Holy Post looks at the news conference in Quebec City

Thank God for the National Post. Though I have not done an exhaustive search of the media coverage of Cardinal Ouellet's and Archbishop Prendergast's news conference in Quebec City this week, what I did see seemed to miss a stress on what I thought was the most newsworthy part.

In the Holy Post blog today:

Two senior Catholic Church officials did something remarkable this week, though it barely got noticed and chances are it will easily be forgotten or written off as some weird “Catholic thing” irrelevant to the rest of society. They proposed a way to re-frame the discussion about abortion and it would be to the benefit of many to pay attention to what they had to say before dismissing them because they wear clerical garb.

At a press conference on Wednesday in Quebec City, Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Quebec City and Archbishop Terrence Prendergast of Ottawa spoke about the need for governments to lend a hand to pregnant women who want to have their babies.

snip

Two weeks ago, Cardinal Ouellet said that abortion in the case of rape was wrong. That triggered predictable stories that talked about the ensuing “firestorm of virulent reaction” against the Church, even though Cardinal Ouellet was simply repeating Catholic moral teaching and not proposing an amendment to the Criminal Code of Canada.

And as a Cardinal, it would have really been news if he had said he was in favour of abortion.

But this is all to make the point that ridiculous push and pull does nothing to reduce the estimated 100,000 abortions that take place in this country every year. So this week two unlikely men opened the door to doing that without the usual rancor and finger pointing.

“We know for now the law is not going to change in the short-term,” said Archbishop Prendergast said in a phone interview Thursday. “So what can we do to help women in difficulty now? If you pushed people on the pro-choice side they too would want to see fewer abortions. So we need to ask them to participate. Of course, we would like to restrict abortions and do away with them if we could, but in the short-term we should work together to reduce the number of abortions.”

Archbishop Prendergast is a realist. He noted that “this debate is so loaded with rhetoric it’s hard to get beyond fears and do positive things.”

The question remains whether on this last point he is right or wrong.

Read more: http://life.nationalpost.com/category/holy-post/#ixzz0pE20BhmD