Category: Abortion

The following are helpful suggestions on how to tick off the Vatican. These suggestions are of a purely prudential nature and thus independent of the merits of any individual case that one might use in the course of following them.

1. Go to the Vatican.

“I went to the Vatican in search of the truth” (4; numbers in parentheses are to the numbered press releases online
here).

2. Meet with someone at one of the dicasteries.

“Lacking guidance from the Vatican, [I] sought an appointment and was received by an official of the Congregation in its halls in Rome” (2).

3. Ask him some questions.

“I went to Rome in person to submit two critical questions to the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith” (2).

4. Receive an unofficial response to your questions from an outside theologian.

“The Response was an unofficial response prepared by an eminent theologian” (3).

Now the ticking off begins.

Continue reading “How To Tick Off The Vatican”

Dr. Edward Peters has now added a Q & A section on the Balestrieri affair. He’s even taking the snarky questions (and assertions) he gets. So far the question lineup includes:

* Why do you say Fr. Cole’s letter is “private”? Cole said Balestrieri could publish it.

* Peters should not criticize Balestrieri’s case publicly.

* What has Peters done for pro-life over the last 30 years?

* It sounds like no matter what Balestrieri did in Rome, you’d have a problem with it.

* Why does the heresy case have to start from scratch?

* If you’re such an “expert” in all this, why didn’t you do it yourself?

Now that you know the questions, GET THE ANSWERS. (Scroll down)

Dr. Edward Peters has now added a Q & A section on the Balestrieri affair. He’s even taking the snarky questions (and assertions) he gets. So far the question lineup includes:

* Why do you say Fr. Cole’s letter is “private”? Cole said Balestrieri could publish it.
* Peters should not criticize Balestrieri’s case publicly.
* What has Peters done for pro-life over the last 30 years?
* It sounds like no matter what Balestrieri did in Rome, you’d have a problem with it.
* Why does the heresy case have to start from scratch?
* If you’re such an “expert” in all this, why didn’t you do it yourself?

Now that you know the questions, GET THE ANSWERS. (Scroll down)

Dr. Edward Peters has some good material on the Balestrieri affair. Excerpts:

Like some other observers of B/DF’s heresy case, I have kept my reservations about its canonical persuasiveness muted. First, it’s not my case; second, my concerns about its problems might be wrong; third, unknown factors might develop to improve its chances of succeeding. But there seems little point in worrying about such things now. At this point, there only remains to salvage from the experience some object lessons, of which I think there are many. Here I will mention just one, on canonical technique.

Two impressions are given about the trip Balestrieri made to Rome after he filed his heresy case against Kerry: one version has him posing interesting academic questions about heresy to various Church officials (mostly at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), the other has him disclosing his status as an active litigant but asking more or less the same questions of the same people. Conceivably, he could have approached some Vatican officials one way and others in the other, but either way, it’s problematic.

[Well-worth-reading elaboration snipped for space. Go read it.]

So now, it seems to me, the canonical case against Kerry and of host of other scandal-mongering pro-abortion Catholic politicians has to be reconstructed, basically from scratch. Perhaps some of the research generated by B/DF can be used in such a case, but it is not likely to be primarily a “heresy” case next time, and it’s certainly not going to come together quickly or be tried in the media.

CHECK IT OUT.

“Tunc et Nunc” is Latin for “Then and Now.”

Above are two images taken from screenshots of Marc Balestrieri’s web site, DeFide.Com. The first was taken Tuesday morning before I went to work. The second was taken Wednesday evening after I got home from work. They are different in significant respects and will convey markedly different impressions to the typical reader. They also illustrate the problem of how Marc Balestrieri dug the hole he is presently in.

Tunc: Mr. Balestrieri advertised Fr. Cole’s letter as “the Vatican’s Response“–a statement that will convey to the ordinary reader’s mind that it is a formal, official response from the Vatican.

