Lastly, some don’t want to be run off and feel like they’re giving in to a “love it or leave it” mentality and want to stay and work to change the Church in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council and work for change.

I hope that gives you a feel for some of what Dignity USA is about. It was founded by a retired Roman Catholic priest as a support group for LGBT Catholics, and today seeks respect and justice for gay Catholics within Church.

If you mean you don’t have time to address the evidence I’ve presented or otherwise familiarize yourself with any evidence that contradicts what you want to believe, then ok. I thought you were seriously interested in the subjects we were discussing. And I don’t have a “slant”, I simply presented evidence that backed my statement regarding the fact that fetuses have not been considered “ensouled” since conception for most of the Church’s history. Unlike you, who label a presentation of facts a “slant”, I thought otherwise, was shown contradictory evidence, then came to my present conclusion. I didn’t dismiss the cold, hard facts as slant and run away from them. Again, I really seek the truth, not confirmation of my existing beliefs.

“You obviously did deep digging to convince yourself that killing a baby at any stage is OK.”

You erect enough straw men that we shouldn’t see a crow for 1500 miles. I made a statement that the Church did not consider abortion murder at all points of the pregnancy for more than 1,000 years. When pressed, I presented quotes from Church fathers and even Popes to back up my conclusion, and was prepared to cite references if you asked, but you never did because you weren’t interested. I never advocated killing anyone.

“The Apostolic Constitution states: “Thou shalt not use magic. Thou shalt not use witchcraft; for he says, ‘you shall not suffer a witch to live’(Ex. 22:18). Thou shalt not slay thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is begotten…If it be slain, it shall be advenged, as being unjustly destoyed”. (7:3 A.D. 400)”

We went over all this, didn’t we? Including the parts you’re not quoting about the question of when the soul enters the body? And the canon law that specifically stated that early abortion was not to be treated as murder? And the Papal Bull that stated that the soul entered the fetus when it began to move and not before? Etc., etc? And you just repeat this one fact over again? Seriously? I’m sorry I wasted my time compiling evidence for someone who wasn’t serious about discussing this.

“The Church didn’t vacilate, some theologians may have had conjectures, later proved wrong.”

If by some you mean the vast majority, and if by theologians you mean people from Church Fathers like Augustine and Aquinas to multiple Popes, and if by had conjectures you mean issued Papal Bulls and wrote it into the first authoritative Canon of Church Law and stated in at an important Church Council, and if by proved wrong you mean one pope changed the position by fiat, then yes. And how does one “prove” a matter of theology anyway?

” We have utrasounds that show babies in the womb. A 1000 years ago they didn’t have that luxury. That’s why different theologians had varying views, trying to come to the truth. ”

Unless ultrasounds can prove the existence of the soul and then show you when the soul enters the body, I don’t see how ultrasounds have anything to do with the issue they were grappling with.

The Apostolic Constitution states: “Thou shalt not use magic. Thou shalt not use witchcraft; for he says, ‘you shall not suffer a witch to live’(Ex. 22:18). Thou shalt not slay thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is begotten…If it be slain, it shall be advenged, as being unjustly destoyed”. (7:3 A.D. 400)

The Church didn’t vacilate, some theologians may have had conjectures, later proved wrong. We have utrasounds that show babies in the womb. A 1000 years ago they didn’t have that luxury. That’s why different theologians had varying views, trying to come to the truth. There is no excuse now for abortion, other then fear on the part of the mother, and good income on the part of abortion providers.

Your statement that the Church always condemned abortion isn’t what I claimed. I claimed that for long periods the Church did not view it as murder. All of the sources you cite back up your claim, BUT they’re only sources up to 210 A.D., while I specifically stated 1000 years. There are many sources you thus left out that show the ways in which the Church position vacillated on this issue. Circa 380 the Apostolic Constitution allowed abortion if it was done early in the pregnancy, but not if the fetus was of human shape and contained a soul. The Didache you cited condemned abortion but raised and did not answer the question of whether the fetus had a soul from conception. St. Augustine condemned abortion because of its interference with procreation, but accepted the doctrine of delayed ensoulment, “But who is not rather disposed to think that unformed fetuses perish like seeds which have not fructified”, and held that abortion was not homicide. This was the majority view among theologians of the time. Circa 675, the Irish Canons list penances thus: “destruction of the embryo of a child in the mother’s womb [at] three and one half years … penance of one who has intercourse with a woman, seven years on bread and water.” In the “Penitential Ascribed by Albers to Bede”, circa 8th century, the idea of delayed ensoulment is again present, “A mother who kills her child before the fortieth day shall do penance for one year. If it is after the child has become alive, [she shall do penance] as a murderess. But it makes a great difference whether a poor woman does it on account of the difficulty of supporting [the child] or a harlot for the sake of concealing her wickedness.” In 1140 the first compilation of canon law that was accepted as authoritative was produced. It reads, “abortion was homicide only when the fetus was formed.” In 1312 Thomas Aquinas held that abortion was a sin due to contraception, but that, again, it was not homicide unless there was a human soul present. Aquinas wrote that the fetus first possessed a “vegetable soul”, then an “animal soul” and finally a “human soul” during its stages of development. This was again consistent with the position of the first 1000 years and confirmed at the Council of Vienne. Pope Innocent III (1161-1216) declared that a monk who arranged for an abortion for his lover had not committed murder if the fetus was not “animated” at the time, and also stated in the early 1200s that the soul enters the fetus when the woman feels the first movements of the fetus, and that abortion was a less serious sin before that time.
In 1588 Pope Sixtus V issued a bull condemning all abortion as murder, but a few years later in 1591 Pope Gregory XIV revoked that bull and reinstated the “animated” qualification of Innocentm which he felt happened 116 days into pregnancy. It was only Pope Pius IX in 1869 who dropped this test and felt that the soul entered the human being at conception. Thus, I feel the collective evidence supports my earlier premise that for the first 1000 years of the Church (longer, really, with a few back-and-forth periods) the Church did not teach the doctrine of a fetus being a human being from conception and did not consider it murder if it was early in the pregnancy. You may now go through the same shock that I did, le pelerin, when I realized we’ve been duped and lied to.

