ROME, June 26, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com)
– The first motivation for Pope John Paul to produce the landmark
encyclical Evangelium Vitae, was a scholarly paper revealing the extent
and brutality of the global population control movement. Evangelium
Vitae was intended by Pope John Paul as a weapon against the
international population control movement, “to oppose the economically
stronger nations and powerful international lobbies.”
In an extensive interview with Lorenzo Schoepflin at the Rome-based
newspaper Il Foglio, Cardinal Elio Sgreccia, the now-retired head of the
Pontifical Academy for Life, has described the history of the one of
the most important intellectual tools of the global pro-life movement.
Sgreccia assisted Pope John Paul II in every step of the encyclical’s
preparation.
Having been known as a strong opponent of Communism, the pope was now
standing against the Western democracies that were moving towards
dictatorship, “because when you split love and life, life and with it
the man himself become the object of domination,” said the cardinal.
Sgreccia said that in Evangelium Vitae, “Pope John Paul II has codified
absolute and irreformable moral principles, the heritage of the ancient
tradition of the Church. We must not forget that the condemnation of
abortion is done, and I quote, ‘with the authority which Christ
conferred upon Peter and his Successors, in communion with the
bishops’.” This places it at the highest level of doctrinal authority,
to be accepted and affirmed by all who want to call themselves Catholic.
Asked whether it is still in force under the new pope, Sgreccia said,
“The media, not without reductionism of various types, likes to describe
the movement from Pope Benedict XVI to Bergoglio as a transition from a
‘doctrinal pope’ to a ‘pastoral pope’.
“But this cannot in any way constitute a door to possible
discontinuities of these basic materials. Let us remember that
Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, once said that ‘abortar es
matar,’ abortion is murder. That is what is stated in the encyclical.”
Sgreccia, was described by Italian jurist Francesco D’Agostino as “the
greatest Catholic bioethicist” and the scholar who embodies in the most
accurate, consistent and systematic official positions of the Church
today in the field of bioethics. His two-volume “Manual of Bioethics,”
is thought to be the authoritative guide to Church positions in the
field. In his 80s, he continues to write and was named Honorary
President of the National Bioethics Committee, of which he is a founding
member. He is currently working on the sixth volume of the
“Encyclopedia of bioethics and legal science”.
Sgreccia noted that internal dissent from the Church’s teaching on life
issues, even at the highest levels of the Church, is a longstanding
problem. “We all know the initial dissent which met Humanae Vitae of
Pope Paul VI [on contraception] and then the silence that
fell on the encyclical.”
“For Evangelium Vitae that did not happen,” he said. But there has been
a similar problem within the clergy, whom he addressed directly: “Often
you do not know bioethics and you consider its arguments too
specialized, and do not always take into account the domain that modern
science has on human life.”
In the 90s Sgreccia discovered first hand the true extent of the
ruthlessness and brutality of the international population control
movement. At a conference in a hospital in Mexico City, while giving a
paper on the ethics of sterilization, he said, “While I was speaking of
the distinction between therapeutic sterilization and contraceptive
sterilization, the [doctors] told me that they had received orders to
close the fallopian tubes of one in five women, even without their
consent.”
This order, he was told, had come from a “pact” between the national
government and the World Bank, as a condition of Mexico receiving
international economic aid.
“Even in Italy,” he said, “parties were funding anti-life policies and
cultural centers to spread these kinds of ideas. And the rich West,
though they do not need to limit births, had to lead by example: the
fewer children the better.”
The impulse to control global population came after the Second World War, he said, based on the now discredited theories of Thomas Malthus
about the “balance” of global food and natural resources. “After every
war we witness a boom in population growth, which is then followed by a
natural adjustment. Nevertheless, the world powers were concerned for
the balance of the planet and set in motion the birth control using
contraception, sterilization and abortion.”
The paper, “Abortion and Politics,” that had alarmed the pope was by
Belgian political philospher Michel Schooyans and described the extent
and origins of the international population control movement, and their
tactics.
After reading Schooyans’ book, John Paul convened a series of meetings
with international leaders to find out the real extent of the movement.
“The Pope wanted to know how many abortions there were worldwide. I
found in the library of the Catholic University the proceedings of a
conference of the International Society of Forensic Medicine, which
provided data still considered valid: between 45 and 50 million per year
of registered abortions,” Sgreccia said.
The encyclical grew out of a meeting of key curial cardinals; “The
cardinals themselves asked for a document of the highest authority, that
is, an encyclical… to speak out about the seriousness of abortion and
decisively assert the identity of the unborn.” The encyclical went
through three drafts and was then put aside for three years. In the
meantime, Pope John Paul established the Pontifical Academy for Life, a
consultory body that would examine bioethical issues and offer
information and advice to the pope.
Sgreccia particularly addressed the notorious problem of the “lesser
evil” argument that has been used by politicians to justify passing laws
that condone or allow abortion. The Encyclical specifically addresses
this in the famous section 73, which many have used as an excuse to
support permissive legislation. Sgreccia was clear that this was an
improper use of the encyclical, and not the intention of the pope.
Section 73 starts by stating, “Abortion and euthanasia are thus crimes
which no human law can claim to legitimize.” It goes on to identify “a
particular problem of conscience” in the case of a legislative vote on
“a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized
abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to
be voted on”.
It instructs politicians, saying, “when it is not possible to overturn
or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose
absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could
licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law
and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general
opinion and public morality.
“This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust
law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil
aspects.”
Sgreccia commented that “not all theologians agreed” with the inclusion
of this passage. So the pope clarified, “that it was not here to
approve a lesser evil, but to limit damage produced by others”.
Pope John Paul, Sgreccia said, “Believed strongly in the ability of
such a text to stop the mad rush of the world towards population
control, driven by international authorities.” And yet, he added, it has
not stopped. “The cultural influence of the Magisterium in this area
was silenced.”
And so the damage continues to grow as more and more people are
eliminated from the drama of human life. Sgreccia cited the work of
Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker who has said that “the lack of
human capital” is a serious injury that creates poverty. “Fewer men does
not mean more resources are available,” he said, “as erroneously
assumed by Malthus. And to repair that damage takes periods of time that
are measured in generations.”
In a time of a “suffocating” and apparently insoluble economic crisis,
Sgreccia noted, “Evangelium vitae reveals itself in many ways,
prophetic”. The crisis, he said, has served as a shock that has in some
cases awakened conscience. He quoted Benedict XVI saying in Caritas in
Veritate that “openness to life is at the center of true development,”
highlighting the “unbreakable bond” between socio-economic issues and
anthropological and bioethical issues.
“The Church is the critical conscience of humanity,” he said, “and
often plays a prophetic role. Man must touch bottom to go back, but
history teaches us that there are regrets, albeit late, which bring him
back on track. This time it was the economic crisis, the rude awakening”
Cardinal Sgreccia said.