Nunc: Mr. Balestrieri advertises the same letter as “the Vatican Requested Theologian’s Response“–a statement which will convey to the ordinary reader’s mind that it is the reply of a theologian who wrote at the Vatican’s request (though it does not completely dispel the idea that this is a formal, official reply).

That shift is a good thing. Balestrieri had to stop representing the letter in such a misleading way.

Unfortunately, the misrepresentation was obvious at the time . . .

Tunc: The address at the top of the letter reads: “Fr. Basil Cole, OP, STD; Dominican House of Studies; 487 Michigan Ave., NE; Washington DC 20017-1585.” This makes it clear that the letter is not a Vatican reply but the reply of an individual theologian.

Tunc: Fr. Cole says in the opening paragraph of the letter: “I receive a request from the Very Reverend Augustin DiNoia, OP, the undersecretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to respond unofficially to your dubia [questions; lit., “doubts”] . . .” This makes it clear that the letter is not an official Vatican response, as would be suggested to the ordinary reader by advertising it as “the Vatican’s Response.”

Tunc: In reply to the questions posed by Mr. Balestrieri, Fr. Cole replies: “My response ad I^um [“to the first”]: Affirmative. . . . My response ad II^um [“to the second”]: Affirmative.” This makes it clear that these are the replies of an individual theologian (“My response . . . My response”) and not “the Vatican’s Response.”

Most unfortunately, a press release labeled NEWS RELEASE No. 2 (hereafter, “Tunc“) was issued October 18th which contained multiple seriously misleading statements:

Tunc: Its headline read “SEN. JOHN KERRY “EXCOMMUNICATED,” ACCORDING TO VATICAN RESPONSE”–suggesting that the Vatican issued a response indicating that Sen. Kerry has been excommunicated. This is an extremely grave misrepresentation as the headline of the press release frames the way the matter will be portrayed in the press and may be the only thing about the piece and individual sees or hears.

Nunc: One reads the entirety of Fr. Cole’s response [.PDF WARNING!] and finds no mention at all of Sen. Kerry.

* * *

Tunc: “A Los Angeles based expert in Canon Law . . . announced Friday on EWTN’s the World Over Live with Raymond Arroyo that an important Vatican congregation has given an unprecedented boost to his case for heresy against presidential candidate John Kerry.” This conveys the impression that the CDF (“an important Vatican congregation”) has directly commented on the case involving Sen. Kerry.

Nunc: In a press release with the snarky title “A REPLY TO THE VATICAN” (a.k.a. NEWS RELEASE No. 3″), Balestrieri states: “I explained to Fr. Funes [at the CDF] that I was a Canon lawyer submitting these dubia strictly seeking a theoretical clarification of the two issues concerned, and confirmation of the conclusions of my research. No names were ever mentioned in the conversation” and “At no point in time, moreover, was any request for further information about those circumstances made to me.”

* * *

Tunc: “Mr. Balestrieri, Director of De Fide, said the Response was written by the Reverend Fr. Basil Cole, O.P., an expert theologian based in Washington D.C., who was delegated by the Undersecretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Very Rev. Fr. Augustine di Noia, O.P., to formally respond.”

Nunc: Balestrieri says: “I sincerely hope that in publicly denying any “official” or formal emanation of the text from the Vatican, which had never been claimed, that certain individuals not risk their salvation . . .” (NEWS RELEASE No. 3).

* * *

Tunc: “The Response is significant in that it represents the first time in modern history since Roe v. Wade in 1973 that such a clear reply is given to the Catholic faithful.” This suggests that the response was written to a broad audience of the faithful.

Nunc: One reads in Fr. Cole’s letter that: “I receive a request from the Very Reverend Augustin DiNoia, OP, the undersecretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to respond unofficially to your dubia . . .”

* * *

Tunc: “Drafted under the auspices of the official Vatican Congregation with competency to decide doctrinal questions, it is entirely unambiguous”–suggesting to the ordinary reader that the reply is official even though that word isn’t used.

