CHURCH SEEKING DOMINATION OVER STATE IN THE
CRUSADE AGAINST ABORTION

• INDIFFERENCE TO DESTRUCTION OF THE FIGURATIVE WALL SEPARATING CHURCH AND STATE

• DOGMATIC UNCERTAINTY CLOAKED WITH PAPAL INFALLIBILITY AND MARIOLOGY

• THE SOUL DEFINED AT CREATION AND CORRUPTED BY THE GREAT LIE IN PAGAN PHILOSOPHY AND PAPAL DOGMA

• IN THE ABORTION CONTROVERSY THE PAPACY DEMANDS SUPREME UNCONSTITUTIONAL SOVEREIGNTY OVER ALL, INCLUDING THE BIBLE

• HOW THE ANTI-ABORTION CRUSADE FORCES PAPAL DOGMA ON ALL IN VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

• UNCONSTITUTIONAL COERCIVE RELIGIOUS LEGISLATION PROLIFERATING IN STATE LEGISLATURES

• THE ANTI-ABORTION CRUSADE: ACHIEVING PAPAL SUPREMACY OVER CIVIL LAW
  WHILE ALSO SUPPRESSING INTERNAL DISSENT FROM HUMANAE VITAE

INDIFFERENCE TO DESTRUCTION OF THE FIGURATIVE WALL SEPARATING CHURCH AND STATE

In The Two Republics A. T. Jones made the following statements in relation to government aid to parochial schools and Sunday legislation:

2. It is stated by the Senator that the question whether the government should be connected with parochial schools at all, is a “great question.” That is the truth. It is a great question. It is the great question that caused the Dark Ages, and has been the curse of every government until now. It is this question that our fathers sought to have [817] this government avoid, when they forbade Congress to have anything to do with religion. But, although the whole spirit and intent of the United States Constitution forbids this thing which is now being done by the government for certain churches of the United States, both the government and the churches have deliberately gone ahead in the matter, and are still going ahead, and the people sit still and let them go on without any protest.

This is a forcible and practical illustration of the truth that constitutional safeguards are such only so long as the intelligence of the people is kept up to the level of the Constitution. A people may have a perfect Constitution, and yet, if they neglect it, so that the public intelligence falls below the level of the Constitution, and the real character of the Constitution is forgotten, then the Constitution is of no more value than so much blank paper. This is the condition of things in the United States now. So far as the subject of religion and government is concerned, the United States Constitution is as nearly perfect as a human production can be made. It declares an absolute separation between the church, or churches, and the State; and prohibits the government from having anything to do with establishing any religion, or with any religion already established. And yet the people of the United States have so far forgotten these principles, and the necessity of maintaining them, that Congress goes on, year after year, bestowing national aid upon certain churches, and the people say not a word. Men are elected to Congress who still carry on the same iniquity, and the people suffer the evil still to go on, until the churches get such a hold upon the government that it is officially declared that it is impossible to be broken. And this declaration is made by the very men who are sent to Congress, and who sit there under a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Of what benefit is the Constitution of the United States, in its provision for the separation of Church and State, when the men [818] who take oath to support it thus violate it, and when the people are so careless and indifferent about the whole matter as to suffer it to go on year after year, with not a word of protest? This is indeed a great question. . .

But of all the elements that may tend to the exaltation and aggrandizement of the papacy, the one that stands preeminent is the movement for religious legislation in the government of the United States; the movement to commit this government to a connection with religion, to the guardianship of religious institutions, and the enforcement of religious observances, and above all, that institution and observance—the Sunday. [871]

This government is the only one that has ever been on earth, which, by its fundamental principles and its supreme law, has been in harmony with the word of God as it respects earthly government; the only one that was ever pledged to a distinct and positive separation from religion; and therefore the only government since the papacy arose, that was ever fully separated from the principles of the papacy. Against this the papacy and those who held to her principles, have always protested. They have always insisted that it was an experiment that never could be made to succeed. Yet in spite of it all and in the face of the hoary principles of the mother of harlots, this nation in liberty and enlightenment has been the admiration of all nations, and in progress has been the wonder of the world. And the influence which by these things, and above all by its absolutely free exercise of religious right, this government has exerted upon other nations, has surely and steadily weakened the hold of the papal principles upon them, till even Spain, the home of the Inquisition, has been led to grant toleration. (Pp. 531, 565.) (Red font and underscored emphasis added.)

Note Jones' statement that "constitutional safeguards are such only so long as the intelligence of the people is kept up to the level of the Constitution." This was commentary on the fact that "the people sit still and let them go on without any protest," while grave violations of the Constitution were being committed in full view. The state of affairs in the United States is now many times greater in gravity than at the time of Jones' publication in 1891. Democracy, the principles of which gave birth to the Constitution, is on the brink of extinction. There is now strong support in the nation for authoritainian governance in opposition to democracy (Trump Is an Authoritarian. So Are Millions of Americans; The Dangerous Rise of American Authoritarianism; The Seeds of Theocratic Authoritarianism Are Being Planted.) Note in the last hyperlinked article the involvement of "extremist Catholic institutions.”

What applied in the statements of A. T. Jones on government aid to parochial schools and Sunday legislation applies with equal force to legislation against abortion. Arguments to the contrary are spearheaded by the Church of Rome and based on her supposedly Christian dogmas, in which spurious application of Bible texts are neatly merged with pagan philosophy.

Judging by the STATEMENT ON THE BIBLICAL VIEW OF UNBORN LIFE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR ABORTION published in October, 2019, the approving Seventh-day Adventist leaders apparently did not realize the profound doctrinal ramifications of the document. This may be the most charitable conclusion to draw. Apparently the Seventh-day Adventist Church has announced its approval of the Religious Right "Pro-Life" movement. Compare the style and content of the document with that of the Religious Right, and there is little distinction. The indications are that there was less concern about advancing Bible Truth than about conforming with the politics of ecumenism. This is in contrast with earlier publications of some Adventist leaders.

There have been voices of prominent Seventh-day Adventist leaders who have highlighted the specific spiritual dangers of taking the wrong side in the abortion controversy, which not only concerns pregnancy but also contraception. Thus it was that in 1969 the Ministry Magazine published a two-part article in the Ministry magazine on Adventists and Birth Control, which specifically mentions "Pope Paul's historic seven-thousand-word encyclical Humenae Vitae [s/b Humanae Vitae] ("Of Human Life," about there is a section later in this document.)" Seventh-day Adventist Kevin D. Paulson is described by Liberty Magazine as "a much-published author, editor, and minister of religion." He discusses the abortion question in an article titled "SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISTS AND THE ABORTION QUESTION: WHERE SHOULD WE STAND? Here are some passages: Abortion has existed in this world for thousands of years . . .; Certain Bible texts are occasionally used . . .; Some have pointed to verses . . . In 2008 a book titled The Abortion Controversy, authored by John V. Stevens Sr., a former Religious Liberty Director of the Pacific Union Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, was published. This was an expansive, in-depth examination of the topic, and can reasonably be preferred to the essay by Kevin Paulson where there is slight divergence.  The title page asks the following questions: "Will a Free America Survive? Will You?" This reflects the gravity of the issue. The book is not online; but is still available in print. The following chapters are reproduced on this website: THE ABORTION CONTROVERSY - EFFORTS TO IMPOSE DOGMA; THE ABORTION CONTROVERSY - ABORTION LAW IN THE SCRIPTURES_ACCIDENTAL AND INDUCED; and THE ABORTION CONTROVERSY - Puzzling Passages Made Plain.

Adventistlaymen's Foundation's William Grotheer also contributed to commentary on the abortion controversy:-

WWN 7(89):

ROE vs. WADE

The issue of abortion "has become the single most controversial and volatile issue in America since the Civil War." Thus reads the first sentence of a research paper recently received by this editor. Written by Elder John V. Stevens, Jr. [s/b Sr.,] Director of Public Affairs & Religious Liberty of the Pacific Union Conference, it is the best yet summary of the issues underlying the present challenge to the Roe vs. Wade Decision which is now before the Supreme Court as a result of legislation passed by the Assembly of the State of Missouri. This research paper presents the last day implications of this whole litigation and its meaning to and for Seventh-day Adventists.

It is "must" reading for everyone who wishes to be truly informed about the behind-the-scenes working in this abortion controversy.

While many have tried to project the Sunday Closing Laws issue for personal gain, the enemy has subtly introduced the first of the two great errors - "the immortality of the soul" - which he is using to bring the world under his deceptions for the battle of the great day of God Almighty. (See GC, p. 588) . . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

WWN 12(89)

A New Ominousness

With the recent decision of the Supreme Court in the Webster case on abortion, a new and ominous era is opening. The emotional fervor raised over abortion itself has clouded the basic issue in this case. The preamble to the Missouri statute which was upheld establishes Catholic dogma and forces it upon the whole of the people of that State. Lost in all the legal conflict was the 14-page dissent by Justice John Paul Stevens. Drawing from a friend-of-the-court brief prepared by Americans United which cited the teachings of Thomas Aquinas that male fetuses receive a soul 40 days after conception and females 80 days, Justice Stevens wrote:

If the views of St. Thomas were held as widely today as they were in the Middle Ages, and if a state legislature were to enact a statute prefaced with a "finding" that female lite begins 80 days after conception and male life begins 40 days after conception. I have no doubt that this Court would promptly conclude that such an endorsement of a particular religious tenet is violative of the Establishment Clause.

In my opinion the difference between the hypothetical statute and Missouri's preamble reflects nothing more than a difference in theological doctrine.

The Webster decision returned the issue of abortion back to the States. While there is little or no possibility of "local option" being attached to the issue of abortion, other issues, such as the sale of alcoholic beverages, have been localized. In Canada, when the matter of the application of the Lord's Day Act of Canada was considered by the Ontario Provincial Parliament, "local option" was the way out of the tense situation. Such an application in the United States would leave the cities the bastions of religious liberty and the small communities in the rural areas the enclaves of intolerance. [Where then would we flee?] The Webster decision is definitely an "establishment of religion" and to let the issue of abortion override our judgment is to place "blinders" on our eyes. Coming events are casting their shadow before.

We would do well to review Rome's plans as stated in 1939 as the deadly wound was being healed. They read:

When the time comes and men realize that the social edifice must be rebuilt according to eternal standards, be it now, or be it centuries from now, the Catholics will arrange things to suit said standards ... They will make obligatory the religious observance of Sunday on behalf of the whole of society and for its own good, revoking the permit for free-thinkers and Jews to celebrate, "incognito," Monday or Saturday on their own account. Those whom this may annoy, will have to put up with the annoyance. Respect will not be refused to the Creator nor repose denied to the creature simply for the sake of humoring certain maniacs, whose phrenetic condition cause them stupidly and insolently to block the will of a whole people ...

In a word, Catholic society will be Catholic and the dissenters whom it will tolerate will know its charity, but will not be allowed to disrupt its unity. (Louis Veuillot, The Liberal Illusion, pp. 63, 64; The National Catholic Welfare Conference, Washington, D.C.: 1939)

Now ask yourself some questions. What has caused the breakdown of "law" from without? Go back and reread Witte's comments. (p. 2, Col. 2 - "From without") Note again the emphasis on "social" factors - society. Then note the objectives of the Catholic Church in regard to "society." Is the issue of abortion a social as well as a moral issue? Has it been interwoven with Papal Dogma?

Note again the Catholic objectives: What does "incognito" mean? How would one observe the true Sabbath, "incognito"? What would be required for "the religious observance of Sunday"? What preserves for us the freedom to worship as we choose, and openly? The answer is the first amendment of the Bill of Rights. Reread that right. (p. 4, col. 1) "Revoking the permit" means simply what? Altering the religious freedom Clause of that amendment. What is the attitude of the Chief Justice, and the Catholic appointees - Scalia and Kennedy - to the Court? It doesn't take a prophet to tell you about the fate of "the Establishment Clause" in the next decade.

The Catholic hierarchy of America boasts that it now has over 50% of Congress in its pocket. It is rapidly obtaining a "working majority" of the Supreme Court. There is only one factor which inhibits its desired objective and that is the growing pluralism of the American population. Islam has taken the third place in the major religions of the States ahead of Judaism. We do well to consider how the full objectives of the Roman Catholic Church will be realized. The answer reads:

In the last days Satan will appear as an angel of light, with great power and heavenly glory, and claim to be Lord of the whole earth. He will declare that the Sabbath has been changed from the seventh to the first day of the week, and as Lord of the first day of the week, he will present this spurious sabbath as a test of loyalty to him. Then will take place the final fulfillment of the Revelator's prophecy. [Rev. 13:11-18 quoted] (Ms. 153, 1902) (Underscored emphasis added.)

There is much to note in this quotation; but of particular significance is the passage on the Webster case. Add to this the fact that the Catholic hierarchy of America has advanced far beyond a "working majority" on the Supreme Court. They now have an overwhelmingly dominant majority, with no apparent hope of reversing this movement before democracy and the Constitution are demolished.

In the quotation from Justice Stevens' opinion, there is the first glimpse in this document of the fact that the papacy has not always held that "life begins at conception." Following is the history of this dogma.

DOGMATIC UNCERTAINTY CLOAKED WITH PAPAL INFALLIBILITY AND MARIOLOGY

‘Life Begins At Conception’ Wasn’t Always The Church’s Position: A History Of Abortion

In the early Christian church, sex itself was seen as sinful, even for procreation. That was bad enough but sex for pleasure was positively heinous. Early discussion about abortion was thoughtful yet critical. The Didache, an early Church document, asked two questions about abortion: 1) Is abortion being used to conceal the sins of fornication and adultery? and 2) Does the fetus have a rational soul from the moment of conception, or does it become an “ensouled human” at a later point? This debate – when does a fetus become ensouled – became the cornerstone of the debate which continues to this day.

St. Augustine, not known for permissiveness, held that abortion was a sin only in that it broke the linear progression from sex to new human life. However, in his Enchiridion he stated:

But who is not rather disposed to think that unformed fetuses perish like seeds which have not fructified?

In other words, the fetus received its soul at some point in its growth, not at conception. As far as being a sin, it was only seen to be so if it was intended to conceal fornication and/or adultery.

The Irish Canons of the 8th century gave penance for abortion at 3-and-a-half years, while the “penance of one who has intercourse with a woman” is given as seven years on bread and water. It is clear which was considered the greater sin. A bit later in the century, in the Penitential Ascribed by Albers to Bede, the idea of delayed ensoulment is again supported. And, believe it or not, the woman’s circumstances are acknowledged:

A mother who kills her child before the fortieth day shall do penance for one year. If it is after the child has become alive, [she shall do penance] as a murderess. But it makes a great difference whether a poor woman does it on account of the difficulty of supporting [the child] or a harlot for the sake of concealing her wickedness.

The first official Canon recognized as authoritative within Church Law was compiled in 1140 by Gratian. Among these was a canon stating explicitly that He is not a murderer who brings about abortion before the soul is in the body.

Dueling papal views on abortion.

The Council of Vienne was called in 1323 by Pope Clement V. During it, St. Thomas Aquinas’ thoughts on conception and abortion were confirmed. While he had opposed abortion as a form of contraception and a sin against marriage, he maintained that the sin in abortion was not homicide. Aquinas said the fetus is first endowed with a vegetative soul, then an animal soul, and then — when its body is developed — a rational soul. This theory of “delayed hominization” is the most consistent thread throughout church history on abortion. It was believed to occur at 40 days after conception for male fetuses, and 90 days after conception for female fetuses.

In 1588, Pope Sixtus V issued a bill decreeing that both contraception and abortion were to be punished by excommunication. There was no exception for therapeutic abortion. This law was relaxed by Pope Gregory XIV soon after Sixtus’ death. He felt it was too harsh and inconsistent with Church teaching’s on ensoulment. As late as the 18th century, the church’s greatest moral theologian, St. Alfonsus Liguori, was still denying that the soul was infused at conception. Like Aquinas before him, he did not say direct abortion was right, but his view allowed a flexibility of approach to abortion, especially when the mother’s life was in danger.

For about three hundred years, the Church accepted the doctrine of delayed hominization. But theologians continued to debate abortion; was it all right in certain circumstances? Was it okay in cases of rape or incest? Or to save the mother’s life? All the while, abortion was not considered murder if performed in the first 90 days after conception. It was a sin and punishable with penance, and in some cases excommunication, but it was not murder.

Then, in 1869, completely ignoring earlier teachings, Pope Pius IX wrote in Apostolicae Sedis that excommunication is the required penalty for abortion at any stage of pregnancy. He further stated that all abortion was homicide. This was an implicit endorsement – the church’s first – of ensoulment at conception.

Abortion in the modern age.

This set the stage for the modern stigma attached to abortion. The revised Church Canon, compiled in 1917, required excommunication both for a woman who aborts and for any others, such as doctors and nurses, who take part in an abortion. Clearly, things were getting stricter. Therapeutic abortions were attacked in 1930, when Pope Pius XI condemned abortion in general. He also specified three instances: in the case of therapeutic abortion; in marriage to prevent offspring; and on social and eugenic grounds. Pius’s stance on abortion remains the hierarchical view today.

The Second Vatican Council (in 1965), declared:

Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception; abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.

With this, abortion is now condemned on the basis of protecting life. All previous ideas about it being used as a concealment of sexual sin have been thrown by the wayside. With 1974’s Declaration on Procured Abortion, the position is that the fetus is a human life from the moment of conception, if not necessarily a full human being. At that point, the church had fully changed the terms of its original arguments.

There are many examples of Reform Christianity’s consistent teaching that abortion is a serious and unconscionable sin. Early Protestant church leaders such as Martin Luther and John Calvin were quite strict on this point. In the early 60s, some branches became less so in their views. The Presbyterian Church has supported free and open access to abortion without legal restriction since 1970. They were joined by the United Methodists (1970), the Lutheran Church in America (1970), the United Church of Christ (1971)and the Disciples of Christ (1971). Most other sects of Protestantism hold with the Catholic Church’s absolutism on the denial of abortion.

