tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83225584559830061672024-03-14T09:25:39.766+00:00LogosAmor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comBlogger2340125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-66214268024169482592014-06-03T19:38:00.000+01:002014-06-03T19:38:20.874+01:00O celibato do Papa Francisco - por Nuno Serras Pereira<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">03.
06. 2014</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1. Eu
confesso que não estava habituado (culpa minha, ou dos outros Papas que
conheci?) a declarações e gestos papais improvisados que se prestam
invariavelmente grandes ambiguidades.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Um dos
mais recentes foi o da concelebração e do beija-mão de Francisco a um sacerdote
activista marxista e promotor de depravações sexuais de homens com homens e de
mulheres com mulheres. O que me provocou maior perplexidade não foi, nem por
sombras, o facto do Papa beijar a mão a um sacerdote, coisa, de resto, que S.
Francisco de Assis fazia, por reverência à Santíssima Eucaristia, a qualquer
Padre, por maior pecador que fosse. Nestes gestos de enorme devoção ao
Santíssimo Sacramento, que naquele tempo só podia ser tocado por mãos
sacerdotais, S. Francisco afirmava contra os hereges cátaros e albigenses a
validade da Eucaristia, com a consequente presença real de Jesus Cristo em
Corpo, Alma e Divindade, na aparência do pão e do vinho, independentemente da
virtude e santidade do sacerdote que a celebrava. Deus que se quis e quer dar a
nós não podia, não queria, ficar dependente das disposições do ministro do
Sacramento para o fazer – tanto mais que assim o fiel nunca saberia se tinha
participado ou não do Sacrifício único do Redentor, que se torna presente na
celebração da Missa, se tinha ou não comungado com o Senhor (isto não
significa, de modo nenhum, que o sacerdote que celebre em pecado mortal o deva
fazer; pelo contrário, comete um gravíssimo sacrilégio se assim procede). Era,
pois, muito clara a razão pela qual S. Francisco de Assis procedia desse modo.
Hoje, porém, as circunstâncias são muitíssimo diferentes. O activismo da
ideologia “gay”, congénere da do “género” é poderosíssima, dominando e
manipulando a política, as finanças, a cultura, a comunicação social, a
educação, a jurisprudência e uma parte significativa de membros da hierarquia
da Igreja. De modo que inclinar-se e beijar a mão <span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">(ou
a pata? Se a “mão” promove coisas próprias de brutos irracionais, deverá adquirir
a designação própria desses)</span> de um padre que tem dedicado o seu
ministério à promoção dessas ideologias, sem uma palavra que esclareça o
sentido ou o propósito desse acto, certamente se prestará às interpretações
mais desvairadas e até à propaganda fotográfica/internética para o avanço da
tirania e do totalitarismo “gay”. Isto, independentemente da vontade de quem o
fez, cujas intenções podiam ser as melhores, ou cuja ignorância, sobre o
sujeito, objecto das mimosices, podia ser supina – o que é de estranhar
grandemente. Como não há esclarecimentos mas tão só um silêncio enigmático
podemos supor que o Santo Padre quisesse desse modo prestar a sua homenagem a
quem tanto tem feitos pelos enfermos de sida/aids e outras maleitas, frutos do
estilo sodomita e afins que essas gentes têm. No entanto, não se pode deixar de
reparar que o tal padre com uma mão (ou pata) promove isso mesmo que principalmente
provoca as tais doenças enquanto com a outra se mostra “caridoso” com os que as
contraíram. É, de facto, extraordinário; imaginem-me de cacete na mão (ou pata,
neste caso) rachando cabeças a torto e a direito enquanto que com a outra
construía um hospital para tratar de crânios traumatizados... Não creio, posso
evidentemente estar enganado, como em tudo o mais, que Francisco me beijasse a
pata por uma atitude tão reles e hipócrita.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mas
o mais inquietante, para mim, não é, como já referi, o beija-mão, ou o
beija-pé, ou o que mais quiserem. O que não acabo de entender é como é possível
que há tantos anos um sacerdote que contradiz a Revelação transmitida pela
Sagrada Escritura e pela Tradição, constantemente e unanimemente ensinada pelo
Magistério da Igreja, desde há dois milénios, tem licença do seu Bispo para
exercer o seu ministério, não é alvo de nenhuma sanção canónica e é admitido
pelo Papa a uma concelebração eucarística, dando-lhe ainda por cima a ler o
Evangelho. Não há dúvida de que o mistério da iniquidade é mesmo um grande
Mistério. Claro que eu parto do princípio de que o Santo Padre de nada sabia e
foi, digamos assim, armadilhado. Não entendo todavia porque é que agora,
seguramente já ciente da situação, não determina um esclarecimento que a todos
sossegue. Mas importa muito advertir que a minha incapacidade de compreensão
não é evidentemente a medida das decisões de Francisco. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2.
Há poucos dias, no regresso da sua viagem à terra santa, o Papa Francisco deu uma
conferencia de imprensa a bordo do avião. Segundo as agências o Santo Padre
terá dito que o celibato sacerdotal não é um dogma e que por isso, apesar de
ser um dom para a Igreja, uma regra de vida, que ele muito estima, há uma
abertura para uma possível mudança. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A
propósito destas declarações <span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">(não se trata de um
comentário às mesmas, mas tão só de um apontamento que a ocasião proporciona)</span>
aproveito o ensejo para dizer o seguinte, uma vez que uma ingente multidão o
ignora.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">a)
Na Igreja existem muitas verdades irreformáveis, infalíveis, que não foram até
agora definidas dogmaticamente. Por outras palavras, não é suficiente afirmar
que uma coisa não é dogma de Fé para poder concluir que pode ser mudada.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">b)
Não é verdade que os Padres ortodoxos podem casar. O cristianismo ortodoxo, no
século VIII, rejeitou a Tradição ao admitir que os varões casados, Ordenados
Sacerdotes, podiam manter relações conjugais com as suas esposas. Uma coisa é
Ordenar Sacramentalmente um varão casado, outra, que nunca foi admitida quer
nas Igrejas ortodoxas quer na Católica, muito diferente é admitir um varão, já
Ordenado Sacerdote, ao Sacramento do Matrimónio (só o admitem desde que o Padre
seja “reduzido ao estado laical”; isto é, que nunca mais possa execercer o
sacerdócio a não ser na assistência a um moribundo.). Pelo que é erróneo falar
de se vir a admitir o casamento dos Padres.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">c)
Muito antes da Igreja decidir conferir a Ordenação Sacerdotal somente aos
varões celibatários, desde o início exigiu que todo aquele que fosse casado
renunciasse à comunhão de casa, ou não sendo possível à comunhão de leito, com
a esposa e a passasse a tratar como irmã. Com o passar das épocas, para
combater abusos, fruto da fragilidade humana ou até da pura ignorância
invencível, se começou a permitir tão somente a convivência com a mãe ou com
uma filha que se tivesse Consagrado na Ordem das Virgens. S. Pedro e outros
apóstolos que eram casados deixaram profissão, propriedades, mulher e filhos
por causa do Reino, isto é de Jesus. Mais tarde, muitos outros como, por
exemplo, S. Paulino de Nola ou S. Gregório de Niza, fizeram o mesmo. E assim
ininterruptamente até que a Igreja teve por bem escolher e admitir somente
varões celibatários.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">d) É
preciso dizê-lo com toda a clareza e frontalidade: a Igreja Católica, a Igreja
de Cristo, desde sempre reconheceu - esta é a minha convicção baseada nos
estudos que tenho feito (confesso que quando era jovem sacerdote estive
baralhado sobre o assunto em virtude do que me foi erroneamente ensinado) -,
como Tradição Apostólica, principiada no próprio Jesus Cristo, a castidade na
forma de continência absoluta como essencial para o ministério sacerdotal.
Aliás, o mesmo era exigido aos diáconos e, evidentemente aos Bispos. A questão
não tinha tanto a ver com o precedente da pureza ritual exigida ao Sumo
Sacerdote aquando do sacrifício anual e com a entrada no Santo dos Santos, mas
sim com o Sacrifício da Eucaristia e com o exemplo de Jesus Cristo. O
Sacramento da Ordem, de facto, configura o Padre com Jesus Cristo Sumo
Sacerdote, Cabeça da Igreja e Esposo da mesma para agir na Pessoa do próprio
Cristo, na celebração dos Sacramentos, e para ser uma Sua presença sacramental
junto a todos.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Se
de facto se trata como julgo de Tradição dos Apóstolos, então não vejo como
será possível modificar esse depósito da Fé que nos foi transmitido. Há coisas
sobre as quais a Igreja não tem poder porque assim dispostas e determinadas
pelo Seu fundador.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">e)
Há relativamente pouco tempo, tendo em conta os dois milénios de da sua
existência, a Igreja tem não só Ordenado Diáconos casados, sem lhes exigir
qualquer mudança de comportamento em relação às suas esposas, como tem
conferido o Sacerdócio a Pastores protestantes casados, convertidos ao
Catolicismo, sem lhes pedir qualquer alteração na relação sexual com as
esposas. Se a memória não me atraiçoa o argumento para assim proceder será o de
que a questão do celibato Sacerdotal é de lei eclesiástica e não Divina. E, de
facto, se assim é a Igreja tem obviamente a faculdade de conceder essas dispensas.
Não saberei garantir se esta é uma questão disputada ou se está bem enraizada
na Tradição. Na longa história da Igreja houve tempos em que a hierarquia tomou
decisões, durante períodos mais ou menos longos, hoje reconhecidas como
inválidas porque não concordantes com o Santo Evangelho de Nosso Senhor Jesus
Cristo.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--EndFragment--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">f)
Para quem quiser aprofundar este tema sem ter que ler uma grande quantidade de
textos, já aproveitará muito lendo este livro: <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Celibacy-Early-Church-Beginnings-Obligatory/dp/0898708001/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1401814737&sr=1-1&keywords=stefan+heid">Celibacy
in the Early Church: The Beginnings of Obligatory Continence for Clerics in
East and West</a> .</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-54006347344204719292014-05-19T19:01:00.000+01:002014-05-19T19:01:23.634+01:00O cruel surrealismo do Cardeal Kasper - por Nuno Serras Pereira<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">19.
05. 2014</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Há
muitos pontos por onde pegar, para a refutar, no que diz respeito à proposta
surrealista do cardeal W. Kasper de admitir à Comunhão Sacramental os casados
validamente pela Igreja que se divorciaram pelo civil e se voltaram a “casar”
civilmente e que vivem, não como irmãos, mas sim mantendo comércio carnal, isto
é, fornicando adulteramente um com o outro. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">O
cardeal mostra , em primeiro lugar, uma concepção mágica da realidade. De
facto, afirma que a sua proposta não muda em nada a Doutrina da Igreja e, para
o provar, afirma em entrevista a validade do primeiro casamento mas recusa
terminantemente, contrariando a Palavra expressa de Jesus Cristo, que a
convivência posterior seja adulterina. Na sua parca, ou delirante?, imaginação
basta mudar o nome a uma coisa para ela deixar de ser o que é e transformar-se
em qualquer outra coisa que ele decidir.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mas
deixemos isso e infinitas outras coisas que se poderiam dizer acerca do que ele
avança e atendamos somente às invocadas responsabilidades morais respeitantes
aos filhos que resultaram da cumplicidade adulterina, as quais obrigariam, sob
pena de impotência Divina, a uma suposta misericórdia de Deus que não poderia
deixar de compactuar e selar o facto consumado.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Recorrendo
a esta mesma lógica teríamos de concluir que um pai ou uma mãe ou ambos, que
fossem ameaçados de morte caso não negassem a Fé em Cristo não só poderiam como
porventura deveriam renunciá-la, para não faltar às responsabilidades para com
os filhos. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(Também
no caso de um pai ou de uma mãe que cometessem crimes, talvez terroristas,
cujas penas incluiriam prisão efetiva, talvez perpétua, a Igreja deveria
proclamar a imoralidade de tal coação por parte do estado, uma vez que inibiam
os pais de cumprir as suas responsabilidades para com os filhos. Pela mesma
lógica, uma mobilização geral em tempos de emergência nacional prolongada e com
risco de vida colocaria de fora qualquer pai. E não seria mesmo de excluir que
os viúvos ou viúvas com filhos fossem moralmente obrigados pela Igreja a
contrair um novo enlace matrimonial de modo a realizar melhor as suas
responsabilidades paternais.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Recomendar
e admitir à Sagrada Comunhão quem vive em estado de pecado mortal é induzir as
pessoas, como ensina S. Paulo a condenarem-se, convencendo-as que o mal é bem,
que o errado é certo, que a pecaminosidade é santidade, é estorvar-lhes a
conversão a Jesus Cristo. Todas estas coisas, aprendi no Catecismo e ao longo
de toda a minha vida, são manhas do Demónio, que tem como fim a perdição das
almas, a sua condenação eterna. E importa muito não esquecer que S. Pedro, o
fundamento visível do Papado, ensina que a finalidade da nossa Fé é a salvação
das almas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">À honra de Cristo e de Sua Mãe. Ámen.</span><!--EndFragment-->
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-23099104250724196812014-05-04T15:59:00.002+01:002014-05-04T16:07:42.313+01:00Matrimonio e Famiglia - Seminario di studi su Giovanni Paolo II - di Cardinal Carlo CaffarraIn <a href="http://caffarra.it/">Caffarra.it</a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Desidero premettere subito che la mia relazione avrà un carattere testimoniale. In un duplice senso. Dirò cose che si basano su numerosi colloqui personali col b. Giovanni Paolo II, ed anche cose che vi comunico non principalmente attraverso ragionamenti formalmente corretti, ma attraverso l’invito ad un <i>reditus ad seipsum</i>. Una comunicazione più agostiniana che scolastica.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>1.</b> La vicenda di questo Istituto ebbe inizio la sera del 20 gennaio 1981 quando, durante la cena, Giovanni Paolo II mi chiese di realizzare il suo progetto di fondare un Istituto di studi sul matrimonio e la famiglia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Da quel momento iniziò un dialogo molto profondo, che da parte mia nasceva dall’esigenza che sentivo assai forte, di capire fino in fondo il progetto concepito dalla mente di quel grande pontefice, le sue ragioni ultime. Non era solo in questione la costituzione di un istituto accademico, ma la testimonianza che il Papa desiderava rendere alla Chiesa e al mondo circa il matrimonio e la famiglia. Una testimonianza di cui Egli avvertiva drammaticamente la necessità: una testimonianza alla verità circa il bene dell’amore coniugale. Egli un giorno mi disse: "l’amore coniugale non è amato". Intendeva dire, non è più riconosciuto nella sua preziosità propria. Non si sbagliava, se ora consideriamo a quali relazioni oggi esso è equiparato.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Vorrei fermarmi un momento su questo punto, perché è di fondamentale importanza. Egli non voleva – ne esistevano già tanti, anche nella Chiesa – un luogo dove si producessero nuove opinioni da contrapporre ad altre opinioni, a riguardo del matrimonio e della famiglia. Ma un luogo di ricerca di una verità, di un bene che Adamo aveva scoperto "fin dal principio", quando vide per la prima volta la donna. Verità e bene che anche oggi l’uomo e la donna riscoprono in se stessi, quando diventano "una sola carne". E’ questo un punto di vista molto difficile da fare proprio, tentati come siamo di pensare la ricerca comune della verità come una controversia fra rivali, anziché di compagni di viaggio incamminati verso la meta, e la questione, cui oggi assistiamo, una questione alla fine di leggi, non una <i>quaestio de veritate amoris.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Giovanni Paolo II ci chiedeva di essere scopritori – testimoni della verità circa il bene inscritto nella <i>relazione</i> uomo-donna. Ritornerò più avanti su questo "punto sorgivo". Ho detto relazione. Il bene di cui stiamo parlando è un bene relazionale, della persona in quanto è-in-relazione. Non un bene individuale.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">La prima, grande testimonianza che il Santo Pontefice diede sono state le 134 catechesi sull’amore umano, che saranno la "carta topografica", per così dire, della vita intellettuale dell’Istituto. Alla fine della prima catechesi [5 settembre 1979], Giovanni Paolo II dice:</span></div>
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<dir><dir style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>"Il ciclo di riflessione che iniziamo oggi, coll’intenzione di continuarlo durante i successivi incontri del mercoledì, ha anche come scopo fra altri, accompagnare, per così dire, da lontano i lavori preparatori del Sinodo, non affrontando direttamente il suo tema, ma dirigendo l’attenzione alle radici profonde".</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Il testo è di grande importanza.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">La Chiesa stava affrontando per la prima volta a livello sinodale il tema del matrimonio e della famiglia. Quale aiuto dà il Papa ai futuri Padri Sinodali? Li conduce "al principio"; li guida verso l’inizio, là dove nasce l’uomo e la donna nel matrimonio.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">E’ caratteristico del grande Pontefice il tipo di aiuto che Egli ha voluto dare ai Padri Sinodali. Non è entrato nelle questioni particolari: molte, già allora, gravi e difficili. Ha desiderato che i Padri ri-scoprissero le "radici". E questo è l’aiuto che l’Istituto ha sempre cercato di dare alla Chiesa, secondo la proposta del Santo Pontefice.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Devo fermarmi un momento su questo punto. La nostra ragione è talmente indebolita che sentendo parlare di verità, pensa subito ad opinioni circa il matrimonio, ad una qualche teoria della famiglia. Opinioni alla quali si contrappongono altre opinioni; teorie contestate con altre teorie. E così è accaduto nel mondo di oggi. Il risultato non poteva che essere la convinzione che non esiste alcuna verità circa il matrimonio.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Quando siamo invitati a guardare "all’inizio", "alle radici" il Santo Pontefice non sta costruendo una <i>sua</i> e <i>nuova</i> antropologia. Più semplicemente ci dice: "guarda te stesso guardando al "Principio"" e "guarda il "Principio" guardando te stesso". E’ l’agostiniano "<i>in interiore homine habitat Veritas</i>".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Posso esprimermi anche nel modo seguente. Se uno avesse chiesto a Giovanni Paolo II se stava facendo un’esegesi dei primi due capitoli della Genesi, sia pure coll’autorevolezza propria del Papa, alla quale comunque si potevano opporre altre esegesi, egli – penso – si sarebbe meravigliato della domanda. Egli si vedeva nel ruolo di chi conduce gli altri a scoprire se stessi alla luce del "Principio".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Se non si percorre questa via, è inevitabile che si imbocchi la via dei farisei che interrogano Cristo sul matrimonio, cioè la <i>via della casistica</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Esiste certo una legge sull’indissolubilità, ma quando è lecito eccepirvi? Che gravità devono avere le ragioni per farlo? L’uomo visto alla luce della legge. E in questa visione è comunque eliminato l’uomo. Anche se si allargano le maglie delle eccezioni.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Se penso secondo la prospettiva della casistica, nel momento in cui mi prendo cura della persona e delle sue relazioni, il problema che diventa centrale è: la persona è in grado di osservare la norma oppure questa è un peso da cui in parte o in tutto può essere dispensata? Mi infilo dentro al dilemma: o la legge morale o il bene della persona.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Studi storici ormai a portata anche dei non "esperti" hanno dimostrato che questo modo di accostarsi alla persona umana è iniziato, col Nominalismo, quando si negò che l’essenza delle proposizioni normative della morale si trova nella verità del bene che in esse è oggettivato.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Accettando questa prospettiva, si può giungere perfino a svuotare il Vangelo della grazia in nome del Vangelo della grazia.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Uno dei momenti in cui ho visto più chiaramente tutto questo, fu durante un dialogo con Giovanni Paolo II. Si parlava di <i>Humanae Vitae</i>. Egli disse – e me lo ripeté più volte – che la grande Enciclica di Paolo VI arrivò in un momento in cui la Chiesa non possedeva una robusta, adeguata antropologia. L’Enciclica stessa argomentava sulla base di un concetto di legge naturale quanto meno assai fragile. E il Santo Pontefice aggiungeva che bisognava riscoprire e ripensare la <i>verità antropologica</i> implicata in quell’insegnamento della Chiesa, oggettivata nell’Enciclica.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Il Santo Pontefice considerava questo non un dettaglio secondario della grande <i>quaestio de veritate</i> circa il bene del matrimonio. Ma uno dei punti in cui questo bene poteva essere riconosciuto in tutto il suo splendore o negato gravemente. Non sto parlando del comportamento del singolo coniugato\a. Se non è chiaro questo si finisce per parlare fra sordi.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Giovanni Paolo II era così consapevole della gravità della questione che nella Cost. Ap. <i>Magnum matrimoni sacramentum</i> [10 ottobre 1981], che fondò canonicamente l’Istituto, è detto esplicitamente che uno dei suoi compiti è l’elaborazione di una antropologia adeguata alla base dell’Enc. <i>Humanae Vitae.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Tutto questo appare chiaramente anche in un’altra pagina del Vangelo, dove uno scriba fa la domanda: <i>chi è il mio prossimo</i>? La domanda è in ordine all’estensione del secondo comandamento: "quali persone comprende?". Lo scriba era fuori dalla prospettiva giusta; guardava in una direzione sbagliata. Non guardava al soggetto-uomo, ma ai vari attributi che possiamo predicare del soggetto: il prossimo sono gli ebrei o anche i pagani? Sono gli amici o anche i nemici? E così via. Il samaritano della parabola esce dalla "prospettiva dei predicati"; si libera di conseguenza dalla tirannia delle opinioni anche consolidate riguardo all’uomo, ed accede alla verità dell’uomo. Quando e come? Quando <i>si commuove</i> per il ferito. E’ questa commozione che fa scoprire al samaritano la semplice verità dell’uomo, alla quale appartiene sia il samaritano sia il ferito. Un’appartenenza che respinge ogni forma di relativismo.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Il Santo Pontefice ha voluto questo Istituto perché fosse possibile creare un luogo dove, nella comunione di studenti e docenti, fosse aperto il sentiero verso il "Principio": un sentiero che non si interrompesse.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In questo contesto – l’ho già detto in vari modi – la vera, più profonda intenzionalità di Giovanni Paolo II nel volere l’Istituto, era l’offerta alla Chiesa di una <i>antropologia adeguata</i>. Fu interessante nei primi anni di vita dell’Istituto sentirmi dire: "ma voi che cosa fate? Siete un Istituto di filosofia, o di teologia, o di etica?". Questa domanda, vi dico sinceramente, mi meravigliava molto. La risposta la diede Giovanni Paolo II stesso nella catechesi del 2 aprile 1980 [n. XXIII], che conclude e riassume tutto il primo ciclo.</span></div>
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<dir><dir style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Abbiamo cercato di chiarire nel modo più profondo possibile il significato di questo Principio, che è la prima presenza di ogni uomo nel mondo, maschio e femmina, la prima testimonianza dell’identità umana secondo la parola rivelata".</span></i></dir></dir><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Nel momento in cui ha origine il matrimonio, ha origine la persona umana nella sua intera verità. Il matrimonio è il sentiero che conduce dentro l’uomo; la visione plenaria dell’uomo è il sentiero che conduce alla Verità del matrimonio.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Come è stato scritto "non possiamo rendere conto filosoficamente dell’essenza dell’uomo, finché non comprendiamo la vera essenza dell’amore. Poiché solo nell’amore l’uomo si desta alla sua piena esistenza personale, solo nell’amore egli attualizza la totale pienezza della sua essenza" [D. von Hildebrand, <i>Man and Woman</i>, Franciscan Herald Press, Chicago 1966, pag. 32].</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">E’ una correlazione sulla quale il Santo Pontefice mi richiamava spesso, perché essa fosse la chiave di volta dell’Istituto. L’errore antropologico coinvolge inevitabilmente il matrimonio [ed il lavoro, ma di questo non devo parlare]. Non è un caso dunque il fatto che l’uomo perdendo se stesso ha di conseguenza perduto il matrimonio.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">E’ assai importante quanto Giovanni Paolo II dice nella stessa catechesi succitata:</span></div>
