And in the Big News today from a Faith Perspective, the Paralympics.
Which brings me to abortion. Abortion is wrong. The Pope has said so. The Catholic Church says so. The Second Vatican Council says so. The late Jonathon Sacks would have said so if he weren’t dead. It should be illegal. I say this in a totally non-political and unbiased way.
No, you may not reply to this or question it in any way. Remember, the Catholic Church, like TFTD, is infallible.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OqACYRMBhpA64BWPQrLAk1R0HRJRIDuq/view?usp=sharing
Platitude of the Day 
This woman’s capacity for self-deception is beyond parody. Once again we were assailed with the tedious old saw that ‘we are all made in the image of my IMF.’ It’s a completely meaningless statement if you hold allegiance (total, fawning, unquestioning, uncritical, blinkered allegiance) to the completely patriarchal, misogynistic, homophobic, autocratic organisation which is the Catholic Church. How can Ms Pepinster begin to suggest that all people are equally valued by her IMF when her faith organisation of choice plainly contradicts all that she wishes (with no evidence) were true. When your IMF’s beloved and cherished homosexual couples get married in RC churches, perhaps by a female priest; and a Black pope sends her blessing, then get back to us. Until then, Ms Pepinster, your listeners are simply embarrassed for you (and that’s without even starting on a catalogue of the pain and harm caused by your church and its teachings).
LikeLike
I imagine in the past that the Catholic Church would have seen the disabled as being cursed in some way. Most Christian sects did, and many still do. It is only because of secular pressures that these awful views have changed. Yet here is Pepinster quoting the usual throwback views and asking us to believe that other outdated Catholic views should still be listened to.
There are ethical issues over abortion but believing in the supernatural gives you no better understanding of those issues or moral leadership.
LikeLike
Can only echo all of the above; absolutely spot on. ^^^^^^
LikeLike
The Catholic Church’s position on abortion is informed by an outdated (that is, wrong) understanding of embryology. There is no “moment of conception” – there is a process of initial stages that might last five to ten days, up to the point of implantation, after which it can reasonably be said that the woman is pregnant.
At three weeks after fertilsation, the risk of failure is around 30%. Think about that in RC terms. One third of all the souls god puts into embryos are out of there within three weeks. Where do they all go? Heaven? Limbo? Hell? wherever they are, that’s a significant chunk of the population. And how does one eternally love / torture a blastocyst soul which has never had anything even vaguely resembling a nervous system?
There are lots of serious questions around abortion, but none of them are helped by a series of flat-out wrong assumptions. Discuss the matter for sure, but please exclude anyone who thinks its all done by magic.
LikeLike
The RCC’s attitude towards disability is completely hypocritical. It insists that people who are disabled are ‘made in god’s image’, in the vacuous phrase that Liverpudlian rightly ridicules. It even pretends that the IMF can, if it wants, ‘cure’ disabilities; indeed, places such as Lourdes have grown fat on the profits from this delusion. Yet it has consistently opposed genetic screening and interventions that might have a chance of undoing the harm that the IMF’s failures have caused, while ignoring the evidence about the formation and development of the human embryo, as Steve makes clear. And it doesn’t have much to say about why its IMF is so arbitrary and capricious in its decisions about who to cure and who to condemn.
Well, Ms Pepinster can fulminate all she likes, but the views of her church are not supported by most people in this country, or even by many of its members, and it has no chance of being able to impose them on the rest of us by force. So the best thing we can do is ignore them. Fortunately, that is not difficult.
LikeLike
https://mobile.twitter.com/BPAS1968/status/1431153806906208258?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
LikeLike
Further to Liverpudlian’s post, when can we expect a disabled Pope? I’m not talking here about the infirmities of old age, but a Pope with paraplegia, a Pope with amputations, or a Pope with genetic or birth defects? How many disabled men are ordained as Priests in the Catholic Church? Come to that, how many disabled people, whether secular or professional Catholics, are employed by the Vatican?
Given the number of babies killed by neglect following birth in Catholic mother and baby homes, it is a wonder that Pepinster has the brass neck to assume the moral high ground on this one.
The abortion of foetuses with defects is a complex issue, emotionally, morally, and legally, and complex issues require complex solutions, not knee-jerk reactions, or blanket bans. Women often face heart-breaking choices about whether to allow their severely disabled unborn babies to be aborted, but in the end, they must be allowed to have that choice, which may be the most compassionate one.
LikeLike