“Science has come a long way and now we know that life starts at conception.”

We know that a fertilized egg is living, and that its DNA is human, but in no way, shape, or form does current science declare that cell a human being. That’s quite an overreach, as there’s not even consensus on what being human entails.

“I just learned recently that for the first 1000 years, key figures in the Church did not hold that a soul was present from conception or that abortion was murdur.” Science has come a long way and now we know that life starts at conception. In the past, people could only guess what was going on at the beginning of life. But to suggest that church people didn’t condemn abortion from the beginning is rewriting history. Abortion was going on in the Roman Empire and the church always condemed it. Check the church fathers: Letter of Barnabas “The way of light is as follows. If anyone desires to travel to the appointed place, he must be zealous in his works. The knowledge therefore, which is given to us for the purpose of walking in this way, is the following…though shalt not slay a child by procuring an abortion, nor, again,shall thou destroy it after it is born.” Letter of Barnabas 19 (A.D.)74

Check out:The Didache 2:1-2 (A.D) 70
The Apocalyse of Peter 25 (A.D.) 137
Athenagorus (A Plea for the Christians 35 (A.D.) 177)
Tertullian 9:8 (A.D.) 197 The Soul 25 (A.D.) 210
And hundreds of other Church Fathers and The Apostolic Contitution

“The very idea of a Christian homosexual marriage seems incredible. Yet after a twelve year search of Catholic and Orthodox church archives Yale history professor John Boswell has discovered that a type of Christian homosexual ‘marriage’ did exist as late as the 18th century.

Contrary to myth, Christianity’s concept of marriage has not been set in stone since the days of Christ, but has evolved as a concept and as a ritual.

Professor Boswell discovered that in addition to heterosexual marriage ceremonies in ancient church liturgical documents (and clearly separate from other types of non-marital blessings of adopted children or land) were ceremonies called, among other titles, the ‘Office of Same Sex Union’ (10th and 11th century Greek) or the ‘Order for Uniting Two Men’ (11th and 12th century).

These ceremonies had all the contemporary symbols of a marriage: a community gathered in a church, a blessing of the couple before the altar, their right hands joined as at heterosexual marriages, the participation of a priest, the taking of the Eucharist, a wedding banquet afterwards. All of which are shown in contemporary drawings of the same sex union of Byzantine Emperor Basil I (867-886) and his companion John. Such homosexual unions also took place in Ireland in the late 12th / early 13th century, as the chronicler Gerald of Wales (Geraldus Cambrensis) has recorded.

Unions in Pre-Modern Europe lists in detail some same sex union ceremonies found in ancient church liturgical documents. One Greek 13th century ‘Order for Solemnisation of Same Sex Union’, having invoked St. Serge and St. Bacchus, called on God to ‘vouchsafe unto these Thy servants [N and N] grace to love another and to abide unhated and not cause of scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of the Holy Mother of God and all Thy saints’. The ceremony concludes: ‘And they shall kiss the Holy Gospel and each other, and it shall be concluded’.

Another 14th century Serbian Slavonic ‘Office of the Same Sex Union’, uniting two men or two women, had the couple having their right hands laid on the Gospel while having a cross placed in their left hands. Having kissed the Gospel, the couple were then required to kiss each other, after which the priest, having raised up the Eucharist, would give them both communion.

Boswell found records of same sex unions in such diverse archives as those in the Vatican, in St. Petersburg, in Paris, Istanbul, and in Sinai, covering a period from the 8th to 18th centuries. Nor is he the first to make such a discovery. The Dominican Jacques Goar (1601-1653) includes such ceremonies in a printed collection of Greek prayer books.

While homosexuality was technically illegal from late Roman times, it was only from about the 14th century that antihomosexual feelings swept western Europe. Yet same sex unions continued to take place.

At St. John Lateran in Rome (traditionally the Pope’s parish church) in 1578 a many as 13 couples were ‘married’ at Mass with the apparent cooperation of the local clergy, ‘taking communion together, using the same nuptial Scripture, after which they slept and ate together’, according to a contemporary report.”

So if this is what is described in the writings from the period, and the documentation of the rites still exist and can be examined by anyone willing to go to the respective archives, how is that being fooled? We’re being fooled into believing that the Church has always held its current position. Heck, I just learned recently that for the first 1000 years, key figures in the Church did not hold that a soul was present from conception or that abortion was murder. The myth is in an infallible, consistent, unaltered dogma extending from the time of Christ to today.