So now we come to the present. At this point in human history you would think we would have come full circle to women’s health being the concern of the individual woman. Well, that would be nice but apparently we can’t quite get there. Male legislators and theologians continue to believe that they should have a say in this most personal of issues. Even with Roe v. Wade, obtaining an abortion in the United States is difficult. Thanks to anti-abortion groups, finding a practitioner is next to impossible. In some places a woman must travel hundreds of miles to find one, especially in the wake of all the recent abortion restrictions in some states. Women with the money to do so can procure an abortion without too much trouble, but poor, desperate women are left to their own devices, with no help from their government and little from charities. Planned Parenthood continues to be under attack. States are passing stricter abortion laws and more and more onerous regulations for clinics, attempting to drive them out of business. Even birth control is under attack. Bills requiring a zygote have the same rights as a person — aka, “personhood” — are gaining ground. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The foregoing historical record reveals a developing Roman Catholic dogma in flux. There is difficulty in pitting the implausible "life begins at conception" idea against the realities of the early stages of pregnancy in which there is no discernible bodily form of humanity. There was also some consideration of possible suffering, and in some cases danger to the health and life, of a pregnant woman. Throughout the history "ensoulment" was seen as essential to human personhood.

Another essay not only confirms the substance of the foregoing historical record, but focuses on the heart of the current position of the Church of Rome. It was published by the Irish Times.

Time for a rational debate on when human life begins

When does human life begin? For most of the last millennium the Vatican did not hold that it begins at conception, writes Patsy McGarry

It is 137 years since the Catholic Church adopted its current teaching on abortion. Then, in his 1869 document Apostolicae Sedis, Pope Pius IX enacted the penalty of excommunication for abortion at any stage of pregnancy. For the previous 278 years, and following Pope Gregory XIV's Sedes Apostolica document in 1591, such excommunication only applied where abortion took place after "quickening", ie from those moments when a mother first detected the foetus move.

Pope Gregory determined quickening at just over 16 weeks (166 days) of pregnancy. Prior to quickening "no homicide" was involved if abortion took place, he concluded. In 1588, just three years previously, Pope Sixtus V issued the Papal Bull Effraenatum which decreed that those who carried out abortions at any stage of pregnancy should be excommunicated and should also be punished by civil authorities (with the death penalty). For the 377 years previous to that, and since 1211 when Pope Innocent III issued the decree Sicut ex, excommunications applied as it had before 1869 - when an abortion took place after "quickening".

So, for the greater part of the last millennium the Catholic Church did not hold that human life began at conception - its current teaching.

Indeed its adoption of that teaching in 1869 was dictated, not so much by a decision on when human life began, as by the dogma of the Immaculate Conception promulgated by Pius IX in 1854. It teaches that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was conceived without original sin.

In 1701 Pope Clement XI had declared the Immaculate Conception a feast of universal obligation. He settled the feast date at December 8th, exactly nine months prior to the feast of Mary's birth on September 8th.

It meant the church believed Mary's sinless soul came into being at the moment of her conception. When in 1854 Pius IX proclaimed the Immaculate Conception as a dogma of the church, he stated that Mary had been free from sin "in the first instant of her conception". In 1869, therefore, he was being consistent with that teaching when he revived the penalty of excommunication for abortions at any stage of pregnancy. (This, by the way, was the same Pope who in 1870 promulgated the doctrine of papal infallibility).

Among those who disagree with the teaching that human life begins at conception are some of the most eminent thinkers in Catholic history. These include at least three of its 33 "super saints" - Jerome, Augustine, Aquinas, all of whom are Doctors of the Church.

St Jerome (died 420) wrote, in his Epistle, "the seed gradually takes shape in the uterus, and it [ abortion] does not count as killing until the individual elements have acquired their external appearance and their limbs". St Augustine (died 430) wrote in On Exodus that early abortion should not be regarded "as homicide, for there cannot be a living soul in a body that lacks sensation due to its not yet being fully formed". He also believed that ensoulment (whereby the foetus is infused with a soul and so becomes human) took place at 40 days after conception for males and 80 days for females.

St Thomas Aquinas (died 1274) held that "the vegetative soul, which comes first, when the embryo lives the life of a plant, is corrupted, and is succeeded by a more perfect soul, which is both nutritive and sensitive, and then the embryo lives an animal life; and when this is corrupted, it is succeeded by the rational soul introduced from without [ ie by God]".

This view was confirmed as Catholic dogma by the Council of Vienne in 1312, and has not since been officially repudiated by Rome. Aquinas also believed the human soul was present 40 days after conception for a male and 90 days for a female. This was in accordance with the theories of Greek philosopher Aristotle and was understood to mean that early abortion was not homicide, since it did not involve killing a person. Aristotle's views (as with Augustine and Aquinas) on differing gestation periods for male and female were based on a belief that males were more active and so quicker to develop and obtain a soul.

Outside Catholicism, within Christianity as with other religions, abortion is seen as (reluctantly) permissible for a range of reasons, generally in the first three months of pregnancy. This includes the Protestant churches, Judaism and Islam. In spite of this, it is extreme elements in the Catholic Church and, particularly in the US, fundamentalist Protestantism which have dominated public debate on this issue, often employing tactics and language which amount to incitement. (Red font and underscored emphasis added.)

The arrogance of the popes knows no bounds; so they have no fear about uttering "great words against the Most High;" (Cf. WWN7(03) at "In the explanation which follows;" "The time when the Judgment is set;" and "The Three Angels' Messages is "the everlasting gospel.") Here must be noted that of the three "great words," two specifically named Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Between them the dogma of the infallibility of the pope is linked to the Immaculate Conception through the papal decree that "life begins at conception." It is obvious that Pius IX perceived a necessity to decree that "life begins at conception" in order to establish Mary's total freedom from the inherited sin in the flesh of all human beings. This was seen as imperative for her to give birth to the distorted Roman Catholic conception of the Son of God. The decree that "life begins at conception" was immediately extended to all human procreation, thus ending the uncertainties of almost a millenium. Note in particular that the decree was the inevitable result of two Roman Catholic Marian feast days. By the time of two decrees of the papacy, in 1965 and 1974, the papacy "had fully changed the terms of its original arguments."

It is also worthy of note that the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope evolved over the centuries:

The pope is never wrong: a history of papal infallibility in the Catholic Church

The idea of papal infallibility arises in the thirteenth century in the context of increasing Franciscan influence at the papal curia. . .

The issue of infallibility further arises with William of Ockham (c.1287-1347), an opponent of John XXII (1313-1334) who he wished to thwart since that pope had denied the Franciscans’ interpretation of poverty and condemned the pro-Franciscan decrees of Nicholas III. Hence, Ockham argued for papal infallibility in order to bind John XXII to the declarations of his predecessors. . .

The idea of papal infallibility also begins to arise in the medieval Church over the issue of papal canonisation
of saints. . .

At the Reformation Catholics looked to the pope as a symbol of the old faith in countries which had become Protestant. Yet there is nothing per se about papal infallibility at the Council of Trent (1545-1563). . .

Yet it was only in the nineteenth century that that idea of papal infallibility really came to a head. In 1854 Pius IX (1846-1878) decreed the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception to be infallible in his bull ‘Ineffabilis Deus’. Then the First Vatican Council (1869-1870) in its decree ‘Pastor Aeternus’ (1870) declared that the pope was infallible when he spoke ‘ex Cathedra’ (‘from the Chair’) on matters of faith and morals. . . (Red font added.)

Papal infallibility

Having been dethroned as ruler of the Papal States by the movement for Italian Reunification that finally triumphed in 1870, Pope Pius IX called the First Vatican Council where he was determined to buttress his own spiritual authority. Though many cardinals believed it dangerous to try to define quite how and when the Pope might speak infallibly, a compromise agreement was finally reached.

It stated that Pope "when he speaks ex cathedra, that is when exercising the office of pastor and teacher of all Christians" is "possessed of infallibility" when "he defines... a doctrine concerning faith and morals to be held by the whole Church, through the divine assistance promised to him by St Peter".

Once the Pope has spoken, the First Vatican Council agreed, his definitions "are irreformable of themselves".

Voting on this form of words took place during a thunderstorm. A majority gave their assent but God, some said, was angry.

Routine papal teaching is not therefore infallible and it was not until 1950 that a pope exercised his "infallible magisterium" to declare that the Virgin Mary had been assumed body and soul into heaven. The belief is unsupported in scripture.(Red font added.)

It must now be abundantly clear that the three "great words" are inextricably tied together in support of Marian dogmas. They are demonstrative of the crassest impudence and satanic defiance of "the Most High God."

In presuming to explore the Incarnation of Jesus Christ the papacy audaciously embarked upon the desecration of holy ground. Counsel from the pen of Ellen G. White makes a critically important  distinction between the benefits of studying the Incarnation with humble dependence on the Holy Spirit for enlightenment, and the presumptuous exploration of a mystery beyond human comprehension:

EGW SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 7A

I. The Mystery of the Incarnation

The humanity of the Son of God is everything to us. It is the golden chain that binds our souls to Christ, and through Christ to God. This is to be our study. Christ was a real man; He gave proof of His humility in becoming a man. Yet He was God in the flesh. When we approach this subject, we would do well to heed the words spoken by Christ to Moses at the burning bush, “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place where on thou standest is holy ground.” We should come to this study with the humility of a learner, with a contrite heart. And the study of the incarnation of Christ is a fruitful field, which will repay the searcher who digs deep for hidden truth.—The Youth's Instructor, October 13, 1898. . .

In contemplating the incarnation of Christ in humanity, we stand baffled before an unfathomable mystery, that the human mind cannot comprehend. The more we reflect upon it, the more amazing does it appear. How wide is the contrast between the divinity of Christ and the helpless infant in Bethlehem's manger! How can we span the distance between the mighty God and a helpless child? And yet the Creator of worlds, He in whom was the fullness of the Godhead bodily, was manifest in the helpless babe in the manger. Far higher than any of the angels, equal with the Father in dignity and glory, and yet wearing the garb of humanity! Divinity and humanity were mysteriously combined, and man and God became one. It is in this union that we find the hope of our fallen race. Looking upon Christ in humanity, we look upon God, and see in Him the brightness of His glory, the express image of His person.—The Signs of the Times, July 30, 1896. . .

That God should thus be manifest in the flesh is indeed a mystery; and without the help of the Holy Spirit we cannot hope to comprehend this subject. The most humbling lesson that man has to learn is the nothingness of human wisdom, and the folly of trying, by his own unaided efforts, to find out God.—The Review and Herald, April 5, 1906. . . (Italics in the original; underscored emphasis added.)

The brazen boldness of the papacy stands in stark contrast to these statements from the inspired pen of one blessed with the prophetic gift.

Given the decree that "life begins at conception" is essential to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, it is worthy of note that the dogma aims a satanic dagger at the heart of the gospel of God "Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh" (Romans 1:3.) Again, "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh" (Romans 8:3.) These are but two of the Bible texts which unequivocally establish that the Divine Christ inhabited a body of sinful flesh inherited through Mary. In the words of Ellen G. White "Christ was a real man; He gave proof of His humility in becoming a man. Yet He was God in the flesh." Of that God the prophet Isaiah wrote: "For a Child hath been born to us, A Son hath been given to us, And the princely power is on his shoulder, And He doth call his name Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Father of Eternity, Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6.) Confronting this God with staggering impudence, the papacy has decreed the "great words" of the Marian dogmas, not least of all presuming to explain the great mystery of the Incarnation in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Again quoting Ellen White "In contemplating the incarnation of Christ in humanity, we stand baffled before an unfathomable mystery, that the human mind cannot comprehend. When we approach this subject, we would do well to heed the words spoken by Christ to Moses at the burning bush, “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place where on thou standest is holy ground." It bears repeating that the "life begins at conception" decree is embedded in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception as an indispensable component.

THE SOUL DEFINED AT CREATION AND CORRUPTED BY THE GREAT LIE IN PAGAN PHILOSOPHY AND PAPAL DOGMA

It is a sad reality that a false concept of the soul is rooted in almost all of the Christian world, and even to a limited degree in the world of Judaism. It is essential in studying the abortion controversy to consider the true and the false, and how the false became established over the centuries since Satan's great lie in the garden of Eden: "And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die"(Gen. 3:4.) Down through the centuries the deception has been perpetuated in the word "soul," which the first book of the Bible had clearly defined: "And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7.) Fortunately, although departing from pure and unadulterated Truth (TM 65) in other respects, the Seventh-day Adventist Church has adhered to the Truth of Gen. 2:7. The following is the Truth about the soul, in plain language and biblical clarity:

What Is Your Soul, According to the Bible?

God’s Word states that after Adam was created, he became a living soul when his body, which God made out of dust, received breath from God (Genesis 2:7).

Before this life-giving breath came from God, there was no “Adam.” He became an individual (a soul) when body and breath came together. The soul is the full integration that makes up each individual person. It is specific to each person. It never leaves his or her body and it dies when the person dies. . .

The formula for a living soul

Body + Breath of Life = Living Soul

If you have a look at the original languages the Bible was written in, terms sometimes translated as “soul” actually meant “life” or “person.” Two examples come to mind:

In Hebrew, the term nephesh and in Greek, psuche are both translated as “soul” in the Bible. However, they can also be translated as “life” or “person.”

Looking at the original Hebrew and Greek as well as the various uses of these terms helps us get to a more comprehensive view of who we are as humans.

It turns out “soul” may not even be the best-fitting modern translation of the original language because of the connotations of immortality and mysticism linked to the word “soul.”

In Hebrew, the way to say “Let me live” (I Kings 20:32) is “Let my soul live.” See how the use of “soul” here ties into a person’s overall existence?

Now take a look at the more drawn-out phrase, “that my soul may bless you before I die” (Genesis 27:4, NKJV). It actually means “that I may bless you.”

The use of the word “soul” is speaking to someone’s complete identity. The Bible uses these terms as a way of closely identifying with an individual—it’s not referring to a separate entity, life force, or energy.

Another way to look at this is that humans do not have a soul but are a soul (1 Corinthians 15:45; Genesis 2:7).

How the Bible talks about the soul

Now that we know what a soul is, let’s look further at how the Bible describes it:

The “soul” can weep (Jeremiah 13:17).

“Souls” can be taken captive (Jeremiah 52:28-30).

“Souls” can be baptized (Acts 2:41).

And yes, the “soul” can die (Ezekiel 18:4; James 5:20; Revelation 20:4; Psalm 89:48; Job 36:14; Leviticus 19:8; 21:1, 11).

The “soul,” in the Bible, is a whole person with consciousness, desires and emotions.

The book of Proverbs says, “The laborer’s appetite works for him” (Proverbs 16:26).

The Hebrew word for “appetite” here (nephesh) can also be translated as “desires” or “needs.” So the desires of a worker’s soul compel him to work.

The Bible talks about the soul here as a whole person who needs, wishes for, and craves things.

Nephesh is also translated as “soul” in other places in the Bible, and that it has feelings.

David prays to God saying, “Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes” in Psalm 27:12. Here, the word for “desire” is also nephesh. In this context, the Hebrew word means “desire” or “greed.”

The Bible portrays souls as the full integration of what makes us individuals. Souls are what make us human.

The soul isn’t something that exists independently of the body. Instead, when the Bible talks about the soul, it is talking about the complete being—the living individual.

It’s also important to realize that as far as the Bible is concerned, the soul does not last forever. Because it is a complete form of body + breath = life, it dies as the body dies.

Where did the idea of an immortal soul come from?

The idea of immortality apart from God came from Satan. It is part of a fundamental deception that has been around since the start of humanity.

Satan lied to Eve right in the Garden of Eden, telling her she wouldn’t die if she ate the forbidden fruit. (Genesis 3:4) He planted the idea that she could disobey God and continue to live forever.

This was clearly an empty promise as humans became mortal as soon as Adam and Eve ate this fruit. Mortality started as a result of deception.

The Bible only uses the term “immortality” twice:

There’s 1 Timothy 6:14-16, where we learn that God alone possesses immortality. As things currently stand, we humans are mortal. We die and cease to exist. Simple as that.

Also, 1 Corinthians 15:51-54 talks about believers receiving immortality at the resurrection, at Jesus’ Second Coming. As in, we as humans, do not have it now.

What happens to our souls when we die?

The Bible teaches that people go to sleep when they die. Their consciousness ends.

“For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished; nevermore will they have a share in anything that happens under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 9:5.)

Quite the sobering message, right?

That isn’t the end of the whole story, though.

The Bible teaches that eternal life is a gift Christ offers us. Without this gift, we simply do not continue to live in any way after we die (Romans 6:23; John 3:36; 5:24; 1 John 5:11, 12).

Our “souls” go to sleep when we die. And if we accept Christ’s sacrifice, we can have the hope that we’ll wake up again at His Second Coming.

The development of the concept of the soul throughout history

Since the first mistruth about the immortality of the soul, the idea of a conscious part of us that keeps living after the body dies has become a popular belief.

Ancestor worship, for example, is a common belief and practice. This is based on the idea that relatives who have died still keep living, though their lives are now within a different plane of existence. This belief often includes that these ancestors are able to influence the lives of the living.

It’s considered very important to worship these deceased relatives to ensure their favor and have them intervene positively for the family members still alive.

Immortality of the soul was also expressed in human sacrifices. In some cultures, an individual would be sacrificed specifically so they could play a special role in the next life.

Ancient philosophy is full of references of the immortality of the soul. The Greek philosopher Plato saw the body as the prison of the soul and believed the soul was set free from this imprisonment at death.

He reasoned that because the soul is capable of understanding scientific truth, and truth, according to Plato, was immortal, the soul had to be immortal. Plato taught his students that the body and the “immortal soul” separate when a person dies.

This part of Greek philosophy was able to influence Christian traditions as well. It is thought that this process of belief infiltration started around the 3rd century AD, as Platonic philosophy popped up in Christian teachings about the soul.

The Italian philosopher and Catholic Priest, Thomas Aquinas, further cemented this belief in the 13th century.

A little later, the Roman Catholic Church officially proclaimed the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as truth in 1513.

This Catholic doctrine has also heavily influenced Protestant churches, many of which also believe the soul does not die. . .

The difference between a soul and a spirit

According to the Bible, the soul and the spirit work together. A person’s “spirit” is his or her life force. This refers to the breath of life God breathed into Adam (Genesis 2:7), and into each of us.
This life force comes from God (Isaiah 42:5) and goes back to Him when we die (Ecclesiastes 12:7; Psalm 104:29; Acts 7:59).

