Questions to the Moralist - Personal Web Server - Boston College

I think the key pastoral dynamic here would be to move the person to trust in God's
merciful forgiveness and to try and grow in that trust of God. So pastorally I feel the
"key" issue is less the relative gravity of the masturbation, as the man's trust in God's
compassion, mercy, understanding, and forgiveness. At least that's the direction I would
take.
Hope this helps,
Fr. Jim
Hello Father,
I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind reiterating some information we discussed
in class. In the last section on bio ethics we discussed a case where a pregnant woman
was told by medical experts that her child would likely be still born and that the chances
of her surviving labor were also quite low. Further, if this fetus was removed now it is
highly probable that her chances of carrying another child to term would be quite high.
In class I was having some confusion as to why an abortion of the fetus would not be
considered euthanasia and you had stated that the Church would consider it, “…..”; I
can’t remember the term you used, which is why I am still unclear about this. I wanted to
follow up with you in class but time is always a valuable commodity. If you wouldn’t’
mind briefly revisiting the topic I’d really appreciate it, thanks.
Fr. Bretzke replies:
Thanks for your e-mail. I think the best way to frame the question/answer is to lay out
some definitions first. So let's start with "euthanasia"--to practice euthanasia you have to
have a single, live, autonomous person, who is being put to death for the purposes of
ending his/her suffering. Taking that definition it would be hard to stretch this to apply
either to the woman or her fetus. I suspect, though, that you probably have some other
stipulative description of what constitutes "euthanasia" (i.e., I think you're probably using
this term to apply to what you would understand to be involved in this case). I'm not
quite sure just what you're thinking of here, but I'd hazard a guess and suggest that
perhaps you're thinking of this as an elective abortion. An elective abortion is one in
which for one or more reasons a woman elects to terminate the life of her otherwise
viable fetus. This description would cover the majority of the so-called "right-to-choose"
cases espoused by "pro-choice" advocates (in whose number I certainly do NOT count
myself!).
But in our class discussion I believe we speaking of this case along the lines of the
paradigm suggested by the ectopic pregnancy. By definition, in current medical
technology, an ectopic pregnancy is ultimately non-viable, which means that regardless
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