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<dir><dir style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Penso che fra le risposte che Cristo darebbe agli uomini del nostro tempo e alle loro domande, nonostante siano tante urgenti, ci sarebbe tuttavia quella che diede ai farisei. Rispondendo a questi interrogativi, Cristo si rimetterebbe sopra tutto al "principio". Lo farebbe in un modo anche più deciso ed essenziale, in quanto la situazione spirituale e culturale dell’uomo di oggi sembra estraniarsi da quel "principio" e assumere forme e dimensioni che divergono dall’immagine biblica di quel "principio" in punti sempre più chiaramente più distanti".</span></i></dir><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i></i></span></dir><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">E’ un richiamo molto forte ad una vera metodologia pastorale, sempre valida.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>2. </b>In che modo il Santo Pontefice ricostruisce la verità circa il bene dell’uomo alla luce del "Principio", e quindi risponde alle questioni odierne circa il matrimonio? Il dramma <i>Raggi di paternità</i> comincia da questo interrogativo, che denota la condizione dell’uomo.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Da tanti anni ormai vivo come un uomo esiliato dal più profondo delle mia personalità e nello stesso tempo condannato ad indagarla a fondo. In tutti questi anni l’ho penetrata a prezzo di incessanti fatiche, spesso però pensando con sgomento che l’avrei perduta; che sì, verrà cancellata in mezzo ai processi della storia, in cui decide la quantità o la massa".</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">[K. Wojtyla, <i>Tutte le opere letterarie</i>, Bompani ed. Milano 2001, pag. 887]</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">E’ questa la condizione paradossale della persona umana: costretta a cercarsi sempre perché sempre nel rischio di perdersi. E Giovanni Paolo II ritiene che l’uscita da questa condizione, la via per trovare finalmente se stessi è la via dell’amore, di cui l’amore coniugale è la forma arche-tipica, della quale Dio stesso si è servito per rivelare Se stesso. Ci aiutano a capire tutto questo due testimonianze.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Il Santo Pontefice mi raccontò che alcuni suoi sacerdoti di Cracovia, dopo aver letto <i>Amore e responsabilità</i>, gli dissero che questa opera esigeva una riflessione sull’uomo che mostrasse che quella dottrina era veramente radicata nell’uomo. "Fu in quel momento" mi disse " che nacque <i>Persona e atto</i>".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Un’altra volta, eravamo a Castel Gandolfo, mi disse che la verità antropologica più profonda che il Concilio aveva detto stava espressa nel seguente testo: "l’uomo non trova pienamente se stesso se non nel dono sincero di se stesso" [ Cost. Past. <i>Gaudium et spes</i> 24].</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">La via della ricostruzione di un’antropologia adeguata è trovata: <i>il dono di sé.</i> Nel Canto del Dio nascosto, K. Wojtyla scriveva:</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"L’amore mi ha spiegato ogni cosa,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">l’amore ha risolto tutto in me –</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">perciò ammiro questo Amore</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">dovunque esso si trovi".</span></i></div>
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[Tutte le opere, cit., pag. 49]</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Egli si ferma in particolare sull’amore coniugale; sulla relazione che si istituisce nel matrimonio; sul dono di sé quale propriamente accade nel matrimonio.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">E’ necessario uscire da un uso eccessivamente analitico della ragione per cogliere il "centro" della visione di Giovanni Paolo II, e compiere un atto di intelligenza sintetico. E’ al contempo <i>antropologia</i>, <i>etica</i>, <i>teologia</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Non è questo il momento di fare un’esposizione completa della costruzione dell’antropologia. Desidero richiamare la vostra attenzione su due punti.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Il <i>primo</i>. La via per ritrovare l’uomo, imboccata da Giovanni Paolo II, doveva incrociare la realtà del corpo e della diversità sessuale. Credo che sia stato uno dei più grandi apporti che il Santo Pontefice ha lasciato in eredità alla Chiesa, di aver costruito una profonda teologia del corpo e della diversità sessuale. Sono tentato di pensare infatti che la difficoltà che il pensiero cristiano trova non raramente nell’affrontare le tematiche odierne, sia dovuta alla dimenticanza pressoché totale della teologia del corpo.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">La tematica viene affrontata per la prima volta nella Catechesi XIV [9 gennaio 1980], e penso che fin dall’inizio se ne dà l’intuizione centrale, là dove si dice:</span></div>
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<dir><dir style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Sorge allora [=quando l’uomo è di fronte alla donna] la persona umana nella dimensione del dono reciproco, la cui espressione – che è l’espressione anche della sua esistenza come persona – è il corpo umano in tutta la verità originaria della sua mascolinità e femminilità".</span></i></dir><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i></i></span></dir><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Il testo è semplicemente mirabile. La persona umana, in quanto costituita per il dono di sé, è espressa nella sua corporeità sessuata. Questa esprime il dono come caratteristica fondamentale della persona. La "persona-dono" e "il corpo sessuato" sono simultanei. Di conseguenza, se si separa il corpo-sesso dalla persona o la persona dal corpo-sesso, non è più possibile costruire un’antropologia <i>adeguata</i>. Se l’età classica, anche teologica è orientata a separare la persona dal corpo-sessuato, la modernità ha separato il corpo-sessuato dalla persona. La grande tesi di Tommaso dell’unità sostanziale della persona umana non è risultata vincente. La riprende il Conc. Vaticano II, quando dice dell’uomo: "<i>corpore et anima unus</i>".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Il <i>secondo</i>. Si comprende la grande importanza che Giovanni Paolo II dava all’insegnamento dell’Enc. <i>Humanae Vitae</i> ed il modo nuovo di fondarlo. Le due cose stanno in piedi o cadono assieme.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Se consideriamo l’<i>Humanae Vitae </i>principalmente e fondamentalmente una legge morale, entriamo necessariamente nella logica della casuistica, dell’applicazione cioè dell’universale al particolare. Il Santo Padre non l’ha mai vista in questa luce, ma piuttosto nella logica – nel <i>logos</i> – del dono di sé quale accade nel matrimonio. Secondo la verità propria dell’amore coniugale.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In tale modo si evade dalla logica casuistica: universale-particolare; e si evade da una considerazione biologistica. Si entra nella persona: nella verità del suo amore e dono coniugale di sé. Il dramma vero dell’uomo non è il passaggio dall’universale al particolare. E’ il rapporto fra verità e libertà.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Una volta, il Card. Gagnon, ora defunto, mostrò al Santo Pontefice – ero presente anch’io – l’articolo di una rivista statunitense – non ricordo più quale – che sosteneva la seguente tesi. Abbiamo speso milioni di dollari per diffondere una mentalità contraccettiva. I risultati sono stati scarsi. La colpa è solo di un uomo: Giovanni Paolo II. Il Santo Pontefice rispose [ricordo quasi alla lettera le sue parole]: "non è così; non sono io: è la verità dell’amore coniugale che si impone per se stessa, se detta".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mi piace concludere questo secondo punto della mia riflessione con un testo di <i>Fratello del nostro Dio</i>:</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Lei ha mai cercato di penetrare in tutta la mole di quei beni ai quali l’uomo è chiamato?... Non si può pensare soltanto un frammento di verità, bisogna pensare con tutta la verità".</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">[<i>Tutte le Opere</i>, cit. pag. 713].</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Non si comprende l’<i>Humanae Vitae</i> se non nel contesto di una antropologia adeguata. L’Es. <i>Familiaris consortio</i> ha offerto, in un documento del Magistero, l’esempio di questa contestualizzazione [cfr. 28-31]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Forse la cosa più profonda che il Santo Pontefice ha detto, e che esprime tutta la sua cura pastorale del matrimonio, è alla fine della <i>Bottega dell’orefice</i>. Teresa, una delle protagoniste, dice:</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"…creare qualcosa che rispecchi l’Essere e l’Amore assoluto è forse la cosa più straordinaria che esista! Ma si campa senza rendersene conto".</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">[pag.869]</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">E’ rimasta solo la Chiesa Cattolica a farci sentire il respiro dell’eternità nell’Amore umano. E se anche essa rinunciasse a farlo sentire?</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: verdana, arial; font-size: 16px;"></b><br />Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-27311226839859979752014-04-26T19:09:00.004+01:002014-04-26T19:10:27.507+01:00George Weigel, evangelizzare l'Europa - di Maria Claudia Ferragni<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">In <a href="http://www.lanuovabq.it/it/articoli-george-weigel-evangelizzare-leuropa-9049.htm">NBQ</a></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>George Weigel, già docente di teologia</strong>, Distinguished senior fellow del prestigioso Ethics and Public Policy Center di Washigton, autorevole giornalista e scrittore cattolico, insignito di numerosi Dottorati Honoris Causa, è considerato il più importante biografo del Beato Papa Giovanni Paolo II. Dando seguito a una promessa fatta al Pontefice stesso solo quattro mesi prima della sua morte, ha di recente pubblicato il libro<em>The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II - The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy</em>.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Lo abbiamo incontrato a Roma, in occasione della storica canonizzazione congiunta dei due più amati Papi del Ventesimo Secolo e gli abbiamo chiesto di parlarci della crisi di fede e politica europea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="background-color: #fce5cd;">Professor Weigel, che fine ha fatto il desiderio di Papa Giovanni Paolo II della riscoperta delle radici cristiane dell'Europa, soprattutto di fronte alla crisi ucraina che riapre scenari di conflitto che ricordano la Guerra Fredda?</strong></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><br /></b>Il fatto che oggi l'Europa sia sempre più chiusa su se stessa, incapace di prendere importanti e serie decisioni dal punto di vista politico, è proprio indice del fatto che si è creato un enorme vuoto spirituale e morale, quello di cui parlava con lungimiranza il Beato Papa Giovanni Paolo II. Questo ci dice anche dell'attuale incapacità europea di sostenere il popolo ucraino che desidera essere libero e vivere in una società aperta e giusta. Il movimento del Maidan avrebbe dovuto, infatti, dare una profonda ispirazione a tutta l'Europa a recuperare i suoi valori costituivi, quelli cristiani, ma questo finora purtroppo non è successo.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>Quale può essere il ruolo della Chiesa Cattolica oggi, adesso in Europa?</strong></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Prima di tutto deve predicare il Vangelo. Questo é il suo compito. Dobbiamo infatti smetterla di dire che bisogna "ricristianizzare" l'Europa, perché va invece "cristianizzata": infatti l'Europa ha completamente dimenticato la fede. Ciò significa quindi che la Chiesa deve assumere un vigoroso atteggiamento missionario e deve assolutamente cominciare a farlo là dove si trova il suo centro: cioè in Europa. Però la Chiesa, proprio come diceva Giovanni Paolo II, deve proporre qualcosa di nuovo. Papa Wojtyla ha infatti letteralmente chiamato e spinto la Chiesa ad abbandonare le "acque basse" e la superficialità rappresentate dalla semplice conservazione del cattolicesimo istituzionale, a favore della ricerca della profondità data dalla nuova evangelizzazione. E ciò deve accadere in primo luogo e prioritariamente in Europa.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong style="background-color: #fce5cd;">Quale può essere il ruolo della Chiesa statunitense anche verso l'Europa?</strong></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><br /></b>Sicuramente la Chiesa cattolica americana ha molti problemi, ma può assumere un ruolo estremamente importante perché é nella forma migliore fra tutti paesi occidentali. Sta vivendo un momento di grande vitalità evangelica: ci sono stati centinaia di migliaia di nuovi Battesimi nella Chiesa cattolica durante le recenti festività Pasquali e questa è una grande notizia.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>Quindi la Chiesa in America</strong> ha imboccato la strada della nuova evangelizzazione e può essere di esempio per la Chiesa in Europa, in Occidente e in tutto il mondo su come si deve muovere la Chiesa nel mondo moderno.</span></div>
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<br />Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-45468080357708894602014-04-26T19:00:00.001+01:002014-04-26T19:11:35.810+01:00Giovanni Paolo II, un ponte tra Cristo e il nostro cuore - di Arcivescovo Luigi Negri<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-size: x-small;">In <a href="http://www.lanuovabq.it/it/articoli-giovanni-paolo-ii-un-ponte-tra-cristo-e-il-nostro-cuore-9043.htm">NBQ</a></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">E’ con profonda commozione e con grande gratitudine a Dio che riviviamo la grande testimonianza cristiana di magistero, di affezione agli uomini e al loro destino che si sintetizza nell’immagine dei 27 anni di pontificato del beato Giovanni Paolo II.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>Si è presentato sulla scena del mondo</strong> con un amore incondizionato a Cristo presente nella Chiesa, un mistero di umiliazione che è diventato l’unica e reale possibilità di recupero dell’uomo e della sua dignità. Ma allo stesso tempo ha avuto una acutissima compassione dell’esperienza dell’umanità in quel triste passaggio dal secondo al terzo millennio che per la sua presenza e per il suo insegnamento sono stati un <em>kairòs</em>: una situazione eccezionale offerta da Dio alla fede dei cristiani, e offerta agli uomini nella temperie di una crisi della modernità che si era andata compiendo in modo inesorabile.<br /><br /><strong>Giovanni Paolo II si è trovato di fronte al compito</strong> di dare una formulazione dell’incontro tra Cristo e il cuore dell’uomo. Questa fu la sua intuizione: la presenza della fede nel mondo non ha ragioni esclusivamente teologiche, ha ragioni profondamente antropologiche. L’affermazione della presenza di Dio in Cristo è la strada lungo la quale l'uomo Cristo rivela profondamente la sua verità e insieme insegna la verità di ogni uomo che vive in questo mondo.<br /><br /><strong>A riaprire il dialogo fra Cristo e il cuore dell’uomo</strong> è il cuore annichilito ma non distrutto dalle grandi tragedie del totalitarismo moderno contemporaneo. Giovanni Paolo II ebbe la capacità di scoprire questo livello profondo della vita umana nella storia, quella tensione inesorabile dell’uomo verso il compimento della sua esperienza umana. Egli condivideva con Pascal la certezza che l’uomo supera infinitamente l’uomo.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>A quest’uomo cominciò a parlare.</strong> E cominciò a parlare nella concretezza della sua esistenzialità quotidiana, andando oltre ogni formulazione ideologica, ogni tentazione umanistica, ogni tentazione di ridurre la vita umana a un problema di giustizia sociale, economica e politica. Ha parlato all’uomo scendendo con lui nelle profondità di quel cuore umano su cui l’insegnamento conciliare ha scritto pagine di straordinaria profondità che hanno trovato il loro radicale compimento teorico e pratico nelle grandi pagine della <em>Redemptor Hominis,</em> il grande manifesto programmatico del cristianesimo del Terzo millennio.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>In Cristo l’uomo ritorna ad essere di Dio e per Dio.</strong> E mentre torna ad essere di Dio e per Dio si rivela in maniera adeguata quell’impegno antropologico che fa grande l’esperienza umana sulla terra. Solo nel mistero di Cristo e della Chiesa l’uomo è introdotto a comprendere e sperimentare quella antropologia adeguata che si è definitivamente compiuta nella Passione, nella Morte e nella Resurrezione di Gesù di Nazaret.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>Quest’uomo, le cui radici sono nel mistero di Cristo,</strong> realizza la propria vocazione umana sulla Terra, nella concretezza, addirittura nella lacerazione, di una esperienza umana che senza Cristo rimane incomprensibile a se stessa. Come afferma il numero 10 della <em>Redemptor Hominis</em>: «L'uomo non può vivere senza amore. Egli rimane per se stesso un essere incomprensibile, la sua vita è priva di senso, se non gli viene rivelato l'amore, se non s'incontra con l'amore, se non lo sperimenta e non lo fa proprio, se non vi partecipa vivamente». </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>Da qui la preoccupazione di rilanciare in maniera adeguata</strong> il mistero del matrimonio e il suo compimento nel matrimonio cristiano. La preoccupazione di insegnare agli uomini e ai cristiani una corretta grammatica dell’affezione, della sessualità, una corretta grammatica di quella paternità e maternità consapevoli e responsabili nella quale l’uomo esercita sulla terra il compito di reale e fondamentale collaborazione al mistero di Dio che genera ogni giorno figli all’umanità e alla Chiesa.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>Il magistero di Giovanni Paolo II era sull’uomo, sul matrimonio,</strong> sulla sacralità della vita, sulla responsabilità della paternità e della maternità, sulla vocazione a realizzare nel mondo quel matrimonio cristiano che - come ricordava don Luigi Giussani in una delle sue ultime interviste - è la cosa più alta cui l’uomo possa accedere sulla terra, reale immagine ed esperienza della Trinità nel cuore dell’uomo e nei rapporti che caratterizzano la sua vita, personale e sociale.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>La Chiesa riscoprì la grandezza dell’essere famiglia,</strong> famiglia di Dio per l’uomo, e la famiglia riscoprì la grandezza di essere Chiesa, di essere esperienza viva di quella comunione con Cristo e fra i fratelli che costituisce la novità della vita cristiana, cioè della vita umana redenta.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>L’insegnamento sull’uomo</strong>, sulla sua vocazione matrimoniale si è articolato poi nella grande lezione della dottrina sociale, in cui l’identità dell’uomo e la sua dignità vennero insegnati nel concreto esercizio di quei fondamentali diritti umani che solo la fede cristiana rivela adeguatamente e solo l’educazione ecclesiale rende esperienza di vita nuova nel mondo.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>La <em>Veritatis Splendor</em>, l’<em>Evangelium Vitae</em></strong>, la <em>Fides et Ratio</em>, la<em> Laborem Exercens</em>, la <em>Centesimus Annus</em>, tutto il corpo delle encicliche sociali del Papa Giovanni Paolo II hanno ampiamente insegnato la responsabilità del cristiano e della Chiesa a calarsi dentro la storia e a costruire dentro la storia la novità umana e cristiana che il papa definì «la Civiltà della verità e dell’amore».</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>Rispondendo alle mie condoglianze</strong> il giorno della morte del beato Giovanni Paolo II, l’allora segretario del Papa e oggi cardinale Stanislao Dziwisz mi disse: «Giovanni Paolo II ha insegnato ai cristiani ad essere autenticamente cristiani, agli uomini ad essere uomini di buona volontà, aperti al Mistero che non escludono più dall’ambito della loro vita ma verso il quale anche misteriosamente muovono i passi in attesa dell’incontro gratificante e pacificante con il mistero di Dio che in Cristo si è fatto presenza umana, storica».</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>I 27 anni del pontificato di Giovanni Paolo II</strong> hanno chiuso in maniera irreversibile ogni tentazione di dualismo, estrema conseguenza del grande sbandamento del modernismo all’inizio del secolo XX. La fede genera nel cuore dell’uomo una cultura adeguata, consente la conoscenza profonda del mistero di Dio, del mistero dell’uomo nella realtà della storia, del loro reciproco connettersi ed articolarsi. Il cristiano di Giovanni Paolo II è un cristiano che è consapevole della grazia che gli è stata fatta, e che vive la fede non solo per se stesso ma per il mondo. Ecco la grande intuizione per cui la missione costituisce – come ebbe a definirla nei primi anni ’80 – l’identità e il movimento della Chiesa. La Chiesa non fa la missione come una delle possibili azioni, la Chiesa è missione, la Chiesa si autorealizza nella missione, perché nella missione la Chiesa diventa sempre più se stessa, «la fede si irrobustisce donandola», scrisse nella Redemptoris Missio.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>La canonizzazione di Giovanni Paolo II</strong> è l’acquisizione definitiva nella Chiesa, di fronte a Dio e di fronte all’umanità, di un cammino cristiano e umano del quale tutto ciò che era stato operato contro Dio è stato inesorabilmente giudicato. Tutto ciò che era tensione al mistero di Dio è stato valorizzato, ma soprattutto è stata testimoniata la pienezza della fede, le condizioni della pienezza di libertà e di umanità per cui la redenzione è l’unica autentica possibilità di una antropologia adeguata, di una storia compiutamente vissuta, di una attesa piena di sacrificio e di letizia per l’instaurarsi di quel regno di Dio che nel mistero della Chiesa viene continuamente riproposto e autenticamente iniziato, portato di generazione in generazione verso il suo compimento. «Quel regno celesto – come diceva Iacopone da Todi – che compie omne festo che il cuore ha bramato».</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><strong>I cristiani che hanno seguito il Magistero e la testimonianza del Papa,</strong> hanno recuperato il senso del proprio essere uomini nuovi nel mondo, destinati proprio da questa novità a praticarla autenticamente e a comunicarla irresistibilmente, perché ogni uomo che incontra la testimonianza della Chiesa di Cristo, la testimonianza che ogni cristiano è chiamato a dare, possa se vuole accettare di inserire anche lui la sua vita e la sua libertà nel grande mistero della Chiesa in cui Cristo è continuamente presente, incontra l’uomo, riempie la sua vita di una proposta irresistibile. Soprattutto lo accompagna in quella azione educativa per cui le parole, le grandi parole della Chiesa, diventano carne e sangue, diventano esperienza reale, diventano una irresistibile fede in Dio e passione per ogni uomo che viene a questo mondo.</span></div>
