Jeffrey Weiss, a blogger from the Dallas News, quotes "Catholic" professor Frank Flinn on the subject of abortion to promote the idea that Church's teachings on the subject "have changed".
Professor Flinn confuses the issue of ensoulment with abortion.
Contrary to Flinn's statement, the Church's teaching on abortion have never changed. You will never find a single reference that treats abortion as permissible.
The proof is: he couldn't come up with such a reference. That would have clinched his argument.
Really, he is trying to confuse the issue of the morality of abortion with the moral status of the fetus.
The Church has always taught that to kill an unborn human being is wrong.
There was uncertainty as to when human life began, but when it was ascertained that the unborn entity in the womb was a human being, it was automatically assumed that killing him was wrong.
So the question up for debate in past centuries was not: "is killing an unborn human being wrong?" but rather: "when does a human being begin to exist?"
On that point the Church did not have a firm and defined teaching for many centuries. Some Catholic writers considered all abortions to be murder; some did not. But they all condemned it.
When science made it clear that human life begins at conception, Church teaching incorporated that knowledge into her teachings.
Interesting. Liberals always complain that the Church doesn't pay enough attention to science, but when she does, they ignore her teaching!
It's quite disingenuous for liberals to claim that the Church's teaching has changed on abortion based on uncertainty of the beginning of human life.
