Catholic bishops reach out to those who have had abortions, research Catholics' views of social teaching

Wednesday, 16 November 2011 08:33

Written by Ann Rodgers

Although the Catholic bishops didn’t vote directly on iright-to-life or social justice issues at this week's meeting in Baltimore, discussion on the floor and line items in their budget show they are aware and concerned that many Catholics don’t understand or accept the church’s womb-to-tomb reverence for human life. And the bishops also made an extraordinary effort to highlight their progranm of outreach to those who have had or participated in abortions.

In a presentation that was extraordinary for its Red Hat Power, three cardinals urged more than 250 other bishops to give high priority and promotion to Project Rachel, a 26-year-old Catholic program of outreach to women who have had abortions and to men, parents, professionals and others who were part of that decision. The Diocese of Pittsburgh has promoted Project Rachel for20 years, and I wrote about the local efforts in 2002.

So it’s not surprising that Pittsburgh’s former bishop, Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington DC joined two other former Pittsburghers, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston and

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston in urging the bishops to promote Project Rachel.

Cardinal DiNardo, chairman of the bishops Committee on Pro-Life Activities, estimated that 10 million Catholic women have had abortions since 1973 and that the number of men, family members, friends and professionals who may have contributed to that decision is in the tens of millions.

“Many in our culture wrongly claim that just as the church condemns abortion, it also condemns the individuals who have been involved in abortion. Such characterizations are not only false, but dangerous. They discourage women and men . . . . from seeking God’s forgiveness in sacramental reconciliation and even form seeking pastoral care,” he said.

Cardinal Wuerl said that Project Rachel had updated its manual for priests with new research and with new issues, such as the increasing number of couples seeking help because in vitro fertilization involved the deliberate deaths of some of their embryos.

“It suggests ways in which pastors, and all of us, can transform their parish environment into one where persons involved in abortion know that it is safe for them to come forward and seek forgiveness without fear of public condemnation,” he said.

The cardinals’ presentation was followed by a lengthy briefing for reporters from three lay experts and a priest involved in Project Rachel. Marianne Luthin, director of the Pro-Life Office in the Archdiocese of Boston, said that notices in parish bulletins are the most effective way to make contact because many people are afraid that someone will see them pick up a separate brochure about post-abortion healing. However, when the archdioceses of Washington and Baltimore and the Diocese of Arlington collaborated on a radio campaign a decade ago, calls to Project Rachel in the Washingotn DC area rose by 1,000 percent, she said. Many were from women who weren’t Catholic, and Project Rachel will assist them without trying to bring them into the Catholic Church, she said.

While the bishops placed tremendous emphasis on post-abortion outreach at their meeting, there was only a brief mention of research they are doing to help them convince Catholics to take the full range of Catholic social teaching seriously. Fuller reports of it were conatined in their items for information.

A recent study has shown that only 16 percent of the nation’s 68 million Catholics have even heard of “Faithful Citizenship,” the bishops’ document on moral issues that should be important to Catholic voters – issued every presidential election cycle since 1976. Only 3 percent had read even a shortened version of it. The document insists that while the right to life is paramount, Catholics cannot ignore poverty, war, hunger, capital punishment and other threats to human life and dignity. The Catholic left typically assails it for placing a premium on opposition to abortion, and the Catholic right blasts it for insisting that these other issues must also be given weight in an election.

The bishops are also keenly aware that Catholic women have abortions at the same rate as all other women, and that only a small fraction of Catholics back the church’s opposition to the death penalty. As a consequence they have budgeted close to $588,000 for research about grassroots Catholic attitudes toward abortion and social justice, in order to communicate the church’s moral teaching more effectively to the people in the pew.

The formal proposal is “to develop effective communication strategies, to research the assumptions and cultural challenges that work for or against the acceptance of the intrinsic value and dignity of human life.”

According to a report on the bishops’ priorities from Bishop George Murry of Youngstown, a research team is in the process of conducting focus groups for parishioners with a variety of views on these issues, diocesan pro-life and social justice directors and will run focus groups for priests next. They are particularly interested in research on Hispanics and young adults who are active in the church.