Church advice service must stop giving abortion info, says theologian

AN ARRANGEMENT between the State and the Catholic Church’s pregnancy advice service on issuing abortion clinic contacts must end, a moral theologian insisted yesterday.

Cura has been issuing phone numbers of agencies that provide contact details for British abortion clinics and Catholic bishops are to meet next month to discuss the matter.

Dublin archbishop Dr Diarmuid Martin has asked that the policy be examined.

Cura receives €600,000 a year from the Crisis Pregnancy Agency (CPA) on the basis that women still wanting an abortion at the end of a counselling session would be given CPA’s Positive Options leaflet, which lists eight other agencies and the services they provide.

CPA chairwoman Olive Braiden indicated this week that State funding for Cura could be in doubt if the bishops forced it to reverse its policy of issuing information on other agencies.

Dr Vincent Twomey, a professor of moral theology at the Pontifical University, Maynooth, Co Kildare, said he was flabbergasted by Ms Braiden’s suggestion and hoped it was not a form of blackmail.

“I am sure it isn’t but it sounds like it,” he told RTÉ’s News at One.

In any event, he said, €600,000 was a small price to pay for saving one baby’s life.

Dr Twomey said he doubted the Catholic bishops would approve of the arrangement, adding that there had to be a clear, unequivocal stand with regard to abortion and that no kind of co-operation with this act was possible.

Dr Twomey pointed out that a majority of people in Ireland were Catholics and upheld certain values and principles. “These principles have got to be respected by the State and its agencies, whether they like it or not,” he stressed.