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Pope’s abortion overtures means little in Canada where priests already can offer forgiveness

Pope’s abortion overtures means little in Canada where priests already can offer forgiveness

Pope Francis made headlines around the world this week when he announced that priests will be able to offer forgiveness to women who have had abortions.

In practical terms, though, the announcement means little in Canada, where bishops have long designated that ability to local priests, says Rev. Tom Lynch, a professor of theology at St. Augustine’s Seminary at the University of Toronto.

“I think here in Canada it’s not as big of news as perhaps in other parts of the world,” says Lynch, the national director of Priests for Life Canada and the pastor St. Mary’s Parish in Lindsay, Ont.

For four decades, North American bishops have delegated the decision to priests to hear confession and offer forgiveness for this “sin.”

Forgiveness for only eight of the most grievous sins is reserved for bishops, Lynch says. Abortion is not one of them.

“This isn’t a change in the teaching on abortion; it isn’t a change in the teaching on confession. It’s just a change in the pastoral practice,” he says.

But if the declaration from Pope Francis was not surprising to Lynch, it was to Jon O’Brien, president of Washington, D.C.-based Catholics for Choice.

“We have a pope that, refreshingly, is trying to practice what he preaches,” he tells Yahoo Canada News.

The pontiff sent a message both to his own bishops, who continue to wage a war against birth control and abortion, and to the faithful, he says.

Ninety-nine per cent of sexually active Catholic women in the United States use a method of birth control not condoned by the Church, he says, and Catholic women have abortions at the same rate as women of no faith.

“There’s a gulf between those of us in the pews and the people in the hierarchy,” O’Brien says. “I think Francis, in his special way, was trying to say something that was pastoral and spiritual, trying to be helpful,” O’Brien says.

But he doesn’t expect to see Catholic women queuing up for confession in Toronto or Washington, D.C., or Ireland when the edict takes effect in the coming Jubilee Year, beginning in December.

“Catholic women know that the final arbiter in moral decision-making within Catholicism is to follow your conscience,” he says.

“I don’t think women are going to feel a need to ask a priest for forgiveness for their conscience-based decisions.”

Still, the latest dialogue from the Holy See is a symbolic overture to both members of the Catholic faith and its priests, he says.

While he has not changed church policy on contraception or abortion, Pope Francis made global headlines earlier this year when he told followers that there was no need for Catholics to breed “like rabbits.”

“What we have is a pope who is trying to struggle to understand abortion and that’s a big change,” O’Brien says.