Pope Makes It Easier for Women who had an Abortion to Rejoin Church

Pope Francis has announced that women who have had abortions can be rejoin his church if they ask forgiveness from a priest ( as oppose to having to go to a Bishop.)

In Roman Catholicism killing a child in the womb is considered a mortal sin; if anyone who commits a mortal sin is found out they are officially excommunicated and thus kicked out of the church. It was already possible for a women who had had an abortion to rejoin the church but she had to spend the time going to the Bishop.

According to Catholic doctrine if a person dies after committing a mortal sin and failing to repent that person will be damned to Hell.

Other mortal sins that the Roman Catholic Church has declared include: Adultery, masturbation, rape, suicide and failing to go to Mass on certain Holy Days. According to the official catechism of the Roman Catholic church: "Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God's law. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin.(CCC 1859)

The Roman Catholic Church has long taught that Salvation comes only through it but in Protestant   churches it's different.

Each Protestant denomination has different standards for who should be kicked out of the church. The problem in both Catholicism and Protestantism is that there are people professing to be true believers while continually sinning in grave ways. In Protestantism the majority of churches will accept someone as part of the community so long as they repent and show evidence of a repentant life style. There are two reasons someone is kicked out: holding to heresy or continually sinning without regret.

The practice of kicking people outside of a church goes back to the first century; St. Paul writes about what to do with one man in Corinth who claimed to be a Christian:

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife. And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the Name of our Lord Jesus on the one who has been doing this. So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.-1 Corinthians 5:1-5

The goal then for the first century Christian church was that people should repent so that they may enter the Kingdom of God.