Eutanásia: A democracia assenta em chão firme, não depende de uma mera opinião - por José Maria André

In Público

 

Cada vez que este jornal publica, com uma certa regularidade, os artigos de Laura Ferreira dos Santos a favor da eutanásia, fico perplexo. Muito havia a dizer, mas vou debater apenas o argumento da liberdade e da tolerância em abono da eutanásia (por exemplo, no artigo de 6 de Agosto de 2011).

Quando se diz que uma sociedade tolerante deve proporcionar o homicídio assistido a quem o pedir, invertem-se os dados da questão, porque isso não é um pedido de tolerância mas de colaboração: os defensores da eutanásia pretendem obrigar-nos a satisfazer o desejo de quem quer ser morto. Seria mais razoável que, em nome da tolerância, nos deixassem em paz.

Nos artigos referidos há uma objecção interessante, que aceito, à parte um pequeno sofisma: defender a inviolabilidade da vida humana equivale a impor uma determinada perspectiva sobre a verdade, excluindo outras. De facto, quando a sociedade toma posição em defesa da dignidade humana assume como verdade que o ser humano tem um valor intrínseco, não sujeito a transacção. No entanto, isso não é uma «determinada perspectiva sobre a verdade», é a própria verdade. Aliás, é um elemento de verdade absolutamente fundamental, sobre o qual assenta uma sociedade que se queira justa, livre e tolerante.

Uma sociedade tolerante não é aquela que aceita tudo. Não pode aceitar a guerra da Líbia, a instabilidade do Iraque, ou a violência da China... não aceita o inaceitável. Não derruba os pilares-base da vida social, nomeadamente o princípio de que a vida humana é inviolável. Esta verdade não é negociável, numa sociedade digna. Não é uma perspectiva acerca da verdade, que estejamos dispostos a trocar por qualquer outra.

Colaborar num homicídio, a pedido da vítima ou com qualquer outro pretexto, é contradizer a verdade fundacional de uma sociedade democrática e solidária. Por isso, introduzir a eutanásia é uma subversão tão grave da ordem social, em linha com aquelas contradições do slogan do Ministério da Verdade do inferno orwelliano: «Guerra é paz; liberdade é escravidão; ignorância é força».

Qualquer ordenamento jurídico, por mais bárbaro que seja, reconhece o valor de algumas vidas humanas, por razões de família, de dinheiro, ou de poder. A inovação característica da democracia é proclamar de que todas as pessoas, sem excepção, merecem esse respeito e de modo absoluto. A democracia não se fundamenta na afirmação de que todos têm êxito nos negócios, ou de que todos são saudáveis, ou têm notoriedade social. Nem sequer importa o que «têm», mas o que «são». A verdade fundacional da democracia é que o ser humano, pelo simples facto de o ser, possui uma respeitabilidade intocável.

O ponto de partida da democracia é que esta verdade ética não é uma opinião entre outras, mas uma verdade absoluta. No dia em que uma vida humana seja dispensável, quebrou-se o princípio e a vida humana passou a ser um valor relativo. Se uma sociedade aceitar que algumas pessoas sejam mortas (com um critério ou outro, o critério pouco importa), ninguém está a salvo, porque nenhum critério resvaladiço subsiste depois de se derrubar o princípio de que a vida humana é inviolável. Quem revogar este princípio intransponível não espere encontrar noutro lugar a justificação ética para uma democracia solidária.

Embora neste assunto da eutanásia esteja em desacordo com a minha colega da Universidade do Minho, isso não quer dizer que não tenha muita consideração por ela e não estejamos de acordo noutros temas.

José Maria C. S. André

Entrevista - el presidente de HazteOir Ignacio Arsuaga: «La civilización del amor reconoce a Cristo como Salvador. La cultura de la muerte tiene como príncipe a Satanás»

Relativism or Relativity: Religious Freedom and the Family - Prof. Mary Shivanandan

In Culture of Life Foundation

Posted:By: William E. May

In Relativism or Relativity: Religious Freedom and the Family Professor Shivanandan illuminates the debate about religion and the public square by throwing a searching light on antithetical understandings of human freedom, particularly religious freedom. A popular understanding is that freedom is requisite to autonomy. Less popular is the understanding that freedom is requisite to relationality. Professor Shivanandan explains how contemporary public debates about the family, issues of birth, marriage and death, are corollary to a prior confusion between autonomy and relationality. In the autonomy model, others are an imposition on freedom. In the relational model, others are integral to freedom. These models are at the heart of debates about family, birth , marriage and death, and they are at the heart of what religious freedom means and the place of religion in the public square. Professor Shivanandan's masterful treatment of freedom is crucial to setting aright a Culture of Life in our public square. 

