Pope Francis says all priests can forgive abortion

[PJ]

With sincere intent, honest contrition, and appropriate penance, all can be forgiven.

Yeah, Francis is simply looking at this from the above viewpoint, not becoming pro-choice or anything. As with nearly all statements made by Pope Francis, many non-Catholic liberals like to pretend it's some sort of massive left-wing shift in the Catholic Church, when it's simply what Catholic teaching has been for decades.

I'm not a worshipping Catholic, unlike the rest of my family, so I'm rather indifferent towards the man, but voted HP in protest of progressive revisionism about the man's beliefs.

[PJ]

With sincere intent, honest contrition, and appropriate penance, all can be forgiven.

Yeah, Francis is simply looking at this from the above viewpoint, not becoming pro-choice or anything. As with nearly all statements made by Pope Francis, many non-Catholic liberals like to pretend it's some sort of massive left-wing shift in the Catholic Church, when it's simply what Catholic teaching has been for decades.

I'm not a worshipping Catholic, unlike the rest of my family, so I'm rather indifferent towards the man, but voted HP in protest of progressive revisionism about the man's beliefs.

I sympathize with your view. People rarely even believe me when I point out that Benedict said the same anti-capitalist stuff. With this though, I think this is a legitimate change in direction. Obviously it's not going to be good enough for some social liberals, who think abortion is great and not something you should ever feel bad about. I think this is about as far as the Catholic Church can go though. "Abortion is bad but...ugggh, let's change the subject" basically.

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This doesn't even change Catholic teaching. It's simply a continuance of what has essentially been the status quo by Francis. I'm not under the illusion that there is any chance of further shifts on abortion within Catholicism, but I wouldn't describe this as a shift either.