Commentator Kirsten Powers wrote a USA Today column lamenting recent state initiatives to limit abortion, describing herself as both "pro-choice and pro-life." She recalled her own conversion to Evangelicalism a decade ago and more recent induction into Roman Catholicism. She wrote:
Throughout this period, I was surrounded by people who believe that one could not be a "real Christian” if they weren't “pro-life." I wanted to be a real Christian. Though I didn't see much in what I read in the Bible to justify this litmus test, I was new to the faith and trusted those who seemed more theologically knowledgeable.
Of course the Roman Catholic Church, which Powers has joined, has an emphatic teaching about the humanity of unborn human life and its merits for protection by civil society. Many social and political issues are matters of Christian prudential judgment. But for Roman Catholics, their church's teaching on abortion is binding.
As a Protestant, I've always been perplexed by committed Catholics, especially adult converts, who presumably have carefully pondered their church's truth claims, and then reject or minimize them. Why join or remain with an institution and faith tradition whose core premises are deeply faulty?
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