Relativism or Relativity:  Religious Freedom and the Family

 

Prof. Mary Shivanandan, S.T.D. John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage & Family; At the Catholic University of America December 9, 2005
            

The fact that issues of birth, marriage and death figure so prominently in debates in the United States on the role of religion in public life should alert us to the possibility that the family holds a special place in the context of religious freedom.  Here we are not talking about members within the family adhering to or converting to a faith according to their conscience, although that is indeed a serious problem in some societies.  Rather it is a question of the very composition of the family and the dignity of its various members.  Are interventions opposing abortion, assisted suicide, so-called homosexual “marriage” an unwarranted imposition of a religious belief on society or legitimate, indeed essential, perspectives to be brought to the public arena?
           

It is generally agreed that Dignitatis Humanae marks a major step forward in the Church’s understanding and endorsement of religious freedom.[1]  Yet right from the beginning arguments arose on the relationship of freedom to truth.   In 1965, when the document was promulgated, the current contentious issues on birth, marriage and death had scarcely ruffled the surface of public concern.  John Courtney Murray, one of the document’s recognized architects, acknowledged that governments’ “first and principle concern for the common good [is] the effective protection of the human person and its dignity.”[2]  But he did not feel it necessary to spell out in what that dignity consists beyond self-determination and an orientation to the good of society.
           

David Crawford, professor at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage & Family, has argued that Murray’s main understanding of religious freedom as a juridical not an ontological concept, comprising only immunity from state interference, leaves the way open for the separation of freedom from truth.  Each self-determining individual is left free to decide for himself the nature of reality, even of good and evil.  That is the definition of relativism, relating everything to myself, without taking into account the objective truth or reality of any thing or person outside myself.  That relativism is now the recognized content of freedom can be seen from the work of Alan Wolfe, director of the Boise Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.  In his book Moral Freedom[3]  Wolfe describes the 19^th century as the century of economic freedom, the 20^th of political freedom and the 21^st of moral freedom, when each individual will determine for himself his moral and ethical standards.   It is not co-incidental that the first example Wolfe takes up is gay “marriage,” which calls in question the very identity of the traditional family. 
         

John Paul II himself says: 

Freedom negates and destroys itself and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others when it no longer recognizes its essential link with the truth.  When freedom out of a desire to emancipate itself from all forms of tradition and authority, shuts out even the most obvious evidence of an objective and universal truth. . . then the person ends up by no longer taking as his sole and indisputable point of reference for his own choices the truth about good and evil, but only his subjective and changeable opinion, or, indeed, his selfish interest and whim.[4] 

Dignitatis Humanae reiterates that all men are impelled by their nature as free and reasonable beings to seek the truth, especially religious truth. [5]  At the same time they are called to be lovers of “true freedom—men that is who will form their own judgments in the light of truth, direct their activities with a sense of responsibility, and strive for what is true and just.”[6] 

In this brief paper I seek to show how in the thought of John Paul II (1) freedom is intrinsically related to the truth and dignity of the human person created in God’s image; (2) freedom from its origin is relational and; (3) relations within the family cannot be detached from the truth of the human person as relational, who finds himself only through a “sincere gift of self.”  In other words relativity is at the heart of human nature, a relativity that recognizes the objective truth of the other as gift.  In conclusion, I shall argue that the debate needs to move to this ontological level, which means that far from imposing a religious view, the Church, especially through the thought of John Paul II, is contributing a vital component to our understanding of religious freedom, the dignity of the human person and the welfare of society.

Inseparable Bond of Freedom, Truth and the Good        
  

 Jesuit scholar, Herminio Rico in his detailed analysis of John Paul II and Dignitatis Humanae ascribes to the separation of freedom from truth when he calls for the primacy of the individual’s freedom.  Freedom is to be joined to responsible promotion of truth but not in an intrinsic way.  Like most commentators, who adhere to democratic liberalism Rico applauds John Paul II’s commitment to human rights understood politically.  What he and others criticize John Paul II for is, in Rico’s words, his “uncompromising,” dogmatic” and “extreme positions” on ethical questions.[7]  He takes as an example the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, the Gospel of Life.  
          

