Abortion, Natural Law, and Catholic Politicians

The Pope recently issued a warning to Catholic politicians that they risk excommunication and denial of the Eucharist if they use their temporal powers to legalize abortion. The pro-choice crowd has been fretting about how terrible this is, and how this is breaking down the separation of church and state.

They're wrong.

Natural law is "written in the heart" of every man according to the Apostle Paul. This is usually demonstrated as general ethics with regards to how we treat each other. Laws against murder, lying in court, theft, and elder abuse all come from the natural law that is written on our hearts. Even people who have not had the light of Christ in their lives recognize that there are rules about how we should govern ourselves and our relations with others.

Christians generally view life as beginning at and ensoulment occurring at conception. This makes the killing of an unborn child a direct equivalent to killing one that has been born. If the child is innocent of any crime (or endangering the mother, such as with an ectopic pregnancy), then killing it intentionally is murder. Murder is, of course, against the natural law, not only against Catholic and Christian doctrine.

If you were to substitute "murder" for "abortion" in the statements about politicians ("The Pope said that politicians who did not legislate against murder risk excommunication and denial of the Eucharist."), it becomes much less controversial. But that is exactly what the Pope is doing. Through their actions, politicians who endorse transgressing the natural law are excommunicating themselves from the church and inviting their bishops to deny them the Eucharist.

There should be no controversy. You cannot endorse sin out of one side of your mouth (the "public" side) and condemn it with the other (the "faithful" side). If the politicians were forcing church attendance or forcing admission of the Host after consecration as being the very body of Christ, that would be forcing church doctrine by law of the state, but saying that the politicians separate themselves from their church for allowing state law to digress from natural law is nothing wrong.