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<br />Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-64593676988423592752014-04-26T18:40:00.000+01:002014-04-26T18:41:53.925+01:00Two Popes and today’s sexual chaos - by Judie Brown<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 19.444442749023438px;">April 25, 2014 (</span><u style="color: #333333; line-height: 19.444442749023438px;"><a href="http://lifesitenews.com/" style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">LifeSiteNews.com</a></u><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 19.444442749023438px;">) – </span><a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02364b.htm" style="color: #336699; line-height: 19.444442749023438px; text-decoration: none;">Canonization</a><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 19.444442749023438px;"> is always a special event in the Catholic Church. But history will be made two days from now as two recent popes—both of whom have had a profound effect on the Church, her theology, and the world—will be elevated to sainthood.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The first of these, Pope John XXIII, presided over the opening of the <a href="http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=10034" style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">Second Vatican Council</a>. That alone made him a controversial pope in the eyes of those with the misguided notion that convening this council was the beginning of<a href="http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/archive-2006-1015-moral-flaw-vatican-two.htm" style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">modernism</a> in the Church. The fact is that the council did not open the doors to error. The <a href="http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=8000" style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">misinterpretation</a> of Vatican II documents was preceded by years of misguided attitudes propagated by wayward priests, bishops, and lay theologians. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But that’s a story for another day. Suffice it to say, Pope John XXIII had the most honorable of intentions. He opened the council on October 11, 1962, <a href="http://www.americancatholic.org/Features/Saints/saint.aspx?id=1165" style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">saying</a> among other things: “The Church has always opposed . . . errors. Nowadays, however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity.” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Though he <a href="http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pope-opens-vatican-ii" style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">died</a> just eight months later, the phrase “medicine of mercy” has been tossed about like Frisbee. Some have <a href="http://www.wf-f.org/JFH-GaudiumEtSpes.html" style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">interpreted</a> it to mean that Vatican II documents teach that it is better to be kind than it is to expect the adherence to truth and the avoidance of sin. This attitude could not be further from the truth.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For example, in May 1961, Pope John XXIII taught in <em><a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_15051961_mater_en.html" style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">Mater et Magistra</a></em>:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We must solemnly proclaim that human life is transmitted by means of the family, and the family is based upon a marriage which is one and indissoluble and, with respect to Christians, raised to the dignity of a sacrament. The transmission of human life is the result of a personal and conscious act, and, as such, is subject to the all-holy, inviolable, and immutable laws of God, which no man may ignore or disobey. He is not therefore permitted to use certain ways and means which are allowable in the propagation of plant and animal life.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Human life is sacred—all men must recognize that fact. From its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God. Those who violate His laws not only offend the divine majesty and degrade themselves and humanity, they also sap the vitality of the political community of which they are members.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Here we find the Holy Father illuminating the undeniable truth that respecting human dignity is not optional if one desires to live in a way that is pleasing to God. In other words, living in accordance with Catholic teaching means accepting and sharing the “medicine of mercy.” Nothing in Vatican II documents denies this.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Further, Pope John Paul II <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae_en.html" style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">taught</a> in 1995, “Despite their differences of nature and moral gravity, contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We can conclude, therefore, that genuine mercy can only be communicated if we understand this virtue and how we must live it, speak it, and share it. Aquinas <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3030.htm#article3" style="color: #336699; text-decoration: none;">tells us</a> that mercy signifies our grief for the sins of another person. Expressing this requires our conscious decision to aid someone in error—showing him the wrongdoing and helping him find in Christ the will to repent. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Whether that action involves abortion, contraception, or other threats to the human person, when we become the ministers of the medicine of mercy we help them by sharing truth in love. We are, by our lives and actions, guiding the wayward to encounter truth, repentance, and forgiveness.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is the essence of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II’s legacy.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, as we think about these soon-to-be saints, let us ask each of them to intercede for us that we may courageously oppose cruelty toward every one of our brothers and sisters while administering the medicine of mercy to a culture filled with human beings suffering sexual chaos.</span></div>
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-88183248987873557242014-04-26T17:46:00.000+01:002014-04-26T17:47:10.305+01:00Interview: A Tale of Two Saints - by George Weigel<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">In <a href="http://www.eppc.org/publications/interview-tale-two-saints/">EPPC</a> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/376425/tale-two-saints-interview" style="color: #0f3163; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 10px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">National Review Online</a><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 16px; line-height: 25px;"> </span><span style="color: #888888; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 4px;">| Published on April 24, 2014</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On Divine Mercy Sunday this weekend in Rome — one week after Easter — Pope Francis will celebrate the canonizations of two recent predecessors in the Chair of Peter, Popes John Paul II and John XXIII. John Paul II’s biographer, George Weigel, distinguished senior fellow at the <a href="http://www.eppc.org/fellows-scholars/george-weigel/" style="color: #0f3163; text-decoration: none;">Ethics and Public Policy Center</a>, discusses the significance of the event with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Why are John Paul II and John XXIII being canonized? Is it a big deal that this is a “doubleheader”?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">GEORGE WEIGEL: It’s probably useful to get one thing straight at the outset: The Church doesn’t “make saints,” and neither does the pope. God makes saints, and the Church (through the pope and his collaborators) recognizes the saints God has made. In the first millennium of Christian history, the Church “recognized” saints through popular acclamation. From the mid 17th century on, the Church used a rather complex (and frankly adversarial) legal process to test whether popular reputations for heroic virtue — the definition of “sanctity” the Church uses in assessing these things — were warranted. That process was reformed by John Paul II in 1983, so that the current process more closely resembles a doctoral seminar in history than a trial.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Multiple canonizations are not all that rare. What gives the “doubleheader” of John XXIII and John Paul II its particular resonance is that both men were beloved, both were controversial, and both were deeply involved with the Second Vatican Council. A lot of the contemporary history of the Catholic Church is summed up in these two lives.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I think Pope Francis’s decision to waive the normal requirement for a second, post-beatification miracle for John XXIII and to celebrate his canonization together with that of John Paul II (after a post-beatification miracle due to his intercession had been confirmed) was inspired and bold. What Pope Francis may be saying is that here are the two bookends of the Second Vatican Council: the pope who had the courage and wisdom to summon the most important Catholic event in 500 years, and the pope who had the courage and wisdom to give that council an authoritative interpretation. I’d also suggest that John Paul II completed the work of John XXIII, by giving post-conciliar Catholicism a new vision of its evangelical, missionary potential — which happens to be the reason John XXIII called Vatican II, as we learn from rereading his magnificent opening address to the Council on October 11, 1962.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: As always, it’s a case of “heroic virtue.” Both men had a widespread reputation for sanctity during their lives; indeed, in both cases, there were calls immediately after their deaths for them to be proclaimed saints. The dignity with which both of them bore their final suffering was a great priestly example, as was the calm courage with which both conducted the Office of Peter. And they could “pope” as well as they did because they were both men who had displayed, in their pre-papal lives and ministries, a radical conversion to Christ.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: What is canonization anyway? Does the Vatican have a window into who is in Heaven and who is in Hell? Could this be presumptuous on the part of the Catholic Church?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: “The Vatican” is, depending on the context, a micro-state or a set of buildings, and in either instance, “the Vatican” doesn’t have any privileged insight into human souls. What the Catholic Church does have is the promise of the Lord Jesus Christ that, by the Holy Spirit, she will be preserved in the truth Christ left her as a patrimony. And part of the Holy Spirit’s ongoing preservation of the Church in the truth is the Holy Spirit’s lifting up saintly men and women throughout the ages — and enabling the Church to recognize the sanctity of its sons and daughters, even when that sanctity comes in surprising or unexpected ways. The formal process of “canonization” is intended to weigh claims that X or Y lived the virtues in an exceptional way, a claim that is also weighed against the expectation that God will provide his own signal in the case of X or Y, through the medically inexplicable cures that are attributed to the intercession of candidates for beatification and canonization.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">John Paul II was convinced that God is profligate in “making saints,” and that the divine delight in doing so had not slackened over the centuries. Thus his many beatifications and canonizations were an effort to get the Church of the third millennium to recognize the many saints who surround us, that “great cloud of witnesses” of which the Letter to the Hebrews speaks so eloquently.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As for Hell, the Catholic Church has never declared that X, Y, or Z is certainly in Hell, although the Church continues to believe that Hell exists. The question of Hell’s population is for God to determine. The greatest of poets, Dante, was, of course, less restrained in his census of Hell than the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: “Vatican Under John Paul II Knew About Sex Abuse In Legion Of Christ For Decades, Documents Reveal,” one headline this week reads. Did Pope John Paul not want to know the truth about Marcial Maciel? Did he know and not care?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: I discussed the Maciel case in <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/247596/pope-s-legacy-george-weigel" style="color: #0f3163; text-decoration: none;"><em>The End and the Beginning</em></a>, the second volume of my biography of John Paul II, and my conclusion today remains the same as it was when that book was published in 2010: John Paul II was deceived by MarcialMaciel, a master-deceiver who deceived many, many people. That, I think, is clear. But that John Paul II knew about Maciel’s perfidies and “didn’t care” is inconceivable.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: An AP story Monday was headlined “John Paul’s legacy stained by sex abuse scandal.” As his biographer, would you agree? What is his legacy on this front?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: This is another matter I discussed at length in both <em>The End and the Beginning</em> and in my 2002 book on the abuse scandal, <em>The Courage To Be Catholic</em>. There are a number of things to be said, things that don’t fit neatly into wire-service sound bites.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First, John Paul II was a great reformer of the priesthood. The Catholic priesthood in 1978 was in arguably its worst shape since the Reformation: thousands of men had abandoned the ministry, and we now know that others — a small minority, but one was one too many — were behaving horribly in betraying the trust of the young. The crisis of the priesthood was addressed by John Paul II comprehensively, by his teaching, his example, his reform of seminaries, and his reform of the world episcopate. The first thing to be said in fairness about John Paul II and the priesthood is that he is one of the great papal reformers of the priesthood.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Second, it’s clear that the Holy See and the pope were not living the abuse crisis in “real time” with the Church in the United States in 2002, an information lag that led to a misimpression of inattention or refusal to face facts.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Third, when John Paul II was fully informed of what had been revealed in the first four months of 2002, he acted decisively, summoning the American cardinals to the Vatican and initiating a process that led to a major and further reform of U.S. seminaries.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Fourth, the rigorous way the Catholic Church has dealt with what is a societal plague — the sexual abuse of the young — should be taken as a model for other institutions. The plague is real, but a one-eyed obsession with the plague’s impact on the Catholic Church makes it more difficult to address the far more widespread crisis of sexual abuse: within families (where the majority of the abuse of the young takes place) or in government-run schools. One does no good service to the young, and to the protection of the young, by using this horrible problem and these wicked acts to attack the credibility of the Church’s moral teaching on matters that cut against the grain of contemporary lifestyle libertinism.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: Shouldn’t both John Paul II and John XXIII be held responsible for what happened on their watch? Which certainly doesn’t scream “heroic virtue”?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: Local bishops and religious superiors are the ones to be held “primarily responsible” for failures to address, rigorously and decisively, the sin and crime of the sexual abuse of the young.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: Some have accused Pope Francis of being all talk on the topic of sex abuse. Would you agree? Or is there a story being missed?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: I really don’t understand what this accusation means. Is someone seriously proposing that Pope Francis does not care about the victims of abuse? That he is giving a wink-and-nod to these issues, where they remain? He’s just established a commission to oversee the Church’s response to the societal abuse crisis, and it includes both laity and an abuse victim.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The pope’s brief criticism of a U.N. report on the Church and the sexual abuse of the young rightly reminded the world that this is a global crisis, not some uniquely Catholic crisis. If Pope Francis were a less charitable man, he would also have remarked on the U.N.’s dismal record in addressing the rampant sexual abuse committed by U.N. “peacekeeping forces.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: The Holy See is about to go in front of a U.N. torture committee. Is there really cause for celebration in the Church about anything this weekend? At some point does Pope Francis have to not just reform but change tradition and teachings from another time?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: The pope is the servant of an authoritative tradition, not its master. One of his tasks is to preserve the integrity of that tradition in its fullness; note that, in his opening address, that’s what John XXIII said was the primary purpose of Vatican II!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The millions of people who will flood Rome this weekend to celebrate two great modern Catholic leaders and their lives of heroic virtue know that there’s a lot to celebrate in the Catholic Church — including its steady refusal to cave in to what the <em>New York Times</em> editorial board and certain <em>Times</em> op-ed columnists think it should be. Hundreds of thousands of men and women, presumably neither deluded nor insane, were baptized or entered into full communion with the Catholic Church at Easter. The Catholic Church is the world’s premier institutional defender of religious freedom for all. Amidst the confusions of post-modernism, the Catholic Church is the world’s most important institutional defender of the prerogatives of reason to get at the truth of things — including the moral truth of things. The Catholic Church is the largest educator of women and the largest provider of health care to women and children in the Third World. The Church’s best seminaries in the United States are fuller than they have been in 40 years. Young Catholics are giving years of their lives as FOCUS missionaries on college and university campuses across the United States. The Church offers empowerment to the poor through its extensive social-service networks and compassionate support to women in crisis pregnancies.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, yes, there’s a lot to celebrate, and a lot for which to be grateful.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: There’s a synod on the family coming up in the fall, convened by Pope Francis. What do you expect come of it? Again, Church teaching seems to be from another reality on marriage and family and women.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: Pope Francis understands that there is a crisis of marriage culture throughout the world. And he wants the Church to address that crisis more effectively. That will happen, I think, by lifting up the beauty of Christian marriage as an alternative to the anorexic notion of marriage as a legal contract for mutual convenience; Christian marriage is a covenant of love and self-giving, and the world needs to hear about that. And the Western world needs to come to grips with the fact that a contraceptive culture is leading to demographic oblivion.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We’ve got a lot of resources to address these issues today, resources that weren’t available in the cultural maelstrom of the Sixties and the furor over Paul VI’s encyclical on the morally appropriate means of family planning, <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html" style="color: #0f3163; text-decoration: none;"><em>Humanae Vitae</em></a>. We have John Paul II’s magnificent 1981 apostolic exhortation, <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_19811122_familiaris-consortio_en.html" style="color: #0f3163; text-decoration: none;"><em>Familiaris Consortio</em></a>. We have John Paul’s Theology of the Body. We have brilliant books like Mary Eberstadt’s <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/309934/pill-buzz-kill-interview" style="color: #0f3163; text-decoration: none;"><em>Adam and Eve After the Pill</em></a>. Those resources should all be in play in the special meeting of the Synod of Bishops in October, and in the ordinary meeting of the Synod in 2015, which will also address the crisis of family life throughout the world.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Above all, we have the example of couples and families who are the living answer to the global crisis of marriage culture. The Synod fathers should hear from them, early and often, as these discussions unfold over the next year and a half.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: What will you most appreciate or enjoy about the canonizations this weekend?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: I’m looking forward to another global gathering of the great Catholic family from all over the world. It’s likely to be a bit chaotic, but then so, I expect, was the first Christian Pentecost.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: Is there anything about John Paul II you wish people realized?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: I suppose I wish that people would recognize his extraordinary courage in facing down a crippling illness and reminding us that there are no disposable human beings. More importantly, I wish that people would realize that he could do that, and be that, because of his embrace of the Cross as the truth of life.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: Is there anything about John XXIII you wish people realized?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: I wish we could get beyond the stereotypes here. Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was steeped in quite conventional Catholic piety, as is clear from his spiritual diary, <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/redirect/amazon.p?j=%200385497547" style="color: #0f3163; text-decoration: none;"><em>Journal of a Soul</em></a>. What made him the bold leader he eventually became as Pope John XXIII were his lifelong study of history — which taught him that the Church must adapt its presentation of perennial truths to the demands of a given cultural moment, so that the truth can be heard and engaged — and his life outside what I would call the “Catholic bubble.” He spent decades as a Vatican diplomatic representative in Orthodox and Islamic countries. He was a Holocaust rescuer. He understood that Catholicism had to rediscover its originating evangelical dynamism if it was going to be the force it should be for the healing of the world.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: Is it right to say one is a right-wing and one is a left-wing pope?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: No, it’s quite ridiculous to say that. Which doesn’t mean it won’t be said, alas.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: Is this some sort of reset in the life of the Church?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: If by “this” you mean the canonization doubleheader, it’s the best kind of reset: a reminder that the Church is, at the bottom of the bottom line, in the business of facilitating holiness, which comes through friendship with Jesus Christ.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: Is there an approach to foreign policy and human freedom and flourishing that is consistent and important about the two?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: Both men understood that, at the root of the sorrows of the 20th century, there was a profound anthropological crisis — a crisis in the very idea of the human person. Roncalli understood this experientially and historically, and responded to it in a deeply personal way that exuded pastoral charity. Wojtyla got it experientially, analyzed it philosophically, and put the Christian view of the inalienable dignity of the human person at the center of his teaching and witness.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: What’s <a href="http://www.catholicpulse.com/en/columnists/lopez/040813.html" style="color: #0f3163; text-decoration: none;">Divine Mercy Sunday</a> and what’s significant about it as the doubleheader date? What does it say about Francis?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: “Easter,” as Catholics understand it liturgically, lasts eight days: every day of Easter week <em>is</em> Easter, and so is the Octave of Easter, the Second Sunday of Easter, which John Paul II designated as Divine Mercy Sunday — the day the Church celebrates the capacity of the divine compassion to heal the most broken of lives. That is what the Resurrection of Jesus confirms. And it’s entirely appropriate that two popes through whom the world “saw” divine compassion and pastoral charity in an exceptional way should be canonized on that day. Pope Francis understands this, and that’s why the doubleheader is what it is and when it is.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: With Elizabeth Lev and your son, Stephen, you recently wrote a book called <em>Roman Pilgrimage</em> on the station churches of Rome. Are there any spots you will not miss when in Rome?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: I’ve got to get back to Sts. Cosmas and Damian and St. Praxedes.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">LOPEZ: Christians are still celebrating Easter. How is Easter relevant in the world today with all its challenges and possibilities?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">WEIGEL: Easter tells Christians that the end of the world’s story has been made manifest in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and his being constituted as Lord and Savior. That changes everything. So, despite the awfulness that we too often see around us, Christians know through Easter that God’s creative and redeeming purposes are going to be vindicated at the end of the drama of history and creation. So we can get about witnessing to the divine mercy we have experienced in our own lives, through friendship with the Risen Christ, in ways that offer the possibility of that friendship to others. And we can do that knowing that, in the end, it’s all a divine comedy, not a cosmic tragedy.</span></div>
