Automatic excommunication for Politicians who vote for abortion

The Pope is really making waves in the news. The automatic excommunication for politicians that vote for abortion laws have really got the media excited.

Currently, there's automatic excommunication for any Catholic woman who kills her baby by abortion and any medical personnel who perform the abortion. Now there's excommunication for politicians who vote for abortion laws.

The background to the hullaballoo was the recent vote by Mexico's parliament to legalise abortion. An Italian reporter on the plane asked the Pope whether he agreed that Catholic MPs in Mexico City who voted for legalisation should be considered excommunicated. The Pope replied: "Yes. The excommunication was not something arbitrary. It is part of the [canon law] code. It is based simply on the principle that the killing of an innocent human child is incompatible with going in Communion with the body of Christ. Thus, they [the bishops] did not do anything new or surprising, or arbitrary."

The Rev John Coughlin, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, flatly contradicted the Pope, saying there was no provision in canon law which stated that Catholic politicians who voted to legalise abortion automatically excommunicated themselves.

The Pope's spokesman, the Rev Federico Lombardi, said the Pope was not making new policy in his remarks, and that formal excommunication of offending politicians - a complicated and rare procedure distinct from the doctrine of "self-excommunication" - was not on the cards. But he endorsed the main drift of the Pope's words. "Legislative action in favour of abortion is incompatible with participation in the Eucharist," he said. Politicians who vote that way, he went on, "exclude themselves from Communion".

Related Link: Pope stirs up row over abortion on visit to Brazil

About time, really. Politicians have to be accountable for their actions in some way.