Tunc: “Rev. Basil Cole, O.P., contacted Balestrieri to inform him of his delegation to answer the two questions. Three days later, the written Response was issued.” This again suggests that it is an official reply to the mind of the ordinary reader.

Tunc: “The Response holds that the dogmatic force of the two propositions is ‘manifest,’ a term not lightly used by any theologian. This means that one is dealing here not with a matter of a theologian’s personal opinion, but with two core non-negotiable Articles of Faith. The Response, therefore, is ‘official’ and binding in that it simply restates infallible teachings of the Ordinary and Universal Magisterium . . .”

Tunc: “The extensive detail of the response, decisively clarifying the matter was unexpected. Normally, only a bishop may request such clarification of doctrine from the CDF [which is a dicastery of “the Vatican”] and receive an official reply.

Nunc: A press release titled “A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS” (a.k.a. NEWS RELEASE No. 4), Balestrieri states: “It is clear that neither De Fide nor I never [sic] stated that that the response received was an ‘official’ document of the Vatican.”

* * *

Tunc: “The Response goes even further in specifying that any baptized Catholic who publicly states, ‘I’m personally opposed, but I support a woman’s right to choose,’ is in fact presumed by Canon Law to be guilty of heresy, with the burden of proving that he is not shifted to the violating politician.”

Nunc: One reads Fr. Cole’s letter and finds no mention whatsoever of the burden of proof. (Balestrieri is extrapolating from something the document does say but this does not change the fact that the document does not say what he claims.)

* * *

Tunc: “Such responses usually take a much longer time to be received, and they are rarely made public.” This suggests that the CDF made the “response” public.

Nunc: “The theologian said explicitly that I was free to publish the document ‘to the whole world if I wanted to'” (NEWS RELEASE No. 3).

The above examples represent portions of Balestrieri’s Monday press release that would misrepresent the nature and conent of Fr. Cole’s letter to the mind of an ordinary person. There are other statements in this press release concerning canon law that are incorrect or weird. Nevertheless, it appears from the above misrepresentations–identified from the text of Fr. Cole’s letter and Balestrieri’s own press releases–that Fr. DiNoia of the CDF would have ample grounds for regarding Balestrieri as having misled him and Fr. Cole regarding the use he was planning to make of Fr. Cole’s letter.

A reader writes:

You didn’t quite state the facts on the Al Kresta program about Kerry’s abortion statements during the presidential debates.

I didn’t claim to be. As I’ve said on this blog, I think Kerry’s real position is that he thinks abortion is a good thing. I think he is dissembling on this point to keep from losing votes. What I did on the Kresta show was to point out how Kerry could spin his recent remarks in a way that would result in a church tribunal finding him not guilty of heresy, which is at the core of the Balestrieri complaint.

By the way, are you a Canon lawyer?

No. I do, however, have significant background in ecclesiastical law, as well as the theological background needed to parse the heresy question. For what it’s worth, I was contacted by a canon lawyer who heard my interview on Kresta and wanted to compliment me. I was also contacted by a theological expert who wanted to compliment me. Both were in agreement that the Balestrieri complaint is seriously flawed and that it will be next to impossible to get a tribunal to issue a finding of heresy on the basis of this complaint.

I was disappointed that you helped Kerry build a case (and he might seek the radio transcript) against any future Church action on his voting actions, motives, and public statements on abortion. You are a smart man but you shouldn’t help Satan’s warriors in their defense.

I appreciate your concerns, though a parallel argument to the one I sketched could be constructed by any competent canonical or theological counsel Sen. Kerry might engage should the matter ever go to trial (which is very unlikely).

My concern is that the case Mr. Balestrieri has made is seriously flawed and incapable of producing the desired result unless a tribunal were to deliberately intervene to supply its deficiencies. As long as there was a chance of that happening, I remained quiet about the problems with the complaint.

Now Mr. Balestrieri has made success a practical impossibility by his handling of Fr. Cole’s letter–a practical impossibility meaning that it would take an amazingly miraculous intervention for the case to achieve the desired result.