John Paul II is indeed uncompromising in viewing the right to life as a fundamental right.  “Upon the recognition of this right, every human community and the political community itself was founded.”[8]  Far from seeing a dichotomy between what is understood as human rights and the right to life, he states in Gift and Mystery, that he came to see a profound connection between them from his encounter with Nazism and communism.[9]  The former pope sees attacks against life as making it “increasingly difficult to grasp clearly the meaning of what man is, the meaning of his rights and duties.”[10]  In fact, he says, “they represent a direct threat to the entire culture of human rights.”[11] 
          

The source of this threat, he charges, lies in secularism, which promotes a “perverse idea of freedom,” the autonomy of the individual separated from any idea of God.
   

In such an agnostic not to say atheistic environment, man loses the sense of his uniqueness among earthly creatures.  Living “as if God does not exist,” he loses sight also of “the mystery of his own being.”  And that leads to utilitarianism, individualism and hedonism.[12]  This rejection of God and its deleterious effect on the human person runs like a refrain throughout Evangelium Vitae. 
  

He sums it up in no. 96: Where God is denied and people live as though he did not exist or his commandments are not taken into account, the dignity of the human person and the inviolability of human life also end up being rejected and compromised. Conversely where the word of life is proclaimed, life acquires its full meaning and value since eternal life is the end towards which our life on earth is directed.[13] 

The saving event of Jesus Christ is the guarantor of all human rights.“By his incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every human being.” (GS 22) This saving event reveals to humanity not only the boundless love of God, who “so loved the world that he gave his only Son (Jn. 3:16) but also the incomparable dignity of every human person.[14]   
        

In Veritatis splendor John Paul II is even more explicit concerning the “essential bond between truth, the good and freedom. ” [15]  Here again in this encyclical on the Splendor of Truth he points to the fact that when the good of human life is rejected, truth suffers as a consequence.  Man begins to doubt that there can be any true salvation.  All that is left is a commitment to a detached freedom that decides for itself both good and evil. Such an attempt to separate freedom from truth results in a yet graver consequence, the separation of faith from its moral content.  For faith is “a decision involving one’s whole existence,” and is deeply bound up with obeying God’s commandments.[16]  “Only God, the supreme good, constitutes the unshakeable foundation and essential condition of morality.”[17]  Man’s freedom is constituent to his nature but it is given to him within the truth of his being as ordered to the good, ultimately the good of eternal life.[18] 

The Relational Nature of Freedom     
        

Man’s life is intimately linked to God.  “The dignity of this life,” says John Paul II,  “is linked not only to its beginning, to the fact that it comes from God, but also to its final end, to its destiny of fellowship with God in knowledge and love of him.” [19] As Crawford points out, my freedom does not pre-exist my relationship with God.  It is that pre-existing relation that allows me to make the decision for or against God.  Religious freedom can never be simply a juridical construct.   Freedom as part of the imago Dei, comes to me as a gift and finds its fulfillment in a reciprocal gift of self.  This notion of freedom as prior gift to the person, whose freedom is fulfilled in becoming a gift to another opens up perspectives of religious freedom that mere immunity from state interference cannot encompass.  First of all it places the understanding of religious freedom, indeed all freedom, in its proper theological context. Crawford draws from John Paul II’s encyclicals what he calls “freedom’s “architecture.” It arises from “within the gift character of creaturehood.”[20] 

Two passages from Gaudium et spes are central to the pope’s understanding of man.  

GS 24 states, “man is the only creature on earth that God wanted for its own sake” and “man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself.”  In other words freedom is a gift from God, given for man to freely give himself as a gift.  John Paul II in Veritatis splendor describes Christ’s total gift of himself on the cross as the “authentic meaning of freedom.” 
  

Freedom is “ultimately directed towards communion”[21].   Man cannot give himself as a gift without the freedom of self-determination and self-possession.  Paradoxically this same freedom offers the possibility of making myself over to another as a gift and in that self-bestowal Christ tells us our true freedom and fulfillment lies.[22]  For, as John Paul II, amply demonstrates in his Catechesis on Human Love, man is more fully the image of God as a Trinity of Persons in the moment of communion. [23] 
           

John Paul II spells this out explicitly in Evangelium Vitae:  God entrusts us to one another.  And it is also in view of this entrusting that God gives everyone freedom, a freedom which possesses an inherently relational dimension.  This is a great gift of the Creator, placed as it is at the service of the person and of his fulfillment through the gift of self and openness to others; but when freedom is made absolute in an individualistic way, it is emptied of its original content, and its very meaning and dignity are contradicted.[24] 

