According to a Catholic Register (April 13, 1985) report by Paulist Father Thomas Ryan of the Montreal (Catholic) Ecumenical Centre, the National United Church – Roman Catholic Dialogue Group has agreed to discuss abortion. The dialogue group has been meeting three times a year since 1975.
In February 1985, according to Fr. Ryan, the group decided to devote the next three meetings to this issue “on the conviction that it is when things are very tense that dialogue is most important.”
Differences could not be more pronounced. The Catholic Church has taught consistently since the days of the apostles that human life is sacred from its very beginning and that life innocent of any crime may never be put to death. The United Church, formed in Canada in 1926, also believed this, until the early sixties, when it favoured accepting abortion first for exceptional reasons, then later on, as a matter of a pregnant woman’s choice.
