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Pope Francis. Credit: Stephen Drsicoll/CNA.“Every unborn child, although unjustly condemned to be aborted, has the face of Jesus Christ, the Lord’s face,” Pope Francis said, adding that like Christ, these aborted children experience the rejection of the world.
The Holy Father asked doctors “who are called to take care of human life in its initial phase” to remind people that “in all its phases and at any age, human life is always sacred.”
“This is a commitment to the new evangelization that often requires going against the current,” he added in his Sept. 20 address. “The Lord counts on you to spread the ‘Gospel of Life.’”
The comments come one day after the publication of an extensive interview with Pope Francis, conducted by the Jesuit-run Italian newspaper La Civiltà Cattolica and translated into English by U.S. Jesuit magazine America.
In the interview, the Pope called Christians to proclaim moral truths in the context of the Gospel and Jesus Christ rather than as “disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.”
“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible,” he said. Rather, “when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context,” allowing moral issues to flow from the proclamation of the Gospel.
Several commenters and media outlets interpreted the Pope’s remarks as a shift in Church teaching on moral issues. However, the Holy Father – who has spoken out against abortion several times during his papacy – also explained in the interview that the “teaching of the Church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the Church.”
Speaking today before a meeting sponsored by the International Federation of Associations of Catholic Physicians, Pope Francis emphasized the doctor’s role in protecting and promoting all life, which, from the unborn to the elderly, “carries the face of Christ.”
“In the fragile human being each of us is invited to recognize the face of the Lord, who in his human flesh experienced the indifference and loneliness that often condemn the poorest” members of society, he said.
The Pope lamented the “widespread mentality of profit, the ‘throwaway culture,’ which now enslaves the hearts and minds of many,” and “requires the elimination human beings, especially if they are physically or socially weaker.”
“Our response to this mentality is a firm and unhesitating ‘yes’ to life,” he emphasized.
The Holy Father noted that the defense of life in all stages “has become in recent years a real priority of the Magisterium of the Church,” especially with regard to the “most defenseless,” the unborn, elderly and sick.
He noted that, paradoxically, in medicine today, “the health professions are sometimes induced to disregard life itself” while at the same time trying to care for patients.
“The paradoxical situation can be seen in the fact that while the person is given new rights, sometimes only presumed rights, life as a primary value and basic right of every man is not always protected,” he said.
But despite the culture’s denial, the “final objective of doctor is always the defense and promotion of life,” Pope Francis affirmed.
Doctors must not discard life, which is at the center of social development, he emphasized. The intrinsic dignity of the human person is beyond any measurable worth, and no human life is “more sacred” or “more significant” than another.
With this understanding of the human person, he challenged the doctors present to “be witnesses and speakers of this ‘culture of life,’” helping the contemporary culture to recognize “the transcendent dimension” of human life from “the moment of conception.”
The Pope encouraged doctors to pray for “the strength to do your job well and to witness with courage.”
Tag Archives: Catholic Church
Sunday Snippets–A Catholic Carnival
It’s time once again for Sunday Snippets. We are Catholic bloggers sharing weekly our best posts with one another. Join us to read and/or contribute. To participate, go to your blog and create a post titled Sunday Snippets–A Catholic Carnival. Make sure that the post links back to here, and leave a link to your snippets post on our host, RAnn’s, site, This, That and the Other Thing.
My posts this week:
GOD RAYS ON GEYSER BASIN AT DAWN
Heart’s Desire
Scruples and the Fear of Hell |Blogs | NCRegister.com
Prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary after Holy Mass
Papal theologian: Treating homosexuals with dignity means telling them the truth BY JOHN-HENRY WESTEN
Papal theologian: Treating homosexuals with dignity means telling them the truth
Asked about the problem of homosexuality, gay ‘marriage’ and their incursion on relgious freedom, Fr. Giertych noted “this is not an issue which is reacting against the Church’s teaching – this is a fundamental anthropological change.” It is, he said, “a distortion of humanity which is being proposed as an ideology, which is being supported, financed, promoted by those who are powerful in the world in many, many, countries simultaneously.”
“The Church,” he added, “is the only institution in the world which has the courage to stand up to this ideology.”
He continued, noting that the increasing role of the state in society has resulted in a substantial lowering of ethical standards:
“Now, what we are observing in many countries world-wide, certainly in the 20th and the 21st century, there is an enormous extension of the responsibility of States. Now, the more the State is encroaching on the economy, on family life, on education – the State is saying that only the State has the monopoly to decide about these things. The more the State is omnipotent, the more the ethical standards are lowered, because it’s impossible to promote high ethical standards by the State.”
The 61-year-old of Polish background said, “I’ve seen the Communist ideology, which seemed to be so powerful, and it’s gone! Ideologies come and go, and they have the idea of changing humanity, of changing human nature. Human nature cannot be changed; it can be distorted. But the elevation of perversion to the level of a fundamental value that has to be nurtured and nourished and promoted – this is absolutely sick.”
