The Island Magisterium.

The Island Catholic News, from Victoria BC, is not exactly a bastion of orthodoxy. In its March 2001 editorial on women's ordination, the ICN emphasizes the dangers of doctrinal certitude. Because we live in a scientific age, the paper declares, final solutions are not really possible in human understanding. Making a distinction between the formal and the informal magisterium, ICN contends that the debate going on in its pages between those in favour of women's ordination and those opposed to it is a good example of the informal magisterium at work--a healthy debate which is absolutely necessary for the proper development of sound Catholic doctrine. In the past, discussion of many doctrines was sealed off by the authorities. "It does not work," says ICN. "If it did work the Catholic Church would not have survived and evolved and redeveloped as it has over two thousand years."

After this statement of policy, it is not surprising to find that the paper supported the World March of Women 2000 (WMW), even after its organizers made their pro-abortion stance perfectly clear. ICN now criticizes a letter from Dr. Patricia Rooke in its April issue, where she said she was waiting for an apology from those Catholic women leaders, especially of the CWL and the CCODP, who supported the March. Most recently WMW organizers have again asserted that abortion is one of their central planks, this time by objecting to President Bush's ban on foreign aid promoting abortion.

In its April editorial, the ICN took Dr. Rooke to task for her

"faulty moral reasoning and thinking which, unfortunately, is becoming more and more prevalent in certain circles in the Catholic Church, namely that the moral gravity of abortion cancels out the possibility of supporting any of the other social benefits of the WMW."

Listing a litany of abuses of women still prevalent in the world, the editorial argues that the WMW was born out of the revelations of women who chose to speak up and tell their stories of cultural violence. Abortion, the paper says, "while of grave moral weight, must be seen in perspective of the greater good which the March of Women aims to promote."

Comment

The argument is well-known, but convicts the Island Catholic Times of faulty moral reasoning, not Dr. Rooke. First, there is no proof that there are any benefits attached to WMW. Second, its entire spirit is corrupted, including its views on how to end violence and poverty (see the C.!. article, March of Women III, Sept. 2000, pp. 12-13, where the reasons are spelled out). Third, it was the general attitude why Catholic Insight asked just what the CCODP was teaching the women's groups to do: is it teaching them to raise the balled fist to smash the faces of its oppressors in the regular revolutionary fashion or what?

Let us repeat: abortion is not just one of a number of issues. To approve of abortion--as WMW does most commitedly--is to approve the use of violence, a general principle which--once adopted--applies elsewhere, and never works.