God's Love - The Vatican and Rape

The Vatican has officially defended a Brazilian Bishop who ex-communicated the doctors and mother of a 9 year old girl for allowing her an abortion after she conceived twins following alleged sexual abuse by her step-father.

Cardinal Re, of the Vatican, has said that, although it was a "sad case", the girl's would-be children "had the right to live" and that "the attack on the Brazilian Church is unjustified."

To me, the Catholic position on abortion in these cases seems nonsensical. Their argument seems to be that any conception is the perfect will of omnipotent God and that it is not our place, as imperfect humans, to divert its natural course by stopping the resulting birth from taking place.

Firstly, if we imperfect humans are able to override the will of God then he can't be very omnipotent. But more importantly, this logic implies that whatever act brought about the conception was also God's will.

Pre-marital sex is wrong, we're told, but if that sex leads to conception, it was God's will. Does this mean that in certain cases, pre-marital sex is actually right? Or can that only be determined retrospectively conception results. What if that pregnancy naturally self-terminates? Was it wrong again?

This leads to this present case. If any conception is sacred, does this mean that this poor 9-year-old's alleged rape was the will of God? Is the Catholic church actually confirming that God sanctions rape in some cases? Or worse, he orders it?

Of course this is a point where the theological trump card, "God works in mysterious ways" can be played. But if those mysterious ways involve the molestation of children, the supposed benefits of this belief system start to look rather thin on the ground.

Although, of course, that has nothing to do with the veracity of the existence of God. He could exist and be a vicious, baby-raping tyrant. In fact that would fit in rather nicely with his Old Testament persona. Not so well with the "God is love" mantra, though.