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-16690511884054000132014-04-26T17:27:00.000+01:002014-04-26T17:35:28.889+01:00A Soul for All Seasons - by George Weigel<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">In <a href="http://www.eppc.org/publications/soul-seasons/">EPPC</a></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In a March 1996 conversation, Pope John Paul II told me, almost wistfully, “They try to understand me from the outside, but I can only be understood from inside.” His tone that evening was less critical than it was bemused, even resigned. But whether his regrets involved biographers who treated him as a globe-trotting politician or journalists who parsed his every word and deed in conventional left-right categories, the view from outside, he knew, was not going to get anyone close to the essence of Karol Wojtyła.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I agreed with him then; and now, nine years after his death, in the days before his April 27 canonization, I agree with him even more. John Paul II, who embodied the human drama of the second half of the 20th century in a singular way, and whose witness to the truth of humanity’s noblest aspirations bent the curve of history toward freedom, can only be understood from inside out. Or, if you prefer, soul first.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">His was a many-textured soul. Some of its multiple facets help explain his extraordinary accomplishments in the Catholic Church and on the world stage.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He had a Polish soul, formed by a distinctive experience of history. Vivisected in the Third Polish Partition of 1795, his country was not restored to the map of Europe until 1918. But during those 123 years of political humiliation, the Polish nation survived the demise of the Polish state through its language, its literature and its faith, with the Catholic Church acting as the safe-deposit box of national identity.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Learning about that hard experience as a boy, Karol Wojtyła was permanently inoculated against the twin heresies that had beset the West for centuries: the Jacobin heresy that the political quest for power runs history, and the Marxist heresy that history is simply the exhaust fumes of economic processes. Knowing in his Polish soul that culture, not politics or economics, drives history over the long haul, John Paul II could ignite a revolution of conscience during his first papal visit to Poland in 1979. He summoned his people to live the truth about themselves, to reject the communist culture of the lie, and to find in that restored national identity irresistible tools of resistance to oppression.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This son of Poland was, at the same time, a man of global vision with a deeply humanistic soul, forged by what he regarded as <i>the</i> crisis of modernity: a crisis in the very idea of the human person. That crisis, he believed, was not confined to communism’s materialist reduction of the human condition, which he tenaciously fought as a university chaplain, a professor of ethics, a charismatic priest and a dynamic bishop. The crisis could also be found in those Western systems that were tempted to measure men and women by their commercial utility rather than by the innate and inalienable dignity that was their birthright.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">John Paul II’s conviction, biblically rooted and philosophically refined, was that every human life is of infinite value, at every stage and in every condition. This was the basis of his priestly ministry for almost six decades; it was the conviction that forged his unique moral analysis of world politics; and it was the ground from which he could inspire men and women from a staggering variety of cultures.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He could also touch those lives because of his dramatic soul. As a young man, he confessed in a memoir later in life, he was “obsessed” with the theater. And while he took some useful skills from those experiences on stage— John Gielgud once commented on John Paul II’s “perfect” sense of timing, as Alec Guinness marveled at the resonance of his voice—he also developed a dramatic view of the human condition. We all live, he believed, in a quotidian, yet deeply consequential, moral drama. Every day of our lives is lived in the dramatic tension between who we are and who we should be.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">John Paul II intuited this on stage; he refined that intuition as a philosopher. And it was deepened by his Christian conviction that the drama of every human life is playing within a cosmic drama in which the God of the Bible is producer, director, scriptwriter and protagonist. That Christian conviction, in turn, was what allowed him to say, a year after he was shot in St. Peter’s Square in 1981, “In the designs of Providence there are no mere coincidences.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A man whose soul is formed by the conviction that “coincidence” is merely a facet of providence that he has not yet grasped is a man impervious to the tyranny of the possible. And here, too, the soul of John Paul II helps explain his accomplishment.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When he was elected pope in 1978, some observers, fixated on what they imagined to be possible, saw in the Catholic Church only contention and possible ruin. He saw seeds of reform and renewal, leading to what he would call a “New Evangelization,” a new missionary dynamic in Catholicism that would offer the divine mercy to a broken and wounded humanity. Others, fixated on what seemed settled in world affairs, believed that the Yalta division of Europe after World War II was permanent. But after June 1979 and the rise of the Solidarity movement in Poland, he saw possibilities for dramatic cultural, social and eventually political change in Eastern Europe—and then helped effect them.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If John Paul II seemed able to discern possibilities where others saw only barriers; if he saw (as he put it at the United Nations in 1995), a “springtime of the human spirit” after a winter of murderous discontent embodied in two world wars, the gulag and Auschwitz—well, one could look to his keen mind for an explanation. But the deeper explanation lies in his soul, and in the human character formed by that soul.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was John Paul’s soul in which hundreds of millions of human beings found an exemplar of decency and an icon of hope. It was the character formed by that soul that made him a champion of resistance against the tyranny of diminished expectations, personal and political.</span></div>
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-72537010726117853682014-04-15T11:47:00.000+01:002014-04-15T11:53:06.259+01:00The Joys and Sorrows of Francis's Magisterium - by Sandro Magister<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">ROME, April 15, 2014 – From the dicastery heads of the Roman curia called to report at the beginning of this month of April, Pope Francis wanted to hear just one thing, summarized as follows in the official statement: "the reflections and reactions raised in the different dicasteries by the apostolic exhortation 'Evangelii Gaudium' and the perspectives opened for its implementation."</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The fact that "Evangelii Gaudium" is essentially the action plan of the pontificate of Jorge Mario Bergoglio is now beyond all doubt.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">But it is precisely for this reason that understanding it is so important. And at the same time so difficult. Because the form in which "Evangelii Gaudium" is written is not at all in keeping with the classical canons of the ecclesiastical magisterium, just like the everyday public discourse of Pope Francis.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">In the analysis published as an exclusive below, Paul-Anthony McGavin maintains that Francis shuns abstractions, prohibits what he calls "cold syllogisms," and instead loves thinking and action that are "holistic," or all-encompassing. And he shows how precisely this is the novelty of method in "Evangelii Gaudium."</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">McGavin is a 70-year-old Australian priest of the diocese of Canberra and Goulburn and an ecclesiastical assistant at the University of Canberra. In 2010 he published in "L'Osservatore Romano" an equally extensive and in-depth commentary on the encyclical "Caritas in Veritate" of Benedict XVI.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">In Pope Francis - McGavin writes - "we encounter a mind that is grounded in a pastoral empiricism . . . that integrates concrete circumstances within a structured and fundamental understanding of the Gospel."</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">But McGavin himself acknowledges that this "unfragmented" mentality exposes the pope to substantial risks of misunderstanding. Especially when some of his statements are taken by the media as self-contained aphorisms and turned into comprehensive keys of interpretation for the current pontificate.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Two recent examples are proof of this misunderstanding.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">*</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Over the span of 36 hours, between Thursday the 10th and Friday the 11th of April, Pope Francis lashed out - and not for the first time - against the "dictatorship of uniform thought" that suppresses "the freedom of nations, the freedom of the people, freedom of conscience."</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">He then forcefully defended "the right of children to grow up in a family with a dad and a mom, in relation to the masculinity and femininity of a father and a mother, thus preparing affective maturity."</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">He furthermore expressed the toughest of views on "the horrors of educational manipulation" that "with the pretense of modernity pushes children and young people to walk the dictatorial path of the single form of thought." And he added the testimony of a "great educator" who had told him a few days earlier, referring to concrete projects of education: "At times one cannot tell with these projects if one is sending a child to school or to a reeducation camp."</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">And finally he reiterated his opposition to the killing of all "unborn life in the mother's womb," citing the summary judgment of Vatican Council II: "Abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes."</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The references to events, to laws, to judicial decisions, to opinion campaigns attributable to "gender" ideology, in the news recently in Italy, France, and other countries, were transparent in the words of Pope Francis.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">But in the media in general his warnings had practically no impact. As if they were a pure abstraction, with no influence on reality and foreign to any judgment. Because the key to explaining everything - in the media's narration of Pope Francis - is by now the "who am I to judge?" spoken by the pope for the first time during the press conference on the return flight from Rio de Janeiro and a second time in the interview with "La Civiltà Cattolica," in reference to the homosexual who "is of good will and is in search of God."</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">*</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The second example shows how a distorted and extensive use of the "who am I to judge?" has also made a breach in the Church, and even in some who should have been reliable interpreters of Pope Francis's thinking.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">On April 1, at a crowded public conference in Rome, the director of "La Civiltà Cattolica" and the pope's interviewer, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, said:</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">"If it had not been for Pope Francis it would not have been easy to baptize a baby girl born to a lesbian couple."</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The Jesuit was referring to the baptism announced with great fanfare and then administered on April 5 in Argentina, in the cathedral of Córdoba, of the little daughter of a woman united in a civil "marriage" with another woman, both present at the rite as "mothers" and assisted by President Cristina Kirchner as "godmother."</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">But if this, according to Fr. Spadaro, was the happy news fostered by Pope Francis, it must be said that there is nothing new but rather something very old and traditional in the baptism of a newborn girl, however she may have come into the world. Only a few progressive and anti-Constantinian Catholic currents are against the age-old practice of infant baptism.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The news, for the Church, was instead in all the rest of the highly touted ceremony in Córdoba. Where everything - from the unnatural "family," to the two "mothers," to the "godmother" Kirchner who was an active proponent of the law that allowed the two to be united in "marriage," to the concealed biological father of the newborn girl - spoke of complete submission to that "single form of thought" so staunchly opposed by Pope Francis.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">_________</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><b style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">WHAT’S NEW IN "EVANGELII GAUDIUM"?<br /><br />by Paul-Anthony McGavin</b><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Pope Francis has attracted wide media attention with his one-line remarks and magazine style interviews. The popular press has largely lauded his remarks, hearing what they want to hear, propagating what they want to hear, and not hearing his refrain: “I am a son of the Church.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">"Evangelii gaudium" is the first extended and considered literary statement that encompasses much of what the Holy Father has been saying in oral formats. What I intend to show is that what is new in "Evangelii gaudium" is what I call method, the manner of thinking and reasoning.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Pope Francis does not present himself as a scholar, and his simple conversational one-line remarks are often made with unvarnished language. What becomes evident in "Evangelii gaudium" is that he nevertheless has refined intellectuality. The manner in which he thinks is sophisticated and has a distinct method or methodology that may be seen in "Evangelii gaudium". This method is not new. What is new is the simplicity and clarity of its statement.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The irony, however, is that his method is at once simple and complex.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">It is simple because it is straightforward. It is simple because there is constant reference to concrete situations, rather than to abstractions that cover all or various situations.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">It is complex because it is situated in a cluster of understandings. The Pope’s oft-quoted single-line remarks in fact situate in a mind that sees a cluster of understandings, and not just single-line perspectives that call upon the mentality that we find in syllogistic logic. Pope Francis is a system thinker.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">To say “a system thinker” seems abstruse, when Pope Francis is not an abstruse man. To use a different idiom, Pope Francis tends to think “holistically”. He tends to locate the questions with which he deals in view of a whole understanding of the work of God in Christ (the Gospel, "Evangelium"), and that whole understanding in the varieties of situations that are evoked. That is, in the concrete circumstances where he is considering the reception and living out of what God has done and is doing in the Church. His thought is always situated pastorally, rather than abstractly. Yet, however, he sees and thinks through the issues that engage his focus in a whole-view way that is complex.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Let’s look at an example of this from "Evangelii gaudium":</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">"There also exists a constant tension between ideas and realities. Realities simply “are”, whereas ideas are “worked out”. There has to be a continuous dialogue between the two, lest ideas become detached from realities. It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone… So a third principle comes into play: realities are greater than ideas. This calls for rejecting the various means of masking reality: angelic forms of purity, dictatorships of relativism, empty rhetoric, objectives more ideal than real, brands of ahistorical fundamentalism, ethical systems bereft of wisdom" (n. 231).</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">One could get hung-up on the rather wide-sweeping list of examples that closes this excerpt, a diverse list that includes things that are likely to provoke an “Ouch!” in most readers. Rather, our attention should focus on the distinction between ideas and realities.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The Pope proposes that ideas are constructed or “worked out”, whereas realities simply “are”. In strict terms, his dichotomization may be questioned, because the subject must perceptually focus on “realities”, must engage an epistemology in order to comprehend the “reality” – just as the subject must engage an epistemology in order to give mental form to something that is noetic, to “ideas”. But introducing such strict philosophical and psychological issues would deflect from the central point that the Pope is making.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">His focus is that there is a tension between the conceptual world and the practical world, and that this tension calls us to dialogue. This is an example of what I have named as at once simple and complex. People can readily grasp that there is often a disjunction between the world of ideas and the world of realities. It is a simple proposition. But once this perspective is engaged, it leads to complexity. This could be the complexity of conflict, or of pathways toward a resolution. The Pope proposes the latter, he proposes dialogue that typically is complex and culturally situated.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Just think how complex it is to moderate the position of someone who has constructed an asceticism that is non-incarnational (“angelicism”); or to moderate the position of someone who sees the whole moral order as self-defined (the “dictatorships of relativism”); or to moderate the position of someone whose position stands outside historical understandings of God’s providence in the world (an “a-historical version of Christianity”), to mention just three of the Pope’s examples.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The Pope comes down on the side of “realities”, saying that “realities are greater than ideas”. This would seem at odds with his emphasis on tension and on dialogue. But it is not really a departure from the points of tension and dialogue. It is an approach that proceeds from the Gospel as first rooted in “realities”, rather than in “ideas”.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The Gospel first involves the “realities” – the facts – of Our Lord’s incarnation, his earthly life, his passion, his resurrection, and his ascension. That is, the Gospel first involves the facts of God’s action in Christ. "He is Risen!" is not first the proclamation of an idea, but of a fact, an experienced fact (n. 7, quoting "Deus Caritas est," 217). The Gospel is predicated upon "witness: That which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life" (1 John 1:1). The astonishing power of the Christian idea is that it articulates the realities of historical acts as encountered by witnesses.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">It is this “reality” that precedes “ideas” in the Christian scheme of things. For the Christian – and using just three of the Pope’s examples – sin is a reality; salvation in Christ is a reality; injustices are a reality (of course, many mistakenly think injustices as perceptual rather than objective, but I do not speak to that); unkindnesses are a reality (although of course misguided sensibilities may wrongly attribute unkindness). In each of these three examples, one can see dangers in detaching from empirical matter-of-factness the notions of sin, injustice, or unkindness: “It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone…” (n. 231).</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">These reduced-form remarks of the Pope are situated in a comprehensive perspective, in a holistic perspective that is undergirded by a fundamental experience of and appreciation of the Gospel. It is a perspective that is at once simple and complex. It is a perspective that engages dialogue. It is a perspective that unmasks conceits of one kind or another (whether conceits of an artifice of religiosity or of a humanist relativism). The “rejecting the various means of masking reality” (n. 231) may seem a harsh turn of phrase, and here I would turn to the non-textual image of the body language of Pope Francis (n. 140): he can hardly keep a closed body posture; it constantly is open; the typical gesture is toward a meeting, toward a conversation, dialogue. Again taking up the text portion, it is a dialogue of truthfulness, and truthfulness that encounters matter-of-factness.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">One sees in this example that the direction of the Holy Father’s manner of thinking and acting is not what I call single-line. He is not grabbed by single-line propositions (“cold syllogisms”, n. 142). His tendency is to thought and action that is holistic – toward a whole understanding of the Gospel, and to the grounding of that whole understanding in matter-of-fact circumstances that avoid abstractions. He is not drawn to a “desk-bound theology” (n. 133). His instinct is toward a pastoral theology.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The pastoral theology focus of Pope Francis may be illustrated with two other key quotations:</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">"Pastoral ministry in a missionary style is not obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be insistently imposed" (n. 35). "It needs first to be said that in preaching the Gospel a fitting sense of proportion has to be maintained" (n. 38).</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Again in these small quotes we see an implicit holistic grasp of the Gospel; again we see that the significances of aspects of the proclamation or of corollaries of the proclamation are situated in a whole that gives them proportion. What the Pope presents derives from systemic understanding. This is not intellectualist systematizing, but systemic understanding that is grounded in pastoral experience.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The Pope will be misunderstood if his various utterances (particularly those that grab the media as “sound bites”) are taken as one-line dictums, for the Pope’s mind is not a fragmented one. In Pope Francis we encounter a mind that is grounded in a pastoral empiricism, but an empiricism that is in whole-system dialogue with the foundations of Catholic faith that integrates concrete circumstances within a structured and fundamental understanding of the Gospel.