On abortion and Christianity, Joe Scarborough doesn’t know what he’s talking about:
Christ and His Church have always condemned abortion — in the Catechism, The Didache, and elsewhere.
We’d be happy to guide @JoeNBC through some basic theology.
Maybe something taught by a world-class scholar at @CUATheology?pic.twitter.com/tCSw6NTkgn
— IHE Voices (@IHEvoices) September 9, 2022
Here, for those who don’t care for the video, is what Scarborough had to say on the subject of abortion and Christianity:
Let me just say, as a Southern Baptist, I grew up reading the Bible, maybe a backslidden Baptist but I still know the Bible. Jesus never once talked about abortion. Never once. And it was happening back in ancient times, it was happening during his time. Never once mentioned it. For people perverting the gospel of Jesus Christ down to one issue, it’s heresy. Go, if you don’t believe me, if that makes you angry, why don’t you do something you haven’t done in a long time. Open the Bible. Open the New Testament. Read the red letters. You won’t see it there. And yet there are people who are using Jesus as a shield to make ten-year-old raped girls go through a living and breathing hell here on Earth. They’ve also conveniently overlooked the parts of the New Testament where Jesus talks about taking care of the needy. Taking care of those who are helpless, who live a hopeless life. Because they believe, these state legislators believe, that life begins at fertilization, and ends at childbirth . . .
The misconceptions (at best) here are myriad. The biggest one concerns Christianity’s treatment of abortion, on which Scarborough is misinformed, to say the least. The Church’s opposition to abortion is ancient, and consistent. As Catholic University of America moral theology professor (and executive director for the Institute for Human Ecology, with which I am affiliated) Joseph Capizzi wrote for National Review:
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable.” The Didache, written by Jewish Christians just decades after Jesus’s death, condemned abortion and infanticide. The communities organizing themselves around Christ shared the conviction that life is sacred at every stage of development. That conviction has remained constant over two millennia.
Scarborough could also use a refresher on biology, which Capizzi provides:
Contemporary science confirms this unanimous judgment of Catholic theologians and philosophers. From the moment of conception, a unique human being is present: composed of the contributions from both the father and the mother, this new being is also neither of them. The zygote (the cell formed by the union of an ovum and a sperm) is a new life, a new human being. Science actually provides us with greater grounds for respecting the earliest stages of human life than were available to the earlier theologians — who, to repeat, nonetheless prohibited intervention in the development of the human being. We now know what they did not: From the moment of conception, a discrete human being is present.
Scarborough also seems unable to comprehend that the unborn are “needy” also. And that, furthermore, pro-lifers are quite committed to taking care of children once they are born, through, among other things, the pregnancy resource centers that liberals like Elizabeth Warren are so keen on shutting down. Funny, that: The Left loves to say pro-lifers are only “pro-birth,” but then attack pro-life means of supporting children once they are born as well as their mothers.
Fortunately, Joe Scarborough is not the only interpreter of Christ’s teaching we have available. Readers might find IHE Voices useful; follow it on Twitter here.