But at no point does the spirit do anything of its own power, such as the way many stories portray a ghost of someone after they die. This life force connects the body and makes the soul, and the soul without the life force is dead.

Again,

Physical Body + Breath of Life from God = Human Soul

And what a gift it is to be a living soul!

The spirit of life God gives us is not just the ability to live, but also what gives us an individual identity as humans. It allows us to think and feel. The range of emotions that is a part of human experience also comes to us courtesy of the spirit.

It allows us to feel anger (Judges 8:3) and grief (Genesis 26:35, Isaiah 54:6). Even angst (Exodus 6:9) and depression (Proverbs 15:13; Psalm 143:4) are something we feel because of the spirit.

It also allows us to experience joy, love, and peace (Galatians 5:22, 23).

Although it is true we can invite the Holy Spirit to “live in our hearts,” this expression is not intending to say that the soul is God, or that it is a piece of God inside of us. It simply means that we are inviting the Holy Spirit’s guidance and influence in our lives. We are opening up our inner thoughts to Him, allowing Him to help us overcome sin and experience the fruits of the Spirit.

The spirit allows us to think rationally (Psalm 77:6). It allows for understanding (Job 32:8), self-awareness (1 Corinthians 2:11), and self-control (Job 32:18; Ezra 1:1,5).

In short, the spirit is part of what makes us the complex human beings we are.

Being a living soul is the ultimate gift from God—existence

The soul, according to the Bible, is the combination of the physical body and the life-giving spirit of God that makes up a human being. It’s the complete package! . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The foregoing passages define the soul conclusively from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and Genesis 2:7 makes it clear that body plus the breath of life constitutes a living soul. Without breath in the body there is no life, which both refutes the papal decree that life begins at conception, and explains certain applications by Judaism of the principle of no breath = no life to abortion. Another biblical Truth all of the ungodly speculation about the soul dares to challenge is that God alone is immortal. This ungodly speculation has been generated by the human discipline of philosophy. Philosophy is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as: "the use of reason in understanding such things as the nature of the real world and existence, the use and limits of knowledge, and the principles of moral judgment." The definition in the Encyclopedia Brittanica is: "philosophy, (from Greek, by way of Latin, philosophia, “love of wisdom”) the rational, abstract, and methodical consideration of reality as a whole or of fundamental dimensions of human existence and experience." It is all human speculation, but Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived (excepting Jesus Christ,) and that wisdom was bestowed on him by God:

Solomon's Wisdom

And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore. And Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country, and all the wisdom of Egypt. For he was wiser than all men; than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol: and his fame was in all nations round about. And he spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom. (1 Kings 4:29-34)

Solomon wrote that: "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding" (Proverbs 9:10.) He also noted that: "Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions" (Eccles. 7:29.) God is the source of all wisdom and the revealer of all Truth. As long as the Bible was relied on as the revealer of all wisdom and Truth the definition of the human "soul" could be preserved; but it was always challenged by human philosophy. The following essay on the immortality of the soul illustrates this fact:

On the Immortality of the Soul

Most religions teach that after death, a soul within us leaves the body and lives on for eternity. Many people assume it is also a biblical belief, but is it? What exactly is the history of this idea?

Today most of the religious world believes in an immortal soul that lives on in some form. . .

But from where have these ideas come? Alan F. Segal, late professor of Jewish studies, wrote that each religion’s views of the rewards and punishments of the afterlife reflect the particular values and aspirations of that culture in this life. For instance, he said, most Americans in the 21st century, Christian or not, believe that their soul is immortal by nature and that most if not all will be saved, because this idea of self-realization fits with American values. . .

A few centuries before the birth of Christ, the Greeks began to assert themselves in Europe, both culturally and in the evolution of their religious beliefs. The Greek idea of “soul” (psuche) was different from that of other civilizations. Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and the Stoics all worked out their own elaborate theories, which have since influenced much of Western philosophical and religious thought. . .

The sixth and fifth centuries before Christ saw a considerable widening in Greek philosophical thinking. By the end of Socrates’ life at the start of the fourth, the soul had gained various virtues and emotions as well as powers of thought and planning. Even magnets and plants were thought to have souls; the adjective empsuchos, or “ensouled,” simply meant “alive.”

In Plato’s Phaedo, the philosopher has his mentor Socrates declaring that the soul is both immortal and aware, capable of intelligent thought, and succeeding from life to death to life again. Plato’s own concepts are widely discussed and even argued today by scholars. Plato saw the soul as much more than mind, capable of thinking and guiding the body. Provided it was a wise soul, it led the person to virtuous actions; but more, it possessed life essentially.

Plato’s student Aristotle, primarily in De Anima (On the Soul), described a relationship between the physical being—human, animal or plant—and the soul that makes up all of its normal vital functions. In his view, the soul was the collection of life systems that function in the body. The body was corporeal, but the soul was not a body or a physical thing. While Aristotle agreed with Plato’s thinking that souls are different from bodies, he did not agree that the soul could exist apart from the body.

In yet another view, two major Hellenistic schools taught that the soul, too, was corporeal, or physical. At risk of oversimplifying, one might say that Epicureans believed everything was composed of atoms, and so the soul must be also. The Stoics seemed to feel that the soul was responsible only for mental and psychological functions; they therefore disagreed with Plato and Aristotle that plants were ensouled.

It may be said, however, that among Greek philosophers immortality of the soul was accepted as a fact of nature.

Later Christian writers including Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa and, most importantly, Augustine of Hippo built on Greek philosophies with new ideas of their own that have come down to modern times.

Ancient Israel and Its Forebears

Hellenistic ideas penetrated Jewish society as well, but according to Segal, “the most long-lasting Greek contribution to Jewish culture was from the aristocratic, Platonist intellectual elite of Greek society that said that the soul was immortal. In return for a life of moderation and intellectual development, the soul went upward to receive its astral rewards.”

Ancestors of the Hellenized Jews had a different understanding, however. In Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures, it says that “the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7, King James Version). “Soul” is translated from the Hebrew word nephesh and also refers to other creatures in Genesis 1:24 and elsewhere. Because of our modern definition of soul we may have a different understanding, but to the speakers of Hebrew it simply meant a living, physical creature—whether human, animal, fish, fowl or insect. In fact, modern translations often render nephesh in Genesis 2:7 as “living being” or “living creature.”

The Creator next told Adam and Eve that they would die if they disobeyed His instructions (verse 17). He explained in Genesis 3:19 that they were made of the physical elements of the earth and would return to the dust of the earth in death. In 3:15 God pronounced a prophecy of the future Messiah, so they were also informed about the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation with the Godhead. (Underscored emphasis added; hyperlinks for Clement of Alexandria and Gregory of Nyssa added.)

The role of Greek philosophy in the infiltration of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul into Christianity seems to be conclusive from the above narrative. An important question is whether it was drawn into Christianity directly from Greek philosophy with or without Judaism as an intermediary. The history reveals that Judaism was not involved, although many authorities, including Encyclopedia Britannica Online do make such a claim.

The following paper emphasizes the contribution of the Church Fathers to this false doctrine. It is interesting, and critically important to note, that the earliest of them (those closest to the time of the apostles,) adhered to the true doctrine of the human soul. This rules out the apostolic period of Christianity. Thus the doctrine of the immortality of the soul can be seen as a part of the developing "falling away" which culminated in the papacy (2 Thess. 2:3-12.) For full clarity the following paper is quoted in almost its entirety:

The Development of the Doctrine of Immortality from the Apostolic Fathers to Augustine

In tracing the Christian development of the doctrine of the nature of the soul, one soon finds that "very few Fathers attempt lengthy rational proofs for immortality."1 The pressing apologetic needs of the church's early centuries necessitated that attention largely be devoted to other subjects. Yet more than ample material exists from which to evaluate the thinking of the great writers of the early church on this matter. Citing selected quotations from that era, this paper will endeavor to illustrate what that thinking was and what trends were evident.

It is readily discovered that the theologians of the primitive age disagreed regarding the soul's immortality.1 Several of them "were persuaded that the soul was mortal by nature but could become immortal by good works, or, as others preferred to stress, by union with the Spirit of God, a teaching they thought to find in St. Paul" (Brady, p. 465). Specifically the teaching of innate immortality is absent from the Apostolic Fathers, those Christian writers who lived nearest to or whose lives partly paralleled the last of the apostles. The trend toward the view of inherent immortality, it will be shown, developed with the subsequent Ante-Nicene Fathers. . .

Characteristic of 1 Clement is the statement that "life in immortality" is the gift of God to Christians: "how blessed and wonderful, beloved, are the gifts of God! Life in immortality, splendour in righteousness, truth in perfect confidence . . . ." Man, he says, is but a "mortal creature, consisting only of dust and ashes" (chs. 38, 39, 17). Never does Clement speak of the natural immortality of the soul.4

Next chronologically among the Apostolic Fathers is Ignatius (died ca. 107), bishop of Antioch, Like Clement his life also is surrounded by obscurity, though it is known that he suffered martyrdom during Trajan's reign by being thrown to wild beasts.

Ignatius declared that our Lord was anointed "that He might breath immortality into His Church" (Eph. 17). His belief in the natural mortality of the soul is made in the unequivocal statement, "For were he to reward us according to our works, we should cease to be" (Mag. 10). He is also silent in his epistles in regard to the concept of innate immortality of the soul.5

The Epistle of Barnabas is seldom if ever ascribed to the apostle Barnabas, St. Paul's friend and companion. Nevertheless it dates to the time of the Apostolic Fathers. This unknown Barnabas echoes the theme of other writers of this era, stating typically:

It is well, therefore, that he who has learned the judgments of the Lord, as many as have been written, should walk in them. For he who keeps these shall be glorified in the kingdom of God; but he who chooses other things shall be destroyed with his works (ch. 21).

Such was the conditional immortality voiced by Barnabas.

One scholar, having exhaustively reviewed the Apostolic Fathers, came to this sweeping conclusion:

From beginning to end of them there is not one word said of that immortality of the soul which is so prominent in the writings of the later fathers. Immortality is asserted by them to be peculiar to the redeemed. The punishment of the wicked is by them emphatically declared to be everlasting. Not one stray expression of theirs can be interpreted as giving any countenance to the theory of restoration after purgatorial suffering. The fire of hell is with them, as with us, an unquenchable one; but its issue is, with them as with Scripture, "destruction," "death," "loss of life" (Constable, p. 167).

Belief in the mortality of the soul was by no means confined to the aforementioned era, however. Several of the Ante - Nicene Fathers (ca. 150-325) also maintained this position.

First in this series is Justin Martyr (ca. 106-ca. 165), the foremost apologist of the second century. Says Justin:

Now the soul partakes of life, since God wills it to live. Thus, then, it will not even partake [of life] when God does not will it to live. For to live is not its attribute, as it is God's; but as a man does not live always, and the soul is not forever conjoined with the body, since, whenever this harmony must be broken up, the soul leaves the body, and the man exists no longer; even so, whenever the life is removed from it, and there is no' more soul, but it goes back to the place from which it is taken (Dialogue, ch. 6).

Considered perhaps the "most orthodox of the Ante-Nicene fathers"6 was Irenaeus of Gaul (ca. 130-202). In an age in which Transition to innatism was taking place, he nonetheless wrote trusting that Christ would "in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy" (Against Heresies 10:1). Here immortality once again is not perceived as a natural endowment but rather that which must be conferred.

So in similar fashion did Novatian (210-280), presbyter of Rome, contend, declaring that "the word of Christ affords immortality" (On the Trinity, ch. 1). Again immortality is pictured as that which must be acquired.

Arnobius, who lived in northern Africa from the late third to early fourth centuries, would appear to be the last conditionalist spokesman among the Fathers (Froom, I, 917). His definition of final punishment of the unsaved leaves no doubt as to his view of the soul's nature:

This is man's real death, this which leaves nothing behind. For that which is seen by the eyes is only a separation of soul from body, not the last end—annihilation: this, I say, is man's real death, when souls which know not God shall be consumed in long-protracted torment with raging fire (Against the Heathen 2:14).

Before moving to the rise of the immortal soul doctrine it should be mentioned that, in this area of thought, the pressing issue was that of ultimate reconciliation (the teaching that all mankind will eventually be saved) versus eternal torment of the unrighteous. Even this arena of conflict drew far less attention than the Christological controversies of the day. More precisely, the position taken by ultimate reconciliationists was that the punishments of the condemned are not eternal, but only remedial; the devil himself being capable of amelioration."7 Its leading spokesman was Origen (ca. 185-254) of Alexandria. It is noted that, while it is not essential to universalism, Origen affirmed innate immortality (Hagenbach, p. 221).

Athenagoras (ca. 127-190), however, appears to be the first Ante-Nicene ecclesiastic to assert innate immortality. Writing after the Apostolic Fathers, he states matter-of-factly that the soul is immortal (The Resurrection of the Dead, chs. 13, 20, 23, 24).

The better known Tertullian (ca. 160-240) of Carthage penned that "the soul, then, we define to be sprung from the breath of God, immortal. ..." He adds, "Some things are known even by nature: the immortality of the soul, for instance, is held by many; the knowledge of God is possessed by all. I will use, therefore, the opinion of a Plato when asserting 'Every soul is immortal.'" (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, ch. 3).

Such quotations as these express the rising trend of belief in natural immortality. With Augustine (354-430), bishop of Hippo and the most illustrious of the Latin Fathers, the die was cast. He was the first Christian philosopher in the West to write a formal treatise on the immortality of the soul.

Therefore, if the soul . . .is the subject in which reason is inseparably present, then, by the same logical necessity with which reason being in the soul is proved, reason is immortal; so the soul, since the soul can be only a living soul.

The influence of Augustinian theology through the next millennium cannot be overstressed. Its dominance was such that the medieval church was virtually a unit in holding the doctrine of inherent immortality. Complete annihilation of evil was rejected as heretical by the fifth century.8

Many have asserted that the rise of immortal-soulism has its roots in the influence of pagan thought and Greek philosophy. That, however, is outside the scope of this paper. (Underscored emphasis added.)

One cannot fail to note that the dramatic departure from the biblical doctrine of the soul followed the Council of Nicaea, presided over by the Emperor Constantine, the man who opened the Christian Church to a flood of paganism. Out of this debacle arose the Roman Catholic Church through the works of the post-Nicene Church fathers and the thorough corruption of true Christianity:

Who were the early church fathers?

The post-Nicene fathers carried out the mission of defending the gospel against all kinds of heresies, so more and more the post-Nicene fathers grew interested in methods of defending the gospel and less interested in transmitting the gospel in a true and pure form. Thus, they began to slowly fall away from the orthodoxy that was the hallmark of the apostolic fathers. This was the age of the theologian and endless discussions on secondary topics.

The early church fathers are an example to us of what it means to follow Christ and defend the truth. None of the early church fathers were perfect, just as none of us are perfect. Some of the early church fathers held beliefs that most Christians today consider to be incorrect. What eventually developed into Roman Catholic theology had its roots in the writings of the post-Nicene fathers. While we can gain knowledge and insight by studying the early church fathers, ultimately our faith must be in the Word of God, not in the writings of early Christian leaders. Only God’s Word is the infallible guide for faith and practice. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The idea that the papacy's concept of the soul was introduced into Christianity through Judaism is thoroughly discredited by the foregoing documentation. Thus the ruminations of Roman Catholicism on the role of "ensoulment" in attributing life to the fetus in a woman's womb is traceable through the post-Nicene Church fathers to Greek philosophy, and not to the Bible. One final example is related to "quickening," also known as "animation."

Roman Catholic Church Quickening

Although the concept of quickening was not developed initially by the Roman Catholic Church, much of their histories are intertwined. Quickening, the point at which a pregnant woman can first feel the movements of the growing embryo or fetus, has long been a pivotal moment in pregnancy. Historically, it has also been a pivotal moment for law and the Church in deciding the criminal and religious sanctions for women who intentionally procured an abortion.

It is interesting to note that although many of the debates in the early Roman Catholic Church regarding procured abortion centered on animation, another term for “quickening,” this was not the original focal point in embryology and development for Church leaders. . .

Many early Church leaders and publications, such as the Didache, Tertullian, Athenagoras, Basil the Great, and others, also indicated that quickening was not used to determine the value of life in the womb. Later Catholic theologians, leaning heavily on Greek philosophers like Aristotle, declared a distinction in the severity of the crime of procured abortion based on a particular point in development. Indeed, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas both cited a point after conception, generally the point of quickening, as the moment at which the life in the womb becomes human, meaning ensouled with a rational human soul. For Augustine and Aquinas, intentional abortion was always an offense against God but after the point of ensoulment it was much more so. These and other Church theologians often declared that abortion after quickening was a highly immoral action, worthy of immediate excommunication and/or the legal penalty for homicide.

Using quickening as the standard for determining how serious a crime it was to procure an abortion was a tradition that lasted for centuries as common Church and legal practice. . .

"Quickening" in relation to abortion was the subject of fluctuating decrees by the papacy for over a millenium. Here it is critically important to recall the circumstances under which Pope Pius IX decreed an abrupt change.

IN THE ABORTION CONTROVERSY THE PAPACY DEMANDS SUPREME UNCONSTITUTIONAL SOVEREIGNTY OVER ALL, INCLUDING THE BIBLE

Seventh-day Adventists who are familiar with the Church's early history will know that A. T. Jones was the most prominent religious liberty leader of the Denomination of his time. In his 1895 sermon on "The Papacy" he uttered this warning:

The papacy is very impatient of any restraining bonds; in fact, it wants none at all. And the one grand discovery Leo XIII has made, which no pope before him ever made, is that turn which is taken now all the time by Leo and from him by those who are managing affairs in this country--the turn that is taken upon the clause of the Constitution of the United States: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Leo has made the discovery that the papacy can be pushed upon this country in every possible way and by every possible means and that congress is prohibited from ever legislating in any way to stop it. That is a discovery that he made that none before him made and that is how it is that he of late can so fully endorse the United States Constitution. (Underscored emphasis added.)