This changes matters.

Since the odds are now infinitesimal that the complaint will meet with success, it becomes an imperative to warn Catholic faithful of this fact lest they be bitterly disappointed and disaffected when the action fails.

It was already a longshot–as many had pointed out–but this recent round of events has prompted many to become emotionally invested in the case in a way that can lead to needless suffering, disillusionment, and suspicion if they are not warned.

Mr. Balestrieri has engaged a serious issue in a very public way that now affects thousands of individuals who have joined or formed opinions about his case. It is important that when one does things like this that one does them with one’s eyes open, recognizing the obstacles that exist.

It is also important that one do them right, which has not happened in this case.

Mr. Balestrieri’s conduct in the matter has also made it harder for a canonical solution to be found to the problem any time in the near future. Now the shadow of this complaint will hang over future attempts to find canonical solutions to the ongoing scandal of pro-abort Catholic politicians and will make obtaining such solutions more difficult.

UPDATE: Another point I forgot to add . . . It is a good thing if arguments pro-aborts and their defenders would use before tribunals get explored now. This lets those seeking to prosecute them (a) anticipate such arguments and have rejoinders ready and (b) seek grounds that are not vulnerable to these arguments.

Marc Balestrieri’s canonical complaint against Kerry on charges of heresy is highly problematic. His reasoning contained enough of a sketch of a case that, if a tribunal wanted, it could have used the complaint as the occasion of coming down hard on Kerry, and by extension other pro-abort Catholic politicians, but in order to do so it would have to supply the deficiencies in Balestrieri’s complaint.

After the events of the last few days, that will never happen, barring an amazingly miraculous intervention. Nobody in Rome is going to want to do Balestrieri’s work for him if they are under the impression that he tried to hoodwink them.

It therefore remains to the future to find a canonical remedy to the ongoing scandal of pro-abort Catholic politicians. There are a number of potential ways that a canonical remedy could emerge (including the pope deciding to create new law on the matter), but here is a promising avenue that is already on the books:

Canon 1369

A person who in a public show or speech, in published writing, or in other uses of the instruments of social communication utters blasphemy, gravely injures good morals, expresses insults, or excites hatred or contempt against religion or the Church is to be punished with a just penalty.

Canonists such as Ed Peters have pointed out for years the opportunity this canon provides for providing a canonical remedy to the harm being caused to society by the scandalous actions of pro-abort Catholic politicians. Using this canon one can cite speeches and other communications of pro-abort politicians, point to the fact that John Paul II (in Evangelium Vitae) has clearly acknowledged the scandal that such communications cause (scandal in the technical sense of leading other into sin), noting that public support for abortion legislation has a gravely crossive effect on good morals on a matter of fundamental human rights, and then slap such politicians (or those who refuse to mend their ways) with canonical sanctions.

In fact, since the canon mentions the infliction of a just penalty, it means that the punishment is on a sliding scale that can be calibrated to the severity of the damage an individual politician has done to good morals (as calculated based on factors such as the politicians degree of support for evil legislation, how publicly he has done it, how prominent an individual he is, and how defiant he is regarding correcting his ways).

Since this canon provides a generous ability to canonically nail such politicians for the evil they are inflicting on society, the finding of a canonical remedy turns principally on the will of tribunals to apply this law to them.

Balestrieri tried to use a personal canonical complaint that was clearly provided for under the 1917 Code of Canon Law. It is not provided in the current (1983) Code of Canon Law (see “A canonical case against Kerry”; scroll down), but a tribunal could conceivably decide to accept such a complaint anyway. His case thus could have been used as the occasion for Church authorities to act.

But the real key here is Church authorities deciding to apply this law to pro-aborts. Thus far they have not. But this year’s interventions by a number of prominent bishops on the question of abortion may be a sign that Church authorities are appreciating the lack of results produced by the previous strategy of private dialogue with politicians and that they may be considering new strategies for dealing with the scandal the politicians are causing.

