Dear Cdl. Dolan, Where Have You BEEN? UPDATED!!

Monica Migliorino Miller, again.  But see update below!!

Towards the end of the [Fox and Friends] broadcast the cardinal answered the following question submitted by a viewer: “What is the Church’s stance on a mother who gets an abortion?”
Dolan responded:

 [To] a mom who has an abortion, we’d say, “Mom, we love you. We might not, uh, particularly condone what you just did. But we love you, and, uh, we’re not about to judge you.” It used to be people who said we should excommunicate the mothers that did that. We don’t do that anymore. You’re welcome back in the Church. If you have a sense of shame and regret about what you’ve done—and I presume you might—uh, come and ask for God’s mercy and it’s yours for the asking. So the blame doesn’t need to go on the mom here… You would say that it used to be pretty clean that an abortion would cause the excommunication not only of the one who did it, [but] people who encourage it, and the one who had it. The Church in the last 50 years—beginning with, uh, Pope John Paul II and especially intensified under Pope Francis—has said, “I don’t know if that’s gospel values, here, because mercy trumps everything.” And even though we would be uncompromising, uh, in our teaching about the horror of abortion, we would also be uncompromising in our teaching about God’s mercy....

Frankly, I don't watch any of the morning 'news-ish' programs because they are usually drivel plus weather maps.  Who needs that?

Well, Cdl. Dolan certainly produced the "drivel" for that show.  As Miller remarks:

...Cardinal Dolan’s response to this question is shot through with multiple errors. It gives me no pleasure to say so, but he totally misrepresented the teachings and practice of the Church regarding the canonical penalty that applies to those who cause abortion. Perhaps Dolan was overly eager to emphasize and provide a coast-to-coast teaching moment on the mercy of God. But in doing so he left doctrinal and pastoral wreckage in his wake....

Yah, well, it gives ME no pleasure to observe that Cdl. Dolan is now tied with Pp. Francis on the doctrinal/canonical error index.  Apparently the Cardinal didn't read anything coming from Rome during the papacies of JPII and B-16.

Put plainly, as Vince Lombardi once shouted:  "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON OUT THERE??"

UPDATE:  Ed Peters demurs, citing Canon 1324, #1, which basically exempts almost every woman from the penalty of C. 1398.   Odd, because my recollection of the law is the same as Miller's.  We prolly heard it from the same (flawed) source back in the '70's....

On the other hand, 1398 replaces a Canon which specifically included the mothers in the 'excommunication'.  Since 1398 says NOTHING to change that, it's logical to conclude that the moms ARE excommunicated, subject to 1324 #1.  So Monica may be wrong (as was I) but only because plain English is very misleading, per Peters.