Alright here we go. I apologise for the wait, think I'm coming down with something.
I've only read the 1994 edition but the contents, new additions aside, should be the same. All that was changed was instead of going through things by type of controversy he went through them chronologically.
I'm not suprised RationalWiki has an article on it. It's one of the more easily verified examples of dogmatic contradiction and has been mentioned in TV shows like CSI before. I've also already commented on Catholic Answers and their policing of wrongthink.
As for Catholic commentary on abortion over the ages....
St. Jerome (4th century) wrote in a letter to Aglasia:
"The seed gradually takes shape in the uterus, and it [abortion] does not count as killing until the individual elements have acquired their external appearance and their limbs
"
Penitentials prior to the 10th century (they were most popular during the 7th) in the West were a convenient way for Catholics to recieve penance if/when clergy were not available to prescribe it. The most "serious" sexual sins like oral intercourse required between several years and a lifetime of penance as punishment....Wheras abortion was fairly consistently only given one hundered and twenty days penance. It clearly was not seen as severe.
Pope Stephen V
(887 AD, Epistle to the Archbishop of Mainz): "If he who destroys what is conceived in the womb by abortion is a murderer, how much more is he unable to excuse himself of murder who kills a child even one day old".
Thomas Aquinas (13th Century): He's the best known propoment of the "Quickening" test within the
Summa Theologica (the literal Theology handbook of the Catholic Church) to test when a fetus was "ensouled". Only the abortion of an "
animated" fetus as murder.
This position was held consistently until Pope Sixtus V declared within
Effraenatam (158
which threatened those who recieved or carried out abortions at any stage of pregnancy with excommunication and the death penalty.This was revoked immediatly by Pope Gregory XIV as heretical (because claiming the quickening test was false amounted to accusing the chief Catholic theologian of heresy, the Church had not accepted aspects of Aquinas writing were heretical yet). He reinstated the "
quickening" test among several other changes pertaining to abortion in
Sedes Apostolicae, which he determined happened 116 days into pregnancy. Gregory XVI did consider abortion to be a sin, but certainly not murder and a far lesser one than fornication or sodomy (the Church today still does consider climxing outside the vagina worse than abortion, one of the "sins that cry to heaven for vengence").
This arragement more or less carried on until Pope Pius IX dropped the distinction between an animated and inanimated fetus in his writing (the lesser punishment for abortion never changed until the release of the revised cannon code of law in 1917, and further clarified in 1983), and it wasn't until as late as the 19th century that Leo XIII declared abortion in as always mortally sinful without exception, even to save the life of the mother when the infant has no hope of surival (In statements on specific cases in 1884, 1885, 1886 and 1889, the Catholic Church confirmed its view that a pregnant woman must not be saved from death when she and her child would otherwise both die. This was confirmed in 1930 in Pius XI's
Casti connubii. If you can get a copy of Uta Ranke-Heinemann's,
Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, I suggest you read his commentary on pages 271-2)
I hope that last bit strikes you as interesting, because the Church today
does believe that abortion as a side affect of medical treatment for the mother is permissible.
Not all statements to be held with Catholic faith need to come from the Pope. The American Bishops for instance have declared it is a mortal sin to eat meat on a Friday as highlighted elsewhere.
The Holy Office (A.K.A: The Doctrine of the Congregation of the Faith, formerly known as the Inquisition) declared belief in the Copernician model of the Earth was heresy. This wasn't a short term thing and as late as the 1800's "belief" in Uranus (at the time, the "Gregorian Star") was mortal sin and all books describing it were on the Index of Forbidden Books.
Of course in practice Catholics in more advanced societies like France and England just ignored this, but in Italy you would be charged for heresy.
The Pope doesn't have to personally go around and declare in each country if it's a sin to eat meat on Friday or if women may serve the altar or not, his delegates have some power to set disciplines as they please for the most part.
The same deity that used to appear before mortals and ask them to change their ways like Saul seems to have backslid back into defaulting to murder as the answer relativley quickly.
The point in that story is that while Sixtus was alive, his translation was "Infalliable" and he insisted it was. The next person who came along insisted that it wasn't.
That's not a miracle Jacob, that's contradiction. There's literally nothing stopping Francis coming out tomorrow and declaring Trent to be invalid, because if those words leave his lips it is. Until the next Pope cares to contradict him in turn.
That's not infalliability, that's just absolute elective monarchy.
Many of us arent atheists because we need the "Good News" shared with us Jacob or to see the light. It's because we've seen rather a bit too much of it to buy into the illusion of continuity.