This prescient statement has been proven correct with increasing intensity in America. Since the healing of the papacy's deadly wound at least as early as the papacy of Pius XI. The papacy will not be satisfied with anything less than supreme unconstitutional sovereignty over the United States of America. There have been various vehicles propelling the papacy towards its ultimate goal, of which anti-abortion politics has been the most open. Central to these politics has been the dogma of the infallibility of the pope:

WHY THE POPE CAN'T CHANGE THE CHURCH'S POSITION ON BIRTH CONTROL: IMPLICATIONS FOR AMERICANS

The antiabortion movement in the United States was created in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade in 1973, which legalized abortion. However, it really owes its origin to a group of men in Rome 103 years earlier. This was 1870, the year of Vatican Council I, a conclave of great importance in recent church history. Why is this so?

Hans Kung, the renowned Swiss Catholic theologian, best summed up the problem accounting for its creation when he said, "It is not possible to solve the problem of contraception until we solve the problem of infallibility."(1) In his book, How the Pope Became Infallible, Catholic historian Bernhard Hasler describes in great detail what Hans Kung meant by this. For a period of five years, Hasler had enjoyed unlimited access to all Vatican Council I documentation in the Vatican archives. Hasler's book has enormous implications for understanding the origins of the antiabortion movement. Hasler wrote that, for more than a millennium, the Vatican had possessed temporal power which ensured its survival. With the loss of the Papal States in 1870, it appeared all but certain that a strong Papacy would simply disappear. The Vatican urgently needed a new source of power.

A group of conservative and influential leaders, including Pope Pius IX, came up with a brilliant idea for a new source; an infallible pope. What is infallibility? According to Catholic dogma, the pope is God's representative on earth and God guides him as he cares for his flock. When the pope formulates a doctrine, he is simply transmitting this dogma on God's behalf. Therefore, the teaching cannot possibly be in error. Thus, the pope's teachings are infallible. . .

PRINCIPLE OF PAPAL INFALLIBILITY MUST BE PROTECTED AT ALL COSTS

This was a brilliant concept—and it worked—for a century. But at its introduction in 1870, the Catholic intelligentsia, among them theologians, historians and bishops, recognized that at some point in the future, this principle would lead to self-destruction of the institution. Times were certain to change and in unpredictable ways.

This decision would lock the Church into an inexorable course—teachings that could not be changed without destroying the principle of infallibility itself. Thoughtful Catholics foresaw that this would immediately become the fundamental principle of the Church, upon which all other Catholic dogma would rest—its very foundation. They understood that if this principle were undermined and destroyed at some future date, all Church teachings would collapse around the eroded foundation and the institution itself would be devastated. They were convinced that one day, encumbered by her unchangeable teachings, the Church would find itself down a blind alley from which there would be no escape and faced with inevitable self-destruction as a result of a grave loss of credibility. These distinguished scholars were strongly opposed to this principle and, as a consequence, many of them left the Church. The blind alley turned out to be the issue of birth control—contraception and abortion.

Since the 1968 adoption of the papal encyclical, Humanae Vitae, there has been a hemorrhage in the Church's credibility. Humanae Vitae ruled out any change of the Church's position on birth control for all time. . .

THE PAPACY IS THREATENED BY LEGALIZED BIRTH CONTROL AND ABORTION

In 1964, Pope Paul VI created the Papal Commission on Population and Birth Control. It was a two-part commission, and met from 1964 to 1966. One consisted of 64 lay persons, the other, of 15 clerics, including Pope John Paul II, then a Polish cardinal. Pope Paul gave the Commission only one mission—-to determine how the Church could change its position on birth control without undermining papal authority. After two years of study, the Commission concluded that it was not possible to make this change without undermining papal authority but that the Church should make the change anyway because it was the right thing to do! The lay members voted 60 to 4 for change, and the clerics, 9 to 6 for change. (2) We know this because one or more members released the details without permission to an Italian and a French newspaper. Pope Paul did not act immediately. A minority report was prepared, co-authored by the man who is now Pope John Paul II [died in 2005.] In this report he stated:

If it should be declared that contraception is not evil in itself, then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had been on the side of the Protestant churches in 1930 (when the encyclical Casti Connubii was promulgated), in 1951 (Pius XII's address to the midwives), and in 1958 (the address delivered before the Society of Hematologists in the year the pope died). It should likewise have to be admitted that for a half century the Spirit failed to protect Pius XI, Pius XII, and a large part of the Catholic hierarchy from a very serious error. This would mean that the leaders of the Church, acting with extreme imprudence, had condemned thousands of innocent human acts, forbidding, under pain of eternal damnation, a practice which would now be sanctioned. The fact can neither be denied nor ignored that these same acts would now be declared licit on the grounds of principles cited by the Protestants, which popes and bishops have either condemned or at least not approved. (3)

In 1980, years after he became pope, John Paul wrote to the German bishops:

I am convinced that the doctrine of infallibility is in a certain sense the key to the certainty with which the faith is confessed and proclaimed, as well as to the life and conduct of the faithful. For once this essential foundation is shaken or destroyed, the most basic truths of our faith likewise begin to break down. (4)

In these two texts, the pope took the position that a change on the birth control issue would destroy the principle of papal infallibility and that infallibility was the fundamental principle of the Church upon which all else rests and, thus, must be protected at all costs. A change on matters of birth control would immediately raise questions about other possible errors popes have made in matters of divorce, homosexuality, confession, parochial schooling, etc. that are fundamental to Roman Catholicism? So we have these admissions in the pope's own words.

The security-survival of the papacy itself is on the line. The Church insists on being the sole arbiter of what is moral. Civil law legalizes contraception and abortion. Governments are thereby challenging the prerogative of the pope to be the ultimate authority on matters of morality. Most Americans look to democratic process to determine morality. In the simplest analysis, the Church cannot coexist with such an arrangement, which in its view, threatens its very survival as a world political power.

For this reason, the Vatican was forced to interfere in the democratic process in the United States by lobbying for the passage of numerous antiabortion laws designed to protect its interests. There is a plethora of documentation to support these findings, relating mainly to Vatican and U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops' sources, some of which I will discuss later. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The proclamation of Humanae Vitae was an earth-shaking event (Cf. 'Humanae Vitae' birth control ban set off a wave of dissent.) It was obviously a serious mistake; but instead of backing off, Rome has doubled down through the defense of papal infallibility, never mind objective truth and the human right to freedom of conscience.

The historical narrative above exposes a fraudulent scheme to cover up the reality that the papacy is as prone to error as any other human institution. Far from being a saint, Pope John Paul was incredibly cynical and ruthless in protecting the universal power of Rome. Indeed he is reported to have made an alarming statement about the all-encompassing scope of that power.

Worthy of note are the contents of a letter that theologian Hans Kung wrote to John Paul in 1979:

Kung Assailed Church's Stand in Letter to Pope

Roman Catholic theologian Hans Kung, in a personal letter to Pope John Paul II, has assailed the church's stand against birth control, married priests and the ordination of women to the priesthood.

The letter, which appeared in Italy's largest daily newspaper earlier this week, was written a year ago, well before the Vatican's recent ruling that Kung may no longer teach as a Catholic Theologian.

In a brief interview printed along with the text of the letter in Milan's Corriere Della Sera, Kung said he wrote the pope "to implore the pontiff to avoid a too-hard position" on priestly celibacy in a Vatican document that was ultimately published April 9, 1979.

The Vatican never answered the letter, Jung said in the interview. The Vatican document he had hoped to soften reaffirmed the church's traditional ban on a married priesthood.

In his letter Kung argued that the Bible does not say priests should not marry and noted that the apostles themselves were married.

"How many more priests do we have to lose before we recognize the legitimacy of marriage (for clergy), a field in which other churches have had good experiences?" Kung asked the pope. "Tens of thousands of parishes are already vacant and their number is destined to grow day by day."

Kung said in the letter that he wanted to "relay in all frankness, the desire of many Catholics, clergy and lay, men and women: recall of the priesthood those who were forced to abandon (their priestly vocation) only because of the celibacy law, [and] eliminate this obstacle to the reunification of the Christian Churches."

The order last Dec. 15 by the Vatican's Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith suspending Kung's authorization to teach as a Catholic theologian did not cite his well-known opposition to the church's stance on celibacy.

Rather, he was disciplined for writings questioning traditional views on papal infallibility and for his views on Christ's divinity and humaness. . .

In his letter to the pope, Kung accused the church of hypocrisy in its opposition to birth control and to women priests.

"Can we intervene in a believable way, in Latin America and in the Third World, against poverty, unemployment, diseases -- all problems that are linked to the high increase in births -- if we do not engage strongly in favor of a reasonable and human planning of births," which contraception makes possible to the responsible conscience of the couple?" the letter asked.

"Can we in modern society intervene in a credible way in favor of women's rights if we keep considering the woman a subject with minor rights and reject ordination on the basis of little convincing theological arguments?

"What good arises from all the church's interventions in favor of human rights in the world if in the church itself these rights are not fully respected?" he wrote. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

It was in keeping with his hardline pontificate that John Paul II refused Hans Kung's request in 1981 for an audience "to discuss the dispute that led to the Vatican stripping him of his authority to teach as an official theologian." Notably, "the action against the Swiss-born theology professor at Tubingen University was taken Dec. 15, 1979, because of church dissatisfaction with his views, especially his criticism of the dogma of papal infallibility."

Granted that there are elements of truth in the papacy's teachings on divorce and homosexuality for example, the overwhelming weight of papal tradition in pursuit of supreme earthly power defies the God of heaven.

The papacy's naked pursuit of absolute despotic power is again documented in the following essay published in an Evangelical publication:

After 150 years of papal infallibility, what?

Vatican I further solidified the nature of the papal office as a quasi-omnipotent and infallible figure.

On 18 July 1870, one hundred and fifty years ago, the First Vatican Council (Vatican I) approved the dogmatic constitution Pastor Aeternus, issued by Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) in the solemn yet nervous atmosphere of Saint Peter’s Basilica.

The political situation around the Pontifical State was extremely tense and the prospect of the end of an era was felt as imminent. In fact, at the battle of Sedan (1-2 September 1870) the Prussian army defeated Napoleon III, the principal defender of the pope, thus leaving the pope without the French military protection from which he had benefited in the past.

Napoleon III’s capture meant the end of French support and paved the way to the “breach of Rome”, i.e. the entry of the Italian army in the city of Rome (20 September 1870) and the proclamation of Rome as the capital city of the Italian kingdom.

The Council was therefore abruptly interrupted and suspended. It is striking – if not tragically ironic – that as the Pontifical State was about to collapse, the pope and the Roman Catholic Church felt it necessary to proclaim a new dogma, i.e. the infallibility of the pope.

The initiative was largely driven by political concerns. That doctrine was elevated to a dogmatic status (i.e. being part of core, revealed, unchangeable and binding teaching) and used as an identity marker and a symbolic weapon to fight against a political and cultural enemy. . .

What happened at Vatican I

There were external and internal pressures that drove the Roman Catholic Church to issue the dogma of papal infallibility. As for the former, in the 19th century the Papacy had to face two staunch adversaries that were able to challenge its survival.

On the political level, there was the absolutism of the princes and European states that claimed authority over the Church, thus bringing into question the difficult balance between powers that had been struck in previous centuries. . .

As far as the internal pressures are concerned, O’Malley surveys the confrontation between two tendencies that were especially strong in France (but had ramifications all over Europe) and polarized the debate: “Gallicanism”, stressing the freedom of particular churches over against Rome, and “Ultramontanism”, exalting the central authority of the pope over national churches.

Fearing that “Gallican” positions – marked by the questioning of centralized power structures – would make inroads in the Roman Church, Pius IX pushed the consolidation of the pope’s absolute authority as the source from which everything else flowed.

His conviction is well captured by Joseph de Maistre’s words: “The pope governs and is not governed, judges and is not judged, teaches and is not taught” (p. 65). . .

The First Vatican Council provided the most comprehensive and authoritative doctrinal statement on the papacy in the modern era.

Instead of taking into account the Biblical remarks legitimately offered by the Protestant Reformation, and instead of listening to certain trends of modern thought that advocate freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, Vatican I further solidified the nature of the papal office as a quasi-omnipotent and infallible figure.

The Roman Catholic church invested its highest doctrinal authority, i.e. the promulgation of a dogma, a binding, irreversible, unchangeable truth, to cement the institution of the papacy by furthering its absolute nature. . .

While there might be different opinions about the exercise of infallibility, there is at least one clear example of a subsequent papal teaching that Roman Catholics must take as infallible.

It was in 1950 that Pius XII issued the dogma of the bodily assumption of Mary as a binding belief for the Roman Catholic faith. . .

The Roman Catholic Church invested its highest magisterial authority to formulate a belief that the Scriptures are silent on, to say the least.

On the basis of a non-biblical dogma, i.e. the pope’s infallibility, another non-biblical dogma, i.e. Mary’s assumption, was built, thus becoming part of the binding and irreformable teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.

Biblically speaking, one could say: from bad to worse; but this is what Rome is committed to and will continue to be committed to, in spite of all “ecumenical” developments and friendlier attitudes.

The flawed Roman Catholic theological system operates in this way: not reforming what is contrary to Scripture, but rather consolidating it with other non-biblical doctrines and practices.

After the 150 years since Vatican I, the only hope for change is a reformation according to the biblical gospel that will question and ultimately dismantle and reject papal infallibility. (Expanded font in original; underscored emphasis added.)

Of course the "absolutism of the princes and European states that claimed authority over the Church" would be no more acceptable to Protestants than to the papacy; but equally unacceptable is the papacy's claim of right to supremacy over all civil government. The dogma of papal infallibility is a most brazen and unbiblical religious and political power grab, which flouts the Constitution of the United States of America - a declaration of individual freedom unique in all the world!

This website has long exposed the reality that the anti-abortion ("pro-life") movement commands assent to the falsehood of the immortality of the soul. This paper is expanding the area of spiritual hazard by documenting the fact that the movement is inextricably linked to other blasphemous papal teachings, in which the dogma of the Immaculate Conception is central. Can assent be anything less than receiving the Mark of the Beast?

It seems to be probable that merely questioning the morality of abortion does not necessarily constitute assent to the Roman Catholic Church's theological crusade. However, it is possible to be ensnared by indifference into support of the political war that is being waged by the papacy for supreme sovereignty over the civil government of the United States. A. T. Jones warned against just such indifference.

HOW THE ANTI-ABORTION CRUSADE FORCES PAPAL DOGMA ON ALL IN VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

In its crusade against abortion the Roman Catholic Church seeks to achieve, and is on the verge of achieving, supreme sovereignty of the papacy over all civil government. America's constitutional separation of church and state is thereby demolished, and Rome's dogma that the papal office is "a quasi-omnipotent and infallible figure" is established beyond all opposition. For the time being, until suppressed by law, that opposition is now being expressed by religious organizations, political and scientific institutions, and individuals, who still have the constitutional right to resist despotic compulsion to submit to the blasphemous claims of the papacy:-

JUDAISM

Judaism should be accorded particular respect because it is the Jewish Bible (Old Testament,) of which the Torah is foundational, which is being misused by Protestants, who have been spiritually beguiled into ignoring Rome's reliance on pagan philosophy in her crusade against abortion. Of course Protestantism had long been seduced by the heretical historical-critical method invented by the Church of Rome. To their credit, the Jews have preserved the authority of the books of the Old Testament throughout the millenia since they were written by inspiration from God:

Judaism and Abortion

NCJW works to ensure that every single person can make their own moral and faith-informed decisions about their body, health, and future. Our Jewish values compel us to support full access to safe and legal abortion care as basic health care. Below is a Q&A regarding some common misconceptions about Judaism and abortion.

Does Jewish law state that life begins at conception? No, life does not begin at conception under Jewish law. Sources in the Talmud note that the fetus is “mere water” before 40 days of gestation. Following this period, the fetus is considered a physical part of the pregnant individual’s body, not yet having life of its own or independent rights. The fetus is not viewed as separate from the parent’s body until birth begins and the first breath of oxygen into the lungs allows the soul to enter the body.

Does Jewish law assert that it is possible to murder a fetus? No, Jewish law does not consider a fetus to be alive. The Torah, Exodus 21:22-23, recounts a story of two men who are fighting and injure a pregnant woman, resulting in her subsequent miscarriage. The verse explains that if the only harm done is the miscarriage, then the perpetrator must pay a fine. However, if the pregnant person is gravely injured, the penalty shall be a life for a life as in other homicides. The common rabbinical interpretation of this verse is that the men did not commit murder and that the fetus is not a person. The primary concern is the well-being of the person who was injured.

According to Jewish law, is abortion health care? Yes, Jewish sources explicitly state that abortion is not only permitted but is required should the pregnancy endanger the life or health of the pregnant individual. Furthermore, “health” is commonly interpreted to encompass psychological health as well as physical health. NCJW advocates for abortion access as an essential component of comprehensive, affordable, confidential, and equitable family planning, reproductive, sexual health, and maternal health services.

What does Jewish law say about the rights of the person who is pregnant and the rights of the fetus? Judaism values life and affirms that protecting existing life is paramount at all stages of pregnancy. A fetus is not considered a person under Jewish law and therefore does not have the same rights as one who is already alive. As such, the interests of the pregnant individual always come before that of the fetus.

Do abortion bans unduly favor one religious viewpoint over another? Yes, different religions believe that human life begins at different stages of development. Science can explain developmental timelines, but philosophic and religious viewpoints largely determine what exactly defines “life” or “personhood” for each individual. NCJW believes, as the First Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees, that no one religion should be enshrined in law or dictate public policy on any issue — including abortion. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The statement on when life begins does seem to recognize the soul as a separate entity rather than coming into existence as a person at the moment the first breath is drawn. Otherwise it is consistent with Gen 2:7. More from Judaism embraces recent events:

Why Are Jews So Pro-Choice?

The Senate voted on a bill Monday to ban most abortions after 20 weeks; it failed along party lines.

Just a few days earlier, the latest Pew data estimated that a whopping 83% of Jews believe that in all or most cases, abortion should be legal, putting us at the fourth most pro-choice group surveyed (behind only atheists, agnostics, and Unitarians.)

We beat out every single non-Unitarian Christian group, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and even “nothing in particular,” which evidently is a category distinct from atheists and agnostics.

