Michael Kelly
The foray into the abortion debate of the leadership of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) at the weekend is a puzzling one. I emphasise the leadership element to the intervention since I’ve been contacted by several priests this week who are members of the ACP but deeply annoyed at the statement and the obvious spin put on the story by most of the media who are engaged in a barely concealed campaign for abortion.
It is causing considerable unease within the grassroots of the ACP – an organisation joined by many priests because they were concerned about their rights, not to have their names associated with statements.
A look at the ACP website is revealing. The discussion forums on the site are usually what you would expect on a forum populated largely by like-minded people – self-congratulatory and agreeable. But, this issue is different.
On a discussion of the statement, one member Fr Kevin O’Higgins SJ writes: “When I heard reports on this ACP statement in the media, my immediate reaction was that there must be some mistake. Having read the actual statement on the ACP website, I feel like I have just been punched in the stomach.
“It brings my mind back to the years I spent in Latin America, when far-right military regimes regularly warned the Church to stop using Mass and other religious celebrations to speak about political or social issues”.
Another, Fr Alan Neville writes: “I attended the first few meetings of the ACP and I was quite hopeful about its aims. Since then it seems you have become overwhelmed by personal agendas and now simply provide ammunition for journalists, especially the Irish Times. What a pity. We really needed the ACP. This latest statement shows how lost you have become”.
Statement
While the statement does underline Church teaching on the sanctity of human life, there is a rather theologically illiterate passage about conscience which gives the false impression that one can, in good conscience, support something which is objectively evil – namely, the killing of an innocent person. The statement makes no reference to the duty that all people have to inform their consciences.
The ACP also go on to reject lay pro-life speakers being permitted to speak at Masses – this despite the fact that there is a long and noble tradition of laypeople speaking about specific issues of concern at Masses.
There’s a particular irony in this in the fact that when the Vatican tightened up the rules around laypeople speaking at Masses in the late 1990s a prominent founder member of the ACP was interviewed in the media expressing the review that this was a backward step.
It leaves one with the distinct impression that some people in the ACP are all for laypeople speaking at Mass so long as they conform rather than challenge their own views.
As Fr Bill Kemmy points out the only effect of the ACP statement is to bolster the ‘Yes’ campaign. That is indeed regrettable and predictable. Some of the leaders of the ACP consider themselves to be media-savvy sages on all issues, but what this statement reveals is that they are more often than not considered no more than ‘useful idiots’ by a media keen to knock the Catholic Church.
On May 25, the Irish people are being asked to permit the Government to legalise abortion on demand. A Catholic in good conscience cannot vote in support of such a proposal. Pope Francis describes the unborn as “the most defenceless and innocent among us. Nowadays efforts are made to deny them their human dignity and to do with them whatever one pleases, taking their lives and passing laws preventing anyone from standing in the way of this…it is not ‘progressive’ to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life.”
When it comes to standing up for the most vulnerable, I think I’ll take my cue from Pope Francis rather than the ACP.