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">This is not to say that in each and every respect this integration is perfect. An Apostolic Exhortation forms part of magisterial teaching, but it is not unreformable. Pope Francis retains an Argentine passport, and his larger cultural situation is Latin America. And Latin America and Central America are without exception comprised of nations that are marked with poverty and political instability. His own perspective on this (his own “take”) is rather “culturally formed” – it is formed experientially, rather than conceptually. In brief, Pope Francis is not a social scientist, and does not bring a social science understanding of the poverty and political instability of his cultural background. One could hear him say, understanding has to begin “with realities”, not “with ideas”. Yet the “facts” are that about a century ago, Argentine and Australia had similar configurations of economy and society, but now Australia is materially more advanced, and is more equalitarian and with relatively little poverty. I regard the reasons for this divergence between Australia and Argentine (my home and the Pope’s home) as mainly “cultural” – and cultural divergences that reflect rather different conceptualizations (“ideas”) of economy and civil society.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">I am not about to launch into an excursus on economy and society. I make these remarks to underscore that everything said in "Evangelii gaudium" is not said with equal robustness. There are points where as both a social scientist and a theologian I have heavily annotated "Evangelii gaudium" in a qualifying ways (particularly nn. 48-50 and 144-147, and 152f). But even within sections so annotated, one still finds restatement of the central thesis of Pope Francis. For example:</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">"Why complicate something so simple [as in biblical calls to almsgiving]? Conceptual tools [such as economic theories] exist to heighten contact with the realities they seek to explain, not to distance us from them [and to dampen direct action to alleviate poverty]" (n. 194).</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">One can see in this compressed exclamation, the urgency of the Pope’s call to grounded theorizing that is consistent with the generalizations that I earlier made. But in its textual context one can see a perspective that is not well informed in social science terms (nor perhaps in biblical terms if the perspective in Lukan parables is taken a paradigm).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">This suggests that in reading "Evangelii gaudium" we should engage in “conversation”, in dialogue (nn. 31, 133, 137, 142, 165). That is, we should not engage the text as “the last word”, but try to enter the tensions in the text in a conversational manner that moderates positions.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Much in the Exhortation reflects personal positions of the Pope (his “personality”) and his Latin American culture (and a principle of cultural groundedness is crucial to his paradigm: see nn. 115, 123, 132f). His readers will have differing personalities and differing cultural perspectives. The strong contribution of "Evangelii gaudium" is the way it demonstrates a holistic method that has diverse applications for living and communicating the joy of the Gospel. Whether concerning issues of economy and society and social science understanding; or with issues of liturgical inheritance and contemporary expression; or with tangled issues of moral discernment; or with tangled issues of giving a good account in particular situations of the faith of the Church – we need to find both simplicity and complexity that involve tension and that call to sympathetic dialogue.</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">This is a call to charity, and "charity covers a multitude of sins" (James 5:20). The Exhortation of Pope Francis is, indeed, a call to charity and to joy – joy in the Gospel, "Evangelii gaudium".</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">__________</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The agenda-setting apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis's pontificate:</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium_en.html" style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><b>> Evangelii gaudium</b></a><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">__________</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The April 10 homily of Pope Francis against the "dictatorship of uniform thought":</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><a href="http://www.osservatoreromano.va/it/news/la-dittatura-del-pensiero-unico#.U0kXlceeRdg" style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><b>> "Anche oggi…"</b></a><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The April 11 speech at the International Catholic Child Bureau:</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/speeches/2014/april/documents/papa-francesco_20140411_ufficio-cattolico-infanzia_it.html" style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><b><br />> "Vi ringrazio…"</b></a><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">The speech on the same day to the Italian Movement for life:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/speeches/2014/april/documents/papa-francesco_20140411_movim-per-la-vita_it.html" style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><b><br />> "Quando sono entrato…"</b></a><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">__________</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">In the homily on April 10, in denouncing the "idolatry of uniform thought," Bergoglio specified that often "when some governments ask for financial help, we hear the response: ‘if you want this help you have to think this way and you have to enact this law and that, and that other.'"</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">This denunciation made by the pope can be set alongside what was written in the latest issue of "</span><a href="http://www.ilregno.it/it/rivista_articolo.php?RID=0&CODICE=53204" style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><b>Il Regno</b></a><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">," in an article on "Churches and gay rights" in Africa:</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">"The idea that the decriminalization of homosexuality is above all a priority of the West has taken on new vigor partly because of the hypothesis of cuts in development aid for Uganda floated by the United States, France, Holland, and Sweden, while the World Bank has frozen an award of 90 million dollars. But already at the end of 2011, after the statements of British prime minister David Cameron and former United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton on the possible suspension of aid for countries without guarantees of 'homosexual rights,' the spokesman of the episcopal conference of Zambia, Fr. Paul Samasumo, had asked that aid not be tied 'to the promotion of immorality.' On that occasion, various other Christian Churches had taken the same stance."</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">__________</span><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><br style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">English translation by<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="mailto:traduttore@hotmail.com" style="color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><b>Matthew Sherry</b></a><span style="color: black; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.</span></span></span></span></div>
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-31801301175444034172014-03-26T15:07:00.000+00:002014-03-26T15:23:06.577+00:00Jerusalem's Rational God - by Rodney Stark<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In <a href="http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0188.htm">CERC</a></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Modernity developed
only in the West — in Europe and North America. Nowhere else did science
and democracy arise; nowhere else was slavery outlawed. The question is,
Why? The answer — at least the most important answer to that question —
is Christianity.</span></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">The intellectual revolution that took place in
Greece had no impact on most of its neighboring societies — the Persians were
no more interested than were the Egyptians. But Greek philosophy had
profound impact among the Jews. Unlike priests of the religions that
dominated most of the world, from early days Jewish theologians were struck by
the fact that what their scripture said about God was quite compatible with
some aspects of Greek conceptions of a supreme god. In addition, since
they were committed to reasoning about God, the Jews were quick to embrace the
Greek concern for valid reasoning. What emerged was an image of God as
not only eternal and immutable but also as conscious, concerned, and <i>rational</i>.
The early Christians fully accepted this image of God. They also added
and emphasized the proposition that our knowledge of God and of his creation is
<i>progressive</i>. Faith in both reason and progress were essential to
the rise of the West. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br />
<b>Hellenism and Judaism</b></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">At present there is bitter and misguided debate
over whether or not Greek thought influenced Jewish theology. On one side
are obvious examples of an extensive intermingling of the two traditions.
On the other side are a host of Jewish scholars who claim that the rabbis who
produced the Talmud had very little knowledge of Greek philosophy and despised
it: "Cursed be the man who would breed swine and cursed be the man
who would teach his son Greek wisdom."</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Whatever the Talmudic rabbis did or didn't know
about Greek philosophy seems irrelevant. Their writings did not begin
until the third century AD, and it is certain that in earlier times there was
extensive Hellenic influence on Jewish life and theology. As the
twentieth-century historian Morton Smith put it, "The Hellenization
extended even to the basic structure of Rabbinic thought." It was
this Hellenized Judaism that influenced early Christian theologians; they had
virtually no contact with the Talmudic rabbis, nor any interest in their
teachings.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">It is important to realize that as early as 200
BC, most Jews lived not in Palestine but in Roman cities — especially the
cities dominated by Greek culture. These communities are known as the
Jewish Diaspora (literally: dispersion), and they were home to at least six million
Jews, compared with only a million Jews still living in Palestine.
(Several million more Jews lived to the east of Palestine, including a
substantial community in Babylon, but little record of them survives and they
played little or no role in the rise of the West.) The majority of Jews living
in the Hellenized western cities were quite assimilated. Intermarriage
with Gentiles was widespread. Moreover, the Diasporan Jews read, wrote,
spoke, thought, and worshiped in Greek. Of inscriptions found in the Jewish
catacombs in Rome, fewer than 2 percent are in Hebrew or Aramaic, while 74
percent are in Greek and the remainder in Latin. Most of the Diasporan
Jews had Greek names; many of them, Israeli scholar Victor Tcherikover noted,
"did not even hesitate to [adopt] names derived from those of Greek
deities, such as Apollonius." As early as the third century BC the
religious services held in Diasporan synagogues were conducted in Greek, and so
few Diasporan Jews could read Hebrew that it was necessary to translate the
Torah into Greek — the Septuagint.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">The Hellenization of the Jews was not limited
to the Diaspora. Beginning with Alexander the Great's conquest of the
Middle East, Palestine came under the control of Ptolemaic (Greek) Egypt.
This soon led to the founding of twenty-nine Greek cities in Palestine — some
of them in Galilee, the two largest of these being Tiberius (on the Sea of
Galilee) and Sepphoris, which was only about four miles from Nazareth. By
early in the second century BC, Jerusalem was so transformed into a Greek city
that it was known as Antioch-at-Jerusalem. According to the eminent
scholar-theologian Sir Henry Chadwick, "Greek influence reached its height
under King Herod (73-04 BC) . . . who built a Greek theatre, amphitheatre, and hippodrome
in or near Jerusalem."</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">In these highly Hellenized social settings it
was inevitable that Greek philosophy would influence religious
perspectives. As Chadwick put it: "As early as Philo, we see
that the current intellectual coin of the more literate classes of society is
this blend of Stoic ethics with Platonic metaphysics and some Aristotelian
logic. Like the form of Greek spoken in the hellenistic world . . . Philo
simply takes it for granted." Thus, the most revered and influential
Jewish leader and writer of the era, Philo of Alexandria (20 BC-AD 50),
attempted to interpret the law "through the mirror of Greek
philosophy," and he described God in ways that Plato would have found
familiar: "the perfectly pure unsullied Mind of the universe,
transcending virtue, transcending knowledge, transcending good itself and the
beautiful itself." According to scholar Erwin R. Goodenough, Philo
"read Plato in terms of Moses, and Moses in terms of Plato, to the point
he was convinced that each said essentially the same things."</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">But Philo was wrong. Although it is true
that the Jewish conception of God is consistent with some aspects of the
supreme God proposed by Plato, Aristotle, and the other Greek philosophers, the
Jewish God is different in important ways. Like Plato and Aristotle's
God, <i>Yahweh</i> is believed to be perfect, eternal, and immutable. But
he is no remote ideal. He is the loving Creator who is intensely
conscious of humankind. He sees and hears; he communicates; he <i>intervenes</i>.
And it was the fully developed Jewish conception of God, not the remote and
inert God of the Greeks or even the God of Philo, that shaped Christian
theology and underlay the rise of the West. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br />
<b>Early Christianity and Greek Philosophy</b></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">From the start, the early Christian fathers
were familiar with Greek philosophy — Paul correctly quoted the Stoic Greek
poet Aratus (ca. 315-240 BC) in his impromptu sermon to local philosophers on
Mars Hill in Athens (Acts 17:28). In fact, some early and influential
Christian theologians had been trained as philosophers before they converted to
Christianity. And as their conversions testified, the many points of
agreement between the philosophers and Christian theology were widely
acknowledged. Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-ca. 215), who probably was
born in Athens and who studied with several philosophical masters before
converting, wrote:</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Before the advent of the Lord, philosophy was
necessary to the Greeks for righteousness . . . being a kind of preparatory
training. . . . Perchance, too, philosophy was given to the Greeks directly and
primarily, till the Lord should call the Greeks. For this was a
schoolmaster to bring "the Hellenic mind," as the law, the Hebrews,
"to Christ." Philosophy, therefore, was a preparation, paving
the way for him who is perfected in Christ.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Perhaps no early church father held Greek
philosophy in higher regard than did Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165). Justin
was born into a Greek-speaking pagan family in Samaria, was formally trained in
philosophy, and continued to wear his philosopher's cloak even after his
conversion to Christianity in about 130. Eventually he opened a school in
Rome where two future church fathers, Irenaeus and Tatian, may have been his
students. Justin was given the surname "Martyr" for having been
flogged and beheaded during an outbreak of anti-Christian persecution during
the reign of Marcus Aurelius.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Justin held that "the gospel and the best
elements in Plato and the Stoics are almost identical ways of apprehending the
same truth." One reason for this close correspondence, according to
Justin, was that the Greeks depended immensely on Moses — a view ratified by
Philo as well as by Neoplatonist contemporaries of Justin, including Plotinus,
who asked, "What is Plato, but Moses in Attic Greek?" In this sense,
Justin identified the Jewish prophets and Greek philosophers as
"Christians before Christ." Of course, he and other early
Christian thinkers were wrong about the early Greeks having learned from Moses,
as Saint Augustine wryly admitted in his <i>City of God</i>. But that
doesn't alter the fact of extensive similarities between Christianity and
Platonism. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Justin gave a second reason for the great
similarity between Christian theology and Greek philosophy: both rested
on the divine gift of reason, which, he said, "has sown the seeds of truth
in all men as beings created in God's image." And since God's
greatest gift to humanity was the power to reason, Christian revelation must be
entirely compatible with "the highest Reason." Consequently,
Justin viewed Jesus as a philosopher as well as the son of God, as the
personification of "right reason."</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">To Justin, then, Plato was correct when he
conceived of God as outside the universe, timeless, and immutable, and when he
said that humans possessed free will. But Justin, Clement, and other
early Christian writers also pointed out many shortcomings in Greek
philosophy. For example, they denied Greek claims that God was remote and
impersonal, that souls took up life in a new body, and that lesser gods
existed. And where Greek philosophy and Christianity disagreed, according
to Justin, the latter was authoritative, for philosophy was merely human,
whereas Christianity was divine — revelation was the ultimate basis of truth.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">One problem early Christian writers identified
was that none of the numerous divinities in the Greek pantheon was adequate to
serve as a conscious creator of a lawful universe, not even Zeus. Like
humans, the Greek gods were subject to the inexorable workings of the natural
cycles of all things. Some Greek scholars, including Aristotle, did posit
a god of infinite scope having charge of the universe, but they conceived of
this god as essentially an impersonal essence, much like the Chinese Tao.
Such a god lent a certain spiritual aura to a cyclical universe and its ideal,
abstract properties, but being an essence, "God" <i>did</i> nothing
and never had.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Even when Plato posited a demiurge — an
inferior god who served as creator of the world, the supreme God being too
remote and spiritual for such an enterprise — this creator paled in contrast
with an omnipotent God who made the universe out of nothing. Moreover,
for Plato the universe had been created in accord not with firm operating
principles but with ideals. These primarily consisted of ideal
shapes. Thus the universe must be a sphere because that is the
symmetrical and perfect shape, and heavenly bodies must rotate in a circle
because that is the motion that is most perfect. As a priori assumptions,
Platonic idealism long impeded discovery: many centuries later,
Copernicus's unshakable belief in ideal shapes prevented him from entertaining
the thought that planetary orbits might be elliptical, not circular.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">A second problem in Greek philosophy, according
to early Christian writers, related to the Greek conception of the universe as
not only eternal and uncreated but also locked into endless cycles of progress
and decay. In <i>On the Heavens</i>, Aristotle noted that "the same
ideas recur to men not once or twice but over and over again," and in his
Politics he pointed out that everything has "been invented several times
over in the course of ages, or rather times without number." Since
he was living in a Golden Age, he concluded, the levels of technology of his
time were at the maximum attainable level, precluding further progress.
As for inventions, so too for individuals — the same persons would be born
again and again as the blind cycles of the universe rolled along.
According to Chrysippus in his now-lost <i>On the Cosmos</i>, the Stoics taught
that the "difference between former and actual existences of the same
people will be only extrinsic and accidental; such differences do not produce
another man as contrasted with his counterpart from a previous
world-age." As for the universe itself, Parmenides held that all
perceptions of change are illusions, for the universe is in a static state of
perfection, "uncreated and indestructible; for it is complete, immovable,
and without end." Other influential Greeks, such as the Ionians,
taught that although the universe is infinite and eternal, it also is subject
to endless cycles of succession. Although Plato saw things a bit
differently, he too firmly believed in cycles, that eternal laws caused each
Golden Age to be followed by chaos and collapse.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Finally, the early Christians saw that the
Greeks insisted on turning the cosmos, and inanimate objects more generally,
into <i>living things</i>. Plato taught that the demiurge had created the
cosmos as "a single visible living creature." Hence the world
had a soul, and although "solitary," it was "able by reason of
its excellence to bear itself company, needing no other acquaintance or friend
but sufficient to itself." The problem with transforming inanimate
objects into living creatures capable of aims, emotions, and desires was that
it short-circuited the search for physical theories. The causes of the
motion of objects, for example, were ascribed to <i>motives</i>, not to natural
forces. According to Aristotle, celestial bodies moved in circles because
of their affection for this action, and objects fell to the ground
"because of their innate love for the centre of the world."</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">For these reasons, the early Christian fathers
did not fully embrace Greek philosophy. They were content to demonstrate
where it supported Christian doctrines and, where there was disagreement, to
show how much more rational and satisfying were the Christian views. Thus
the primary effect of Greek philosophy on Christianity had far less to do with
doctrines per se than with the commitment of even the earliest Christian
theologians to reason and logic. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br />
<b>The Rational Creator of the Cosmos</b></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Justin Martyr was not alone in stressing the
authority of reason. That has been the most fundamental assumption of
influential Christian theologians from earliest times. From the very
start the church fathers were forced to reason out the implications of Jesus's
teachings, which Jesus did not leave as written scripture. The precedent
for a theology of deduction and inference began with Paul: "For our
knowledge is imperfect and our prophesy is imperfect."</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">As Tertullian (ca. 160-ca. 225) put it,
"Reason is a thing of God, inasmuch as there is nothing which God the
Maker of all has not provided, disposed, ordained by reason — nothing which he
has not willed should be handled and understood by reason." This was
echoed in <i>The Recognitions</i>, which tradition attributed to Clement of
Rome: "Do not think that we say that these things are only to be
received by faith, but also that they are to be asserted by reason. For
indeed it is not safe to commit these things to bare faith without reason,
since assuredly truth cannot be without reason." </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Hence the immensely influential Saint Augustine
(354-430) merely expressed the prevailing wisdom when he held that reason was
indispensable to faith: "Heaven forbid that God should hate in us
that by which he made us superior to the animals! Heaven forbid that we should
believe in such a way as not to accept or seek reasons, since we could not even
believe if we did not possess rational souls." Augustine added that
although it was necessary "for faith to precede reason in certain matters
of great moment that cannot yet be grasped, surely the very small portion of
reason that persuades us of this must precede faith."</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Augustine devoted all of book 8 in his <i>City
of God</i> to explicating and assessing the bonds between Greek philosophy and
Christianity, placing the primary emphasis on reason as a basis of truth.
He noted that Plato "perfected philosophy" by using reason to prove
the existence of God and to deduce many of his aspects from the many
observations of order in the universe — such as the predictable movements of
the heavenly bodies, the succession of the seasons, and the rise and fall of
the tides.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">But Augustine recognized something else
inherent in Plato's commitment to reason: Socrates had surpassed his
predecessors, Plato had advanced knowledge beyond Socrates, and Christianity
was far advanced beyond all the Greeks — clearly philosophy was <i>progressive</i>.