“The Church, standing up to this ideology which we are seeing now in the Western world, the Church is saying something very normal and humane, which corresponds to the understanding of humanity, which humanity has had for millennia, long before Christ, long before the appearance of Christianity,” he said. “So it’s not a question of the Church fighting the ideology, it’s a question of the distortion of humanity, and the Church standing up in defence of human dignity.”
Fr. Giertych and John-Henry Westen on a balcony within the papal palace.
Speaking of practicing homosexuals Fr. Giertych said, “of course they have to be treated with dignity, everybody has to be treated with dignity, even sinners have to be treated with dignity, but the best way of treating people with dignity is to tell them the truth.”
“And if we escape from the truth we’re not treating them with dignity,” he added.
The papal theologian drew an analogy to smoking saying that helping people stop smoking is not denying their dignity.
He said:
“Homosexuality is against human nature. Now, there are many things that people do that are unnatural – smoking cigarettes is also unnatural. You can live with the addiction to tobacco, you can die of it, but there are people who are addicted to tobacco, yet they live and we meet with them and we deal with them and we don’t deny their dignity. So certainly people with the homosexual difficulty have to be respected … And so the important thing is how to pastorally help such people to return to an emotional and moral integrity.”
Fr Giertych (Pope’s personal theologian) on contraception and the coming violence
Text by Tom:
(This is the second report from the 40-minute LifeSiteNews video-recorded interview with Fr. Giertych. The first report and video was Papal theologian: Treating homosexuals with dignity means telling them the truth www.lifesitenews.com/news/papal-theologian-treating-homosexuals-with-dignity-means-telling-them-the-t)
VATICAN CITY, July 11, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – “I think clearly we can see that the economic crisis which we are observing in the western world is a direct consequence of 1968, of the rejection of Humanae Vitae, of the rejection of the Church’s teaching, and the approval of the sexual revolution, which has caused a demographic crash.” Those were the words of Rev. Wojciech Giertych OP, the Theologian of the Papal Household, in a recent interview with LifeSiteNews.com in which the highly-placed prelate related some fascinating history and projections. (See video of this part of the Giertych interview)
Beyond the issue of people working less and living longer which creates economic instability, Fr. Giertych discussed “the moral issue of spending money and throwing the debt on the next generation, on a generation which has been partly aborted, which has not met with the generosity of the parents,” and described it as “the preparation of a violent conflict between generations.”
“I am seeing this brewing, certainly in Europe,” added Fr. Giertych. “In America at least you have a public debate about the morality of extending the public debt and throwing the responsibility on the future generation.”
Children living in poverty because their parents experienced a tragedy or war, can live with their circumstances understanding the calamity that led to their state he explained. He contrasted that however with “a vast segment of society saying we are poor compared to what the generation of our parents had, not because there was some catastrophe, but because the generation of our parents consumed all the [wealth] and threw the responsibility on us.”
The papal theologian drew attention to the violent youth protests and mass unemployment across Europe. “They are generally demonstrating saying, ‘We have the right to receive’, because their parents received grants for their studies, they received cheaper housing, and so they have this sense of entitlement which is a consequence of socialism – somebody has to give.”
Fr. Giertych warned “ultimately there will be a violent conflict.”
He said: “And the states are finally saying, ‘We cannot give. There is a limit, you know. How far can we go?’ And of course the state may produce money and be more and more in debt, but ultimately there will be a violent conflict, and euthanasia is one aspect of this conflict, which is a direct consequence of the expulsion of the transmission of life and the living out of sexuality. Ultimately it boils down to contraception – it’s a consequence.”
The Church, he said, will have an answer for the youth, one they will need to and be glad to hear. “I think there will come a moment where the young people will need to hear, will be glad to hear from the Church a voice which will be on their side, and a voice which will point to the egoism of the hedonist generation that has distorted society,” he said. “And it has distorted society beginning at a very important focal point, which is sexuality… and we are seeing the consequences.”
We began our discussion with the Papal theologian how the Catholic Church could defend its ‘hard teaching’ on contraception.
Fr, Giertych emphasized that the issue is about a reality that applies to everyone. He explained, “it’s not only a question of being in sync with Church teaching, it’s being in sync with reality, with the nature of the human person and the nature of love, which we received from God, whereas the Church’s teaching is showing us the way towards that supreme love.”
For Fr. Giertych there is nothing difficult about the answer of why the Catholic Church forbids contraception. “Because it distorts the human sexuality, and elevates the moment of sexual pleasure, whereas it denies the fundamental finality of sexuality, which is the transmission of life,” he said. “Sexual activity has been created, devised by God, as a way of transmitting life and expressing love, whereas contraception separates the transmission of life which it excludes, and then focuses uniquely on the pleasure, which generates, as a result, egoism.”
