That’s not exactly what he said.
In the summer of 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in its Dobbs decision, overturned a nationwide right to abortion; it triggered back into effect a 1931 law in Michigan that prohibited abortion. Some prosecutors in the state said they would not enforce it; others said they would; and a judge, Elizabeth Gleicher, issued a stay of the effect of that law, in what appeared to me to be an exercise of her personal preferences rather than an application of law.
Meanwhile, Michigan voters faced an amendment to the state constitution that would have mandated a right to abortion in Michigan. This was known as Proposal 3, and was on the ballot in the fall 2022 election. It passed by a wide margin, amending the Michigan state constitution and guaranteeing the right to abortion in that state.
This did not sit well with the Roman Catholic archbishop of Detroit, Allen Vigneron.
“Abortion is now legal in Michigan at an unprecedented level, and millions of lives are at stake,” Vigneron said. “We must pray and ask God for his mercy upon us for allowing this evil to happen in our state. For this reason, I want to invite all the faithful to join me in the first two weeks of Advent, from November 27 to December 9, in doing penance, giving alms, praying, and fasting. We must use these spiritual practices to make reparations for the great sin of abortion in our midst.”
To “invite” someone to do something is not to “direct,” “order,” “mandate” or “command” that the person do it. I don’t know enough about Roman Catholic belief and practice to know whether or not the archbishop could have done any of those other things; it is possible that his “invitation” has the same effect. My same inadequate knowledge of Roman Catholicism will apply also to other questions here below.
I don’t see a need for Michigan’s Roman Catholics to make reparations for this event. I don’t see that they “allowed” it. If they had had the right or power to not “allow” it, then serious questions might rise about the First Amendment and about whether or not Roman Catholic dogma can rightly dictate the law of the land.
I perceive other questions, about cosmic dynamics and energies and karma.
Can these activities on the part of Roman Catholics bring about a reversal of the electoral event?
Are they likely to have the effect, in terms of energies, of changing the minds of the millions of voters who, in good conscience after all, voted in favor of the proposal?
Can they compel such a change of mind?
Offhand, the answer I suppose to each of those questions is no.
So I see, what is to me, a very strange cosmology at work in the archbishop’s statement.
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