Our Pro-Life Pope

The Holy Father spoke to an association of Italian doctors last week and his words could not have been more clear. Here is the lead paragraph from the Vatican Insider report:

Fidelity to the Gospel of life and respect for life as a gift from God sometimes require choices that are courageous and go against the current, which in particular circumstances, may become points of conscientious objection, Francis said in todays address to the Italian Catholic Doctors Association. The dominant thinking sometimes suggests a false compassion, that which retains that it is: helpful to women to promote abortion; an act of dignity to obtain euthanasia; a scientific breakthrough to produce a child and to consider it to be a right rather than a gift to welcome; or to use human lives as guinea pigs presumably to save others, the Pope said in his speech.

If anyone doubted Pope Francis pro-life commitment, these words should squash their reservations.

Some pro-life Catholics were worried when Pope Francis said last year that the Church should not obsess only about abortion, contraception, and same-sex marriage. Their worry was in direct proportion to the degree that these same critics had obsessed about the triumvirate of issues which, with euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research, were listed as the five non-negotiable issues by Professor Robbie George, a meme that caught fire in conservative Catholic circles. I pointed out at t he time that, in a sense, none of the Churchs teachings are negotiable, and that this meme amounted to a reduction of Christian ethics to political efficacy. But, there was never any doubt the pope was firmly committed to the pro-life cause. Anyone who has read and pondered the Scriptures must perform some strange intellectual somersaults to be other than pro-life.

These same pro-life advocates who criticized the popes comments on obsession have also tended to dismiss, downplay, or derogate Pope Francis consistently trenchant criticisms of the modern economy and his commitment to social justice. This, too, betrays a political agenda not a sound doctrinal or theological stance. The Churchs pro-life concerns are linked in their essence with the Churchs commitment to social justice.

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In 1997, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops passed a document on Hispanics and the New Evangelization that included this paragraph:

In our country, the modern, technological, functional mentality creates a world of replaceable individuals incapable of authentic solidarity. In its place, society is grouped by artificial arrangements created by powerful interests. The common ground is an increasingly dull, sterile, consumer conformism visible especially among so many of our young people created by artificial needs promoted by the media to support powerful economic interests. Pope John Paul II has called this a culture of death.The New Evangelization, therefore, requires the Church to provide refuge and sustenance for ongoing growth to those rescued from the loneliness of modern life. It requires the promotion of a culture of life based on the Gospel of life.

The phrase culture of death may have been used by partisans to equate with party of death when speaking of the Democrats Cardinal Burke used that unhappy phrase but that equation was always wrong.

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Our Pro-Life Pope