Are pro-abortion politicians canonical ‘accomplices’?
Calls for excommunication gain attention, but seem unlikely to gain any traction with bishops.
A Catholic advocacy group made headlines last week, as it called for the excommunication of Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey. The governor signed legislation this month giving physicians legal latitude to perform late term abortions in the state.
But while the call for excommunication has gained attention, it seems unlikely to gain any traction with the Archdiocese of Boston, where Healey lives, or the Diocese of Springfield, the locale of Massachusetts’ state capital.
Why not?
The Pillar explains.
What happened?
On August 10, Healey, a Catholic, signed into law the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act, which would allow doctors to supersede the states’ prohibition on abortion beyond 24 weeks of gestation, when doctors judged the later-term abortion to be medically necessary.
While the advocacy group Reproductive Equity Now said the measure would allow doctors to “prioritize health, safety, and compassion in the most challenging circumstances,” the Catholic bishops of Massachusetts disagreed, saying that the law was “a radical measure which is gravely immoral.”
After the letter was signed, advocacy group CatholicVote released a statement arguing that Healey had incurred an excommunication, because the governor had “legislatively cooperated in the destruction of innocent human life.”
The statement called for the Massachusetts bishops to clarify whether Healey had incurred an excommunication, and if so, to formally declare it.
An excommunication? On what grounds? And will the bishops do it?
The CatholicVote statement cited canon 1329, which provides for the possibility of a latae sententiae excommunication for the accomplices to several canonical crimes, including the procurement of a completed abortion, “if, without their assistance, the crime would not have been committed.”
CatholicVote argued that “a governor who signs legislation into law is not a bystander; she is the necessary final act of a legislative process that cannot take legal effect without her.”
In short, the group said, because Healey had signed into law a bill that creates the conditions for more abortions to legally occur, she should be regarded as a formal accomplice to all those abortions which might follow, and thus be declared excommunicated.
But the argument is not likely to pass muster among canon lawyers — even those sympathetic to the principles at stake.
The Vatican’s established legal interpretation in cases related to “accomplices” is that an accomplice must be tied immediately to a particular criminal act — in this case, that would mean that Healy must be tied to serving as an immediate accomplice to a particular abortion. This is different, in canonical jurisprudence, from the circumstance of having created or facilitated the conditions, even the necessary conditions, by which a particular abortion is procured.
An accomplice, generally, could be considered the person who drove a pregnant woman to an abortion clinic, or paid for the abortion — actually performing the abortion falls under the canonical delict of homicide. But, since the cooperation was more remote and not tied to a particular abortion, this does not extend in law to the politician who voted an abortion-permissive law, even though they created the circumstances by which the procural of abortions was possible.
Of course, the decision to create the conditions by which abortion might occur is still a very gravely sinful matter, in the Church’s theological understanding, and one dealt with canonically in a different way. But there is a reason why the Church’s understanding of its legislation on accomplices is understood very narrowly.
That reason is canon 18, which establishes that “laws which prescribe a penalty, or restrict the free exercise of rights, or contain an exception to the law, are to be interpreted strictly.”
Because canon 1329 establishes a penalty, canonical general norms require that each of its provisions be interpreted according to a narrow reading of a text, and not according to the broader reading offered by the CatholicVote statement.
That seems to be an argument against the Church declaring an excommunication for Governor Healey.
It is true that the Vatican’s interpretations of the relevant canons would not seem to support the possibility for the “accomplice excommunication” demanded by CatholicVote.
On the other hand, a growing number of canon lawyers have at least considered the possibility of whether a politician like Healey might be judged to have committed the canonical crime of heresy for the rejection of the Church’s teaching on the grave sinfulness of the taking of innocent human life. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s commentary on the 1988 apostolic letter Ad tuendam fidem would seem to support that possibility.
While that is not the argument raised by CatholicVote, it does seem at least possible that a bishop would conclude a politician who denies the immorality of abortion — especially if they do so directly in word — is in the proximate occasion of heresy, and begin from there the relevant canonical proceedings.
But what’s most likely to happen?
That’s hard to say, and depends — of course — on how the relevant bishops decide to proceed.
But one more likely possibility is that the Archbishop of Boston might conclude that because Healey’s support for the legal protection is consistent and public, it constitutes “obstinate perseverance in manifest grave sin.”
That situation would, according to canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law, lead to a formal determination that Healey is not permitted to receive the Eucharist.
That determination is not the same as the imposition of excommunication as a canonical penalty, but it is similar, in that it is intended both to call a person to repentance, and to address the scandal of a Catholic’s public opposition to the teachings of the Church.
The possibility of invoking canon 915 with regard to abortion-supporting politicians kicked off major debates among the U.S. bishops over the issue of “Eucharistic coherence.”
And there is precedent to exercising that option. In 2022, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone invoked canon 915 when he prohibited Rep. Nancy Pelosi from receiving the Eucharist, and the option has been exercised in the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, under the leadership of both Bishop Thomas Paprocki and his predecessor, Bishop George Lucas.
Whether that might happen in Massachusetts remains to be seen — but it seems likely that the issue of Healey’s support for expansively permissive abortion legislation is likely to remain the subject of ongoing debate among Catholics.