Indeed, some Greek philosophers were inclined to think that history was itself
a progressive phenomenon. Augustine shared that view, stressing that the
general trajectory of history is progressive as knowledge accumulates and
technology improves. Scholars have identified this belief as <i>the idea
of progress</i>.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">By this I do not mean that human progress is <i>inevitable</i>,
as Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) may have believed, but merely that, at least
in the West, there has been a progressive trend, especially in the sphere of
technology, and in the widespread agreement that things can be and ought to be
made better. Because humans lead their lives "under the spell of
ideas," the idea of progress has marked the path to modernity. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br />
<b>Faith in Progress</b></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">A remarkable amount of nonsense has been taught
about the idea of progress. The prolific Cambridge professor J. B. Bury's
1920 book <i>The Idea of Progress</i> dominated opinion for several generations
with the message that belief in progress is a recent development, having
originated during the eighteenth-century era sometimes called the
Enlightenment. This claim is as mistaken as the notion that science
developed despite the barriers religion erected. The truth is that
science arose only because the doctrine of the rational creator of a rational
universe made scientific inquiry plausible. Similarly, the idea of
progress was inherent in Jewish conceptions of history and was central to
Christian thought from very early days.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">The Jews believed that history was progressing
toward a golden Messianic Age, when, in the words of the distinguished
historian Marjorie Reeves, "a Holy People was expected to reign in
Palestine in an era of peace, justice, and plenty, in which the earth would
flower in unheard of abundance. . . . The Messianic age is conceived as within
history, not beyond it." Early Christianity fully incorporated
Jewish millenarianism and hence a progressive view of history. There was
another aspect to Christian faith in progress as well: almost without
exception, Christian theologians have assumed that the application of reason
can yield an <i>increasingly more accurate</i> understanding of God's will. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Augustine noted that there were "certain
matters pertaining to the doctrine of salvation that we cannot yet grasp"
— but "one day," he added, "we shall be able to do
so." Progress in general was inevitable as well, he supposed.
Augustine wrote: "Has not the genius of man invented and applied countless
astonishing arts, partly the result of necessity, partly the result of
exuberant invention, so that this vigour of mind . . . betokens an
inexhaustible wealth in the nature which can invent, learn, or employ such
arts. What wonderful — one might say stupefying — advances has human
industry made in the arts of weaving and building, of agriculture and
navigation!" He likewise celebrated the "skill [that] has been
attained in measures and numbers! With what sagacity have the movements and
connections of the stars been discovered!" Augustine concluded that all of
these advances resulted from the "unspeakable boon" that God
conferred on his creation — a "rational nature."</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Many other Christian thinkers echoed
Augustine's optimism about progress. In the thirteenth century Gilbert de
Tournai wrote, "Never will we find truth if we content ourselves with what
is already known. . . . Those things that have been written before us are not
laws but guides. The truth is open to all, for it is not yet totally
possessed." In 1306 Fra Giordano preached in Florence:
"Not all the arts have been found; we shall never see an end to finding
them. Every day one could discover a new art." But the most
notable statement came from Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) in the<i> Summa
Theologica</i>, which stands as a monument to the theology of reason and set
the standard for all subsequent Christian theologians. Because humans
could not see into the very essence of things, Aquinas argued, they must reason
their way to knowledge, step by step — using the tools of philosophy, especially
the principles of logic, to construct theology.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">For Augustine, Aquinas, and the others, such
views reflected the fundamental Christian premise that <i>God's revelations are
always limited to the capacity of humans at that time to comprehend</i>.
In the fourth century Saint John Chrysostom stated that even the seraphim do
not see God as he is. Instead, they see "a condescension
accommodated to their nature. What is this condescension? It is when God
appears and makes himself known, not as he is, but in the way one incapable of
beholding him is able to look upon him. In this way God reveals himself
proportionately to the weakness of those who behold him."</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">In addition, with all these thinkers we see the
Christian belief in man's rational nature — what Augustine called that
"unspeakable boon" — and also in God himself as the epitome of
reason.48 Had they seen God as an inexplicable essence, as had the Greek
philosophers, the very idea of rational theology — and, more broadly, of
progress itself — would have been unthinkable.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">The twentieth-century classical scholar Moses
I. Finley was quite aware that the European embrace of progress was
"unique in human history." But he seems not to have realized
that the idea of progress is profoundly Christian. The philosopher John
Macmurray put it best when he said, "That we think of progress at all
shows the extent of the influence of Christianity upon us." </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br />
<b>The West and the Rest</b></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">To this discussion a qualification must be
added: faith in progress was fundamental to <i>western</i>
Christianity. As for Orthodox Christianity in the Byzantine East, it
prohibited both clocks and pipe organs from its churches.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Nor was it only the Orthodox Church that did
not embrace the idea of progress. By looking at other major traditions
from the East, we can appreciate the uniqueness of the Western approach.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Consider life under Islam, which arose as a
religion and cultural force several centuries after Christianity did. In
1485 Bayezid II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire and caliph of Islam, outlawed the
printing press. That ban remained in effect throughout the Muslim world
for at least the next three centuries.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">The sultan's action represented far more than
the power of tyrants. It reflected Muslim commitment to the <i>idea of
decline</i> in contrast to the idea of progress. In addition to the
Qur'an, Muslims give great authority to a collection of writings known as
Hadith. These consist of sayings attributed to Muhammad and accounts of
his actions. In the first Hadith Muhammad is quoted as saying:
"Time has come full circle back to where it was on the day when first the
heavens and earth were created." The second Hadith quotes the
prophet thus: "The best generation is my generation, then the ones
who follow and then those who follow them." The Palestinian
historian Tarif Khalidi interpreted these passages — which were "both
frequently cited and commented upon" by Muslim scholars — to "suggest
a universe running down, an imminent end to man and all his works."
They also imply the superior virtue of the past. In this context,
prohibiting the printing press was not surprising, for books written by hand —
the standard from the past — would seem inherently better.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Even more important, Islam holds that the
universe is inherently irrational — that there is no cause and effect — because
everything happens as the direct result of Allah's will at that particular
time. Anything is possible. Attempts at science, then, are not only
foolish but also blasphemous, in that they imply limits to Allah's power and
authority. Therefore, Muslim scholars study law (what does Allah
require?), not science.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">But what of the "Golden Era" of
Muslim science and learning that flourished while Europe languished in the
"Dark Ages"? Chapter 4 makes it clear that the "Dark Ages"
are a myth. The "Golden Era" of Islamic science and learning is
too. Some Muslim-occupied societies gave the appearance of sophistication
only because of the culture sustained by their subject peoples — Jews and
various brands of Christianity (see chapter 14).</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Islam's conception of the universe and its
resulting opposition to reason, science, and philosophical inquiry have had a
profound impact down to the present day. Muslim societies today are
manifestly backward in comparison with those of the West. As Robert
Reilly points out in<i> The Closing of the Muslim Mind</i>, "The Arab
world stands near the bottom of every measure of human development; . . .
scientific inquiry is nearly moribund in the Islamic world; . . . Spain
translates more books in a single year than the entire Arab world has in the
past <i>thousand</i> years; . . . some people in Saudi Arabia still refuse to
believe man has been to the moon; and . . . some Muslim media present natural
disasters like Hurricane Katrina as God's direct retribution." </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">It is also useful to look at China. Many
historians claim that, until modern times, almost every significant invention
was first made in China. If so, then it also must be admitted that nearly
every one of these Chinese inventions was either disregarded or very little
exploited; some even were prohibited. As Jean Gimpel, the French
historian of medieval inventions, put it: "it is a feature of
Chinese technology that its great inventions . . . never played a major
evolutionary role in Chinese history.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Consider the case of gunpowder. Whether
gunpowder was independently invented in Europe or imported from China is
irrelevant. It is well known that the Chinese had gunpowder by the
thirteenth century and even cast a few cannons. But when Western voyagers
reached China in the sixteenth century the Chinese lacked both artillery and
firearms, whereas the Europeans had an abundance of both. The Chinese
also invented a mechanical clock, but the court Mandarins soon ordered all of
them destroyed. As a result, when Westerners arrived, nobody in China
really knew what time it was. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">The reason so many innovations and inventions
were abandoned or even outlawed in China had to do with Confucian opposition to
change on grounds that the past was greatly superior. The twelfth-century
Mandarin Li Yen-chang captured this viewpoint when he said, "If scholars
are made to concentrate their attention solely on the classics and are
prevented from slipping into study of the vulgar practices of later
generations, then the empire will be fortunate indeed!"</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Nothing sums up the importance of the idea of
progress better than the story of the great Chinese admiral Zheng He (also
Cheng Ho). In 1405 Zheng He commanded a large Chinese fleet that sailed
across the Indian Ocean and reached the coast of East Africa. His purpose
was to display the power of China and to collect exotica — especially unusual
animals — for the imperial court. The voyage was entirely successful,
making its way to and from Africa without major mishaps and bringing back a
cargo of exotic goods and strange animals, including several giraffes. In
all, Zheng He led seven of these voyages, each of them successfully completed,
the last one in 1433 (during which he may have died and been buried at
sea). It is believed that Zheng He's Chinese fleet included several
hundred ships and that the major ships dwarfed anything being sailed in the
West at this time.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">The Chinese flotilla must have awed the
occupants of the Indian and African ports it visited, and had the Chinese been
so inclined, they could easily have imposed their rule over coastal areas all
along their route, just as Westerners were soon to do following Vasco da Gama's
Portuguese expedition that reached India in 1498. Moreover, had Chinese
voyaging continued, they might well have sailed around Africa to Europe or
across the Pacific to the "New World."</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">But after 1433 the voyages ceased. What
happened?</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">The death of Zheng He would not have been
enough to halt the voyages completely, given the obvious successes of the
previous expeditions and the opportunities at hand. Instead, a decree
came down from the emperor forbidding the construction of any oceangoing
ships. The emperor also had Zheng He's fleet dragged ashore and stripped
of useful timbers; the remains were allowed to rot. Even the plans for
such ships were destroyed, and the Chinese attempted to erase all records of
Zheng He's voyages. Soon it was a capital offense to build a seagoing
ship (as opposed to junks for sailing along the coast and on the inland
waterways). For good measure, all the exotic animals Zheng He had brought
back to the imperial zoo were killed.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Why? The court Mandarins believed that
there was nothing in the outer world of value to China and that any contacts
were potentially unsettling to the Confucian social order. Progress be
damned.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Contrast this with the medieval West's eager
adoption of technologies that had been invented elsewhere. As Samuel
Lilley wrote in his history of technological progress, "The European
Middle Ages collected innovations from all over the world, especially from
China, and built them into a new unity which formed the basis of our modern
civilization."</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">These counterexamples to the history of the
West expose the weakness of the widely accepted claim that technological
progress is pretty much an inevitable product of the times — that, for example,
when conditions were right the incandescent bulb and the phonograph would have
been invented whether or not Thomas Edison ever existed. Inventions don't
just happen. <i>Someone</i> has to bring them about, and the likelihood
that anyone will attempt to do so is influenced by the extent to which they
believe that inventions are possible — that is, the extent to which the culture
accepts the idea of progress.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Perhaps of even greater significance is that
inventions not only must be made but also must be sufficiently valued to be
used. That is not inevitable either. What if the phonograph had
been outlawed, as the printing press was in the Ottoman Empire? What if
the state had declared a monopoly on the incandescent lightbulb and destroyed
all privately produced bulbs, as the Chinese did with iron production in the
eleventh century? </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br />
<b>The Road to Modernity</b></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Throughout the remainder of the book, we shall
see how the Christian conception of God as the rational creator of a
comprehensible universe, who therefore expects that humans will become
increasingly sophisticated and informed, continually prodded the West along the
road to modernity.</span></span></span></div>
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-71696607075466036072014-03-26T14:53:00.000+00:002014-03-26T14:53:01.015+00:00Eutanasia - por Pablo Requena MeanaIn <a href="http://www.almudi.org/Articulos/ID/8736/Eutanasia">Almudi </a><br />
<br />
<div style="margin-left: 1cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong><span style="color: black;">Índice</span></strong></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="margin: 0cm 42.45pt 8pt 42.55pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">1.
Breve referencia histórica. 1.1. Evolución histórica del sentido del
término. 1.2. Historia de la práctica eutanásica. 2. Delimitación del
concepto de eutanasia. 3. Eutanasia activa y pasiva: el debate bioético
sobre la distinción matar/dejar morir. 4. La valoración moral de la
eutanasia. 5. La eutanasia y la medicina. 5.1. ¿Qué significado médico
tiene la petición eutanásica y cómo afrontarla? 5.2. ¿Qué supone para la
relación médico-paciente la posibilidad de la eutanasia? 6. Argumentos
ético-políticos a favor y en contra de la eutanasia. 7. Bibliografía</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><h2 style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>
<h2>
1. Breve referencia histórica</h2>
<h3>
1.1. Evolución histórica del sentido del término </h3>
</strong></span></h2>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">La palabra eutanasia procede del griego (<em>eu-thanatos</em>) y
significa literalmente “buena muerte”. Este término, u otros derivados,
fue muy poco utilizado por autores clásicos griegos; y algo más, pero
siempre de modo muy limitado, entre los latinos (ejemplos de este uso
pueden encontrarse en Crisipo, <em>De Sapiente et insipiente</em>, 601, 28; G. Flavio, <em>Antiquitates Judaicae</em>,
libro VI, 3.3; libro IX, 75.5). Su sentido era generalmente el de
muerte como coronamiento de una vida lograda, o como un final de la vida
lleno de honores. En los siglos sucesivos no se encuentran referencias
escritas de la palabra, que reaparece —al decir de muchos—, con un
significado análogo, en la obra de Francis Bacon <em>De dignitate et augmentis scientiarum</em>
(1605), donde se refiere a la “euthanasia exterior” para indicar
aquellas intervenciones médicas que hacen más llevadera la muerte. Hay
que esperar hasta la segunda mitad del siglo XIX para llegar a lo que
podríamos denominar el cambio semántico radical. Éste se produce con
algunos autores que comienzan a utilizar este término con un sentido muy
parecido al que es frecuente hoy en día. Entre ellos destaca Samuel D.
Williams, un profesor de escuela, que publicó un artículo en la revista
del <em>Birmingham Speculative Club</em>. En su escrito, titulado <em>Euthanasia</em>,
proponía abiertamente el uso de la morfina no sólo para mitigar los
dolores de los moribundos, sino para anticiparles intencionalmente la
muerte. El artículo de Williams tuvo una cierta difusión y fue publicado
posteriormente en varias revistas. Tanto sus ideas como la asociación
entre la palabra eutanasia y su significado de anticipación voluntaria
de la muerte se fue difundiendo en las décadas sucesivas. A principios
del siglo XX, en el ámbito de movimientos eugenésicos, el término
eutanasia adquiere un nuevo significado: la eliminación de personas con
taras físicas o psíquicas; y pierde la connotación de voluntariedad (por
parte del sujeto pasivo) que tenía en la propuesta de Williams. En
estos años, y sobre todo con los horrores de la época nazi, se vulgariza
el uso de la palabra eutanasia. Tras el escándalo producido durante los
juicios de Nuremberg por la publicación del uso que se había hecho de
la eutanasia en los años anteriores, se tendió a evitar el término, que
quedará marcado con una connotación muy negativa. En todo caso, pocas
décadas después se reproponen las ideas de Williams, procurando
purificar el término de toda referencia al carácter involuntario de la
eliminación de enfermos o discapacitados sin su consentimiento. De este
brevísimo recorrido podemos identificar cuatro filones semánticos del
término:</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">a) acepción muy general que se
refiere a aquellas condiciones que rodean el momento de la muerte, que
permiten de calificarla como una “buena muerte”. Es el sentido original o
clásico; </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">b) actuación (médica) dirigida a
eliminar aquellas condiciones que pudieran impedir una muerte serena. Se
trata del sentido en el que lo utiliza Bacon, pero que no ha tenido un
gran seguimiento;</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">c) acción que provoca
intencionalmente la muerte de un paciente (que autónomamente la pide),
como medio de evitar el dolor y otras molestias al final de la vida. Se
podría denominar como sentido moderno;</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">d) eliminación de enfermos
terminales o discapacitados como medio (sociopolítico) para conseguir
una sociedad más sana y/o ahorrar en gastos sanitarios. Se trata del
sentido utilizado en la historia reciente (época nazi), y se podría
describir como eutanasia eugenésica.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><h3 style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong><span>1.2. Historia de la práctica eutanásica</span></strong></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Es importante no confundir el uso
del término eutanasia y su diverso significado a lo largo de los siglos,
con lo que se podría llamar la “historia de la eutanasia”, o más
propiamente la historia de la anticipación de la muerte para evitar el
sufrimiento, a la que dedicamos a continuación algunas líneas. Esta
historia está todavía por escribir a nivel académico. Aunque tenemos ya
algunos trabajos que nos dan ciertas pistas sobre el modo en el que este
fenómeno se ha dado a lo largo de los siglos, tienen el defecto de
centrarse en los extremos de la historia, dejando sin explorar apenas un
espacio de muchas centurias, entre la antigüedad greco-romana y los
movimientos pro-eutanasia del siglo XIX. Todas estas narraciones
comienzan con la época clásica griega, y con frecuencia hacen
generalizaciones poco acordes con la complejidad histórica del problema.
Se puede afirmar que en esa época no existe eutanasia como tal (en el
sentido moderno del término), sino suicidio que, en ocasiones, podía
contar con la colaboración de otras personas (entre las que cabría
enumerar al médico), que proporcionaban el veneno para acabar con la
vida. Es preciso tener en cuenta el contexto médico-sanitario en el que
nos encontramos para no hacer extrapolaciones demasiado arriesgadas: la
mayoría de las situaciones en las que actualmente puede verificarse el
fenómeno de la petición de eutanasia simplemente no se daban. Entre los
filósofos griegos y latinos no existe uniformidad de pensamiento en
materia de suicidio. Los epicúreos tenían una consideración bastante
positiva cuando los placeres de la vida parecían haber acabado, mientras
que el estoicismo le mostraba una notable tolerancia, justificándolo en
algunos casos: como exigencia ética para defensa de la patria o de los
amigos, para escapar del tirano o evitar acciones injustas, en caso de
grandes sufrimientos o enfermedades incurables, en situaciones de
demencia, o para evitar la extrema pobreza. Sin embargo, los mismos
estoicos consideraban el suicidio como un acto ilícito en los casos en
que se actuara por debilidad, por razones meramente humorales o por
cansancio de la vida. En Platón encontramos una posición matizada, que
se entiende mejor en su contexto de la organización de la polis, donde
sería inútil desperdiciar recursos a favor de los débiles y enfermos. De
todos modos, en el <em>Fedón</em> hace una condena bastante neta del suicidio, que posteriormente en el libro de las <em>Leyes</em>
suaviza, admitiendo algunas excepciones. Más nítida es la condena que
Aristóteles hace de cualquier forma de suicidio, en cuanto se trata de
un acto contra la razón, y por tanto, contra el propio individuo y la
sociedad. Además, supone generalmente un acto de cobardía y falta de
coraje. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">En este contexto es importante
recordar la condena de asistencia al suicidio que hace el Juramento de
Hipócrates (alrededor del siglo IV aC). Dejando de lado la debatida
cuestión de su autoría, que tiene sólo relativa importancia en relación
con su autoridad moral, es interesante reseñar cómo en una época en la
que no pocos filósofos justificaban el suicido, al menos en algunas
circunstancias, el texto médico señala taxativamente a los galenos: “a
nadie, aunque me lo pidiera, daré un veneno ni a nadie le sugeriré que
lo tome”. Se trata de una indicación que, sin entrar en el mérito de la
posible justificación o condena del suicidio, impone a los médicos el no
mezclarse en ese tipo de prácticas, por ser opuestas a lo que es la
naturaleza de su profesión. No está de más recordar que es con la
escuela hipocrática con la que comienza realmente la medicina
científica, que logra separar el médico del hechicero, el que salva la
vida del que acaba con ella. El Juramento Hipocrático en general, y
concretamente esta indicación, ha tenido una gran influencia en el ethos
médico posterior, y ha configurado por muchos siglos la práctica médica
occidental. Solo a partir del siglo XX, se ha comenzado a criticar y
matizar sus netas indicaciones.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Sin duda alguna en la
consideración del suicidio y de su valoración moral ha tenido gran
influencia el papel de las religiones, y en modo particular las tres
grandes religiones monoteístas, que lo consideran un acto gravemente
inmoral. Sin embargo esto no disminuye el papel que la propia ética
médica ha jugado en la consideración de la ayuda al suicidio por parte
de los médicos. Durante muchos siglos los facultativos han contado con
pocas posibilidades terapéuticas para contrarrestar el dolor de sus
pacientes (que era la causa mayor de sufrimiento de los enfermos), y que
podía llevarles en casos extremos a pedir la muerte. En la mayoría de
las situaciones se trataba de patologías agudas, pues las enfermedades
crónicas severas no eran tan significativas como lo son hoy en día.
