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Sunday, February 2, 2014

A Notre Dame Professor Urges the Pope to “Rethink Abortion”






by Carson Holloway


Writing at the website of the New York Times, Gary Gutting, a philosophy professor from the University of Notre Dame, invites Pope Francis to “rethink” the Church’s position on the question of abortion.  Needless to say, the rethinking is supposed to end not in a clearer and more persuasive presentation of the Church’s traditional teaching, but instead a weakening of it.  I’d like to note what I think are two weaknesses in Professor Gutting’s piece.

First, there is a disappointing partisanship to it.  Professor Gutting opens his argument by noting “the dogmatic intransigence that has long cast a pall over the religious life of many Roman Catholics.”  This might be true, but it is at best a partial truth.  One could just as easily characterize the exact same phenomenon as the “unswerving fidelity to its teaching that has long been an inspiration to many Catholics, and even a cause of admiration by certain non-Catholics.”  This is to say nothing of the possibility of also acknowledging the “dogmatic intransigence” of, say, the New York Times on this very issue.  The Times, after all, is not noted for its flexibility on what it thinks is a right to abortion.

You might think, and hope, that a professor at a Catholic university would start out with some predisposition in favor of the Church’s traditional teaching, especially on a matter of such great importance.  In Professor Gutting’s case, however, you would be disappointed.  If that expectation had to be dashed, then you might hope, as a last resort, that as a philosopher pure and simple Professor Gutting would begin with no prejudicial remarks on either side of the question.  You would be wrong here, too.

continue reading at http://www.catholicvote.org 

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