killing.

Roe vs. Wade today, as it was, would not have a leg to stand on.

And so it was, year after year, until well into Obama's abominable second term, when the anti-life antagonists began to show up at the annual pro-life gatherings.  Last year, the one held annually in Pershing Square, Los Angeles, got a bit tense when greater numbers of baby killing activists appeared, and as usual, it is the promoters of satan's agenda that make all the noise.  You can readily see who is on the right side by noticing who is not, that is, who shouts the obscenities, makes threats, hurls insults and sometimes bags of excrement.

Last year their numbers were increasing from previous years, and this year it appeared several weeks in advance that Pershing Square was going to be overrun by them and if the Pro-lifers showed up as they had been doing for decades, things could get ugly, so they decided to relocate to Exposition Park, near the Los Angeles Coliseum.  Exactly ONE radio station carried any news of this event, 930 AM, Immaculate Heart Radio, which actually went all-out and did a remote broadcast from the venue itself. Of the other 4 radio stations I heard that day, Saturday, Jan. 21st, providing local news, the only gathering of people they mentioned was the women's issues protesters in Pershing Square. But this year it was also a whining anti-Trump rally. They pumped it up with energetic tones announcing this was the largest gathering of people they had ever seen in Los Angeles, with crowds so dense that the route they had planned to take was entirely full of people from start to finish so that no one could move, so no march took place.

One station in the Bay Area mentioned that a Pro-life group was marching nearby while a Pro-abortion group was coming close by, and predictably, the pro-death activists were the rude ones, threatening to attack and shouting insults with vigor. No injuries were reported. The Pro-life group continued on their way to avoid confrontation.

There were gatherings of Pro-life volunteers in Washington D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles, and all three places were also left-wing liberals this year to shout at them and demonstrate their evil mind and hearts.  

Of course, the mainstream news media isn't going to bring you that perspective.

Quote

“Pope Francis is saying what every faithful lay Catholic knows: To be effective in the modern world, the Church must refocus on what Christ actually taught us: to proclaim God’s love and good news for the poor, the vulnerable and the forgotten,” Salt wrote in a statement.

And who are the poor, the vulnerable and the forgotten, if not preborn children?

The best good news we could proclaim for them is that there will be no more abortion.

Even more souls of children are lost due to the pill, which prevents the fertilized embryo from adhering to the mother's womb, and so it dies, in most cases without Baptism.  So no more contraception would be more good news for children, the poorest and most vulnerable and the frequently forgotten, that is, unbaptized.

A) I don't think all abortion will end. Legal abortion, yes, but people will find a way with hole-in-the-wall inconspicuous 'clinics' that provide underground abortion.

B) RC1953, some of the most liberal college campuses are actually "Catholic" universities. This should be expected out of any of them.

EDIT: Puke. It's St. Catharine's in the Twin Cities. Yeah, there's no Catholics there. Take this from me - all the conservative Catholics are going to state schools here in Minnesota because the diocesan universities are spiritual vomit.

B) RC1953, some of the most liberal college campuses are actually "Catholic" universities. This should be expected out of any of them.

What do you mean that they are "Catholic Universities" . By pre-Vatican 2
standards they are NOT.  They now employ many non-Catholic and anti-Catholic
professors, Jєωιѕн rabbis, Muslims, protestants and claimed they are
Ecuмenical.
A Catholic that goes into these Universities are guaranteed to lose their
faith after 4 years.  I saw this in my 30th High School Class reunion in
1996.  Not one that went to so called Catholic Universities such as Loyola in
Los Angeles were practicing their faith. And all have left the Church a long
time ago.
Many I knew since First Grade and many served on the altar.  And all
their Catholic teachings came from the Nuns and the Baltimore
Catechism was the rule.