The national debate about abortion is back, and it’s pretty clear where the Jewish community falls.

There are a few reasons for this, I think.

The first is religious. To put it plainly, Jewish law allows for abortion. For the first 40 days of gestation, a fetus is considered “mere fluid” (Talmud Yevamot 69b), and the fetus is regarded as part of the mother for the duration of the pregnancy. It is not considered to have the status of personhood until birth; the Mishnah (Ohalot 7:6) teaches that if the mother’s life is in danger from the pregnancy, even in labor, the fetus may be sacrificed to save her life, unless the baby’s head has already emerged. Only then, according to Rashi (Talmud Sanhedrin 72b), is the fetus or baby considered to be a nefesh, a soul. Elsewhere, the Mishnah (Arachin 1:4) teaches that “If a [pregnant] woman is about to be executed, they do not wait for her until she gives birth. But if she had already sat on the birthstool, they wait for her until she gives birth.” Birth, not gestation, is the critical marker, here.

In situations where the mother’s life is not in danger, modern and contemporary legal decisors have gone on record permitting abortion when in cases when a fetus may suffer gravely if carried to term or when a mother’s physical or mental health is in danger, or even when her psychological well-being may be at risk. Some legal decisors are more cautious in their assessment, suggesting that cases must be evaluated individually, and some lean on the side of abortion only in cases of serious or life-threatening medical need, but the permissibility (and even sometimes necessity) of abortion in some cases is a clear thread running through the literature.

For example, Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, an important Israeli ultra-Orthodox decisor of Jewish law who died in 2006, wrote in his treatise the Tzitz Eliezer, “It is clear that in Jewish law an Israelite is not liable to capital punishment for feticide…. An Israelite woman was permitted to undergo a therapeutic abortion, even though her life was not at stake…. This permissive ruling applies even when there is no direct threat to the life of the mother, but merely a need to save her from great pain, which falls within the rubric of ‘great need.’”

This body of literature, needless to say, comes in stark and striking contrast to arguments that life—and personhood—begins at conception.

Interestingly, many Christian communities derive their prooftexts against permitting abortion from the Hebrew Bible, like verses about God forming humans in the womb (Psalm 139:13, Jeremiah 1:5, Isaiah 44:24)—texts which don’t even register in the Jewish legal conversation on this topic. To put it simply, we don’t derive matters of Jewish law from Psalms.

Another reason that I suspect so many Jews come down in favor of safe and legal abortion is connected to the fact that we have historically been among the strongest supporters of the separation of church and state, and have long been wary of legal maneuvers that appear to be coming from a place of Christian religious conviction. I imagine that, even among Jews who may be personally against abortion for themselves or think that it’s morally wrong, there may be a reticence to impose their individual thinking on other people, and certainly the country as a whole. Cynthia Ozick put it once thusly: “What our faith communities would be wise to choose is religious responsibility undertaken autonomously, independently, and on cherished private ground, turning their backs on anyone, however estimable or prudential, who proposes that the church steeple ought to begin to lean on the town hall roof.” (Underscored emphasis added.)

The above is a cogent, instructive exposition of Judaism's position on abortion. The reader will observe the distinction to be made between the books of the Hebrew Bible, of which there are three divisions: Torah (Instruction, or Law, also called the Pentateuch), Neviʾim (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). What God commands or forbids has been revealed in the Torah, and this applies to Christianity as well as to Judaism, to the extent that Judaism's interpretation does not conflict with what Jesus Christ taught. The position of Judaism on abortion draws on the Torah in Genesis 2:7, Exodus 21:22-23, and probably Numbers 5:11-31 as well, about which there is more in this paper. The New Testament is silent on the subject of miscarriage, spontaneous or induced. Not so the Torah. Judaism has it right, and Jews are justified in their reaction to the misuse of the Hebrew Bible:

Jews, outraged by restrictive abortion laws, are invoking the Hebrew Bible in the debate

When Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, signed into law in May one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans, she invoked her faith.

“To the bill’s many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God,” Ivey said in a statement.

This is a familiar argument for the Republican Party when it comes to abortion access. In January, Kirk Cox, speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, cited biblical scripture when he came out against a proposed bill that would lift late-term abortion restrictions.

"You knit me together in my mother’s womb,” he said, quoting Psalm 139. “You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born.”

But for many leaders in the Jewish faith, such interpretations are problematic and even insulting.

“It makes me apoplectic,” says Danya Ruttenberg, a Chicago-based rabbi who has written about Jews' interpretation of abortion. “Most of the proof texts that they’re bringing in for this are ridiculous. They’re using my sacred text to justify taking away my rights in a way that is just so calculated and craven.”

Across the country, as a wave of anti-abortion legislation reinvigorates the fight over reproductive rights, Jewish religious leaders, activists and women are speaking out in favor of a woman's right to choose, buoyed by their faith.

It’s not just that the U.S. shouldn’t be deriving law from poetic language, Ruttenberg said. It’s that the Jewish tradition has a distinctly different reading of the same texts. While conservative Christians use the Bible to argue that a fetus represents a human life, which makes abortion murder, Jews don’t believe that fetuses have souls and, therefore, terminating a pregnancy is no crime. . .

Republicans have been pushing for decades to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that recognized a woman's right to an abortion. Now, with two Supreme Court appointments from President Donald Trump giving the court a conservative bent, the law seems more at risk than ever before. Restrictive laws are being passed all over the South, and, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks abortion legislation, 30 states now "demonstrate hostility toward abortion rights" while 14 demonstrate support.

It’s common in this debate to hear the Christian perspective. But what’s often left out of the conversation is how Jews, who read the Hebrew Bible – referred to in Christian circles as the Old Testament – argue that their tradition condones abortion. Sometimes, if the mother's life is at stake, it even insists on it. . .

Religious freedom concerns

To Rabbi Michael Adam Latz of Minneapolis, the fight over abortion rights – and lawmakers who reference their faith as a reason for why certain laws should exist – is a larger issue. That shouldn’t just worry Jews, whose tradition teaches something other than Evangelical Christianity, he says. It should worry anyone who believes in religious freedom.

“While I certainly understand that there are people who disagree with me, in a nation for which religious pluralism is a hallmark, to impose one religious tradition on this is not actually how a democracy functions, it’s how a theocracy functions,” Latz says.(Underscored emphasis added.)

The Seventh-day Adventist Church has clearly failed to recognize the theocratic destination into which the anti-abortion crusade is sweeping America.

An ancient mistranslation is now helping to threaten abortion rights (October 12, 2021)

The Hebrew Bible didn’t urge special penalties for causing a miscarriage.

Is it possible that more than 150 million people in the United States might lose some of their critical rights, as enshrined in the Constitution, at least in part due to a single word being mistranslated more than 2,000 years ago?

It is.

Texas has pulled abortion rights from its citizens and put bounties on the heads of anyone who dare offer to help them, and Florida has recently introduced a similarly restrictive bill. Though a judge just blocked the Texas law, an appeal has already been filed, and the law is back in effect for now. The case may find its way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has already scheduled arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which centers on a similarly unconstitutional Mississippi 15-week abortion ban, for which Mississippi has asked the court to formally overturn Roe v. Wade.

The six-week bans in Texas and Florida are called “heartbeat bills” by their advocates, rather than the more medically accurate “embryonic cardiac activity,” attempting to equate an embryo with a fully formed baby. The 15-week ban, too, is also about trying to define viability at a time in pregnancy when, scientifically, it’s simply not possible. But there are cultural and theological roots underpinning these anti-scientific attitudes, and they are relevant, especially if part of that approach is based on an error.

To understand what this translation mistake is, and why it matters today, we must first go way back to the Hebrew Bible. The key verses are found in the Book of Exodus:

“When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other harm ensues, the one responsible shall be fined when the woman’s husband demands compensation; the payment will be determined by judges. But if other harm ensues, the penalty shall be life for life.”

In other words, if a miscarriage is caused, the offender is fined for damages, but there is no other punishment as the fetus is not, in the Hebrew Bible, regarded as a person. If there is “other harm” — that is, if the pregnant person dies — the offender is seen as having committed manslaughter and punished accordingly. This is how these verses are understood in Judaism, from the Rabbinic era of the Mishnah and Talmud through Jewish law today, where abortion is permitted and, if needed to save the life of the pregnant person, sometimes required. (The Torah does not indicate at what stage of gestation the fetus is when this miscarriage happens; as a result, in Jewish law traditionally and today, personhood is regarded as beginning during birth, with the first breath.)

The key word in all of this is “harm,” which in Hebrew is “ason,” which could also be translated as “disaster” or “damage” — all more or less connoting the same general idea that something bad has happened.

This is where it gets weird.

In the mid-3rd century B.C., the Hebrew Bible began to be translated into Greek, into what became known as the Septuagint. There, “ason” (“harm,” “damage” or “disaster”) was translated as “exeikonismenon,” which literally translated as “from the image” which is, needless to say, not a good or useful way to communicate the meaning of that word. Theories abound as to why this happened, like the claim by Richard Freund, a scholar of Hellenistic Judaism, that the translators got stuck on the similarities between “ason” and the Greek word “soma,” meaning human life, and tried to communicate something about being created in God’s image.

For whatever reason, in the Septuagint’s translation, the meaning of the verses was completely transformed:

“When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but it is not in the form, the one responsible shall be fined when the woman’s husband demands compensation; the payment will be determined by judges. But if it is in the form, the penalty shall be life for life.”

Theology, based on that translation, soon followed. It’s easy to see how Saint Augustine, working out of the Septuagint, could develop his theory of ensoulment from here; a fetus early in formation, or in the early stages of gestation, did not have a soul, and thus it was not considered manslaughter to cause its accidental miscarriage. A fetus that was more “formed” did have a soul, so a person who caused its miscarriage would be, indeed, liable as though they had killed a fully formed person. Saint Thomas Aquinas, too, pointed to the moment of “quickening” — the moment at which fetal movement could be detected by the pregnant person — as the point of ensoulment.

For both Augustine and Aquinas, abortion was always regarded as an offense against God, but after the point of ensoulment, it was regarded as much more so. The Catholic Church ultimately dropped its distinction between the fetus before and after quickening in 1869, coming down against all forms of abortion. . .

On the Protestant side of things, translation choices that were straightforward at one point seem less so as language has evolved. The King James Bible — the go-to version for many American Protestants, particularly in many Evangelical and Baptist circles — decided to translate “ason,” presumably from the Hebrew rather than from the Septuagint’s Greek, as “mischief.” In the 1600s, this word did connote misfortune or calamity, but today, this word choice simply obscures the verse’s meaning. Someone reading this passage without any context might not be able to pick up on what the Hebrew — or, indeed, the original meaning of King James’s English — is actually describing.

In discussions regarding scripture and abortion among conservative Christian theologians and ethicists, this particular verse is rarely cited or explored. Most people sitting in the pews of Christian churches likely have never encountered this verse from Exodus in a Sunday morning sermon or a Bible study. And so the assumption among them that sacred texts uphold a staunchly antiabortion position prevails. . .

The Supreme Court that will hear these cases this year has six Catholic justices on the bench, and a seventh who was raised as Catholic. Judges are tasked to rule impartially, but they are human beings with biases (some with significant biases, such as Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who signed on to several ads calling for an end to Roe before she was appointed to the court). So their relationship to a tradition’s approach to abortion is relevant.

We hope it won’t be, though. Regardless of the fact that scripture never claimed that life begins at conception, we are promised separation of church and state in this country. So, truly, what the Bible does and does not say should not dictate law; one religious viewpoint should not — should never — be forced upon all who dwell in this country. The Constitution, after all, protects the right to abortion in the 14th Amendment. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Indeed, the abortion controversy is distilled into two fundamental issues: the false doctrine that there is an immortal soul which combines with an embryo to make it become a person, AND the termination of the constitutional separation of church and state to establish supremacy for the papacy over all civil government and every individual.

Much space has justifiably been given above to the position of Judaism on abortion, because the Evangelicals, (and as of October 16, 2019, the Seventh-day Adventist Church,) all quote copiously from the Hebrew Bible. This has provoked outrage in Judaism in reaction to the misinterpretation and misapplication of the Sacred Scriptures. If these Protestant churches are aware of the basis of the Church of Rome's anti-abortion crusade in philosophy and papal dogma, there is no hint of it.  Please note that the current section of this paper is focused on papal coercion of the nation. That there are Christian churches which do not share Rome's position is pertinent to the issue of separation of church and state and individual religious liberty. It must be noted that there are still Protestant churches which have not bowed to the papacy on the issue of abortion. This has already been mentioned in passing in one of the passages quoted earlier in this paper.

THE PROTESTANT CHURCHES ON ABORTION

Erosion of support for freedom of choice continues in the Protestant churches. There is evidence that this is the result of a massive propaganda program as well as the activism of the Roman Catholic Church. In his book Facts of Faith Seventh-day Adventist minister and prominent author Christian Edwardson described the process of catholization of America undertaken by the papacy. In the same book he warned about propaganda as the means of accomplishing Rome's purpose. The massive propaganda campaign mentioned above was launched by Pope Pius XI. There is little room for doubt that the catholization of America has played a vital role in eroding the commitment of the vast majority of Protestant churches to freedom of choice in the abortion controversy. In the case of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, there has been a departure from the denomination's historic prophetic position on the papacy. The SDA Church has followed the other Protestant denominations in the misapplication of Bible texts to support its change of position on abortion. It was political pressure from without, plus misguided pressure from within which paved the way for the abandonment in 2019 of the Church's freedom of choice position. Arguably, this all marks the success of the catholicization of America. It is very likely that the same process explains the changing position of the United Methodist Church mentioned in the following report: 

Where major religious groups stand on abortion

Abortion is still a difficult, contentious and even unresolved issue for some religious groups.

The United Methodist Church provides one example of a religious group whose stand on abortion is not entirely clear. At its quadrennial convention, held in May, church delegates voted to repeal a 40-year-old resolution supporting the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and approved another resolution ending the church’s membership in a pro-abortion rights advocacy group. However, the church’s Book of Discipline (which lays out the denomination’s law and doctrine) stresses that abortion should be, in some cases, legally available.

Some religious groups have little or no ambivalence about abortion. For instance, the nation’s largest denomination – the Roman Catholic Church – opposes abortion in all circumstances. The second-largest church, the Southern Baptist Convention, also opposes abortion, although it does allow an exception in cases where the mother’s life is in danger.

Other sizable religious groups in opposition to abortion with few or no exceptions include the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) and the Assemblies of God, the largest U.S. Pentecostal denomination. Hindu teaching also is generally opposed to abortion.

On the other side of the debate, a number of religious groups, including the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association and the two largest American Jewish movements – Reform and Conservative Judaism – favor a woman’s right to have an abortion with few or no exceptions.

Many of the nation’s largest mainline Protestant denominations – including the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Methodists – also support abortion rights, although several of these churches temper this support with the call for some limits on when a woman can terminate her pregnancy. For instance, while the Episcopal Church opposes statutory limits on abortion, it teaches that “it should be used only in extreme situations.” . . .

Even when a religious institution has a clearly stated policy on abortion, church members may not always agree. For instance, roughly half of all U.S. Catholics (48%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, in spite of the Catholic Church’s strong opposition. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The last statement underscored above is significant. One of the two reasons for promulgating the dogma of papal infallibility was internal, involving enforcement of the central power of Rome to dominate the worldwide institution of the papacy. It appears that in America the internal pressure continues. Hence the problem of Americanism, which has been hard to eradicate because of the Constitution, about which more later in this paper.

As stated above, "the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)" supports abortion rights. The following is an essay by a retired Presbyterian minister:

Selective Interpretation: Opponents Of Legal Abortion Cherry Pick The Bible To Justify Control Of Women's Reproductive Choices

Why are religious conservatives so adamantly opposed to abortion and reproductive freedom? Few commentators have probed the pertinent religious assumptions behind this opposition. Most base their ethical claims on a particular way of reading the Bible. In regard to abortion, they cite the Mosaic commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” But nowhere in the scriptures does that commandment pertain to fetuses, much less embryos. In fact, the words “abort” or “abortion” do not occur in scripture.

Exodus 21:22 is one of only two references to a miscarriage, and it requires that if two men are fighting and a pregnant woman is injured so that she miscarries, the man responsible pays the woman’s husband what he demands or what a judge determines. That reflects a time when wives and progeny were a man’s property, and injury or destruction of them required compensation. That is a far cry from murder or manslaughter. . .

The other and much more obscure text deals with abortion (maybe) and is the subject of heated debate among some scholars. Numbers 5:11-31 describes how a priest must adjudicate a dispute when a man suspects his wife of adultery. If she protests her innocence, he is to administer the “waters of bitterness that brings the curse (5:19).” If she is innocent, the potion will have no effect. If she is guilty, however, the waters of bitterness will “enter your bowels and make your womb discharge, your uterus drop (5:22).”

The text seems clear that this was an induced abortion with the purpose of determining both guilt and paternity. Little wonder that this passage is not cited by anti-abortion advocates.

The big question is: When does human life begin? Abortion opponents quote Psalm 139: “When I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth / Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.” They also cite Jeremiah: “Before you were formed in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you (Jer. 1:5).”

Another critical passage on this issue is never cited: Genesis 2:7 reads, “[T]hen the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and he became a living being.” According to this text, read literally, human life begins at birth with the first breath.

“Right-to-life” folks assert their claim that abortion is murder, and that some forms of contraception cause the abortion of an embryo. They base their objection on a selective use of scriptures and then ignore any passages that do not support their view. Clearly, the Bible is not a very reliable guide in this matter.

The other basis for their objection is the Roman Catholic doctrine on this matter, which also forbids birth control. This doctrine is based on “natural law,” first promulgated by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), in which any interruption of or interference with “the natural order of things,” which is believed to be ordained by God, is sinful.

So these religious groups oppose abortion and contraception, both of which are legal in America. Should 13th-century theology and highly selective biblical interpretation control social policy in a free society?

In a word, no. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The essay is refreshing in its inclusion of Genesis 2:7, thus indicating that this Presbyterian is among the minority of Protestants who do not subscribe to the pagan concept of an immortal soul.