Puede pensarse, por ejemplo, en el doctor de los campos de batalla, que
tenía muy poco que ofrecer a los moribundos que encontraba con heridas
de todo tipo, primero de arma blanca y posteriormente de arma de fuego.
Aunque seguramente habrá habido casos en los que el médico haya ayudado a
morir a algunos de estos pacientes, en muchos otros casos la máxima
hipocrática ha llevado a los doctores a acompañar del mejor modo posible
a esos pacientes hasta el último momento. Y en todo caso, esas
situaciones dramáticas no condujeron a cuestionar teóricamente la
deontología profesional. Solamente a finales del siglo XIX y comienzos
del XX, por influencia de algunas ideas cuyas raíces proceden del ámbito
filosófico, se comienza a plantear la posibilidad de que el médico no
sólo ayude al paciente a morir, sino que incluso acabe con su vida.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><h2 style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong><span>2. Delimitación del concepto de eutanasia</span></strong></span></h2>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Sin perder de vista la gran
diversidad conceptual que históricamente ha tenido el término eutanasia,
se hace necesaria una especificación de su contenido que permita
entablar discusiones con sentido, tanto desde un punto de vista moral,
como desde la perspectiva jurídica. Para la construcción de la
definición es necesario hacer algunas elecciones sobre cuáles son los
elementos principales, aquellos que se consideran imprescindibles; y
cuáles son secundarios, cuya presencia no sería determinante para
calificar una acción como eutanasia, aunque habitualmente vayan
asociados. Los elementos imprescindibles son: a) se trata siempre de una
actuación que se propone provocar la muerte; b) se realiza con el fin
de eliminar algún tipo de sufrimiento en la persona que muere. Entre los
elementos secundarios se pueden enumerar: el consentimiento del
paciente, su situación patológica grave (con mayor o menor grado de
sufrimiento, de tipo físico o psicológico), el carácter indoloro de la
muerte que se provoca (elemento que queda implícito en la mayoría de las
definiciones de eutanasia), el contexto sanitario en el que se realiza
la acción, al menos en relación a los medios empleados... </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Teniendo en cuenta la distinción
anterior, podemos afirmar que no constituyen eutanasia todas aquellas
acciones que pueden provocar la muerte sin buscarlo (directamente):
como, por ejemplo, una intervención quirúrgica que tiene un éxito
negativo, o el uso de un fármaco con finalidad analgésica que causa la
muerte del paciente. Tampoco habrá que considerar eutanasia todas
aquellas acciones que aun buscando la muerte de un paciente, no tienen
como finalidad la eliminación de su sufrimiento; o sea, aquellas
acciones que se realizan con otras intenciones, como pueden ser el
mejoramiento de la raza, la resolución de problemas de distribución de
recursos sanitarios (desde el ahorro del gasto público hasta la
liberación de una cama de hospital), intereses de los familiares o de
otras personas, etc. Es claro que con esta definición restringida de
eutanasia quedan fuera, por ejemplo, muchos de los crímenes cometidos
por el sistema sanitario nazi. En cambio, se incluyen aquellas acciones
que provocan la muerte de un paciente sin su consentimiento para
evitarle sufrimientos, o de esas otras que la causan sin que exista
alguna patología particularmente grave.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">En el ámbito bioético se suele
distinguir entre eutanasia y suicidio asistido, indicando con la primera
que la acción letal la realiza una persona distinta del enfermo,
mientras que en el segundo caso es el mismo paciente el que la pone por
obra (bebiendo algún tipo de sustancia, o accionando algún sistema que
permite el acceso a su cuerpo de dicho producto), con la ayuda y
asistencia de otras personas.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><h2 style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong><span>3. Eutanasia activa y pasiva: el debate bioético sobre la distinción matar / dejar morir</span></strong></span></h2>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Una de las mayores confusiones que
se encuentra en las presentaciones sobre la eutanasia hace referencia a
los adjetivos “activa” y “pasiva”. En el periodo del nacimiento de la
bioética, sobre todo alrededor de los años 60 y 70 del siglo XX, se
consideraba eutanasia pasiva a cualquier abstención o retirada de un
medio terapéutico de la que se siguiera la muerte del paciente. En estos
casos, al preguntarse por la moralidad de la acción, la respuesta era
diferenciada —como no podía ser de otro modo— según las circunstancias
concretas: algunas retiradas se consideraban lícitas, mientras que otras
tenían una valoración negativa. Este modo de razonar, condicionado por
una deficiente consideración de la teoría de la acción moral (propia
sobre todo de la ética utilitarista), llevaba a la conclusión de que
existían casos de “eutanasia pasiva” (y por tanto de eutanasia) que
habían de considerarse lícitos, lo que no ayudaba, y no ayuda —pues la
confusión sigue presente— a la búsqueda de las mejores soluciones a
nivel moral y jurídico.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Esta dificultad podría desaparecer si se tienen en cuenta los siguientes axiomas morales:</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">a) el orden moral va más allá del
orden físico, y por tanto no se pueden identificar causalidad física con
responsabilidad moral;</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">b) es posible matar a una persona a través de una acción y también a través de una omisión;</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">c) la responsabilidad moral de la
muerte que se sigue a una cierta omisión dependerá tanto del grado de
causalidad que une la omisión con el efecto letal (en este sentido es
importante la distinción entre causa y condición), como de la obligación
que tenía el sujeto de realizar aquella acción de cuya omisión se
siguió la muerte. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Algunos ejemplos pueden ayudar a comprender mejor estos puntos:</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">a) dos cirujanos pueden realizar
los mismos movimientos de la mano durante una intervención quirúrgica, y
provocar el corte de una arteria importante que condiciona una
hemorragia masiva y la muerte del paciente. Sin embargo son dos acciones
moralmente distintas si uno la realiza involuntariamente mientras
intentaba curar al enfermo, y el segundo lo hace de intento, para
provocar su muerte;</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">b) la negación de las maniobras de
reanimación ante un paro cardíaco puede responder a acciones muy
diversas. En el caso de un paciente joven que llega a las puertas de
urgencias de un hospital después de un accidente de tráfico se
considerará, en principio, como una negligencia grave, pues ese masaje
podía salvarle la vida, y además el personal allí presente tenía
obligación de realizarlo. En el caso de un paciente terminal, que ha
sufrido otros ataques precedentes, la omisión de las maniobras será en
muchos casos el modo más prudente de actuar, para evitar al paciente
moribundo ulteriores sufrimientos. Pero también en este segundo caso, se
podrían configurar distintos modos de actuar, aun siendo igual el
comportamiento externo (en este caso la omisión de las maniobras de
resucitación): en un caso el médico puede decidir no reanimar porque ya
está harto de ese paciente, que le ha dado mucho trabajo; o puede omitir
esa maniobra por el mejor interés del enfermo.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Estos ejemplos ayudan a entender
que se puede hablar de eutanasia pasiva, o eutanasia por omisión, pero
que es necesario hacerlo de modo más preciso. Se debe tratar siempre de
la omisión de un acto que se considera obligatorio, y que provoca la
muerte del paciente. Otros casos similares de los que se sigue la muerte
del paciente, pero donde ésta no procede de la omisión voluntaria de un
medio que se considera obligatorio, podrán suponer una negligencia más o
menos grande, pero no llegarán a configurarse como verdadera eutanasia.
El caso del joven que no es reanimado en urgencias podría considerarse
como un ejemplo de eutanasia por omisión. El segundo caso (anciano
terminal) no lo sería, en ninguna de sus dos modalidades, pues la acción
omitida no era debida; aunque ciertamente, la valoración final del
comportamiento de cada médico será muy distinta. Esta clarificación
resuelve la dificultad inicial sólo a nivel formal. Por lo que se
refiere a los contenidos, o sea, a la determinación de las actuaciones
debidas, el problema pasa al ámbito biomédico: son los profesionales
quienes deberán establecer, caso por caso, lo que es debido para el
mejor interés del paciente. Esto no significa que sean ellos los que
hayan de tomar las decisiones, que dependen en primer lugar del
paciente, sino que es función del médico realizar una primera valoración
sobre la proporcionalidad de los posibles tratamientos. La teología
moral y la ética médica se han servido durante mucho tiempo de la
distinción entre medios ordinarios y extraordinarios, señalando que los
primeros deberían considerarse obligatorios y opcionales los segundos.
El carácter ordinario de los medios terapéuticos depende de muchos
factores, algunos objetivos y otros subjetivos (en relación al
paciente), que hacen referencia a su facilidad de uso, a la esperanza de
su eficacia, a los inconvenientes que supone tanto a nivel de molestias
para el paciente como de coste económico, etc. Como es fácil adivinar
la calificación de un medio como ordinario o extraordinario está muy
condicionada por las circunstancias de lugar y tiempo. Actualmente se
tiende a utilizar más el concepto de proporcionalidad para la
identificación de la obligatoriedad de los medios terapéuticos,
considerando los mismos factores apenas mencionados.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Ejemplos de eutanasia pasiva que
se pueden encontrar en la práctica clínica actual son la negación de una
sencilla intervención para resolver problemas de supervivencia en
recién nacidos con deficiencia mental, o la suspensión de la nutrición e
hidratación a pacientes en estado vegetativo, o con enfermedad de
Alzheimer en fase avanzada.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Muy en relación con la cuestión de
la eutanasia pasiva se encuentra en el ámbito de la bioética el llamado
debate sobre la equivalencia moral entre “matar” y “dejar morir”. Éste
se inició en los años Sesenta cuando filósofos de matriz utilitarista
comenzaron a analizar algunas actuaciones que se daban en el ámbito
médico (como primeros protagonistas de este debate puede citarse a
Johathan Bennett, Michael Tooley, James Rachels). Se estudiaba el caso
de los niños nacidos con síndrome de Down a los que se negaba una
cirugía sencilla que podía salvarles la vida. Este modo de actuar se
justificaba en el entorno clínico señalando que se trataba de “dejar
morir” al paciente, que a diferencia de “matar” podía justificarse en
algunos casos. Los filósofos denunciaron con acierto la falta de
coherencia presente en este planteamiento, pero no se quedaron ahí, sino
que dieron un paso más y afirmaron que, en realidad, no existe
diferencia moral entre “matar” y “dejar morir” cuando la motivación y
las consecuencias son las mismas. Esta tesis comenzó a conocerse como
“equivalencia moral entre matar y dejar morir”. En un principio estos
autores presentaban la cuestión desde una perspectiva lógica, sin
pretender entrar al análisis de los contenidos: no cuestionaban el
problema moral de la justificación de matar o de dejar morir, sino
simplemente sostenían que si se aprobaba moralmente uno debía aprobarse
también el otro, y si se condenaba uno también habría que condenar el
otro. En todo caso, no hizo falta dejar pasar mucho tiempo para que se
cruzara la línea que separaba el plano lógico del moral, y se llegaran a
justificar algunos casos de eutanasia. Como era evidente a todos que
había situaciones clínicas en las que la mejor actuación médica
consistía en “dejar morir” al paciente, teniendo en cuenta la tesis de
la equivalencia moral, se concluía que en esos mismos casos debería
considerarse igualmente lícito “matarlo”.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Este debate, que hoy sigue todavía
abierto, es largo y complicado. En todo caso, haciendo referencia a los
elementos de la teoría de la acción señalados anteriormente, no es
difícil descubrir algunas de sus falacias. El punto central del problema
se encuentra nuevamente en la identificación de las acciones morales.
Cuando se habla de “matar” es fácil entender el tipo de acción al que se
refiere. Sin embargo cuando se habla de “dejar morir” no resulta tan
claro, porque en el fondo esa dicción no corresponde a un único tipo de
acción, sino a varios. Detrás de “dejar morir” se pueden identificar,
simplificando, dos tipos de acciones: el acompañamiento al paciente en
su proceso de muerte como mejor actuación médica en ese caso, teniendo
en cuenta todas las circunstancias; y una omisión (de algo debido) que
busca prioritariamente la anticipación de la muerte del paciente.
Téngase presente que la finalidad en ambos casos puede ser la misma, e
identificarse con el mejor interés del paciente, pero la acción que se
elige es distinta (el objeto moral de la acción es distinto). Los
autores utilitaristas que defienden la tesis de equivalencia tienen
razón al señalar que “matar” y “dejar morir” tienen la misma valoración
moral cuando dejar morir corresponde al segundo significado, y por tanto
supone un ejemplo de eutanasia por omisión. Se equivocan cuando
identifican “matar” con “dejar morir” en el primero de sus significados.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Estas distinciones difícilmente
podrán captarse desde una perspectiva de la tercera persona, la del
observador externo, de la que es paradigmática la ética utilitarista. Se
requiere la ética de la primera persona, que es la única capaz de
determinar lo que ocurre en el interior de la persona que actúa, cómo se
configura su actuación, no solo en lo que se refiere a la finalidad,
sino también a los medios que se eligen para llegar a ese fin.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><h2 style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong><span>4. La valoración moral de la eutanasia</span></strong></span></h2>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Una vez realizada la delimitación
conceptual de la eutanasia es posible preguntarse por su valoración
moral. Hemos visto que sus elementos esenciales son dos: a) eliminación
intencional de una vida humana (inocente): cosa que es siempre
gravemente inmoral; b) para evitar todo tipo de sufrimiento: finalidad
buena. En no pocos casos se presenta la acción eutanásica de modo
positivo justamente haciendo referencia a este segundo elemento, y se
habla de “homicidio por piedad” o “por compasión”. Sin perder de vista
esta dimensión, que posee ciertamente su peso en la valoración global
del acto, no se debe diluir la caracterización del tipo de acción que se
elige en este caso para conseguir ese fin bueno: matar a una persona.
Como ha enseñado la ética desde siempre “el fin no justifica los
medios”, y como la acción “matar a un inocente” es uno de esos tipos de
acciones que nunca se debe realizar, el sujeto que se encuentra ante esa
posibilidad tendrá que buscar alternativas para conseguir el fin bueno
que se propone. En este caso, la admisión de la incompatibilidad de un
tipo de acción con la honestidad y la vida buena de la persona no pone
un punto final en la cuestión, sino que es un punto de partida para una
nueva búsqueda (moral) de aquellos modos de actuar que son adecuados y
virtuosos, teniendo en cuenta todas las circunstancias del caso. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">La respuesta a la pregunta sobre
la valoración moral de la eutanasia está ciertamente condicionada por el
tipo de ética en el que cada autor se apoye. Mientras que un
planteamiento deontológico, por ejemplo de tipo kantiano, llegará
fácilmente a una resolución como la que se ha presentado en el párrafo
anterior, para una perspectiva utilitarista no será difícil encontrar
una respuesta más matizada que sea capaz de justificar la licitud de
algunas excepciones al principio moral que prohíbe matar a personas
inocentes.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">¿Dónde se apoya la neta valoración
negativa de la eutanasia? Desde un punto de vista filosófico las
respuestas pueden ser diversas. Aquí se presentan dos filones
principales: </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">a) <em>la sacralidad de la vida</em>:
se trata del concepto que históricamente ha tenido más importancia como
fundamento de la prohibición de la eliminación de la vida humana. A
veces se confunde la referencia a la sacralidad de la vida con la
comprensión que de la misma posee una determinada tradición religiosa.
Sin embargo, el concepto es mucho más amplio y comprensivo cuando se
estudia la historia de la fenomenología del sacro y su relación con la
aparición del homo sapiens. Por eso, la vida humana tiene una
importancia muy particular y su disposición está fuera del alcance del
domino del hombre, incluso para muchas personas que no se reconocen en
una determinada religión.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">b) <em>la dignidad humana</em>:
aunque es un concepto antiguo, ha ido ganando importancia en los últimos
siglos, llegando a ser un punto cardinal para la fundamentación de los
ordenamientos jurídicos modernos, que encuentran en esta especial
caracterización de la persona humana una válida razón para condenar
cualquier tipo de homicidio (también el “homicidio por compasión”). Este
concepto, como el anterior, puede tener una base religiosa (la dignidad
de la vida humana se apoya para los cristianos en que el hombre es
imagen y semejanza de Dios, y está llamado a participar de la vida
divina por toda la eternidad), o filosófica (para Kant la persona posee
no un precio, sino una dignidad).</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">La valoración que el <em>Catecismo de la Iglesia Católica</em>
hace de la eutanasia es también negativa. En este documento puede
leerse que «cualesquiera que sean los motivos y los medios, la eutanasia
directa consiste en poner fin a la vida de personas disminuidas,
enfermas o moribundas. Es moralmente inaceptable» (n. 2277). Al mismo
tiempo hace una distinción importante: «la interrupción de tratamientos
médicos onerosos, peligrosos, extraordinarios o desproporcionados a los
resultados puede ser legítima. Interrumpir estos tratamientos es
rechazar el ‘encarnizamiento terapéutico’. Con esto no se pretende
provocar la muerte; se acepta no poder impedirla» (n. 2278).</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><h2 style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong><span>5. La eutanasia y la medicina</span></strong></span></h2>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">La consideración negativa que la
ética médica ha tenido de la eutanasia a lo largo de los siglos, a
partir sobre todo de las indicaciones del Juramento Hipocrático, sigue
estando presente en las resoluciones que sobre este tema ha emanado la <em>Asociación Médica Mundial</em>
en los últimos años. Para la medicina se trata de un tipo de
comportamiento que contrasta fuertemente con las bases teóricas que
sostienen la actuación médica. Entre los diversos campos que se podrían
señalar aquí se presentan sólo dos: </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><h3 style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong><span>5.1. ¿Qué significado médico tiene la petición eutanásica y cómo afrontarla?</span></strong></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">El deseo de morir, la petición de
anticipar la muerte y el intento de suicidio, son fenómenos con los que
la medicina se ha encontrado desde sus orígenes. Generalmente se han
considerado como síntomas de alguna patología, en la mayor parte de los
casos de tipo depresivo. Ante estas señales, el médico se pregunta por
la causa que lleva al paciente a la petición o intento de un gesto tan
extremo, con la convicción de que se trata de una petición de ayuda, y
no de un “verdadero” deseo de morir. Una vez identificados los problemas
de base se aborda globalmente la situación del paciente obteniendo, en
la mayoría de los casos, una mejora de los síntomas descritos. Los
metanálisis más recientes muestran cómo el deseo de anticipar la muerte
responde a una compleja constelación de factores que producen un estado
emocional negativo, entre los que destacan el sufrimiento
físico-psíquico-espiritual, la sensación de pérdida de sí y el miedo a
la muerte. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Además de lo anterior, en no pocos
pacientes que se aproximan al momento de su muerte se encuentra una
fase depresiva, según la clásica sucesión de estados psicológicos
descritos por la doctora suiza Kübler-Ross. En esos momentos se percibe
una falta de deseo de vivir y de seguir luchando, que el personal
sanitario conoce y sabe afrontar para ayudar al enfermo y su familia en
esa difícil situación.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Ciertamente las propuestas
actuales de despenalizar la eutanasia tienen más o menos en cuenta estos
fenómenos, y ponen como condición para poder aceptar una petición
eutanásica la certificación de ausencia de depresión en el paciente.
