[gotorightway123]

It seems to me that it’s a mistake for Catholics to oppose a political issue like the Freedom of Choice Act on theological grounds and, if she claims that her opposition is on legal grounds, then that means she’s involved in politics and that’s simply not right. There are many reasons which cause me not to be involved in the Church’s opposition to the FOCA. Here are two. First, I don’t want my democracy to be even slightly turned into a theocracy. I don’t want a Catholic mullah deciding, either directly or indirectly, what people may or may not do under the law. I want our priests to preach from the pulpit, on the street corner, in the public square—wherever they can preach—to convince people to exercise their free will not have an abortion. It seems to me that the concept of free will is crucial here. If people are legally precluded from exercising their free will by the political actions of the Catholic Church, that’s a big step toward theocracy. People have to want to obey God’s law, not be threatened with imprisonment if they don’t. And, second, the Church’s preaching against abortion hasn’t been very successful; however, to turn to the government to prevent people from sinning is simply wrong. Just as we would never permit any other religion to impose its theology on our activities (should selected tenets of Hinduism or Buddhism be incorporated into U. S. law?), we should not try impose any of our tenets on anyone else. I remember my Jesuit high school theology instructor (an older priest) in the early 60s saying that all mortal sins are equally offensive to God, but that some are more offensive to man than are other mortal sins. Because we can’t grasp God’s wisdom, we use a different, i.e. human, moral measuring stick, if you will. From that I concluded that divorce is just as abominable as abortion and the good Jesuit agreed. Each sin separates us from God, but we humans get more upset about abortion than divorce, probably because abortion involves the death of a human and that death is a rather messy and gory event, while the death of a marriage is merely the death of two souls—spiritual, not physical—and much less offensive to our human senses. After all, there are not yet any pictures of souls writhing and withering in sin, are there? We regularly rub elbows with divorce attorneys, but how many of us readily dine with abortionists? The Church’s efforts to outlaw abortion are understandable, but hypocritical, to my mind. The Church’s efforts to impose its theology on all citizens is a dereliction of its teaching responsibility. It’s as if our bishops are saying, collectively, “We’ve tried, but we just can’t get folks to stop having abortions, so we’ll turn the problem over to Uncle Sam. Since folks refuse to accept our teaching, we’ll make it a law.” There’s nothing wrong with the Church’s teaching. It’s spot on. It just shouldn’t be turned into law. It smacks of “Inquisition Lite.”