The Family    
        

John Paul II in the first encyclical of his papacy, Redemptor Hominis writes: Man cannot live without love.   He remains a being incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. [25] It is in the love revealed by Jesus Christ that “man finds again the greatness, dignity and value that belongs to his humanity.”[26]   It is in the family above all that human love is experienced.  In fact the mission of the family is to “guard, reveal and communicate love.”  Its role is “decisive and irreplaceable.”[27] Emphatically John Paul II states that “there is no true freedom where life is not welcomed and loved; and there is no fullness of life except in freedom.”[28]  In other words freedom and love are inextricably linked.  It is this link between freedom, life and love that compels the Church to speak out on so many issues that affect the essence of the family as a communion of life and love, such as divorce, gay “marriage” and reproductive technologies. 
           

Let us set what the Church teaches about the family beside the message our culture gives implicitly through technological manipulation of sexuality and procreation.  In “Letter to Families,” John Paul II contrasts the “civilization of love,” which has the family as its center with the anti-civilization of agnoticism and utilitarianism.  Instead of being a gift, the child is seen as a “hindrance” to the woman’s self-realization or else a product to be purchased from a fertility clinic.  The woman, often with her own unwitting cooperation, becomes a mere object of sexual desire.  With contraception and abortion readily available she absolves the man of making a true gift of himself.  A pseudo freedom belongs to both, one that short circuits the total gift of self, which alone can fulfill their freedom.[29] In this section of the Letter, John Paul II speaks a great deal about the connection between freedom, truth and love.
    

The gift-character of the human person demands freedom.  He must be free both to give himself and free to receive in a way that honors his or her dignity and humanity.  Bodily sexual union is the sign of the total gift of self between a man and a woman.  The fact that man is a body is intimately bound up with his dignity as a person and a gift.  To treat the body as mere raw material that can be molded according to the desires of the individual is to deny the very nature of the person as a unity of body and soul.  As the present Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI says, “Although in modern culture, the concept of ‘human nature’ seems to have been lost, the fact remains that human rights cannot be understood without presupposing that man in his very being, is the bearer of values and norms that must be rediscovered and reaffirmed, not invented and imposed in a subjective and arbitrary manner.”[30]  One might say that relativism has been enshrined in the United States Constitution as a result of Roe vs Wade. This applies both to values such as masculinity and femininity and their ordination to union and fruitfulness as well as to the nature of the human embryo.
   

It is specious, for example, to claim: No one thinks that blastocysts (the microscopic balls of human cells from which embryonic stem cells are derived four or five days after fertilization) are actual people, and potentiality alone is not a sufficient basis for rights.  We do not, for instance, think that a child of ten who has the potential to become medically qualified actually has the right to practise as a physician.[31]To become medically qualified is to add an extrinsic quality to the human being.  There is no inevitability that the ten-year-old child will become a doctor, whereas the human blastocyst, if allowed to develop normally, inevitably becomes a human person.  It is this intrinsic humanness of the blastocyst that accords it rights.  Otherwise at what stage do rights begin? 

  

The Public Debate 

The abortion issue, along with all the other life issues, is not likely to go away.  Neither can these issues be separated from issue of religious freedom, which Herminio Rico intimates, because they deal with ultimates.  As Pope Benedict XVI says, “Prior to any positive law emanated by states, such rights are universal, inviolable and inalienable, and must be recognized as such by everyone, especially by the civil authorities who are called to promote them and guarantee that they are respected.”[32] Crawford concludes his discussion of John Courtney Murray on religious freedom by noting his emphasis on the need for a “public conversation and what he called ‘consensus.’ [33]Murray  recognized that no society can survive if it cuts itself off from foundational truths, but the public debate cannot be fruitful if it is based on a concept of freedom severed from truth and the good.
           

There is increasing recognition in the United States that the discussion that should have taken place on abortion was short-circuited by the Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion virtually through all nine months of pregnancy. [34]  A  University of Alabama Law professor in 1968 came up with the suggestion that, rather than legalize abortion through the democratic process in state legislatures, it would be quicker to secure it as a right through judicial fiat.
  

A privacy right was conjured up from the 14^th amendment.  This privacy right now extends far beyond abortion.  It has come to mean “personal autonomy—everyone’s right to do whatever he or she pleases so long as others are not harmed.”[35] By becoming a matter of constitutional law the opportunity for principled discussion of the ultimate values involved was cut short.   As Justice Antonin Scalia, wrote, Roe v. Wade “destroyed the compromises of the past, [and] rendered compromise impossible in the future. ‘. . .  To portray Roe as the statesmanlike settlement of a divisive issue . . .is nothing less than Orwellian. [36] .

