I’m not Catholic, but from what I understand of it, it’s impossible to be Catholic and not follow what the church teaches. A person is either Catholic, meaning they follow the precepts of the Catholic Church, or they are something else not Catholic. Dissent is permissible, but one must follow the rules whether one agrees with them or not. In other words, pro-murder (aka abortion) “Catholics” cannot aid or abet abortion in any way, or they are not Catholic. They can discuss their opinions with church hierarchy but have no authority to act by themselves to change doctrine. Is that a fair assessment of proper dissent within the church?
Yes it is. Unfortuantely the church isn’t loud enough IMHO about this evil and those who support it. I’ve always felt that there are some things even G-d wouldn’t forgive you for and that those who support and condone this should know about the mark on their soul. I would not want to be any of them on judgement day.
So by Church law everyone responsible for an abortion --- the woman, the so-called doctor, the boyfriend who gave her the money or drove her to the abortion site, politicians who voted for funding and thus intentionally enabled abortions --- they're all instantly excommunicated.
However.
Most Catholics are unaware of the automatic excommunication; I have never, ever heard it preached upon and have rarely seen an article about it in a Catholic publication. Thus people with this grave offnse on their souls come up for Communion and nobody says them nay; morever, even the most public, manifest, un-your-face unrepentant accomplices --- the pro-abort politicians --- are excluded from Communion only on rare occasions. So rarely that it makes headlines.
This has been the problem in the Catholic Church for the past 40 years: wonderful doctrines, terrible discipline. It's so ironic, because the Church still has the reputation of being so darn 'judgmental' and 'authoritarian' and so on, when the reality has long been the complete opposite: the corruption of having laws that everybody, from the High and Mighty Reverends on down, fail shamefully to enforce.
It's getting a bit better now. American Archbishop Raymond Burke was just appointed Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura (that's the Catholic equivalent of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) and he a firm, just, and serious man who, as Archbishop of St. Louis, four years ago had told Kerry he wasn't to receive Communion in his diocese.
Burke can only lead by argument and example. There's no enforcement on the slacker bishops if they just keep cowardly silence, so long as they refrain from open dissent. But a subset American bishops seem to be following Burke's lead. For which I give thanks.
Pray for us.