Current Events: The Pope, Abortion, and Confession...

Dear Apologist, I heard recently that the Pope declared that priests could not forgive abortions in Confession?   Could they not before?  Was abortion unforgivable?

Here is the first thing to keep in mind;  If you are getting news about the Catholic Church from secular news sources such as the Associated Press or Reuters, you are only going to be misled.  Those people do not understand the Catholic faith and have no idea how to accurately present it to readers.  The sources you want to get Catholic news from are the National Catholic Register and EWTN. 

Onto the matter at hand.

Excommunication:

In Matthew 18:15-20, we find Jesus giving juridical authority to the Apostles for the governing of the Church.  He notes that if a believer is in sin, refuses to repent, and refused to listen to the authorities of the Church – that person can be removed from the community.  This is known as “excommunication”.  We can actually see Paul exercising this penalty in 1 Corinthians 5 upon a man who is living in a state of terrible sexual immorality.

Now, when the Church wants to make sure people know something is super-duper bad, it can attach an automatic excommunication to the activity.  That means the penalty applies as soon as you commit the act – whether or not the Church convenes a tribunal to declare it in your individual case. 

According to Canon 1331 in the Code of Canon law, a person who is excommunicated cannot receive the Sacraments until that penalty is removed by a competent authority.  In most cases that is the Bishop.  Therefore, if someone is excommunicated, an ordinary parish priest actually cannot absolve that person.  He would need to see the bishop personally, or his pastor would have to contact the bishop on his behalf to sort things out.


The Abortion Excommunication:

Many societies have legalized abortion.  This legal acceptance has led to widespread confusion regarding the moral status of killing pre-birth babies.  Therefore, the Church has judged it appropriate to apply a penalty of excommunication upon procuring, assisting, or performing an abortion.  The Catechism states:

“Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication by the very commission of the offense, and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law.” - CCC 2272

Now, if that was all there was it would be true that - due to the excommunication - an ordinary priest could not absolve an abortion.  But that’s NOT all there is to it.  There are some very relevant details which have to be kept in mind.

First, even if you are involved in an abortion, the excommunication doesn’t apply unless certain criteria are met.  According to Canon 1323 of the Code of Canon Law:

• You have to be a Catholic.  
• You have to be over the age of 16.  
• You have to be aware that abortion is a grave sin.  
• You have to be aware of the excommunication penalty.  
• You have to get the abortion with no coercion. 

In other words, you literally have to try  to get excommunicated.  It is actually an open question in Catholic legal circles as to whether anyone has ever successfully come under this penalty.  Therefore, in almost all cases the ordinary parish priest is sufficient to absolve an abortion because the woman, even in the getting an abortion, almost certainly did not qualify for the excommunication.


Faculties:

Now, way back during Saint John Paul II’s reign as Pope, he told the Bishops they could give their faculty to remit the abortion excommunication to their priests.  And throughout most of the world, that is exactly what happened; the vast majority of bishops gave this faculty to their priests.

Therefore, for the past few decades your average parish priest has been able to absolve abortions even if the excommunication is present.  Thus, in the astonishingly unlikely event that someone actually managed to incur this excommunication, a normal parish priest could take care of it.

What Pope Francis did last year was extend that faculty of remitting this excommunication  - (which no one ever incurs) - to all priests in the world - (most of whom already had it).  So if there was still a couple dozen priests somewhere on Earth who didn’t already have that ability, the Pope made sure they did too.

A Symbolic Gesture:

You might be thinking, “Was there any practical effect of his doing this?” 

It generated a few confusing headlines and hopefully enticed some post-abortive women to come to the confessional.  But in terms of practical changes… none.  The act was mostly symbolic.

Which brings us up to the present day.

What happened most recently was Pope Francis made that extension of faculties permanent for all priests.  So this complete non-change is now permanent.