Confrontational politics took over, with the “religious” right on one (the losing) side and the secular liberals ostensibly on the other.  Yet according to several opinion polls the majority of Americans declare that abortion should be illegal in the second (72%) and third (86%) trimesters of pregnancy.  Because of Roe v. Wade, these views can find no expression in state legislatures or state laws.[37]   The very freedom of the majority of the people has been stifled.  In such circumstances the Church has a duty to inform the public debate. There is recognition that John Paul II’s encyclical, Evangelium Vitae has in fact significantly influenced public discussion.  The November 2005 issue of Washingtonian, a magazine read widely by policy makers in the capital, lists a handful of titles in the last 40 years that “have moved the debate.”  Among them are such influential books as Alan Bloom’s (1987) The Closing of the American Mind and Francis Fukuyama’s (1992) The End of History and the Last Man.”  Evangelium Vitae merits the following evaluation: From its use of such phrases as “culture of life” and “culture of death” to its insistence that human life must be protected at every stage, Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical laid the foundation for today’s evangelical conservatives.  A book that reaches far beyond its Catholic roots.[38] 

This brief paper will finish with one of John Paul II’s many quotes on the relationship of democracy and the moral life:
 

Your country prides itself on being a realized democracy, but democracy is itself a moral adventure, a continuing test of a people’s capacity to govern themselves in ways that serve the common good and the good of individual citizens. The survival of a particular democracy depends not only on its institutions, but to an even great extent on the spirit which inspires and permeates its procedures for legislating, administering and judging.[39]

 

---

 

[1] Herminio Rico declared that the document “has effected a definitive break, set an irreversible direction of openness and dialogue in the attitude of the Church toward the World.” John Paul II and the Legacy of Dignitatis Humanae (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004) 16.

[2] John Courtney Murray, “Arguments for the Right to Religious Freedom,” in Religious Liberty: Catholic Struggles with Pluralism, ed. J..Leon Hooper (Louisville, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993) 239, as cited by David Crawford in “The Architecture of Freedom: John Paul II and John Courtney Murray on Religious Freedom” in a forthcoming publication on Religious Freedom.

[3] Alan Wolfe, Moral Freedom:The Search for Virtue in a World of Choice, (New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 2001).

[4] Evangelium vitae, Encyclical Origins, 24 no. 42 (April 6, 1995)  no. 19.

[5] Dignitatis Humanae, Walter M. Abbott., ed. The Documents of Vatican Council II ( New York, Guild Press, 1966) no. 2.

[6] Ibid., no. 8.

[7] Tad Szulc in his biography, Pope John Paul II (NY: Scribner, 1995) writes that “the great novelty of John Paul II’s reign was his dedication to religious liberty and tolerance.”  315.  Yet he uses the same adjectives as Rico to describe his stance on moral issues, “inflexibility,” “iron opposition to ordination of women,” “unbending insistence on priestly celibacy: 318.”

[8] EV no. 2

[9] John Paul II Gift and Mystery (New YorK: Doubleday, 19996) 66-67.

[10] EV no. 11.

[11] EV no. 18.

[12] EV no. 21, 22.

[13] EV no. 29.

[14] EV no. 2

[15] Veritatis splendor, encyclical Origins 23, no. 18 (October 14, 1993) no. 88.

[16] VS, no. 88, 89.

[17] Vs no. 99.

[18] VS no. 86.

[19] Ev no. 38.

[20] Crawford, 4

[21] VS no. 86.

[22] David Crawford, “The Architecture of Freedom: John Paul II and John Courtney Murray on Religious Freedom, 11.

[23] John Paul II, Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan (Boston, MA: Pauline Media and Books, 1997) November 14, 1979.

[24] EV no. 19.

[25] Redemptor Hominis encyclical, (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1979) no. 10.

[26] Ibid.

[27] EV no. 92.

[28] EV. No. 96.

[29] “Letter to Families,” Origins  23, no. 37 (March 3, 1994) no. 13.

[30] Zenit ZE05120107

[31] Philosopher, Baroness Onora O’Neill, “The Ethical Dimension,” Cam: Cambridge Alumni Magazine no. 46 (Michaelmas Term, 2005) 24.

