Cardinal Bernardin, chairman of the American bishops’ Committee for
Pro-Life Activities, asserts that abortion is a moral wrong and that the
official stand of the church is binding on all Roman Catholics. Again,
Roman Catholic professor of moral theology at Notre Dame University in
the United States, James T. Burtchaell, wrote in 1982: “My argument is
straightforward. Abortion is homicide: the destruction of a child.” Yet,
four years later, priest Richard P. McBrien, chairman of the theology
department of the same university, took pains to explain that abortion
is not a defined doctrine of his church. According to this view,
Catholics who subscribe to abortion cannot be excommunicated, even
though they may be viewed as being disloyal.

On account of this ambiguity of church authority, many prominent
Catholics are outspokenly pro-abortion. Included among them in the
United States are some priests. Also a number of nuns, some of whom
endorsed a controversial abortion newspaper advertisement for which they
were threatened with expulsion from their orders.

Additionally, lay Catholics now form an active pro-abortion lobby. “I am
in the mainstream of Catholic lay thought,” asserted Mrs. Eleanor C.
Smeal, president of NOW, the National Organization for Women, at an
abortion rally in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. At the same time, according
to The New York Times, she mocked the suggestion that her support for
the right to abortion could lead to her excommunication from the Roman
Catholic Church.

The Church of Rome is finding it increasingly difficult to resolve such
conflicting views within its ranks.