Canonical sanctions would certainly make a dramatic statement about the incompatibility of the pro-abort position with the Catholic faith.

It would let the voice of Christ be heard clearly.

(Sigh.)

People may not like what I have to say in this post, but it’s one of those obligation-to-tell-the-truth situations because there are things out there in the Catholic press right now that are (at best) misleading and as someone who is aware of this fact and who works in the setting-the-record-straight business I have something of an obligation to try to clarify matters.

First, the standard disclaimers: As anyone who reads this blog knows, I think that John Kerry’s support of the American abortion holocaust is horrendous. I would like to see him and every other Catholic pro-abort politician slapped with severe ecclesiastical sanctions. What they are doing is a crime against humanity of unimaginable proportions, and I think they should be prosecuted to the full extent of ecclesiastical law, including–if necessary–creating stronger ecclesiastical laws with which to prosecute them. (That’s the pope’s job, though, not mine.)

Now, you are probably aware that there is a canonical suit currently filed with the Archbishop of Boston by a young canonist named Marc Balestrieri, who is part of the Gen X crop of orthodox canon lawyers who will play an important role in the future of the Church. But the Gen Xers are still rather green at this point, and I find things in their writings that either don’t quite square with the law or that involve (at best) very dubious interpretations of the law. (This is in contrast to the Greatest Generation generation and the Baby Boom generation of canon lawyers, many of whom actively seek to subvert the law.)

I’m afraid that Mr. Balestrieri’s suit against Kerry is problematic. I read the original complaint (online here), and was unconvinced that he had found a canonical way to nail Kerry for his pro-abort stance. Mind you, I think there are ways to do that, and the Archbishop of Boston or one of several dicasteries in the Roman curia could choose to use Balestrieri’s complaint as the occasion to come down hard on Kerry, I just don’t think that he has put together a set of reasons that demand this response (which might not be forthcoming even if his reasoning was impeccable). In particular, his assertion that Kerry’s “I’m personally opposed but . . . ” stance amounts to heresy appears to be very problematic, for reasons I will explain below.

Yesterday the news broke that there had been a “Vatican response” to his case and that he had received a letter (online here; evil file format [.pdf] warning!) from Fr. Basil Cole at the Dominican House of Studies. Fr. Cole had been asked by Fr. Augustin DiNoia of the CDF to send Balestrieri an unofficial response to a couple of questions he had posed to the CDF.

In his letter (which is written as an informal personal opinion and not as a formal reply), Fr. Cole argues (plausibly) that direct support for abortion (i.e., saying that abortion is a morally permissible thing) is theologically heretical and can (in the conditions described in canon 751) become the canonical crime of heresy, triggering automatic excommunication. All this is fine.

At the very end of the letter, Fr. Cole has a very brief treatment of advocating a civil right (as opposed to a moral right) to abortion, and he states:

[I]f a Catholic publicly and obstinately supports the civil right to abortion, knowing that the Church teaches officially against that legislation, he or she commits that heresy envisioned by Can. 751 of the Code. Provided that the presumption of knowledge of the law and penalty (Can. 15, § 2) and imputability (Can. 1321, § 3) are not rebutted in the external forum, one is automatically excommunicated according to Can. 1364, § 1.

Well, Balestrieri published Cole’s letter to his web page and advertised it as a Vatican response (see the graphic above, which is from a screenshot of his web page this morning). The letter then set off a firestorm of “Kerry automatically excommunicated” posts and news stories on the Internet.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to apply to Kerry’s situation. Fr. Cole appears to be speaking of advocating a civil right to abortion in a way that Kerry is not (or would not if called upon to explain himself to a Church tribunal). Kerry has expressed his opposition to abortion and justified his support of a civil right to abortion not saying that he thinks such a civil right is a good thing in and of itself (which is what Fr. Cole seems to be thinking of), but by (wrongly) appealing to the pluralistic nature of our society.