With reference to mention of miscarriage in the Bible, the retired minister cites Numbers 5:11-31 which, as he states, "is the subject of heated debate among some scholars." The problem revolves around the phrase "her belly shall swell and her thigh rot" (verse 27 in the KJV.) The "heated debate" should not automatically preclude a conclusion that the verses in Numbers 5 tend to support freedom of choice. Here is a helpful analysis.

The retired minister also points out the role of Roman Catholic "natural law" in the right-to- lifers contentions on the subject of abortion and contraception. Roman Catholic "natural law" has become pervasive as a part of the catholicization America.

After all of the preceding documentation in this paper, there is not much more to be said on this aspect of the abortion controversy. However, it is critically important to note the last two sentences above in the context of the dogma of papal infallibility. One of its purposes is to suppress internal dissent.

Now the field of science needs to be explored in opposition to the papal claim that all should be in subjection to the Church of Rome:

SCIENTISTS ON THE ANTI-ABORTION CRUSADE

Most of the following documentation is hyperlinked without additional comment. The true science speaks for itself:-

Abortion Bans Based on So-Called “Science” Are Fraudulent

Our silence in the face of new anti-choice laws across the U.S. is deafening

We are scientists, and we believe that evidence, not ideology, should inform health care decisions. The wave of anti-abortion laws across the U.S. is the latest in a long string of attempts to falsely use the language and authority of science to justify denying people their basic human rights and inflict lasting harm. Although abortion is still legal in every state, recent legislation in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio threatens the future of abortion rights in the country. Scientists should, first and foremost, value evidence, and the evidence is clear: abortion bans cause harm. They make abortions less safe and especially harm historically marginalized communities.

As scientists, we are uniquely positioned to use our privilege and position in society to speak against the new abortion bans and other public policies that threaten the reproductive freedom of our nation’s people. We have the knowledge to communicate the science of reproductive health care, demonstrate the harm restrictive laws will cause and hold decision makers to account.

The public officials behind these latest abortion bans exhibit breathtaking ignorance of the science of their own proposals. When asked when a woman would still be able to obtain an abortion under his near-total ban, Alabama State Senator Clyde Chambliss uttered “I’m at the limits of my medical knowledge, but until those chromosomes you were talking about combine—from male and female—that’s my understanding.” The lawmaker is clearly confused about the fundamentals of reproductive science, but that hasn’t stopped him from authoring the most restrictive abortion law in the country—one that threatens the health of his constituents.

So-called heartbeat bills, which ban abortion as early as after six weeks of pregnancy, are not based on science. In fact, no heart yet exists in an embryo at six weeks. Yet six states and counting enacted such bills in 2019, in addition to Alabama’s near-total ban. . .

Our Complacency Is Complicity

As scientists, it is our job to assess the evidence, and what we know from many countries, including the U.S., is that that restrictions to reproductive health do not stop abortions but make them less safe. In addition, attempts to limit access to legal and safe abortion violate basic human rights and increase unsafe abortions. These abortion bans will cost lives—period. Existing restrictions in more than half of U.S. states already limit access to timely and affordable abortions, and these new laws would take such constraints to new heights. For example, miscarriages may be “investigated” and prosecuted under the recent law passed in Georgia. Because one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage, such scrutiny would undoubtedly target and further traumatize people already dealing with the loss of a pregnancy.

The elected officials passing these laws are not concerned with medical expertise or scientific evidence. They actively misrepresent the work of scientists, using rhetoric to deceive the public and stoke emotional outrage. These abortion bans are ideological and cynical, they are appallingly unscientific, and they are dangerous. We need leaders who will use science to create a safer world for all, and we, as scientists and citizens, need to hold them accountable when they don’t. It is time for scientists to show up and use our voices, money and positions of privilege to push back on these oppressive and harmful abortion bans.

For too long, scientists have been afraid to wade into controversies because we were taught to believe that being outspoken would chip away at our perceived public credibility. But our persistent silence has made us complicit. Anti-choice groups continue to invoke science in support of their cause. Case in point: this year the March for Life, a protest against the practice and legality of abortion, falsely claimed that science is on the side of the anti-choice movement. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

Science vs. myths about later abortion

Since the legalization of abortion by the US Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, restrictions on abortion have largely been based on ideas about fetal development and the purported negative mental health effects of abortion that are not supported by scientific evidence. Significant research has been conducted in the past decade to shed light on the nature of the misinformation that informs restrictive abortion legislation. The questionable evidence for these restrictions has been centered on three key areas: the impact of abortion on women’s mental health, inaccurate beliefs about whether a fetus can feel pain, and the time at which a fetus could survive outside of a woman’s body. . .

Does abortion impact mental health?

Contemporary research has found no link between having an abortion and experiencing subsequent mental health problems [1][2]. The theory that abortion causes depression or a “post-abortion syndrome” has been debunked, and the research used to support these claims has been found to be methodologically flawed [3] [4] [5]. . .

Is there such a thing as “fetal pain”?

There is no agreement among medical providers that a fetus can experience pain any earlier than the time period between the very end of the second trimester and the start of the third [1] [2]. Research into the ability of a fetus to feel pain has demonstrated that the neural pathways that make pain processing possible do not fully develop until the third trimester [3]. Thus it is necessary to make an important distinction between the way a self-aware adult may experience pain and the reactions a fetus may have to stimulus before the full development of those neural pathways [1][4]. Despite a lack of conclusive evidence, 17 states prevent women at 22 weeks LMP or later in their pregnancy from having an abortion because of the inaccurate idea that a fetus could experience pain at that point [5]. . .

What is viability?

Despite the predication of the Roe v. Wade decision on the point at which a fetus can survive outside of a woman’s body, called viability, neither the medical community nor the legal community have defined or agreed upon when viability begins. When over 1,000 US obstetricians and gynecologists were surveyed with regard to their intervention and delivery practices, the overwhelming majority indicated 24 weeks LMP as the point at which they considered a fetus to be viable [1]. Studies of infant survival and impairment rates support this range [2] [3] [4]. In studies of preterm infant survival and outcome rates, the risk of neurodevelopmental impairment is greater the earlier an infant is delivered in a pregnancy, with 45% of those infants born between 22-23 weeks having neurodevelopmental impairment, and all infants born between 22 and 25 weeks having a high risk of moderate to severe neurodevelopmental impairment [2] [3]. A study of infant survival rates across 11 US hospitals revealed that only 3.4% of infants born at 22 weeks survived without severe impairment and only 5.1% survived overall at that week of pregnancy [4]. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The statistics of survivability of infants born between 22 and 25 weeks of pregnancy is irrefutable evidence that "life begins at conception," meaning "human personhood", is a purely unscientific fable.

Why hundreds of scientists are weighing in on a high-stakes US abortion case

Studies suggest that a reversal of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision would be detrimental for many.

An upcoming case in the US Supreme Court might hasten the end of abortion across roughly half of the United States — a right that the country has defended for nearly 50 years. More than 800 scientists and several scientific organizations have provided evidence to the court showing that abortion access is an important component of reproductive health care.

The researchers, some of whom have studied the impact of abortion for many years, are rebutting arguments made to the court that abortion has no beneficial effect on women’s lives and careers — and might even cause them harm. “The scientific community is eager to weigh in on such an important issue, especially given five decades of evidence concerning the importance of abortion access,” says Stephanie Toti, a director at the New York City-based Lawyering Project, a group that advocates for abortion access in the United States. She adds, “This case is a big deal.”

The case, to be heard by the Supreme Court on 1 December, is between the state of Mississippi, which has issued a ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, and the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the only clinic in the state that provides abortions. In lower US courts, the clinic has successfully argued that the ban violates Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that enshrined the federal right to an abortion until the point that a fetus can live outside the womb — a ‘viability standard’ typically set at 22 or 24 weeks of pregnancy. But state officials are now taking the case to the highest court, seeking to end the precedent set by Roe so that individual states can set their own rules on the legality of abortion. In a surprise move last week, the Supreme Court announced that it would also hear a separate case on an abortion ban in Texas on 1 November; that decision has the potential to hobble Roe by allowing states to ignore the viability standard.

Since Roe, many states have diminished abortion access by, collectively, issuing more than 1,000 restrictions on the procedure, the majority in midwestern and southern states (see ‘Abortion regulations’). But legal analysts say the Mississippi case is the first in the Supreme Court in 30 years that could directly overturn or significantly undermine that long-standing precedent. Some analysts think that is likely to happen, judging from the court’s current composition. Former US president Donald Trump promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who would reverse Roe, and succeeded in replacing three justices during his presidency: there are now six conservative justices who have said that they disagree with abortion precedents, and three liberal justices. Should the court effectively end Roe, 12 states have policies designed to ban most abortions immediately, and — on the basis of existing and pending policies — researchers predict that another 8 to 10 could follow suit.

With much at stake, many people on both sides of the abortion debate — including scientists, religious leaders and athletes — have filed a total of more than 130 ‘amicus’, or ‘friend of the court’, briefs to the Supreme Court in advance of the Mississippi case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. A handful of the briefs are authored by hundreds of researchers in public health, social science, health equity and economics, who urge the court to uphold abortion rights on the basis of dozens of peer-reviewed studies examining the effects of abortion on well-being. . .

Allowing states to ban abortion might even increase maternal and infant mortality rates, according to the brief signed by about 550 public-health and reproductive-health researchers. Unwanted pregnancies are associated with worse health outcomes for several reasons, including that people who plan their pregnancies tend to change their behaviour — drinking less alcohol, for example — and receive prenatal medical care long before those who are surprised by their pregnancy and don’t want it.(Underscored emphasis added.)

Facts are Important: Abortion is Healthcare

Facts are very important, especially when discussing the health of women and the American public. The fact is, abortion is an essential component of women’s health care.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), with over 57,000 members, maintains the highest standards of clinical practice and continuing education for the nation’s women’s health physicians. Abortion care is included in medical training, clinical practice, and continuing medical education. . .

ACOG has issued several evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and official statements on abortion. ACOG’s November 2017 Statement of Policy reads in part:

Induced abortion is an essential component of women’s health care. Like all medical matters, decisions regarding abortion should be made by patients in consultation with their health care providers and without undue interference by outside parties. Like all patients, women obtaining abortion are entitled to privacy, dignity, respect, and support.4

Many factors influence or necessitate a woman’s decision to have an abortion. They include, but are not limited to, contraceptive failure, barriers to contraceptive use and access, rape, incest, intimate partner violence, fetal anomalies, illness during pregnancy, and exposure to teratogenic medications.

Pregnancy complications, including placental abruption, bleeding from placenta previa, preeclampsia or eclampsia, and cardiac or renal conditions, may be so severe that abortion is the only measure to preserve a woman’s health or save her life. . .

Sound health policy is best based on scientific fact and evidence-based medicine. The best health care is provided free of political interference in the patient-physician relationship. Personal decision-making by women and their doctors should not be replaced by political ideology. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Religion Must Not Substitute Science in the Abortion Debate

The United States is more diverse now than it has ever been. Views on abortion vary widely, both among and within religious denominations.

When Gov. Greg Abbott signed Texas law S.B.8, he provided an oft-heard reason for why the Lone Star state is effectively banning nearly all abortions: “Our creator endowed us with the right to life.”

Abbott’s religious invocation to justify Texas’s law, of course, begs the question: Whose vision of a creator, exactly? The United States is more diverse now than it has ever been. We are a country of over 330 million people who practice every major world religion, with a growing number practicing “nothing in particular.” Views on abortion vary widely, both among and within religious denominations.

All these perspectives are protected equally under the U.S. Constitution—by the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment—which together protect the fundamental right to hold religious beliefs of one’s choosing while ensuring that the government remains neutral when it comes to matters of faith.

Among the most deeply shameful moments in our nation’s history have been the legal system’s justification for brutal racism and discrimination on the basis of religion—going back to at least 1852, when the Missouri Supreme Court upheld enslavement in America in an opinion asserting, “The introduction of slavery amongst us was …. in the providence of God.”

Alarmingly, we’re approaching a disturbing comingling of religion and government on the issue of abortion in several states, not limited to Texas. In a session of the Arkansas legislature this year, a state senator proclaimed, “There’s six things God hates, and one of those is people who shed innocent blood.”

A Mississippi state representative who coauthored the 15-week abortion ban being challenged in the Supreme Court this term in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization asserted in her defense of the ban that she “believes that children are a gift from God.” Several of her colleagues in the Mississippi House of Representatives have likewise invoked their personal religious views to justify unconstitutional restrictions on abortion.

Their constituents, of course, may disagree on the morality of abortion. One need only look to the vast array of “friend-of-the-court” briefs filed in the Supreme Court in Dobbs to understand the sheer complexity and span of religious views that coexist in the United States. For example, Catholics for Choice and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops put forth competing views of what it means to adhere to the Catholic faith. One group’s brief advocates for reproductive rights within the teachings of the church, while the other interprets those same teachings to portray abortion as an “unspeakable crime.”

The same goes for various Jewish organizations and religious leaders who embrace a wide range of understandings and interpretations of the role and permissibility of abortion in Judaism and have filed dueling briefs. Some Lutherans and Protestant groups have registered their support for the Mississippi ban, while some Muslim, Presbyterian, Humanist and Atheist groups want the court to strike it down.

The very problems the First Amendment was designed to avoid—public divisiveness and social conflict based on religious difference—are on full display.

Diversity of thought exists within every religion and includes those who believe their faith compels them to support reproductive rights, generally, and abortion, specifically. The late Dr. George Tiller, for example, who was murdered a little over a decade ago by an anti-choice zealot, was known to be a devout Lutheran who considered his abortion practice a spiritual calling. Another provider, Dr. Ben Brown, recently tweeted about how he believes his “work is an expression of [his] Quaker values.” Faith leaders like Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II of the Poor People’s Campaign have long supported reproductive justice as part of their religious missions, and many more have voiced their support for access to abortion in the wake of S.B. 8’s passage.

Lawmakers and political leaders who tout religion-based rationales for abortion restrictions not only disregard these differing powerful convictions but aim to enshrine one narrow theological interpretation into law. Given that pre-viability abortion bans like the ones at issue in Texas and Mississippi fail to serve a clear secular purpose—they have no effect on the over­all rate at which women seek abortions, are not tied to a medical determination that the fetus could survive independently, and in fact increase rates of maternal death and mortality—it is doubly dangerous for religion to be used as a proxy for policy or substitute for science.

The First Amendment gives us the right to debate the meaning of life and when it begins. But it also says that such debates have no place in our legislatures or courts of law if we are to be a society that fosters religious freedom for all. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The reference above to Judaism does not provide details of the "dueling briefs;" so it is important to note the latest Pew data on the percentage of Jews who believe that in all or most cases, abortion should be legal; and remember that their position is based on the Jewish Bible, which is the Christian Old Testament.

Personhood Seeking New Life with Republican Control

Just three days prior to the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States, Representative Jody B. Hice (R-GA) introduced the Sanctity of Human Life Act (HR 586), which if enacted, would provide that the rights associated with legal personhood begin at fertilization. Then, in October 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services released its draft strategic plan, which identifies a core policy of protecting Americans at every stage of life, beginning at conception. While often touted as a means to outlaw abortion, protecting the "lives" of single-celled zygotes may also have implications for the practice of reproductive medicine and research. Indeed such personhood efforts stand apart and distinct from more incremental attempts to restrict abortion that target the abortion procedure and those who would perform it. While personhood efforts have not been successful to date at either the state or federal levels, abortion opponents may find a friend in President Trump and his Supreme Court nominees. What is more, because the recent decision by the Court in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt makes it more difficult for states to impose incremental restrictions on the abortion procedure, restrictions focused on the status of the unborn may assume increasing importance. Personhood rhetoric is often seen in proceedings involving the disposition of unused embryos and in laws that restrict access to abortion on the basis of gender, race, or disability. Laws outlawing abortion on the basis of fetal pain are also on the rise. With so much uncertainty surrounding the political landscape, this Article places the personhood movement in historical context with other antiabortion strategies. This Article further explores the theoretical underpinnings of the personhood movement and considers its future prospects with regard to abortion and other reproductive services. . .

III. RECENT STATE EFFORTS: THE REEMERGENCE OF THE PERSONHOOD

MOVEMENT

Stung by the failure of efforts at the federal level and disenchanted with the incrementalist approach, the modern personhood movement resolved to focus its efforts on constitution-amending initiatives at the state level.' The charge is led by Personhood USA and its state-level affiliates. Founded by Keith Mason and Cal Zastrow, Personhood USA is self-described as a nonprofit Christian ministry focused on changing the constitutional status of the preborn.' . . .

Since 2008, personhood measures have been introduced (and failed) in over a dozen states.63 Indeed, only a few of these measures have reached the ballot as in Colorado (three times),' Mississippi (once)," and North Dakota (once).'

The repeated failure of these state constitution-amending initiatives may have been due, in part, to their potential non-abortion impact.' After all, the personhood movement seeks to confer personhood on the zygote, that is, the single-celled embryo which comes to be within hours of a sperm penetrating an egg.68 According to this view, this newly cognizable member of the human species would and should be entitled to legal protection as a matter of course. It follows that objections to the destruction of the single-celled zygote would by extension apply to in vitro fertilization (IVF). After all, many techniques commonly utilized during IVF create risks for the embryos involved, such as freezing and thawing when more embryos are created than are used in a given transfer cycle.' Similar objections would apply to the potential loss or destruction of embryos at more advanced stages of development such as the day-three cleavage-stage embryo (used in preimplantation genetic diagnosis) and the day-five preimplantation blastocyst (used in preimplantation genetic screening).70 To be sure, because no clinic boasts a 100% success rate, the risks associated with merely transferring an "embryonic person" for hopeful implantation could be viewed as problematic under a personhood framework.71

Certain forms of contraception could also pose problems.' Known abortifacients such as mifepristone (RU-486) that cause an embryo or fetus to detach from the uterine wall at up to seventy days gestation' could be outlawed. Emergency contraception (such as Plan B) and other frequently used hormonal contraceptives may also raise concerns to the extent they are effective in preventing pregnancy after a single-celled zygote is formed. For instance, although still subject to significant debate, hormonal contraceptives (including certain forms of emergency contraception) are thought to have three potential mechanisms of operation.' The first two, preventing ovulation of a mature ova or preventing the sperm from reaching the egg, would not be problematic under a personhood framework; however, the third, making the endometrium inhospitable to implantation of a fertilized ova, would create personhood problems."