“The main reason why the Church says ‘no’ [to] contraception,” said Fr. Geirtych, “is that it destroys the quality of love, and marital love, which is a way of expressing the graces of the sacrament of matrimony, which is a way of living out the divine charity which is infused in the body and soul of the spouses.”
He explained that “marital love is to be of the supreme quality” but “contraception boils down to the saying of the spouse, ‘There’s something in you that I love, but there’s something in you that I hate, and I hate the fact that you can be a mother. So I require that this will be poisoned.’ Well, this is not love. It is not possible for a husband to say to his wife, ‘I love you truly,’ if at the same time he demands that she poisons in her body the capacity to transmit life, to be a mother.”
“That distortion of sexuality,” he said, “distorts human relationships, distorts the entire living-out of human sexuality.”
He added:
“When sexuality is not tied with the virtue of chastity, which trains the person how to integrate the sexual desire within charity, then everything is rocked. And certainly we are seeing this once contraception became so easily available. We’re seeing, successively, the distortions of sexuality, and problems on the level of human relationships, of marriages breaking down, of a violent aggressiveness of women who are discovering that they are being abused as a result of contraception, and so they’re landing in an aggressive feminism, with rage against men. Contraception is leading to abortion, because it treats the potential child as an enemy, and if something goes wrong and a child is conceived then the child is easily aborted.”
On contraception and the coming violence: Interview with Pope’s personal theologian | LifeSiteNews.com
This is the second report from the 40-minute LifeSiteNews video-recorded interview with Fr. Giertych. The first report and video was Papal theologian: Treating homosexuals with dignity means telling them the truth)
VATICAN CITY, July 11, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – “I think clearly we can see that the economic crisis which we are observing in the western world is a direct consequence of 1968, of the rejection of Humanae Vitae (the encylical that reiterated the Catholic teaching against contraception), of the rejection of the Church’s teaching, and the approval of the sexual revolution, which has caused a demographic crash.” Those were the words of Rev. Wojciech Giertych OP, the Theologian of the Papal Household, in a recent interview with LifeSiteNews.com in which the highly-placed prelate related some fascinating history and projections. (See video of this part of the Giertych interview)
Beyond pointing out the reality of people working less and living longer, which creates economic instability, Fr. Giertych discussed “the moral issue of spending money and throwing the debt on the next generation, on a generation which has been partly aborted, which has not met with the generosity of the parents,” and described it as “the preparation of a violent conflict between generations.”
“I am seeing this brewing, certainly in Europe,” added Fr. Giertych. “In America at least you have a public debate about the morality of extending the public debt and throwing the responsibility on the future generation.”
Children living in poverty because their parents experienced a tragedy or war, can live with their circumstances, understanding the calamity that led to their state, he explained. He contrasted that, however, with “a vast segment of society saying we are poor compared to what the generation of our parents had, not because there was some catastrophe, but because the generation of our parents consumed all the [wealth] and threw the responsibility on us.”
The papal theologian drew attention to the violent youth protests and mass unemployment across Europe. “They are generally demonstrating saying, ‘We have the right to receive’, because their parents received grants for their studies, they received cheaper housing, and so they have this sense of entitlement which is a consequence of socialism – somebody has to give.”
John Thavis | Pope Francis on the risk of a ‘babysitter’ church
Essentially, the pope argued that unless lay Catholics are willing to courageously live and proclaim their faith, the church risks turning into a “babysitter” for sleeping children.
Pope Francis was speaking to the mostly lay employees of the Vatican bank in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where his morning Masses have become daily teaching moments.
He referred to the day’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles on the evangelizing efforts of the earliest Christians, who traveled from place to place proclaiming the Gospel.
“They were a simple faithful, baptized just a year or so before – but they had the courage to go and proclaim,” he said.
“I think of us, the baptized: do we really have this strength – and I wonder – do we really believe in this? Is baptism enough? Is it sufficient for evangelization? Or do we rather ‘hope’ that the priest should speak, that the bishop might speak … and what of us? Then, the grace of baptism is somewhat closed, and we are locked in our thoughts, in our concerns. Or sometimes think: ‘No, we are Christians, I was baptized, I made Confirmation, First Communion … I have my identity card all right. And now, go to sleep quietly, you are a Christian.’ But where is this power of the Spirit that carries us forward?”
The pope said Christians today need to “be faithful to the Spirit, to proclaim Jesus with our lives, through our witness and our words.”
“When we do this, the church becomes a mother church that produces children…. But when we do not, the church is not the mother, but the babysitter, that takes care of the baby – to put the baby to sleep. It is a church dormant. Let us reflect on our baptism, on the responsibility of our baptism.”
via John Thavis | Pope Francis on the risk of a ‘babysitter’ church.
Be Holy! 