It’s possible to be religious and not impose your theological beliefs on other people

Jun 06, 2024

There are many aspects of life in Italy, where I will be living soon, that differ dramatically from how we live in the US. I’ve written about the slower pace as well as the robust safety net (compared to the US) that is provided to those who live there, among many factors.

While reading The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America, out this week, I was reminded of another aspect: how differently Christians, specifically Catholics, behave in public life in both countries, especially around the issue of abortion.

In The Fall of Roe, the New York Times journalists Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer offer a definitive historical account of how Roe v. Wade came to be overturned. They gained access to key players in the drama including former Planned Parenthood head Cecile Richards, longtime Federalist Society president Leonard Leo and Marjorie Dannenfelser, the head of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

Leo and Dannenfelser are conservative Catholics, and there is no doubt their religious beliefs were the driving force behind their efforts to make abortion illegal in the United States. While evangelicals play a huge role in the anti-abortion movement, the brain trust behind the campaign to overturn Roe was overwhelmingly Catholic. Crucially, Leo played a pivotal role in loading the Supreme Court with conservative Catholics dedicated to eviserating Roe.

But for conservative Catholics, it’s hard to see how Roe would ever have fallen.

Yet in Italy, where more than 80 percent of the population is Catholic and which is home to the Vatican, abortion has long been considered a settled question regardless of where people stand on the political spectrum.

Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is vocally anti-abortion but promised in her election campaign that, despite her personal beliefs, she wouldn’t work to make abortion illegal. While it remains to be seen if she sticks to this promise, it’s impossible to imagine even a mainstream US Republican presidential candidate saying something like this.

John Allen, a journalist who has covered the Vatican for decades and is respected across the political aisle, wrote in 2022:

Italy…legalized abortion in 1978 and went through a tumultuous popular referendum on the subject in 1981, which ended by upholding the new law. Since then, the motto of Italian politics has been that the abortion law non si tocca, meaning “it’s not to be touched,” because it’s perceived as representing a social consensus. That position, more or less, is shared by both left and right.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t more work to be done to increase abortion access in Italy. But it is broadly accepted that abortion in this Catholic country should be legal. In public hospitals, abortions are paid for by the government. Meanwhile, in the US, conservative American Catholics—and even some mainstream Catholics—are convinced that being Catholic means forcing everyone else to live by their religious beliefs.

It’s fairly straightforward that Catholicism teaches that abortion is a sin. I don’t believe this, but I don’t deny that this is the teaching. There was a period of time when I did believe being a “real Christian”™ meant accepting this teaching, during which I wrote some deeply regrettable columns I wish I could delete from the Internet.

But even when I was very religious and identified as “pro-life” because I thought that’s what a “real Christian” did, I never believed I was obligated to deny rights to other people based on my religious beliefs. In fact, I always found the effort to overturn Roe based on theological beliefs alarming.

Unlike Italy, the US does not even have a majority Catholic country; only 20 percent of American adults are Catholic, and many of them support legal abortion. Still, a powerful subsection of American Catholics expect Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, and Catholics and Christians who support abortion rights to live according to Catholic theology.

They malign American Catholics who are pro-abortion rights and claim they should not be allowed to take Mass. Over in Italy, where the Pope lives, there is no such controversy. Indeed, after a hyper-conservative American archbishop declared that Nancy Pelosi should be denied communion, she received communion at a Vatican Mass presided over by Pope Francis.

Francis is unequivocally against abortion—he’s called it evil, murder and ‘hiring a hitman.’ Still, he also doesn’t believe that a Catholic who supports abortion rights should be denied communion. While conservative Catholics like to claim that Francis doesn’t understand Catholic teaching, his stance on this is no different than popes before him, including Pope John Paul II, who conservative Catholics revere. More from John Allen:

During the Great Jubilee year of 2000, presided over by Pope John Paul II, the mayor of Rome was a center-left practicing Catholic named Francesco Rutelli. He took the standard Catholic Democrat line, which was personal opposition to abortion but unwillingness to criminalize it. Rutelli attended virtually all of the important papal Masses during the Jubilee and always received communion, sometimes from the hands of John Paul II himself.

Whenever I write about abortion, I get bombarded with emails about how I’m not even Catholic because I support abortion rights. Truthfully, I don’t care whether others think I’m a Christian or a Catholic because I’m not even sure myself. I know that I’m deeply spiritual, but I don’t think I’ll get any clarity around what I believe in until I am living in Italy, away from American Christianity.

The fact that there are American Christians who will read this and claim Pope Francis and the Italian bishops don’t understand Catholicism is part of what makes the abortion issue in the US so maddening to discuss. They will insist Italians aren’t really Catholic because of lower church attendance than the US, but then when Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi attend church every week, they too are not “real” Catholics. Anyone who doesn’t conform to an American-style anti-abortion agenda is automatically declared a fake Christian—even the Pope.

Worse, the Religious Right isn’t bound by borders. They are prone to exporting their ideology to other countries. In fact,

has an interview up this week with an author who has a book out about the Christian Right and how it is spreading American culture war issues to churches in Europe.

Recently, Italy was in the headlines when Meloni’s far-right-led government approved a law allowing anti-abortion groups access to publicly funded family planning centers. The most influential Italian anti-abortion group supportive of the measure, Pro Vita e Famiglia, has accepted roughly $100,000 in funding from the American anti-abortion group Heartbeat International.

This kind of measure in the US would be cheered by many conservative American bishops, but the Catholic-focused news site Crux noted that Italian bishops have taken a dim view of this effort, particularly because it has the fingerprints of the US anti-abortion movement on it, which the bishops view as overly aggressive and problematiic.

I’ve said many times that Italy is no panacea. It’s not perfect on many issues. They are behind some other European countries and the US when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues and women’s rights relating to harassment and sexual assault, for example.

Italy is, however, an interesting contrast to consider when thinking about the various issues we are facing in the United States. We can get used to accepting certain things as normal, or unavoidable, even when they are anything but.

The way we live in the United States is not normal

·

November 29, 2023

Read full story

Refer a friend