The extent to which hormonal contraceptives might prevent implantation of a fertilized ova is not settled. Indeed, the different types of hormonal combinations may well matter. For instance, while progesterone-only contraceptives may act on the uterine lining, preparations that combine both estrogen and progesterone may not have sufficient levels of progesterone to have a postfertilization impact if breakthrough ovulation occurs." Determining exactly what prevented a pregnancy from occurring in any given month where hormonal contraceptives are used may prove impossible. The same would be true for intrauterine devices (IUDs) whose protective effect might occur after fertilization, in particular for the nonhormonal variations.' Even the slightest risk that a "person" came into existence and was destroyed by virtue of contraception could be enough to trigger restrictions on access to at least certain forms of contraception, particularly given the availability of alternatives.

Viewed in aggregate, the potential impact of a constitutional personhood amendment on IVF and/or contraception may account for the fact that personhood efforts do not enjoy undivided (or even majoritarian) support within the antiabortion ranks." . . . (Italics in the original; underscored emphasis added.)

What a hornets' nest of problems are triggered by the anti-abortion crusade's focus on "personhood!" It is all a brazen and unconstitutional invasion of science and individual privacy by religious ideology.

UNCONSTITUTIONAL COERCIVE RELIGIOUS LEGISLATION PROLIFERATING IN STATE LEGISLATURES

This section is effectively an extension of the last, with emphasis on Republican legislative actions in prosecution of the anti-abortion crusade that are nakedly religious. The openness of these actions, without any attempt to conceal the fact that they are religious, is a measure of the confidence that the legislation will be ratified as constitutional by the Roman Catholic controlled Supreme Court, and even some of the lower courts before it reaches the Supreme Court:-

Whose religious freedom is at stake with Texas’s new abortion law? (September 20, 2021)

Some rabbis are claiming that SB 8 violates the obligations of their faith.

This summer the Texas legislature banned abortions after six weeks of gestation or at the moment when a heartbeat can be detected in a fetus. In order to evade judicial review, this law provides for enforcement not by any government entity but by the public, who have the option to sue any person or organization that they suspect of helping a woman have an abortion after six weeks. The law took effect last month after the Supreme Court declined to block it.

Some of the more surprising objections to SB 8 have come from rabbis who claim that the law violates their freedom of religion. Jewish law, they argue, not only allows for abortion after six weeks but in some cases requires it. Furthermore, Jews are required to offer their neighbors aid—yet the new law prohibits them from offering aid to a woman seeking an abortion.

These rabbis argue that SB 8 is based on an explicitly and exclusively Christian understanding of personhood. Texas governor Greg Abbott referred to this view in his remarks at the bill’s signing: “Our creator endowed us with the right to life, and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion.”

“Judaism teaches that potential life is sacred,” writes rabbi Danny Horwitz in an article for Religion News Service. “Nevertheless . . . that a fetus is not a human being. . . . is directly derived from Scripture.” Horwitz quotes rabbi Byron Sherwin: “Judaism is neither pro-life or pro-choice. It depends on the life and it depends on the choice.”

This is not the kind of pro-abortion rights argument we are most accustomed to. Usually such arguments rely on concepts of individual rights and freedoms, which are then pitted against different assertions of individual rights and freedoms by abortion rights opponents. This rhetorical stalemate has dominated the abortion debate for many years.

These rabbis do not deny individual rights and freedoms, but they situate them inside the context of community, tradition, and scripture. Furthermore, their approach does not require every Jewish person to agree on the exact dynamics of abortion, because disagreement is inherent to the tradition. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg wrote in Forward in 2018 that Jews “have long been wary of legal maneuvers that appear to be coming from a place of Christian religious conviction” and that the Jewish tradition of machloket, divergent opinions, “makes a Jew who feels personally against abortion more able to see the possibility that someone else might legitimately understand the world in a different way, and to value that perspective.”

Of course, Christian clergy are also among those trying to block the law from taking effect and pursuing legal action going forward. And Christianity has a complicated history on the subject of reproductive rights and personhood. But our Jewish brothers and sisters can show us what it looks like to situate our abortion arguments not in the context of partisan politics but in the context of faith—and what it might mean in this country to truly take religious freedom seriously. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Abortion bans are a result of the crumbling of church-state separation (May 27, 2019)

The terrifying rash of state abortion bans spreading throughout the United States has captured the nation’s attention, but in order to stop this trend, those who are fighting back must also focus on its deeper cause: the ever-crumbling wall of separation between church and state.

The First Amendment prohibits the government from imposing one set of religious beliefs, or religion at all, on others, but that’s undeniably what these bans are doing.

“This legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God,” said Gov. Kay Ivey after signing Alabama’s uncompromising abortion ban into law on May 15. Explaining the ban’s rationale, Alabama Sen. Clyde Chambliss asserted: “I believe that if we terminate the life of an unborn child, we are putting ourselves in God’s place.” In Missouri, Rep. Holly Rehder expressed her support for that state’s abortion ban, which, like Alabama’s, lacks a rape or incest exception: “To stand on this floor and say, ‘How can someone look at a child of rape or incest and care for them?’ I can say how we can do that. We can do that with the love of God.”

These abortion bans are but one piece of a larger Christian nationalist effort sweeping America now. Last year, more than 800 state legislators across the country received the 150-page playbook of Project Blitz, a national initiative to codify a far-right evangelical Christian America. Project Blitz’s strategy is to pass an increasingly ambitious set of state laws, starting with bills that require prominently displaying “In God We Trust” and establishing Bible classes in public schools, and escalating to laws that would permit religion to be used to justify discrimination, particularly against women, LGBTQ people and religious minorities. More than 50 Project Blitz bills have already been introduced in 2019, from Virginia to Alaska and many states in between. . .

This year alone, the Trump administration has already allowed federally funded South Carolina foster care agencies to turn away prospective parents and volunteers who do not share their religion (evangelical Christian) and issued a rule allowing all health care providers to deny even lifesaving care to patients based on their religious views. These actions come on the heels of the rule the administration finalized in November that permits employers and universities to deny women birth control coverage guaranteed by the Affordable Care Act on religious or moral grounds.

These days, some claim these policies that license discrimination are really just about protecting the “religious freedom” of conservative Christians. But the religious freedom enshrined in our Constitution is not meant to be weaponized. If the government makes me bear the cost of your “religious freedom,” then it prefers your religion to mine. And the First Amendment forbids the government from playing favorites. The Trump administration is undermining, not bolstering, true religious freedom. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

Religion has everything to do with abortion (February 1, 2022)

Four anti-abortion bills have been introduced into the state legislature including a Texas copycat bill (HR2001, HR2483, SB1044, SB1164). The issue is not whether a state has the constitutional authority to protect “unborn life” but whether women, who have been born, have a constitutional right to make decisions about their own health and life or whether unknown and unrelated people who have no interest in her life will make that decision for her.

These bills violate the Establishment and Free Exercises Clause of the Constitution because they try to put into statute a belief that only one religion has and that is completely contrary to the beliefs of many other religions and even the bible.

In twelve places (Genesis-3, Job-3, Ezekial-2, Isaiah-2, Psalms, John), the bible says that man becomes a living person when he has the breath of life, when the person can breathe on their own. It is clear from the bible that abortion was not prohibited as described in Exodus 21:22-24 where a harm occurs only if the pregnant woman herself is injured not if she loses the pregnancy, and in Numbers 5:11-31 where a priest can cause an abortion to find out whether a woman has committed adultery.

The test of whether a law violates the First Amendment is whether the principal or primary effect of the law neither advances nor inhibits religion nor fosters an excessive government entanglement with religion. The court agreed that neither a state nor the federal government can pass laws that aid one religion, all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Arizona’s Constitution says likewise. (Article XX §1)

That is precisely what these laws do. No one is forcing Catholics to have abortions or take contraceptives. So their belief and free exercise is not impinged. But other people who believe differently would be forced to accept the dogma of one church that they must carry a pregnancy to term. Thus the free exercise of those women is destroyed.

Religion has always been at the heart of anti-abortion legislation. The passage of the Hyde amendment was replete with references to sin and souls and morals. The Catholic Conference was an adviser to the House of Representatives. Justice Stevens noted in the Webster case that there was no secular purpose for the declaration that life begins at conception making it a violation of the establishment clause. Sixty-seven religious organizations submitted amicus briefs. After Roe v. Wade became law, the Catholic hierarchy devoted more time, energy, and money to abortion than any other issue – including famine, disease, homelessness, and a myriad of other sufferings inflicting living humans. Legislators have openly said they introduced and passed these laws based on religion, (Representative Lola Sheldon-Galloway, MT; Governor Kristi Noem, SD; Senator Clyde Chambliss AR; Governor Kay Ivey, AL). . .

A primary tenet of our Constitution is that no one has the right to impose their beliefs on everyone else. There is no scientific, medical, religious, philosophical or any other consensus, about when a group of dividing cells becomes a human being possessed of legal rights. However, women most assuredly are human beings and must have the full panoply of rights including control of their own destiny. (Underscored emphasis added.)

THE ANTI-ABORTION CRUSADE: ACHIEVING PAPAL SUPREMACY OVER CIVIL LAW
WHILE ALSO SUPPRESSING INTERNAL DISSENT FROM HUMANAE VITAE

It must never be overlooked that the papacy, from its very inception, has sought supremacy over the entire world. Read or listen to its history. Furthermore this was reasserted very recently in the papacy of John Paul II.

The Roman Catholic politics of abortion is directly connected with the reason why the dogma of papal infallibility was decreed in the First Vatican Council (1869-1870.) At the time of Vatican Council I the papacy was in a state of great crisis. The princes and European states were claiming authority over the Church. Here it should be noted that "In 1869–70 American bishops participated in Vatican I, where they were among the minority that opposed the decree of papal infallibility" (Roman Catholicism in the United States and Canada.)

America was neither a kingdom nor a nation which claimed authority over the Church; but by its constitution guaranteeing separation of church and state and individual freedom, it has been a far deadlier enemy of papal supremacy. Princes could be deposed one by one; but the God-given formula for individual freedom enunciated by Jesus Christ (Matt. 22:21) is welcomed by the people. In general, with the exception of any who have become conditioned to authoritanian government, the people reject coercion by the civil power; and Almighty God coerces no-one. Therefore, once the separation of church and state and the individual liberty guaranteed by the United States constitution has become ingrained in the people, this can only be overcome by destruction of the Constitution - hence Rome's war on the Constitution. Under Pope Pius XI (1922-1929) Roman Catholicism was mobilized against American democracy, with one of the most massive propaganda campaigns in history. It has been brilliantly, and indeed diabolically, successful since it was ramped up by the USCCB's Pastoral Plan of 1975, which made no secret of the fact that it was to be spearheaded by the anti-abortion crusade. A sufficient percentage of the population has been brainwashed into an emotional belief that abortion at any stage of pregnancy amounts to "murder" of innocent "unborn babies." This has fostered indifference to the demolition of the constitutional freedoms of the nation inherent in the anti-abortion crusade.

Returning to Vatican Council I, there was at the same time as the threat from the princes and European states, an internal "confrontation between two tendencies that were especially strong in France (but had ramifications all over Europe) and polarized the debate: “Gallicanism”, stressing the freedom of particular churches over against Rome, and “Ultramontanism”, exalting the central authority of the pope over national churches."

So “Ultramontanism” is but another term for the supremacy of papal Rome:

Ultramontanism

The term ultramontanism has had a long and complicated history. In the Middle Ages, Northern Europeans called someone an ultramontanist simply because he was ruled by the pope, who lived “beyond the mountains” (ultramonate in Latin), i.e., in Rome, on the other side of the Alps. Of course, those in Italy thought of the French and the Germans as “beyond the mountains,” so when a pope came from those lands, he was a papa ultramontano. Same term, nearly opposite meanings. . .

The nineteenth century saw another evolution of the term. During the Middle Ages, a movement called conciliarism had become prominent within the Church. This movement, which held that Church councils were the highest authority in the Church—even higher than the pope—eventually was defeated in the fifteenth century. In the nineteenth century, the debate over the precise extent of papal authority arose again, and there were still those within the Church who wished to place council over pope. In this context, the defenders of papal authority were given the “ultramontanist” label.

The ultramontanist defeated the conciliarists at the First Vatican Council, a council in which the universal jurisdiction and infallibility of the pope was definitively defined. . .

'New Ultramontanists': Why do some Catholics fear change?

"When the Pope thinks, it is God who is thinking in him."

—Louis Veuillot

"I should like a new Papal Bull every morning with my Times at breakfast."

—William George Ward

These two quotations seem shocking today, and were, in fact, shocking to many in their own time; they come from two 19th-century journalists Louis Veuillot and William George Ward. Veuillot, Ward, and others were at the vanguard of a theological, cultural and political movement within the Roman Catholic Church named "ultramontanism" — "over-the-mountain-ism."

Ultramontanism looked over the Alps that separated Germany, France, Ireland and England from the pope in Rome, promoting him and a particular theology of the papacy as a bulwark against Enlightenment rationalism and the forces of change in the 19th century.

The ultramontanist movement was diverse, decentralized, youthful — and successful, encouraged by the first celebrity pope, Pope Pius IX, and culminating in the definitions of papal primacy and infallibility of the First Vatican Council.

Arguably the ultramontanist movement made the modern papacy that we know today.

Most Catholics can recognize the pope immediately; the pope appoints bishops for every diocese in the world; papal encyclicals and other documents are published frequently and read widely; and seven out of the ten popes beginning with Pius IX have been canonized, beatified, or set on the path toward canonization — making Pius X, John XXIII, John Paul II, and, this fall, Paul VI, the most recent popes since Pius V was canonized in 1712.

In recently reading Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church, Jesuit historian Fr. John O'Malley's newest book on Vatican I, including his survey of the ultramontanist movement in 19th-century Europe, the parallels between these ultramontanist thinkers and authors and those I would name the "new ultramontanists" of today were striking.

Who are the new ultramontanists? As in the 19th century, the movement is diverse, difficult to categorize, and susceptible to overstatement or stereotype. But in the family of thinkers from the conservative Catholic public intellectuals like Ross Douthat and Matthew Schmitz, to the more bombastic, Veuillot-like tirades of "rad-trads" and others on Catholic Twitter, one can see some fascinating parallels between the 19th century and our own.

First, in both periods it was journalists who promoted these views with the most energy and effectiveness, rather than academic theologians or even, at first, most clerics or bishops. Veuillot used his journal L'Univers and William George Ward the Dublin Review; Veuillot at least was regularly in conflict with the Archbishop of Paris. Along with them, La Civiltà Cattolica, now known for its wide-ranging centrism, was first established by the Jesuits as an ultramontanist mouthpiece.

Today's ultramontanists similarly disseminate their ideas not through the pulpit or the academy, but primarily through First Things, The New York Times, and the Catholic blogosphere and Twitter. They have a much wider reach than most academic theology will ever have, and yet many theologians would critique the lack of theological education that sometimes leads to simplistic, underdeveloped or simply wrong understandings of ecclesiology or church history.

For many voices on Twitter, their experience of the Catholic Church during the long pontificate of John Paul II is how the church always was, and also how the church ever shall be. And, like the polemics of L'Univers and the earlier incarnation of La Civiltà Cattolica, the vitriol, even violence, directed at institutions and individuals betrays a deep lack of Christian charity "in the service of the truth." . . .

Those of us who may have thought that the issue of the historical nature of the church was settled at the Second Vatican Council should be alerted out of our complacency to speak and teach about the phenomenon of ecclesial change. And we ought to remember that it was Veuillot and Ward who won the day through their skillful use of media, not the Archbishop of Paris or the theological elites who argued with them in theological journals. (Italics in the original; internal hyperlinks added; underscored emphasis added.)

We are warned by this Roman Catholic publication - the odds are that the new ultramontanists will be victorious. Confirmation will be found in Bible prophecy, so we need to pay close attention to Veuillot's vision. There is further confirmation in the following essay which analyzes a book on the history of the First Vatican Council. The title accurately characterizes the Council:

Vatican I, Pius IX, and the problem of ultramontanism

John W. O’Malley’s new history of the First Vatican Council provides an impartial and detailed account that offers both historical context and insight into the situation in 2018. . .

Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church has a rather unique structure: only one of its five chapters (the final chapter) is directly focused on the Council itself. Though O’Malley does not say so explicitly, I think there are two reasons for this: the longue durée method pioneered in French historiography which looks expansively at the “causes” of historical events, a method especially important here for so much of Vatican I is simply incomprehensible without understanding the French Revolution a century before. Second, the First Vatican Council barely lasted seven months, whereas the debates leading up to it ran for well over a century and brought in major players—politicians, churchmen, and scholars alike—in England, France, and the Italian and German lands then being united into their respective nation-states, a process itself playing no small part in shaping the Council. . .

Add to this potent brew the fact that the French, Austrians, Italians, and Germans were all involved in various imperial projects of consolidation, score-settling, and territorial rearrangement, especially on the Italian peninsula. This revolutionary environment left many of the ultramontane party suffering from what I would call clear cases of hysteria: their capacity for careful reason and sober theology were very nearly overwhelmed by these traumatic “memories” of the damage done to the Church by the French and 1848 revolutions, and by the various European enlightenments, all of them derided under the heading “rationalism”. Joseph de Maistre, as I’ve shown elsewhere, was in the vanguard of whipping up the belief among churchmen that they were facing nothing less than the destruction not just of the Church but of human civilization. The only way to prevent such utter chaos was to submit to an absolute sovereign. For Maistre, absolute sovereignty presupposed infallibility, and only one of the many monarchs he favored (he spent fourteen years as ambassador of the king of Sardinia to the Russian Tsar Alexander I) would enjoy both characteristics: the pope. Many at Vatican I agreed that they must find just such a “guarantor of absolute certainty” as O’Malley puts it (p.197).

