The Cura controversy is being used by right-wing Catholic groups to bring us back to an era when the ill-treatment of women with a crisis pregnancy was the norm for church and society in Ireland, writes Brendan Butler
When a complex moral issue like abortion is to be discussed there must be an acceptable ground found somewhere between indifferentism and extremism.
For the past 35 years I have been involved in religious education in a Catholic secondary school for girls and the abortion issue has always featured in the programmes.
This would have been equally true of other Catholic, comprehensive, community and no doubt other Christian secondary schools.
Indeed, over those years we had always to be wary of outside agencies wanting to address the students on abortion: including a Fr Marx, who carried a preserved foetus in a bottle, and other extremists whose methodology was one of scare tactics to deter girls from ever considering an abortion.
Yet in spite of all this educational effort put into the abortion issue, the numbers of Irish women going to Britain for abortion steadily increased over these years. It seems that much of the methodology employed in religious education was not up to scratch or that young Irish women were now no longer going to accept traditional moral values as previous generations had.
From involvement and conversations with young women in a crisis pregnancy I have been struck by the heart-searching process they go through and no one should ever neglect to appreciate the agonising that finally ends in an abortion.
This then ought to be accepted as a real conscientious moral decision which should be respected as the decision of the personal conscience.
Within the Catholic Church the primacy of conscience has always been acknowledged.
Indeed Pope Benedict XV1 wrote in 1968: "Above the pope as an expression of the binding claim of church authority stands one's conscience, which has to be obeyed first of all, if need be, against the demands of church authority."
Cura, the Irish Catholic bishops' response organisation to crisis pregnancy, has adopted a professional non-judgmental and non-directive approach to its counselling. Such an approach does not involve any compulsion or moral pressure on the woman involved.
The problem arises for a Catholic organisation such as Cura when a woman believes that, in spite of being counselled by it, she should opt for an abortion and states this quite clearly to her counsellor.
Surely the Christian response is not to shunt her out the door and ignore her, like the priest and the Levite in the parable of the good Samaritan who not alone pass the robbed and injured man but pass over to the opposite side of the road in case they become involved with injured humanity.
The right response is surely the compassionate one, like the response of Jesus to the woman brought to him for stoning to death. In the case of Cura it is to say: "I don't agree with your decision but there are organisations here in Ireland that will give you genuine assistance with your decision and here are their telephone numbers/or here they are, printed on this sheet."
If I am concerned about the totality of the person in crisis I want this woman to receive the best of advice and assistance.
However, this is not always the case. A young Irish woman recounted to me how she had to endure the gauntlet of shouting, abusive people, armed with rosary beads, who were blocking the entrance to the abortion clinic in England to which she had been referred.
Not alone had she to endure that further trauma but there was no follow-up counselling session arranged. When she inquired about one, she couldn't attend as the cost was prohibitive for her in her circumstances.
And, as in so very many areas of life, the poor have to endure the worst treatment even in the event of an abortion.
I have no doubt that the decision of the Irish Catholic bishops to order the national executive of Cura to end the policy of offering the Crisis Pregnancy Agency's "Positive Options" leaflet to women who seek help is a wrong one and will further infuriate and alienate thinking and conscientious Catholics.
The question is: why has this Cura policy,which has been in operation for some time, been ordered by the hierarchy to cease. I believe that the Bishops' Conference has given in to pressure from Irish Catholic fundamentalism, which has received a new lease of life since the election of Pope Benedict XV1.
The Cura issue is being used by these right-wing organisations as a Trojan horse to further control Irish Catholicism and to bring us back to an era when bigotry and the ill-treatment of women with a crisis pregnancy was the norm of Church and society. This hierarchical decision will no doubt earn kudos in the Vatican.
Brendan Butler holds a Bachelor of Divinity (BD) degree and is deputy principal at Loreto College, Swords, Co Dublin