[32] Zenit News Agency, ZE05120107.

[33] Crawford, “The Architecture of Freedom,” 22, 23.

[34] See Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179 (1973), and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).

[35] George F. Will, “The Abortion Argument We Missed,” The Washington Post, December 1, 1925, A25

[36] Planned Parenthood v. Casey. It brought about  just  the kind of extremist situation of Pilgrims v. Park Rangers Kevin Seamus Hasson describes in his book, The Right to be Wrong: Ending the Culture War Over Religion in America (San Francisco:  Encounter Books, 2005)1-7..

[37] Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Thomburgh v. American College, of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 476 U.S. 747, 814 (1986)

[38] Online Washingtonian

[39] “Moral Truth, Conscience and American Democracy Ad Limina Address to U.S. Bishops, June 27, 1998

O Crime dos Partidos Descarados

“A justa ordem da sociedade e do Estado é dever central da política. Um Estado, que não se regesse segundo a justiça, reduzir-se-ia a um grande bando de ladrões, como disse (Santo) Agostinho … A justiça é o objectivo e, consequentemente, também a medida intrínseca de toda a política. A política é mais do que uma simples técnica para a definição dos ordenamentos públicos: a sua origem e o seu objectivo estão precisamente na justiça, e esta é de natureza ética.” (Bento XVI, Deus Caritas est, nº 28 a).

Impressiona a glacial desvergonha desaforada do psd e do cds com que publicitam, como se fora algo extraordinariamente audacioso e benigno, uma futura apresentação de propostas para cobrar “taxas moderadoras” para as mães grávidas, no caso do psd, que repitam o abortamento de um filho ou, no caso do cds, para toda e qualquer mãe grávida que queira abortar seus filhos, mesmo que se trate da primeira vez. Esta crueza da “maioria absoluta” que parece assim pretender ocultar a sua perversa identidade sinistra revela pelo contrário um maquiavelismo sádico.

De facto, estas organizações partidárias que agora exercem o poder têm o dever estrito de garantir a justiça reconhecendo e tutelando a igual dignidade de todo o ser humano em todas as fases da sua existência, desde a sua concepção, ou estado unicelular, até à morte natural. Sem este fundamento, isto é, o respeito do direito à vida, não existe nem estado de direito nem democracia nem bem comum. De modo que os políticos que detêm os poderes executivo e legislativo ao cumpliciarem-se com uma lei profundamente e gravissimamente injusta, tendo eles a obrigação e a possibilidade de a eliminar, tornam-se, lamento dizê-lo mas é a verdade dos factos, criminosos cuja ferocidade faz empalidecer e praticamente desaparecer a das organizações mafiosas - basta lembrar não só a quantidade de vítimas mas também a qualificação eminentemente tenebrosa, atroz e desalmada dos assassínios perpetrados: “Dentre todos os crimes que o homem pode realizar contra a vida, o aborto provocado apresenta características que o tornam particularmente perverso e abominável … A gravidade moral (= a injustiça) do aborto provocado aparece em toda a sua verdade, quando se reconhece que se trata de um homicídio e, particularmente, quando se consideram as circunstâncias específicas que o qualificam. A pessoa eliminada é um ser humano que começa a desabrochar para a vida, isto é, o que de mais inocente, em absoluto, se possa imaginar: nunca poderia ser considerado um agressor, menos ainda um injusto agressor! É frágil, inerme (indefeso, desarmado), e numa medida tal que o deixa privado inclusive daquela forma mínima de defesa constituída pela força suplicante dos gemidos e do choro do recém-nascido.” (João Paulo II, Evangelium vitae, 58).

Tudo isto que fica escrito, juntamente com todas as outras coisas que não me tenho cansado de redigir e de citar (por exemplo: O Triunfo da Vida e Ao Gólgota), mostra à saciedade, que não é devido nenhum respeito a qualquer referendo ou “lei” ou promulgação emanadas de qualquer órgão político que admita a ignóbil matança de inocentes. E muito menos que os execute através dos serviços de saúde (!) do estado ou dos que com ele estão concubinados. 

No entanto, mesmo para aqueles que absurda e erroneamente consideram que o referendo apesar de não ter sido juridicamente válido o tenha sido politicamente (Cf. A posição anfigúrica, à revelia da doutrina da Igreja, de D. José Policarpo), como o demonstra argutamente a Dra. Isilda Pegado, presidente da Federação Portuguesa pela Vida (cf Público, 07 de Junho de 2012, pág 47), a pseudolegislação actual produzida pela anterior maioria não encontra nele suporte, constituindo mais um abuso infame de poder ao financiar e subsidiar universalmente o abortamento.

