Detroit Vicar General elaborates on Popes remarks on abortion and forgiveness
Monsignor Robert McClory, vicar general and moderator of the curia for the Archdiocese of Detroit, has helped clarify the local significance of Pope Francis’s comments Tuesday that priests in the upcoming Year of Mercy will be allowed to forgive penitents the sin of abortion. Monsignor McClory on Wednesday morning addressed the topic with radio host Paul W. Smith of the popular Paul W. Smith morning show on WJR (990 AM).
Monsignor McClory noted that, in the United States since the early 1980s, priests have had the authority to forgive the sin of obtaining an abortion which, in some circumstances, can invoke an ecclesiastical censure. While Pope Francis’s remarks on September 1 will not change the ability priests already have by virtue of Church law in the United States to forgive the sin of abortion – and should not cause any concern for women who have confessed and received absolution – the Holy Father’s remarks were relevant on a more global scale, Monsignor McClory said.
“I think the Holy Father in his pastoral wisdom looked at the whole world and said, ‘I want to make sure that everybody knows that priests can forgive you of this sin,’” he told Smith. “So my hope, my prayer, is that those who have been involved in abortion, that women who have suffered and who are experiencing the effects of this, whose awareness of the enormity of what they’ve done sinks in, they will know that the church is a place of mercy and forgiveness.”
Monsignor McClory added that the Church and its pastors always strive to convey God’s mercy, love and forgiveness for those who have had abortion. He pointed out that the Church has ministries, such as Project Rachel, specifically devoted to offering women spiritual and emotional healing from abortion. Still, Pope Francis’s ability to speak “eternal truths in a new way,” he said, will help further spread the news of God’s mercy.
“The pope really has a megaphone to tell the world in a new way what we’ve been trying to say, and that is that the Lord is loving, is merciful, is forgiving,” Monsignor McClory said. “He’s willing to risk occasionally being misunderstood if he can get through to people who need to hear that the Lord loves them. He’s clearly a pastor first and trying to bring as many people into the fold as possible.”
Earlier this year, Pope Francis had announced that on December 8, 2015 would mark the beginning of a Year of Mercy for the Catholic Church throughout the world. He addressed the forgiveness of abortion during the upcoming Year of Mercy in a public correspondence this week to Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization.
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