If called upon to explain himself by a Church tribunal, Kerry would be able to plausibly argue in this way:

I do not support abortion. I have repeatedly and publicly said that I accept the Church’s teaching on this point as an article of faith. I have said this in front of the nation in the presidential debates. And at that time I said that because of the nature of our society in America, I cannot impose that article of faith on others. In saying this, I appealed to the same kind of considerations that John Paul II appealed to in Evangelium Vitae 73, in which he said that in circumstances where it is impossible to remove or ameliorate an abortion law, it is permissible for an elected official whose personal opposition to abortion is well known to support a law that contains provisions allowing abortion.

I am such a politician. My personal opposition is well known. In fact, after the debates my pesonal opposition is better known than that of any other Catholic politician. Yet I am telling you that removing the civil right to abortion in America would cause a huge convulsion to our society that would be worse than leaving the civil right in place. I therefore do not support the civil right as a good thing in and of itself but as something that the nature of American society presently requires.

Heresy involves denying or doubting specific propositions, and I am with the Church on the evil of abortion. I do not doubt or deny any propositions of a theological nature. What I doubt or deny is that the civil right to abortion could be removed from American law without causing an enormous cataclysm in American society that would be worse than leaving the civil right in place. This is not a matter that has been definitively treated by the Chruch’s ordinary or extraordinary magisterium and therefore is not capable of triggering the Code of Canon Law’s provisions regarding the crime of heresy. Further, since John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae noted that there are situations where elected officials can support legislation that contains abortion provisions because the attempt to overturn this legislation would be ineffective or produce a worse situation, it is clear that I am not committing heresy, however much one may disagree with my stance on this matter.

If he made such a statement I would regard it as a hypocritical, duplicitous, and flatly erroneous position to take. Abortion must end in America, and efforts to end it would not be worse than the 1.5 million deaths it causes every year in this country. So Kerry’s claim would be howlingly wrong, but howlingly wrong does not make it heretical in the sense that the Code of Canon Law defines that concept, which requires (among other things) a matter to have been infallibly settled. The Church has made no such determination regarding the sociological situation in America. It thus would be extraordinarily difficult to show that heresy has been committed by an individual taking the kind of position described above.

Now it turns out, as Ed Peters informs us, that Fr. Cole has issued a clarification indicating that neither he nor Fr. DiNoia knew that they were talking to a guy who was a litigant in a case. They thought that they were helping out a canon law student (Balestrieri is pursuing a doctorate; he already has a standard canon law degree on the basis of which he has practiced) and that the reply Cole gave was in no way an official reply from the Vatican (as is obvious from the text of the letter itself) and was a comment on principle not directed to the case of Sen. Kerry. Indeed, Cole’s letter doesn’t even seem to engage Kerry’s actual position.

Cole says in part:

Neither Fr. DiNoia nor I had any knowledge that he was going to “go after” Kerry or any other Catholic figure for their public stance concerning the evil of abortion. So, in my letter to Marc Balestrieri, I began by mentioning that my letter is a personal and private opinion to him about anyone who would publically and persistently teach that abortion is not morally prohibited. It in no way is authoritative from the Congregation nor was I representing the Congregation.

Further, the CDF has now issued a statement saying Cole’s letter is not an official determination on anything concerning the Kerry case.

Peters comments:

It is a pity that a refined and thoughtful letter by a thinker of Fr. Cole’s credentials was so mischaracterized (as if it were a Vatican determination on a key point in Balestrieri’s case), and that so many people (eager perhaps for something finally to be done about the Kerry scandal) relied on those mischaracterizations (despite the plain wording of Cole’s letter itself!) and circulated them uncritically.

Whatever else happens now (and I fear several repercussions actually), I think a gaff like this appears to be is going to make it even more difficult for Balestrieri to pursue his heresy case against Kerry, a case that was already facing some significant procedural and substantive canonical hurdles.

GET THE STORY.

(Sigh.)

People may not like what I have to say in this post, but it’s one of those obligation-to-tell-the-truth situations because there are things out there in the Catholic press right now that are (at best) misleading and as someone who is aware of this fact and who works in the setting-the-record-straight business I have something of an obligation to try to clarify matters.

