It appears you are correct. Canon law does excommunicate everyone involved in the abortion (Code of Canon Law, 1398 and 1329). However, Pope Francis’s year-of-mercy extension of absolution appears to apply only to the woman who actually received the abortion.

Problem with your theory: it is an undisputed — indeed indisputable — fact that a 1-week-old fetus is a human being, and that it is a human organism in the way you are a human organism, not the way a toenail is. The question is whether such a *primitive* human being (which cannot think or even suffer) is sufficiently…

If I understand the situation correctly, all those emails were deleted at the same time, just before the server was turned in. So nothing else hit the server, so nothing needed to be overwritten. If that is, in fact, the case, then we’re looking at your first scenario. Can’t wait to read through all those wedding…

I could not have composed a better counter to my point. Well said.

The Netherlands are always 20 years ahead of us on this stuff. In 20 years, not only will you be long-since dulled to the horror, but you will actually be somewhat cheered by the slow, steady (if sometimes bloody) march of progress.

Kim Davis isn’t actually covered under public accommodations law, because the county clerk’s office is not a public accommodation in the sense of the Civil Rights Act; it’s a government office, to which different rules necessarily apply because government is a fundamentally different institution.

To be fair, both sides do this, all the time. You think if a Democratic Congress were holding hearings on Crisis Pregnancy Centers they’d invite the head of Birthright? They would not. It’s about the sound bites. Follow the sound bites.

Or you’re grandstanding for maximum political points, knowing you can’t make any practical difference. There’s no margin in putting dissenters on the stand.

I don’t think there’s a big risk of Jim Crow returning under *any* of these forms in modern America. No matter where you are, there is somebody who cares more about the money in your wallet than about the color of your skin or the sex of your bed-partner — unlike the 1950s South. If a few businesses want to…

In the United States, yes. We grant more annulments than the rest of the world combined. A good chunk of the rest of the Catholic world is harshly critical of us for this — an annulment process really isn’t supposed to be a mere formality, but a sincere, thorough investigation of whether or not a marriage exists.

Everyone’s focused on the soap and not the Lords of Kobol? Great Bird!

There was no printing press, but communication across the Empire was fast, efficient, and widespread, with a strong, centralized, and papyrus-based bureaucracy centered in Rome, scribes perfectly able and willing to make copies of interesting (or profitable) documents, and a citizenry that was unbelievably literate…

To be clear, everyone involved in the abortion is excommunicated, too — including any men who performed, enabled, or encouraged it. This “Year of Mercy” thing applies to them as well as to the person on whom the abortion was performed.

Is it telephone if there were surviving eyewitnesses available at the time of writing? Jesus died in the 30s A.D., but his followers survived for decades after — long enough to see at least some of the Gospels and most of the Epistles in wide circulation.

Well, the scholarly consensus places the authorship of the Pauline letters (the authentic ones) in the 40s, Mark in the 60s or 70s, Matthew in the 80s, Luke in the 80s or 90s, and then John the outlier in the first decade of the second century. Jesus died right around 31.

Umm... he said 2 and 5 pretty clearly. Heck, Matt 12:34 is a lot harsher than “disappointment.” And 5 forms the very last words of Matthew’s Gospel (Matt 28:19-20).

The tag history suggests they’ve been doing it regularly for just a few weeks, but point taken. Not really sure how I did miss it.

Confused. Why is this on Jezebel, and not just an entry in the local crime blotter?

Hey, are you /u/QDefenestration from /r/Catholicism? Fancy bumping into you here!

Serious answer: Excommunication is, at heart, a juridic measure. It’s imposed by men on men. It can even be imposed mistakenly (or maliciously). It denies the graces of the sacraments to the excommunicate, and it is normally only imposed on those who have publicly and unrepentently committed a mortal sin, but it does…