O problema do desemprego é seguramente muitíssimo grave mas o principal problema social do país é o abortamento de tantas crianças e se há razão para sair à rua esta é a primeira de entre todas.

Nuno Serras Pereira

10. 06. 2012

Pilatos, el demócrata - por Juan Manuel de Prada

In XLSemanal  

En la condena del justo hay siempre algo que nos estremece, porque todos tenemos muy arraigada, casi podríamos decir que inscrita en los genes (aunque muchos traten de oscurecerla), una noción natural de la justicia; y si la conculcación de la justicia es siempre aborrecible, cuando sirve para condenar al inocente resulta aberrante. A quienes estudian leyes se les debería proponer el análisis del proceso a Jesús, en el que la injusticia adquiere una densidad rabiosa, pululante de irregularidades que lo convierten en una monstruosidad jurídica: el Sanedrín se reunió en el tiempo pascual, cosa que le estaba vedada; los testimonios contra Jesús fueron falsos y contradictorios; no hubo testigos de descargo, ni se permitió que el reo dispusiera de defensor; la sentencia del Sanedrín no fue precedida de la preceptiva votación; se celebraron dos sesiones en el mismo día, sin la interrupción legal establecida entre la audición y la sentencia; el sentenciado fue después enviado a la autoridad romana, que el Sanedrín no reconocía como legítima y que, además (como el propio Pilatos observa), no tenía jurisdicción sobre delitos religiosos; el delito de conspiración contra el César, que los miembros del Sanedrín promovieron después, no estaba penado con la crucifixión, a menos que hubiese mediado sedición armada, cosa que manifiestamente no hizo Jesús; y, en fin, dejando aparte otras irregularidades, el procurador romano lo mandó a la muerte sin pronunciar la sentencia oficial, cosa que un juez no puede hacer, pues es tanto como abdicar de su oficio.

Son solo algunas de las irregularidades que pueblan este proceso; y cualquiera de ellas bastaría para que se considerase nulo. Pero quizá lo que más nos conturba de este proceso oprobioso no sea la actitud furibunda o fanática de los miembros del Sanedrín, sino la cobarde y frívola del procurador Poncio Pilatos, que tras reconocer públicamente la inocencia del acusado («No encuentro culpa en él») lo manda sin embargo a la muerte, entregándolo para que lo crucifiquen, por miedo a la chusma. Analizando este pasaje evangélico, Hans Kelsen, el célebre teórico del Derecho y pope del positivismo jurídico, concluye que Pilatos se comporta como un perfecto demócrata, al menos en dos ocasiones. La primera, cuando en el interrogatorio primero que hace a Jesús, este le responde: «Todo el que es de la verdad escucha mi voz»; a lo que Pilatos replica con otra pregunta: «¿Qué es la verdad?». Para Kelsen, un demócrata debe guiarse por un necesario escepticismo; las indagaciones filosóficas o morales en torno a la verdad deben resultarle, pues, por completo ajenas. La segunda ocasión en la que Pilatos, a juicio de Kelsen, se comporta como un perfecto demócrata es cuando, ante la supuesta imposibilidad de determinar cuál es la verdad, se dirige a la multitud congregada ante el pretorio y le pregunta: «¿Qué he de hacer con Jesús?». A lo que la multitud responde, sedienta de sangre: «¡Crucifícalo! ¡Crucifícalo!». Pilatos resuelve el proceso de forma plebiscitaria; y puesto que la mayoría determina que lo que debe hacerse con Jesús es crucificarlo, Pilatos acata ese parecer.

La exposición de Kelsen puede parecernos brutal, pero nadie podrá negar que, en efecto, Pilatos es un modelo de político demócrata: escéptico hasta la médula, considera inútil tratar de determinar cuál es la verdad; y, en consecuencia, somete a votación popular el destino de Jesús. Y esta es la encrucijada en la que se debaten las democracias: renunciando a emitir un juicio ético objetivo (renunciando, en definitiva, a establecer la verdad de las cosas), el criterio de la mayoría se erige en norma; y, de este modo, la norma ya nunca más obedecerá a la justicia, sino a las preferencias caprichosas o interesadas de dicha mayoría. Es una solución relativista que está gangrenando las democracias; y que, de no corregirse, acabará destruyéndolas desde dentro, que por lo demás es como han sucumbido siempre todas las organizaciones humanas que no han preservado un núcleo de nociones morales netas; y en las que, inevitablemente, el justo acaba siendo perseguido y condenado, como un criminal cualquiera, para regocijo de los auténticos criminales.