First, the standard disclaimers: As anyone who reads this blog knows, I think that John Kerry’s support of the American abortion holocaust is horrendous. I would like to see him and every other Catholic pro-abort politician slapped with severe ecclesiastical sanctions. What they are doing is a crime against humanity of unimaginable proportions, and I think they should be prosecuted to the full extent of ecclesiastical law, including–if necessary–creating stronger ecclesiastical laws with which to prosecute them. (That’s the pope’s job, though, not mine.)

Now, you are probably aware that there is a canonical suit currently filed with the Archbishop of Boston by a young canonist named Marc Balestrieri, who is part of the Gen X crop of orthodox canon lawyers who will play an important role in the future of the Church. But the Gen Xers are still rather green at this point, and I find things in their writings that either don’t quite square with the law or that involve (at best) very dubious interpretations of the law. (This is in contrast to the Greatest Generation generation and the Baby Boom generation of canon lawyers, many of whom actively seek to subvert the law.)

I’m afraid that Mr. Balestrieri’s suit against Kerry is problematic. I read the original complaint (online here), and was unconvinced that he had found a canonical way to nail Kerry for his pro-abort stance. Mind you, I think there are ways to do that, and the Archbishop of Boston or one of several dicasteries in the Roman curia could choose to use Balestrieri’s complaint as the occasion to come down hard on Kerry, I just don’t think that he has put together a set of reasons that demand this response (which might not be forthcoming even if his reasoning was impeccable). In particular, his assertion that Kerry’s “I’m personally opposed but . . . ” stance amounts to heresy appears to be very problematic, for reasons I will explain below.

Yesterday the news broke that there had been a “Vatican response” to his case and that he had received a letter (online here; evil file format [.pdf] warning!) from Fr. Basil Cole at the Dominican House of Studies. Fr. Cole had been asked by Fr. Augustin DiNoia of the CDF to send Balestrieri an unofficial response to a couple of questions he had posed to the CDF.

In his letter (which is written as an informal personal opinion and not as a formal reply), Fr. Cole argues (plausibly) that direct support for abortion (i.e., saying that abortion is a morally permissible thing) is theologically heretical and can (in the conditions described in canon 751) become the canonical crime of heresy, triggering automatic excommunication. All this is fine.

At the very end of the letter, Fr. Cole has a very brief treatment of advocating a civil right (as opposed to a moral right) to abortion, and he states:

[I]f a Catholic publicly and obstinately supports the civil right to abortion, knowing that the Church teaches officially against that legislation, he or she commits that heresy envisioned by Can. 751 of the Code. Provided that the presumption of knowledge of the law and penalty (Can. 15, § 2) and imputability (Can. 1321, § 3) are not rebutted in the external forum, one is automatically excommunicated according to Can. 1364, § 1.

Well, Balestrieri published Cole’s letter to his web page and advertised it as a Vatican response (see the graphic above, which is from a screenshot of his web page this morning). The letter then set off a firestorm of “Kerry automatically excommunicated” posts and news stories on the Internet.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to apply to Kerry’s situation. Fr. Cole appears to be speaking of advocating a civil right to abortion in a way that Kerry is not (or would not if called upon to explain himself to a Church tribunal). Kerry has expressed his opposition to abortion and justified his support of a civil right to abortion not saying that he thinks such a civil right is a good thing in and of itself (which is what Fr. Cole seems to be thinking of), but by (wrongly) appealing to the pluralistic nature of our society.

If called upon to explain himself by a Church tribunal, Kerry would be able to plausibly argue in this way:

I do not support abortion. I have repeatedly and publicly said that I accept the Church’s teaching on this point as an article of faith. I have said this in front of the nation in the presidential debates. And at that time I said that because of the nature of our society in America, I cannot impose that article of faith on others. In saying this, I appealed to the same kind of considerations that John Paul II appealed to in Evangelium Vitae 73, in which he said that in circumstances where it is impossible to remove or ameliorate an abortion law, it is permissible for an elected official whose personal opposition to abortion is well known to support a law that contains provisions allowing abortion.

