Jakubczyk on Life

a tragedy screaming for answers

Have any of you read about the tragic events that occurred in Virginia? It seems from the stories making the news that a Richmond Catholic Charities facilitated an abortion of a young Guatemalan girl who was a ward of the court. We still do not know many details and what we do know is very disturbing. Here are the limited facts as we know them. The 16 girl was a ward of the Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement and in the custody of Catholic Charities. Apparently the abortion took place in January of this year. Federal authorities learned of the incident and began an investigation. Four employees have been fired and one manager has been suspended according to a secret April 29 letter detailing the events which were reported in the Wanderer, a Catholic national newspaper. What then was later disclosed is that the bishop was aware of the plan to take her for an abortion and did nothing to stop it.

My frustration at reading this article bubbled into anger at the failure of people to stop something like this. when i think of what we try to do to stop the killing throughout the nation, the idea that a Catholic operation would even have considered or permitted this to happen is appalling. And here is a little sidebar. The counselors had "fitted" the girl with a contraceptive devise two months previous to the abortion.

The bishop's own admission in his letter addressing the issue only raises more questions. Who told him that it had to happen? Who was responsible for the procurement of the procedure? Where did it happen? Why did he not get up an try to personally stop it?

An opinion piece on Spero News by Mary Ann Kreitzer asks similar questions.

This event reminds us that the leadership of the USCCB has much to explain. It further tells us that the bureaucratic operations in the Church throughout the country need to have a crash course in Catholic teaching. It is totally inexcusable that an employee of any Catholic Charities would even consider doing what was done in Virginia.

And here is the topper - what was done violates state and federal law.

When I think back at the 1999 case of the 14 year old who was whisked off to Kansas to have a later term abortion while our governor was the attorney general, it becomes even more distressing.

I wonder who got the girl pregnant. And did the employees who arranged for the abortion know his identity? and given that the child was 16, his contact with her is a violation of the criminal law as well.

Stay tuned.

posted by Jakubczyk on Life @ 6:46 PM