Repost from Jul 18, 2022
When I was eleven years old, I took communion in the Catholic church.
In other denominations, this might not have been any particular cause for celebration. After all, the Eucharist (the bread and wine) is an integral part of nearly every Christian service. For Catholics, though, First Communion is a holy rite of passage. The Church holds that the bread and wine are not merely symbols but are in fact the essence of Jesus Christ himself, and so before a Catholic can accept the Eucharist, they must be taught exactly why it’s treated with such reverence.
A note in my personal Bible, given to me 18 years ago in honor of my First Communion.
That was 2004. About a year later, I started sixth grade at St. Joseph’s Catholic School. I argued, I cried, but ultimately, the decision had been made. Instead of attending Smitha Middle School with my neighborhood friends, I began my Catholic education.
And…I loved it.
I’d never had many friends in public school. I was a bespectacled, overweight nerd who loved Harry Potter and Star Wars way more than he’d ever love football. And though I was still bullied at St. Joseph’s, here was a place where —like Harry — I finally fit in. So, when 2008 rolled around and it was time to think about high school, I entreated my parents to send me to Blessed Trinity in Roswell, where many of my new friends planned to attend. Though it was expensive, and though it was a forty-minute drive from home, my mom and dad acquiesced.
That’s about the point the Church really started drilling “pro-life” into my head. When I was maybe 15, my religion teacher showed us a PowerPoint that depicted the various medical procedures involved in abortion in graphic detail. I harbor no illusions about the objectivity of the lecture; it was propaganda, clear and simple. But it’s the sort of thing that haunts you, that whispers “pro-life” into your ear at every turn.
Now, when I say “pro-life” aloud to most Americans, they no doubt attribute that phrase to a very specific set of convictions. Namely, the belief that life begins at conception, and that abortion is no less than infanticide. To some extent, their assumption is correct. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (“CCC”), Paragraph 2270, “human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.”
However, read in its entirety, the Catechism actually provides a much broader definition. For example, it states that “the moral law prohibits exposing someone to mortal danger without grave reason, as well as refusing assistance to a person in danger” (CCC, 2269); “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” (CCC, 2267); and “the moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law.” (CCC, 2273).
In other words, the Catholic definition of “pro-life” requires that we cherish every life, whether it belongs to a fetus or a serial killer. It places the burden of protecting each and every one of those lives squarely on our shoulders, because we’re told from day one that to do anything less is a mortal sin in the eyes of God. That’s why I spoke out when George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other black lives were taken. It’s why the flippant response to COVID-19 infuriated me. To refuse to do something as simple as wear a piece of cloth over your nose, at the possible cost of God knows how many lives, spat in the face of my most sincerely held beliefs — the ones the Church is supposed to protect.
A crucifix atop a bible page. https://pixabay.com/photos/bible-rosary-prayer-pray-holy-706662/
I’m well aware that my Church has done both great good and great harm over its two-millennia existence — as I’m sure many of my fellow students would attest. As part of our grade, we were expected to perform a certain amount of service hours per semester. Likewise, millions of Catholics every year foster children, feed the homeless, donate to charity, and volunteer their time to other worthy causes.
That doesn’t change the fact that in our senior year, we all signed a petition begging the school not to fire our chorus teacher simply because they’d been open about their non-hetero marriage. That also doesn’t change the fact that, whether we like to admit it or not, this is the same Church that founded the Inquisition and that forced Galileo to recant under threat of torture (see CCC, 2298, admitting that the Church “adopted in [its] own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture”). In fact, he would have been tortured even after he recanted, if not for his advanced age.
And while you’d be correct to argue that both offenses were centuries ago, this is also the same Church that has been very credibly accused of shunting pedophilic priests between parishes in an attempt to conceal their crimes. Those accusations are so damning that Wilton Gregory — former Archbishop of Atlanta and now the first African American Cardinal — issued a formal apology on behalf of the Church and worked to implement the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.”