Pero Kelsen tenía razón: Pilatos es un perfecto demócrata; por lo que las democracias relativistas deberían alzarle monumentos en los parques públicos e instituir fiestas –con lavatorio de manos incluido– que celebren su memoria.

Tras JMJ, Vargas Llosa admite que occidente necesita del catolicismo

MADRID, 29 Ago. 11 / 10:35 am (ACI/EWTN Noticias)

En su habitual columna en el diario español El País, el premio Nobel de Literatura, Mario Vargas Llosa, señaló este domingo que el éxito de la reciente Jornada Mundial de la Juventud en Madrid ha hecho evidente que occidente necesita del catolicismo para subsistir.

En su artículo titulado "La fiesta y la cruzada", Vargas Llosa, que se declara agnóstico y es un constante detractor de las enseñanzas de la Iglesia, elogia el espectáculo de Madrid "invadido por cientos de miles de jóvenes procedentes de los cinco continentes para asistir a la Jornada Mundial de la Juventud que presidió Benedicto XVI".

En el texto recogido también en su edición de hoy por el diario vaticano L’Osservatore Romano, Vargas Llosa, nacido en el Perú pero de nacionalidad española, afirma que la JMJ fue "una gigantesca fiesta de muchachas y muchachos adolescentes, estudiantes, jóvenes profesionales venidos de todos los rincones del mundo a cantar, bailar, rezar y proclamar su adhesión a la Iglesia Católica y su ‘adicción’ al Papa".

"Las pequeñas manifestaciones de laicos, anarquistas, ateos y católicos insumisos contra el Papa provocaron incidentes menores, aunque algunos grotescos, como el grupo de energúmenos al que se vio arrojando condones a unas niñas que… rezaban el rosario con los ojos cerrados".

Según Vargas Llosa existen "dos lecturas posibles de este acontecimiento": una que ve en la JMJ "un festival más de superficie que de entraña religiosa"; y otra que la interpreta como "la prueba de que la Iglesia de Cristo mantiene su pujanza y su vitalidad".

Después de mencionar las estadísticas que señalan que sólo el 51 por ciento de jóvenes españoles se confiesan católicos, pero sólo 12 por ciento practica su religión, Vargas Llosa dice que "desde mi punto de vista esta paulatina declinación del número de fieles de la Iglesia Católica, en vez de ser un síntoma de su inevitable ruina y extinción es, más bien, fermento de la vitalidad y energía que lo que queda de ella –decenas de millones de personas– ha venido mostrando, sobre todo bajo los pontificados de Juan Pablo II y de Benedicto XVI".

"En todo caso, prescindiendo del contexto teológico, atendiendo únicamente a su dimensión social y política, la verdad es que, aunque pierda fieles y se encoja, el catolicismo está hoy día más unido, activo y beligerante que en los años en que parecía a punto de desgarrarse y dividirse por las luchas ideológicas internas".

Vargas Llosa se pregunta si esto es bueno o malo para el secularismo occidental; y responde que "mientras el Estado sea laico y mantenga su independencia frente a todas las iglesias", "es bueno, porque una sociedad democrática no puede combatir eficazmente a sus enemigos –empezando por la corrupción– si sus instituciones no están firmemente respaldadas por valores éticos, si una rica vida espiritual no florece en su seno como un antídoto permanente a las fuerzas destructivas".

"En nuestro tiempo", sigue Vargas Llosa, la cultura "no ha podido reemplazar a la religión ni podrá hacerlo, salvo para pequeñas minorías, marginales al gran público"; porque "por más que tantos brillantísimos intelectuales traten de convencernos de que el ateísmo es la única consecuencia lógica y racional del conocimiento y la experiencia acumuladas por la historia de la civilización, la idea de la extinción definitiva seguirá siendo intolerable para el ser humano común y corriente, que seguirá encontrando en la fe aquella esperanza de una supervivencia más allá de la muerte a la que nunca ha podido renunciar".

"Creyentes y no creyentes debemos alegrarnos por eso de lo ocurrido en Madrid en estos días en que Dios parecía existir, el catolicismo ser la religión única y verdadera, y todos como buenos chicos marchábamos de la mano del Santo Padre hacia el reino de los cielos", concluye.