John Mccloskey

The Pope Who Said Abortion is Not Murder: Secrets of the Catholic Church John Mccloskey

Some years ago, I discovered a surprising fact. In a book by a Catholic theologian I read that a pope once ruled abortion is not murder. I was amazed. Years of Catholic education, including four years at a Jesuit institution, had given me some understanding of Church doctrine and the way the Church works. From what I knew, it was absolutely unbelievable that a pope, any pope, would say abortion was not murder. Yet, according to the theologian, one pope had. The pope was Pope Innocent III. The time was about eight hundred years ago. The occasion was a question: was a monk who helped his lover obtain an abortion guilty of murder? The monk was guilty of fornication and aiding an abortion. But were he and his lover also guilty of murder, of taking the life of a human being? No, answered Pope Innocent, because the aborted fetus was not a human being. My discovery left me with two questions. Why would a pope say a fetus is not a human being? Who was Pope Innocent? - From the Introduction