The pope, then, was naïvely thought to be this guarantor, the apparent antidote to total civilizational collapse and absolute chaos. For us it is perhaps hard to imagine this sense of emergency, and the one quibble I would raise with O’Malley’s book is whether he downplays this to some extent. It is, I suppose, hard to know where to draw the line between utterly dismissing, or else being sucked into, the panicky polemics of Maistre, whose hysterical style seems sometimes to veer into the apocalyptic.

But that sense of apocalypse did have very real effects on the Council. As the likelihood of war between France and Germany grew throughout the spring of 1870, those pushing for a definition of papal infallibility grew scared that events might outrun them and the Council unable to get the deed done in time. Already, given the above conditions, bishops had begun drifting home so that, O’Malley tells us, before the final vote in July nearly a quarter of them were gone. Some left out of frustration, some to escape the war, but most did so to avoid a divisive non placet vote on the final document. (An earlier vote on a draft, with a record 88 votes against—and still others voting to modify the schema—had enraged a petulant Pius IX who coined a series of labels and scornful sarcastic slogans to deride individual members of the minority, some of whom promptly left to avoid any more abuse.)

So, sensing that their opportunity was slipping from their grasp, the extreme ultramontane party performed one of the dastardly tricks one sometimes finds in the history of Councils: without warning they dramatically re-arranged the agenda on April 29th so that infallibility, far down the list (to be found in a sub-section of the eleventh of fifteen chapters) in the wide-ranging schema on the Church that was being discussed, was suddenly yanked out and given a place all of its own. All other issues were abandoned, and papal infallibility and jurisdiction were the sole agenda items, sucking all the oxygen out of the Council from then until July when they were voted upon right before the remaining bishops fled Rome to avoid the Franco-Prussian War which broke out on the 19th. O’Malley shows how they got away with procedural chicanery by quoting Pius IX’s open threat to dissolve the Council and define infallibility and jurisdiction on his own, much as he had done in 1854 with the Immaculate Conception. The overall impression is not one of a council of divines but of a hostage situation.

Numerous phenomena in the ante-conciliar history narrated so well by O’Malley’s first four chapters stood out to me in reading this book in 2018, all of them grouped under what I would call the promise and perils of papal populism. The earliest come under popes Pius VI and VII. As various movements—usually called Gallicanism and Josephism—were building in France and Austria respectively, Pope Pius VI travelled to Vienna to meet Emperor Joseph II in 1782, while Pius VII travelled to Paris to crown Napoleon in 1804. Both trips sought to bolster a very weakened papacy but neither trip aided the papacy’s political standing vis-à-vis other monarchs of Europe. There was, however, a curious side-effect: the crowds. Both popes got widespread welcomes along the routes to Vienna and Paris. Both popes, and their apologists, defenders, and savvy successors, quickly learned the lesson that populist movements could be ruthlessly exploited to elevate a papacy that was, at the end of the eighteenth century, extremely weak and declining fast. . .

Similar populist dynamics were exploited in 1854 when the Immaculate Conception was defined by Pius IX, a definition, as I have remarked elsewhere, having nothing to do with any serious crisis of Marian devotion or doctrine—for there was none—and everything to do with centralizing papal authority in a singular way, which Vatican I went on to do a scant sixteen years later when it defined the pope as having universal jurisdiction and infallibility by virtue of his office, not his person (one of the few concessions the minority were successful in pushing through). All these earlier events, together now with the Council itself, would, O’Malley says in his conclusion, lead to “a strikingly new prominence in Catholic consciousness for the ordinary believer.” Such believers were led by the hierarchs to think that “personal devotion to the pope became a new Catholic virtue” (p.240). . .

O’Malley runs the numbers and confirms what other historians—Owen Chadwick, Eamon Duffy, and John Pollard—have argued: the popes, losing their territories, claim for themselves a new role as teacher of the nations. Thus Pius VII (r. 1800-1823) published precisely one encyclical; Pius IX (1846-78) published thirty-eight; and Leo XIII (1878-1903) seventy-five. And, of course, their successors since then have published not just scores of encyclicals but all manner of documents—exhortations, homilies, letters, chirographs, apostolic constitutions—at ever increasing length ranging over an exhausting array of topics.

The net effect of all this, O’Malley concludes, is to leave as an open question: “to what extent is the Catholic Church ultramontane today”? Today more than ever we are realizing the answer is: Too much. We are also realizing that the context of emergency and revolution from outside the Church is long gone. But the changes wrought in that context are with us still, adding immeasurably to the damage done in this long emergency within the Church of 2018 as an unaccountable pope is allowed, as a result of Vatican I, to sit in solipsistic splendor and do nothing except shamelessly tell the rest of us to be silent about the squalor.

If O’Malley’s superb history has lessons for us today, it is that papal supremacy and Roman centralization were strongly aided and often driven by the grassroots. So it is up to the grassroots of 2018 to start a new movement towards a much more modest, far less domineering and destructive papacy for—as one of the great English opponents of the council, Lord Acton, famously said, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The above essay is very revealing that the Church of Rome is essentially more about politics and worldly power than about true religion. Note in particular the passage about "exploitation of popular dynamics" in the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which had "everything to do with centralizing papal authority in a singular way." The reader will recall that the dogma required the teaching that "life begins at conception."

It is striking that in the final paragraph the famous aphorism of Lord Acton, English Catholic historian, politician, and writer, who was present at Vatican Council I as an observer, that “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” referred directly to the Council.

This aphorism can be applied to the evil work of "Saint" John Paul II. Pope John Paul II was the embodiment of ultramontanism and, unsurprisingly, responsible for the anti-abortion crusade. The USCCB's Pastoral Plan specifically quotes him as follows:

“In our present social context, marked by a dramatic struggle between the ‘culture of life’ and the ‘culture of death’, there is need to develop a deep critical sense, capable of discerning true values and authentic needs.

What is urgently called for is a general mobilization of consciences and a united ethical effort to activate a great campaign in support of life. All together, we must build a new culture of life.” Pope Saint John Paul II, Evangelium vitae (1995) (Underscored emphasis added.)

He is named and quoted throughout the document. This also links him to the Roman Catholic-Evangelical alliance known as the Religious Right. He was the puppet master of the anti-abortion crusade throughout his papacy.

He was manifestly an ultramontanist even before he was elected to the papacy, as detailed in the documentation of his involvement in the minority report of the Papal Commission on Population and Birth Control created by Pope Paul VI in 1964. Note the passages:

A minority report was prepared, co-authored by the man who is now Pope John Paul II [died in 2005.] In this report he stated:

If it should be declared that contraception is not evil in itself, then we should have to concede frankly that the Holy Spirit had been on the side of the Protestant churches in 1930 (when the encyclical Casti Connubii was promulgated), in 1951 (Pius XII's address to the midwives), and in 1958 (the address delivered before the Society of Hematologists in the year the pope died). It should likewise have to be admitted that for a half century the Spirit failed to protect Pius XI, Pius XII, and a large part of the Catholic hierarchy from a very serious error. . .

In 1980, years after he became pope, John Paul wrote to the German bishops:

I am convinced that the doctrine of infallibility is in a certain sense the key to the certainty with which the faith is confessed and proclaimed, as well as to the life and conduct of the faithful. For once this essential foundation is shaken or destroyed, the most basic truths of our faith likewise begin to break down. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Not only is papal infallibility ultramontanist; it is a deceitful cloak to cover up grave errors. Here it was used to protect the papacy's teaching on contraception, which itself is connected to abortion. By his ultramontist actions John Paul II continued to protect Humanae Vitae:

Humanae Vitae: Sex and authority in the Catholic Church

Fifty years ago, Pope Paul VI issued an encyclical that shook the Catholic Church to its core by declaring that every use of artificial contraceptives is immoral. The document, "Humanae Vitae" ("Of Human Life"), was a shocker because many Catholics had hoped the pope, with the widening availability of the pill after its appearance in 1960, would open the way for Catholics to use birth control.

The encyclical continues to be controversial, with the hierarchy, including Pope Francis, supporting it while most Catholics ignore it.

When the encyclical was published on July 25, 1968, the response from Catholic moral theologians was overwhelmingly negative. Although they liked many things in the encyclical, the universal prohibition against artificial contraception was not something they could support. They noted that almost all other Christian denominations approved of contraception and that the papally appointed commission to study the issue had recommended a more open position.

The opposition of theologians was not just behind closed doors. It was very public in scholarly articles, op-eds, news conferences and signed petitions. Both Catholic and secular media covered the dispute extensively. Disagreements in the Catholic Church over sex made good copy.

Nor were theologians the only ones to disagree. Some cardinals and bishops distanced themselves from the pope, pointing out that the document was not infallible teaching and that each person had to follow their conscience. The German bishops issued the "Declaration of Königstein" that left to individual conscience of lay people whether to use contraception or not.

And much of the laity worldwide did follow their own consciences. Polls have shown that the overwhelming majority of Catholics do not accept the hierarchy's teaching that all use of artificial contraceptives is immoral. In 2016, the Pew Research Center found only 8 percent of American Catholics agree that using contraceptives is morally wrong. Catholic couples felt that they understood the situation better than celibate males.

It is uncertain how many Catholics left the church over this teaching, but it is clear that even more stayed, continued to go to Communion, and simply ignored it. This was a remarkable change for Catholics who had deferred to the clergy on moral and doctrinal teaching. It gave rise to the concept of "cafeteria Catholics," Catholics who picked and chose which teachings they would accept.

Some in the hierarchy blamed dissenting theologians for leading the people astray. While it is true that the public debate eased the consciences of some Catholics, the vast majority of Catholic couples were making up their minds on their own. In fact, studies found that increasing numbers of Catholics were already using contraceptives in the 1950s.

Rather than shoring up the authority of the hierarchy with the laity, "Humanae Vitae" undermined it. In the laity's mind, if the church could be so wrong on this issue, why should they trust the church in other areas?

"Humanae Vitae" was not just a dispute about sex. It quickly became a dispute over church authority.

Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Krakow, Poland, was a member of the papal commission studying the question of birth control. The man who would become St. John Paul II missed the last meeting where a majority of the commission voted in favor of changing church teaching. As a result, his position on birth control was not well known. We now know that he supported the minority position and wrote directly to Paul VI supporting the retention of the church's prohibition against artificial birth control.

If his opposition to birth control had been widely known, would he have been elected pope? Certainly, any cardinal who supported changing the church teaching and voted for him regretted it later.

John Paul understood that the debate over "Humanae Vitae" was as much about authority as sex. He was scandalized by the opposition of theologians and bishops to papal teaching. As a product of a persecuted church, he understood the importance of church unity. Once elected pope, he launched an inquisition against moral theologians who had spoken out against the encyclical. He was ably assisted in this effort by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whom John Paul made head of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Ratzinger succeeded John Paul as Pope Benedict XVI.

Since most of the theologians at that time were priests or members of religious orders, John Paul was able to use their promise or vow of obedience to get them under control. They were removed from teaching positions in seminaries and universities, forbidden to write on sexual topics, and told to profess their acceptance of the encyclical. The training of priests was put into the hands of those who stressed papal authority and following rules rather than the reforms of Vatican II.

Likewise, "Humanae Vitae" became a litmus test for the appointment of bishops. Loyalty to papal authority became the most important quality looked for in a potential bishop, trumping pastoral skill and intelligence. Over the almost three decades that he was pope, John Paul remade the hierarchy into a body that had little creativity or imagination in implementing the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Rather, they looked to Rome for leadership and stressed the importance of following rules.

Today, many in the hierarchy are claiming that "Humanae Vitae" was prophetic in its conviction that contraceptives led to the separation of sex from procreation and therefore to conjugal infidelity, disrespect for women, gender confusion, and gay marriage. But the controversy was never over the encyclical as a whole; rather, it was over its prohibition of every single use of artificial contraception. To say that contraception caused all of these other problems is absurd, an insult to all the good people who have used contraceptives at some point in their lives.

How should the church deal with this problem? It is probably impossible for it to simply admit it was wrong. The church is not very good at that. What it could do is say that abortion is a far greater evil, and anyone who might be tempted to have an abortion should practice birth control. The church should also stop supporting laws forbidding the sale or public funding of contraceptives. These would be small steps in reversing a 50-year-old mistake.(Underscored emphasis added.)

Here again we have the witness of a Roman Catholic publication.

John Paul reinforced his stand on the issue of Humanae Vitae and church authority by writing his own encyclical on the subject:

Evangelium Vitae (1995), by Pope John Paul II

The encyclical entitled “Evangelium Vitae,” meaning “The Gospel of Life,” was promulgated on 25 March 1995 by Pope John Paul II in Rome, Italy. The document was written to reiterate the view of the Roman Catholic Church on the value of life and to warn against violating the sanctity of life. The document focuses on right to life issues including abortion, birth control, and euthanasia, but also touches on other concepts relevant to embryology, such as contraception, in vitro fertilization, sterilization, embryonic stem cell research, and fetal experimentation. . .

In discussing abortion in passage sixty–two, Pope John Paul II agrees with Pope Paul VI’s condemnation of abortion because it is the direct killing of a human. As stated in “Humanae Vitae”, the Church finds that “direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder.”

In addition to general condemnations of abortion, Pope John Paul II also used “Evangelium Vitae” to reject modern techniques of prenatal diagnosis (when performed with the intention of providing selective abortions), chemical abortion methods (such as the RU–486 pill), unnatural methods of fertilization or artificial insemination, sterilization for birth control purposes, and other direct interventions aimed at preventing, artificially creating, or destroying the product of conception. Government policies that provide international aid only to nations with population control plans were also denounced. . .

The letter concludes by stating that direct and intentional euthanasia, murder, and abortion are grave sins that the Roman Catholic Church has condemned throughout history. “Evangelium Vitae” was written to address the value of human life and maintains that societies and individuals, especially Christians, should do everything in their power to preserve this life. Any direct form of killing is prohibited. The contribution made by “Evangelium Vitae” to the body of literature surrounding embryology comes in its specific discussion of abortion as prohibited at any stage, from conception and the earliest embryonic stages, and its reaffirmation of the historic teachings of the Church. (Underscored emphasis added.)

Note John Paul's invasion of the scientific topics of "embryology, such as contraception, in vitro fertilization, sterilization, embryonic stem cell research, and fetal experimentation." The point is that his purpose was to activate the political and legislative opposition which followed.

It is doubtful that there are many members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church who realize that by jumping on the "pro-life" bandwagon they are inadvertently supporting the Church of Rome's opposition to contraception:

Fruits of the Same Tree

One cannot be both pro-life and in favor of contraception

Since its promulgation in 1995, St. John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae has become like a pro-life manifesto. It is often cited not just for its eloquence but for its passionate defense of the great dignity of human life. The saintly pontiff is quick to point out not just the offenses against bodily life but the soul-deadening effects of many practices associated with the culture of death. From abortion and artificial reproduction to murder to euthanasia, the saintly pontiff runs the gamut of life issues, pointing out not just the bodily dangers but also the soul killing aspects of these evil practices. Despite its relative popularity, there is one section that is consistently overlooked and that is when the Holy Father speaks on contraception.

The saint says “despite their differences of nature and moral gravity, contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree” (Evangelium Vitae 13). He means this on two levels, both of which are typically ignored. The first is the truth that there is a medical connection between abortion and chemical contraceptives that remains hidden in plain sight. This connection “is being demonstrated in an alarming way by the development of chemical products, intrauterine devices and vaccines which, distributed with the same ease as contraceptives, really act as abortifacients in the very early stages of the development of the life of the new human being” (ibid).

Most assume that the Holy Father is talking about things akin to the “morning after pill” but he also has in mind the ordinary birth control pill. Anyone who has looked at the package insert for the Pill or picked up the Physicians’ Desk Reference will find that oral contraceptives work by suppressing gonadotropins which will help to inhibit ovulation. But this suppression also leads to other alterations including changing the cervical mucus, making fertilization more difficult and altering the thickness of the endometrium, reducing the likelihood of implantation. It is the latter property that makes it an abortifacient; implantation occurs after fertilization, that is after the child has been created. So the Pill is not just a contraceptive but an abortifacient.

This is why in truth you cannot be pro-life while at the same time being in favor of contraception. It is not just because the literal meaning of contra-ception is “against life.” It is because, as St. John Paul II points out, contraception and abortion are fruits of the same tree, capable of causing not just bodily death but spiritual death. Those who rely on these practices are not just succumbing to a boring hedonism but depriving themselves of the natural opportunities that make personal fulfillment possible. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The above reasoning actually goes beyond the original papal decree that "life begins at conception," in order to condemn the prevention of conception. Assuming that the scientific process described above is correct, the suggestion that preventing fertilization makes the pill an abortifacient is absurd, as are much of the papal teachings about abortion. If fertilization is prevented, what is there to abort? The Roman Catholic "pro-life" theology has led to similarly absurd legislative attempts to confer personhood on single-cell zygotes. Papal authority demands an abdication of reason to accept its fallacies on contraception and abortion.

The magnitude of the presumption, and the brazenness of the dishonesty, of "ultramontanist" Pope John Paul II, is staggering; but this is the nature of the papacy. This was exposed by his own words in defense of the winning minority report of the Papal Commission on Population and Birth Control. Note the determination to cover up error, and the role of the papal infallibility dogma in the cover-up. John Paul II's 1980 letter to the German bishops says it all:

I am convinced that the doctrine of infallibility is in a certain sense the key to the certainty with which the faith is confessed and proclaimed, as well as to the life and conduct of the faithful. For once this essential foundation is shaken or destroyed, the most basic truths of our faith likewise begin to break down. (Underscored emphasis added.)

There shall be no admission of error in any of the false doctrines and dogmas of the Church of Rome, of which the doctrine of infallibility is the "essential foundation." They include the Immaculate Conception, and the Bodily Assumption of Mary, which with infallibility form the triad of "Great Words.") Then there is a vast array of false doctrines and dogmas, which include: the Immortality of the Soul (at the heart of the "pro-life" crusade,) the False Sabbath, the Trinity, the Eucharist, preference of Tradition over the Bible, the anathemas of the Council of Trent etc. etc. How much pure unadulterated Bible Truth is it possible to find in the Church of Rome?

The papacy decrees, and not only all Catholics but all religions, science, and specifically the Civil law, must yield to the supremacy of the Pope. This is the demand of Rome!