More recently still, as my classmates and I found out, it’s the same Church that insists to this day that homosexuality is a “grave depravity” (CCC, 2357). Modern scientific consensus holds that forcing a gay or transgender teenager to suppress their identity leads to lifelong mental health issues and (according to data collected by the Trevor Project) a fourfold increase in suicidal ideation. The American Medical Association agrees, stating in no uncertain terms that to allow governments to dictate what care a transgender person may receive is “a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine.” In the face of those facts, the Church’s stance is irrational and, frankly, indefensible. It’s difficult to reconcile “pro-life” with “rhetoric that quadruples suicide risk.”
That same irrationality taints the abortion debate, too. I know this because it’s something I’ve struggled mightily with over the past ten years. I know the facts; I’ve read the science. The medical community has studied the reproductive process extensively, and they’ve determined exactly when, why, and how an abortion should be performed. Despite that, my heart still clenches at the thought of terminating a pregnancy. Part of me still shouts, “this is wrong!”
I realized around 2014 that those beliefs had turned me into a single-issue voter. I disagreed with 90% of what the Republican party stood for (particularly its apathy toward climate change and antipathy toward the LGBTQIA community), and the only reason I wasn’t voting Democrat was because Republicans were — ostensibly — pro-life.
I told myself that I could vote third-party instead, perhaps find a Libertarian candidate who was pro-life, but who opposed oppression of LGTBQIA Americans. But Libertarians also oppose economic and environmental regulation, no matter how well-intentioned. Any hope I held that gold was the way to go died when I watched the country’s meltdown over mask mandates.
The problem wasn’t the parties, it was me.
I couldn’t condemn the Church for involving itself in one aspect of American politics while simultaneously asking it to do the same in another. That’s a Pharisaic level of hypocrisy. It’s completely irrational. What’s worse, here was a cisgender man — who does not have a uterus and who will never, ever carry a child to term — inserting himself into a debate that he had no business being a part of. Same goes for the Church, which doesn’t allow female priests and doesn’t acknowledge trans identities, and so is governed entirely by cisgender men.
The truth is, no matter what I, you, or Samuel Alito may believe about abortion, that Church cannot be allowed to dictate medical and penal law for the entire country. The U.S. and all the states are republics; they are not theocracies. But with Dobbs, we have allowed Catholics (and, admittedly, other Christians too) to decide a point of science and medicine for all of American society — damn what the doctors say. The fact that we insist life begins at conception, despite the mountain of scientific evidence to the contrary, speaks to a level of faith-fueled irrationality that absolutely cannot coexist with the reason and temperance required in lawmaking.
“But John,” you could argue, “It wasn’t the Church that passed the bill, it was the Mississippi Legislature!” To that I ask, “Who influenced them? What are their stated reasons for writing the laws?”
The answer? They, like me and like many other Christians, sincerely believe that life begins at conception. If someone I loved were considering abortion, I would present them with as many other options as possible; I would sooner adopt the baby myself. But I would not stop nor condemn them, because that is not my decision to make. It is not the Church’s decision, the state’s decision, nor even the doctor’s decision. That choice lies exclusively with one person: the one who’ll carry that child to term.
It may turn out that Christians were right all along, and science will verify that life really does begin at conception. Perhaps then we will reassess our laws. But all the data we have suggests otherwise, and no matter how hard Christians believe, faith can’t be the deciding factor. Faith can encourage the hopeless and strengthen the hopeful, but it can also twist the mind and cement the heart. That stands in stark contrast with the law, which must be decided objectively and enforced equally. Insisting on laws that criminalize accepted medical procedures — be they for reproductive health or gender transition therapy — is no better than condemning Galileo or rooting out heretics with a sword.
Many of my fellow Catholics also sincerely believe that a happy, healthy gay marriage is inherently evil and that allowing a trans woman to live her truth is an affront to God. Should that allow Catholics to dictate their rights to them? A few hundred years ago, it was heresy to teach children that the Earth orbited the Sun. Shall we torture Neil DeGrasse Tyson until he recants?
Of course not. Christians do not have the right to enforce a religious belief in a republic. They can preach it in church, they can teach it in parochial schools, but they cannot criminalize it. Just like the government cannot criminalize our attending Mass.
That’s just how America works.