I am such a politician. My personal opposition is well known. In fact, after the debates my pesonal opposition is better known than that of any other Catholic politician. Yet I am telling you that removing the civil right to abortion in America would cause a huge convulsion to our society that would be worse than leaving the civil right in place. I therefore do not support the civil right as a good thing in and of itself but as something that the nature of American society presently requires.

Heresy involves denying or doubting specific propositions, and I am with the Church on the evil of abortion. I do not doubt or deny any propositions of a theological nature. What I doubt or deny is that the civil right to abortion could be removed from American law without causing an enormous cataclysm in American society that would be worse than leaving the civil right in place. This is not a matter that has been definitively treated by the Chruch’s ordinary or extraordinary magisterium and therefore is not capable of triggering the Code of Canon Law’s provisions regarding the crime of heresy. Further, since John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae noted that there are situations where elected officials can support legislation that contains abortion provisions because the attempt to overturn this legislation would be ineffective or produce a worse situation, it is clear that I am not committing heresy, however much one may disagree with my stance on this matter.

If he made such a statement I would regard it as a hypocritical, duplicitous, and flatly erroneous position to take. Abortion must end in America, and efforts to end it would not be worse than the 1.5 million deaths it causes every year in this country. So Kerry’s claim would be howlingly wrong, but howlingly wrong does not make it heretical in the sense that the Code of Canon Law defines that concept, which requires (among other things) a matter to have been infallibly settled. The Church has made no such determination regarding the sociological situation in America. It thus would be extraordinarily difficult to show that heresy has been committed by an individual taking the kind of position described above.

Now it turns out, as Ed Peters informs us, that Fr. Cole has issued a clarification indicating that neither he nor Fr. DiNoia knew that they were talking to a guy who was a litigant in a case. They thought that they were helping out a canon law student (Balestrieri is pursuing a doctorate; he already has a standard canon law degree on the basis of which he has practiced) and that the reply Cole gave was in no way an official reply from the Vatican (as is obvious from the text of the letter itself) and was a comment on principle not directed to the case of Sen. Kerry. Indeed, Cole’s letter doesn’t even seem to engage Kerry’s actual position.

Cole says in part:

Neither Fr. DiNoia nor I had any knowledge that he was going to “go after” Kerry or any other Catholic figure for their public stance concerning the evil of abortion. So, in my letter to Marc Balestrieri, I began by mentioning that my letter is a personal and private opinion to him about anyone who would publically and persistently teach that abortion is not morally prohibited. It in no way is authoritative from the Congregation nor was I representing the Congregation.

Further, the CDF has now issued a statement saying Cole’s letter is not an official determination on anything concerning the Kerry case.

Peters comments:

It is a pity that a refined and thoughtful letter by a thinker of Fr. Cole’s credentials was so mischaracterized (as if it were a Vatican determination on a key point in Balestrieri’s case), and that so many people (eager perhaps for something finally to be done about the Kerry scandal) relied on those mischaracterizations (despite the plain wording of Cole’s letter itself!) and circulated them uncritically.

Whatever else happens now (and I fear several repercussions actually), I think a gaff like this appears to be is going to make it even more difficult for Balestrieri to pursue his heresy case against Kerry, a case that was already facing some significant procedural and substantive canonical hurdles.

GET THE STORY.

Mark Brumley of Ignatius Press is an apologist’s apologist. He’s a true gem. One of the very, very best.

In recent days, he has turned his formidable talents to commenting on moral matters raised in the current political debate.

In one piece on National Review Online, he takes on the argument that abortion is an article of faith for Catholics that shouldn’t be “imposed on others.”

In another piece on Ignatius Insight, he debunks the attempt to level out the importance of political issues and pretend that things like the war in Iraq are as important as abortion.

Well worth reading.