You will fry
Italy’s drug regulation agency has authorized the use of RU-486 even though the Vatican says it will excommunicate doctors who prescribe the drug and patients who use it – so for one thing Italy’s drug regulation agency perhaps has the sense to realize that not all Italians are Catholics and thus not all Italians should be governed by what the Vatican threatens to do to Catholics. Well done Italy’s drug regulation agency.
The Vatican, which opposes all forms of abortion in the belief that human life is sacred from the point of conception, says the pill is no different from surgical abortion. “There will be excommunication for the doctor, the woman and anyone who encourages its use,” said Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, emeritus president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and the pope’s top expert on bioethical issues.
Good old Vatican, doing its level best to mess up more people’s lives ‘in the belief that’ something completely meaningless mumble mumble. Grazie, Monsignor Sgreccia.
I long for the day when Catholicism’s views on abortion are given the same consideration as Scientology’s views on psychiatry or Mormonism’s views on Native American history.
So.do.I.
“There will be excommunication for the doctor, the woman and anyone who encourages its use.”
The Vatican can excommunicate people who aren’t Catholic? The way Mormons can convert, marry, adopt and generally snatch people who have been dead for centuries?
What is the sound of cardinals excommunicating the non-Catholics?
I suppose the excommunication of people who aren’t Catholics must take place in some weird Platonic realm where everyone’s abstract potential Catholicism is abstractly excommunicated. It all takes place in the conditional, or the subjunctive, or both. Scary stuff.
No reason to be too scared. It’s all imaginary.
Is it too much to hope that, with things like this, people will begin to see how foolish the whole thing is? Lately, there’s been one idiocy after another coming out of the Vatican. Surely people will come to see that it’s a big joke? Won’t they?
I thought the same thing about Ann Coulter years ago. I was sure that eventually her repugnance and stupidity would reach a saturation point. Quite the opposite, it is precisely the stupidity and repugnance of what she says that endears her to her audience. The worse she is, the happier they are.
Wellllll…as always, some of them, but not others. Some people will be turned off by Vatican idiocy. Maybe lots; who knows?!
@Claire & OB: the generic threat of excommunication is based on the “fact”, which is generally taken for granted by the press and the politicians as well as the Vatican, that everyone in Italy is Catholic, and therefore everyone is a fair target for the threat. This assumption is simply *never* questioned.