Dejando ahora el problema que la experiencia ofrece sobre la falta de
rigor en estos controles, queda siempre la cuestión de cómo puede llegar
a considerarse “fisiológica” (no patológica) una petición de muerte,
aun no dándose los criterios clínicos de la depresión.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><h3 style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong><span>5.2. ¿Qué supone para la relación médico-paciente la posibilidad de la eutanasia?</span></strong></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Si la cuestión anterior es
importante, y no fácil de resolver para la epistemología médica, quizá
más problemática aún sea la posibilidad de conceder al médico, entre sus
opciones terapéuticas, la de acabar intencionalmente con la vida de
algunos pacientes. Esta posibilidad, se quiera o no, cambia al médico y
cambia la relación médico-paciente. El médico es un ser humano, sometido
como el resto a las presiones psicológicas que suponen los éxitos y
fracasos. En la medicina actual, a diferencia de épocas pasadas, la
situación de no tener nada más que ofrecer a un paciente para curarlo se
percibe en no pocos casos como un fracaso. Teniendo esto en cuenta no
es difícil concluir que es grande la tentación de anticipar la muerte de
pacientes con los que no se puede obtener un buen resultado.
Ciertamente los que proponen la eutanasia piensan siempre en una
eutanasia voluntaria, donde este último problema no debería darse, pero
la experiencia holandesa ha puesto de manifiesto que no es posible
escindir la apertura a la eutanasia en ámbito sanitario con el cambio de
mentalidad del médico. El modo en el que se manifiesta este cambio es
muy variado, y va desde la abierta propuesta eutanásica al paciente, a
un descuido más o menos consciente de su atención, pasando por un modo
de asistencia que subraya el peso económico y social que ciertos
pacientes suponen para la familia y la colectividad.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Para el enfermo, saber que el
médico estará siempre de su parte da una gran seguridad psicológica. Las
situaciones clínicas pueden ser muy variadas e imposibles de prever en
un documento de directivas anticipadas. Para el paciente el hecho de que
su médico pudiera anticipar su muerte, aunque en principio sea con su
consentimiento, hace que su percepción del personal sanitario sea
diverso, pues en los lugares en los que la eutanasia no se permite, se
podrá tratar mejor o peor a los enfermos terminales, pero el paciente
sabe que su médico y las enfermeras estarán siempre de su parte por muy
mal que se pongan las cosas.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A todo lo anterior hay que sumar
el desarrollo extraordinario de la medicina en los últimos decenios, que
ha proporcionado al médico posibilidades paliativas de las que carecía
hace sólo pocos años y que le permiten, para la mayoría de los casos, un
control adecuado de los síntomas, comenzando por el dolor. No cabe duda
que en la fase final de la vida siempre encontraremos enfermos con más o
menos molestias, y que la medicina paliativa no es una panacea capaz de
resolver todos los problemas y dificultades que aparecen en esos
momentos, pero es también claro que la actuación profesional de los
cuidados paliativos consigue crear las condiciones adecuadas para
afrontar este penoso tránsito de un modo razonablemente sereno. Además,
junto a todo el arsenal terapéutico para el tratamiento de los
diferentes síntomas que puedan aparecer, el médico cuenta siempre con el
recurso de la sedación paliativa. Ésta nada tiene que ver con la
eutanasia, pues su finalidad no es anticipar la muerte, sino poner al
paciente en un estado de inconsciencia que le evite el sufrimiento
causado por algunos síntomas refractarios, que no es posible superar de
otro modo. Aunque en ocasiones se pretenda presentar la sedación como un
tipo de eutanasia camuflada, la literatura médica en los últimos años
ha hecho un esfuerzo notable para aclarar esta confusión: la sedación es
un medio terapéutico para el control de los síntomas, y no un modo de
provocar la muerte del paciente.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><h2 style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong><span>6. Argumentos ético-políticos a favor y en contra de la eutanasia</span></strong></span></h2>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Tras considerar brevemente la
valoración moral de la eutanasia, y su consideración dentro del ámbito
sanitario, es preciso plantear la pregunta sobre la posibilidad de
permitir o no el ejercicio de la eutanasia en una sociedad pluralista.
Aun habiendo dado un juicio moral negativo a la acción eutanasia no es
superflua la cuestión, pues puede haber comportamientos que se
consideran negativos, pero que no convenga perseguir y penalizar por
parte del ordenamiento jurídico. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">El abanico de posibilidades a
nivel legislativo en relación a la eutanasia es amplísimo, y se mueve
entre la condena de todo tipo de eutanasia, considerándola simplemente
como cualquier otro homicidio, y la legalización, o incluso el
reconocimiento de un derecho a la muerte.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">El principal argumento a favor de
la despenalización y de la legalización de la eutanasia se basa en la
autodeterminación de los ciudadanos libres. En una sociedad moderna en
la que existe diversidad de pareceres sobre cuestiones morales, las
leyes no deberían impedir a los habitantes de un determinado país el
decidir cuándo consideran que su vida carece ya de sentido y, por tanto,
la posibilidad de elegir el momento de ponerle fin. No se trata de
imponer nada a nadie, sino de permitir que cada uno pueda escoger según
su conciencia; y por tanto, que aquellos que llegados a un estado
precario de salud (o incluso por otras razones) quieran acabar con sus
vidas, tengan el derecho de hacerlo. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Puesto así el argumento parece
bastante razonable. Sin embargo, el admitir un “derecho a morir” en un
determinado momento, y de un cierto modo, significa exigir al Estado, y a
otros miembros de la comunidad, el “deber” de secundar esos deseos,
pues cuando se habla de eutanasia o suicidio asistido, se está
implicando junto al interesado a otras personas; en este caso,
generalmente, del ámbito médico. Se da por tanto un salto lógico y
jurídico de notable importancia. Si bien es cierto que —en el ámbito de
la ética pública— el individuo tiene libertad para hacer lo que quiera
con su vida, siempre que no vaya contra el bien común de la sociedad (lo
que abre la cuestión de cómo valorar el suicidio con respecto a ese
bien común), no tiene derecho a que otro ciudadano acabe con su propia
vida, a que otro ciudadano cometa un homicidio, aunque sea a petición
del interesado. Además, el hecho jurídico de admitir algunos casos de
homicidio abriría una brecha en el principio de inviolabilidad del
sujeto inocente, que tan fatigosamente se ha conseguido en las
sociedades modernas.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Junto a la autodeterminación se
suele mencionar la piedad como argumento a favor de la eutanasia. Pero
también en este caso se trata de un razonamiento problemático. La piedad
y la compasión llevan a cuidar, a consolar, alentar al que sufre (<em>“cum-passio”</em>
padecer con el otro, según la etimología del término compasión), pero
no puede justificar el acabar con la vida del que sufre. En no pocos
escritos de bioética, se presentan situaciones en las que se explica que
para el paciente sería mejor estar muerto (<em>“better off death”</em>
es la expresión que se ha consolidado en la literatura inglesa). Sin
embargo, desde un punto de vista filosófico, que es el que deberían
adoptar los escritos de bioética, se trata de un argumento falaz, pues
no es posible justificar tal afirmación: ¿quién puede asegurar a través
de un razonamiento filosófico que la muerte es preferible a un cierto
tipo de vida? Por otro lado, la “muerte dulce” no existe: toda muerte es
traumática. Se puede adelantar, se puede intentar camuflar, pero no se
puede eliminar su fuerte connotación antropológica.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">El principal argumento en contra
de la despenalización (o legalización) de la eutanasia es el criterio ya
mencionado de la inviolabilidad de la vida humana. Una sociedad no
debería permitir que sea posible que una categoría de personas pueda
decidir sobre la vida o la muerte de otras, por muchas condiciones que
se prevean para evitar abusos. Se podría decir que los médicos (y los
pacientes) realizan todos los días decisiones de vida y de muerte, pero
es muy distinto decidir cuándo dejar de luchar contra la enfermedad, a
elegir una acción para acabar con la vida de otra persona, por muy
enferma que esté. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Son también muchos los autores que
utilizan el argumento de la “pendiente resbaladiza”, que sostiene que
si se aprueba legalmente la eutanasia para algunos casos extremos, no se
podrán evitar, en más o menos tiempo, otros casos que están fuera de
los previstos por la ley. La experiencia de la ley holandesa, que vio
una primera reglamentación en 1993, y fue finalmente aprobada en 2002 (<em>Ley de verificación de la terminación de la vida a petición y suicidio asistido</em>)
es un buen ejemplo del argumento. La primera reglamentación preveía la
aplicación de la eutanasia solamente a aquellos pacientes que la
pidieran voluntariamente (de forma consistente y repetida), se
encontraran en una situación terminal y sufrieran dolores que se
considerasen insufribles. En pocos años se ha podido observar cómo las
tres condiciones se han sobreseído: se pasó de petición repetida de
pacientes competentes no deprimidos, a la aceptación de pacientes
psíquicos, de otros que no podían manifestar su voluntad, o incluso de
aquellos que la habían rechazado; y lo mismo sucedió con la condición
terminal de la enfermedad y con los dolores insufribles. No se trata de
dibujar panoramas apocalípticos, como se presentan en ocasiones, sobre
todo para banalizar el argumento y quitarle fuerza. Se trata simplemente
de asumir lo que ha supuesto abrir la puerta a la eutanasia en un
ordenamiento jurídico concreto.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Otra razón en contra de la
despenalización de la eutanasia es lo que podríamos denominar “argumento
antisolidario”. Junto al enrarecimiento de la relación médico-paciente,
la posibilidad social de la eutanasia carga al paciente crónico, no
sólo terminal, con un peso que en ocasiones es demasiado grande. La
posibilidad de pedir la eutanasia, y de dejar de ser una carga para la
familia y para la comunidad en general, es origen de un sufrimiento para
el paciente que la sociedad debería evitarle. Quizá se encuentren
algunos pocos casos de personas que, aun recibiendo unos cuidados
paliativos adecuados, sigan queriendo acabar con sus vidas. Pero si se
permite la eutanasia a esas pocas personas, serán muchas otras las que
quedarán desprotegidas, y las que tendrán que justificar por qué quieren
seguir siendo un peso para los demás. El enfermo grave lo último que
necesita es una carga de este tipo.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">El momento de la muerte es un
momento único y definitivo. La familia, el ámbito sanitario, la sociedad
en general, debería facilitar que ese momento tenga lugar del modo más
sereno posible, pero sin olvidar que se trata siempre de algo que escapa
a su dominio, algo misterioso y fascinante.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><h2 style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong><span>7. Bibliografía</span></strong></span></h2>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Carrasco de Paula, I., <em>Eutanasia, en Lexicón. Términos ambiguos y discutidos sobre familia, vida y cuestiones éticas</em>, Ediciones Palabra, Madrid 2004, pp. 359–366.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Dowbiggin, I., <em>A Concise History of Euthanasia: Life, Death, God and Medicine</em>, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Lanham 2005.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Gaylin, W. − Kass, L. R. − Pellegrino, E. D. − Siegler, M., <em>Doctors Must Not Kill</em> «JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association» 259 no. 14 (April 8, 1988), pp. 2139–2140.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Hendin, H., <em>Seducidos por la muerte: médicos, pacientes y suicidio asistido</em>, Planeta, Barcelona 2009.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Keown, J., <em>Euthanasia, Ethics and Public Policy: an Argument Against Legalisation</em>, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2002.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Monforte-Royo, C. − Villavicencio-Chávez Ch. − Tomás-Sábado, J. − Mahtani-Chugani, V. − Balaguer, A., <em>What Lies Behind the Wish to Hasten Death? A Systematic Review and Meta-ethnography from the Perspective of Patients</em>, «PloS One» 7 no. 5 (2012): e37117.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Ortega, I., <em>La «pendiente resbaladiza» en la eutanasia: ¿ilusión o realidad?</em>, «Annales Theologici» 17, no. 1 (2003), pp. 77–124.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Serrano Ruiz-Calderón, J. M., <em>La Eutanasia</em>, Tribuna Siglo XXI, EIUNSA, Madrid 2007. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong><span style="color: black;">Pablo Requena Meana</span></strong></span></div>
<br />
<br />Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-20411026054384004882014-03-25T19:54:00.000+00:002014-03-25T19:54:35.440+00:00Elementar, meus irmãos - por Nuno Serras Pereira<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">25.
03. 2014</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Se é verdade o que o Cardeal
Muller afirmou, invocando o poder que lhe foi conferido de Magistério, a saber,
que a admissão à Sagrada Comunhão dos “divorciados recasados” vai contra a
Palavra e a Vontade de Jesus Cristo, então isso significa que quem a advoga
nega a Verdade de Fé, revelada por Deus. Ora, repudiar uma Verdade de Fé tão
patente ensinando teimosamente o contrário significa aceitar e promover a heresia.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Caso assim seja, por que será que
o Santo Padre convidou um Cardeal a pregá-la ao Consistório, elogiando-a, a
acreditar em vários vaticanistas, depois de vários Cardeais a terem fustigado? Por
que será que o Papa na última entrevista, dada ao jornal La Stampa, anunciou
que o texto de Walter Kasper iria ser editado em livro, em alemão? Por que será
que vários Cardeais andam em público rejeitando a tal Verdade de Fé?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Caso assim não seja, por que será
que o Santo Padre não remove o Prefeito da Congregação para a Doutrina da Fé,
uma vez que este estaria sub-repticiamente insinuando uma adesão do Sumo Pontífice
ao erro e acoimando os seus pares de heresiarcas?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Ou tem razão Muller ou tem-na
Kasper. Não é possível que a tenham os dois. O povo de Deus e o resto da
humanidade não podem é continuar sujeitos a esta enorme choldraboldra.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Que o Céu nos acuda para não
assistirmos a outra abominação da desolação.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Bem-aventurado João Paulo II,
rogai por nós.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">À honra de Cristo. Ámen.</span></span></div>
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-48617023234651469632014-03-21T21:18:00.000+00:002014-03-21T21:18:01.556+00:00A grande dívida - por Nuno Serras Pereira<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">21. 03. 2014</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Portugal tem uma dívida muito maior
do que aquela de que se fala habitualmente. E é de justiça que tome consciência
disso. Mais ainda, somente aproveitará e se recomporá se a reconhecer,
agradecer e corresponder a quem tanto fez por nós.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Deus suscitou entre nós um
generoso guerreiro que, como S. Paulo, combateu o bom combate – um valente, um
bravo, cheio de Fé e de audácia – com uma inteligência perspicaz, uma capacidade
de liderança singular e uma habilidade organizadora exímia. Exemplar na luta
pela Justiça, um modelo de Caridade e de Misericórdia. Não só cuidou dos
feridos como intrepidamente, na linha da frente, se opunha aos exércitos do
Maligno para que não fizessem mais vítimas.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Num tempo em que tantíssimos
poderosos se têm empenhado feroz e encarniçadamente contra a vida, o
matrimónio, a família, a liberdade de educação, o cristianismo (e outros tantos
covardes ou indiferentes se demitem da sua humanidade e da sua Fé), raros, se é
que alguém, como ele se entregou com tamanha generosidade e competência à
defesa, consolidação e promoção destes princípios inegociáveis que são os
fundamentos do Bem-comum, da sociedade e da política, no seu sentido mais
nobre.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Deus que tanto lhe deu para
acudir a tantos não o poupou, como a Seu Filho, à Cruz. Assim como durante a
maior parte da sua vida o fez participante dos Mistérios da Sua vida pública,
nos últimos tempos quis fazê-lo participante da Sua Paixão em favor da nossa
Salvação. Nestes tempos de grande configuração ao Crucificado poderíamos
aplicar-lhe, analogicamente, o que o P. António Vieira disse de Cristo
crucificado: “Nunca fez tanto, como quando nada fez”. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Tenho para mim, sem a pretensão
de me antecipar ao juízo da Igreja, que o Fernando Castro, que Deus ontem
chamou a Si, participa já da Sua Glória; e que com a sua intercessão nos
fortalecerá para continuarmos a missão que com tanta bondade e verdade
desempenhou.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
<span style="line-height: 115%;">Deus
compadecido das nossas misérias deixou-nos a Leonor (<i>das Dores</i>), sua mulher, e uma trezena de filhos para nos continuar
a favorecer com as Suas Graças. À honra e glória de Cristo. Ámen.</span></span></span>Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-10345633517155857992014-02-27T18:57:00.000+00:002014-02-27T19:00:19.548+00:00Grande Balbúrdia na Igreja - por Nuno Serras Pereira<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">27. 02. 2014</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Para quem não saiba, desde já
adianto que tempos houve na história da Igreja em que a grande maioria dos
Bispos e, por pouco tempo o Papa Libério, eram hereges, mais concretamente arianos,
não reconhecendo a Divindade de Cristo e advogando que não era da mesma substâncias
do Pai. Para defender e salvar a Fé suscitou Deus a Santo Atanásio, Bispo (e um
relativamente pequeno grupo de outros Pastores), que, para usar uma expressão
do Papa Francisco, tinha “uma teologia vociferante”, a ponto de ter sido
exilado por 5 vezes da sua Diocese.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">O Papa Libério não foi o único,
na história do Papado, a vacilar ou escorregar na Doutrina da Fé, mas Graças a
Deus todos acabaram por se retractar. Esta crendice moderna de opinar que o
Santo Padre sempre que fala é um oráculo, vozeando o Espírito Santo, nunca foi
Doutrina da Igreja.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Aliás, que um Papa possa cair em
heresia é uma teoria teológica comum, que se encontra inclusive em S. Tomás de
Aquino. No caso de isso acontecer deixaria de ser aquilo que era, perdendo toda
a autoridade. Mas não é disso que este artigo trata.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Posto isto (sendo manifesto e
indubitável a todos os que me conhecem que não sou Santo, esclareço a quem não
o saiba que na minha certidão de nascimento não consta de modo nenhum o nome de
Atanásio), passo ao tema deste texto. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">O Santo Padre Francisco, Bispo de
Roma, Pastor Universal e Vicário de Cristo, tem entre outras características a
de ser um excelente comunicador e também a de ser um péssimo comunicólogo. As homilias
quotidianas em Santa Marta, as Audiências Gerais, os “twitter”, os textos
Magisteriais dizem respeito à qualidade, enquanto as entrevistas e não poucos
dos improvisos se podem classificar como imperfeitos. De facto, desde a
entrevista no avião aquando do regresso das JMJ, no Brasil, passando pela
concedida a Antonio Spadaro, S.J. e aos elogios descomedidos ao Cardeal Kasper,
depois de um convite aparentemente surrealista para que preleccionasse no
consistório sobre uma dita misericórdia absurdamente contraposta à Verdade, tudo
tem concorrido para uma enorme confusão e perplexidade. Umas vezes é
patentemente anti-relativista, defensor e guardião da verdade, outras suscita a
impressão exactamente contrária. Mas será, interrogo-me, assim tão difícil
falar com a clareza meridiana do Cardeal Muller, que não deixa espaço a
qualquer dúvida ou ambiguidade?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Quando os Cardeais Maradiaga e
Marx, depois de terem sido escolhidos a dedo pelo Papa Francisco para o chamado
C8, dão como adquirido a admissão aos Sacramentos dos impropriamente chamados “divorciados
recasados”, que não renunciam à relação adúltera, sem que o Santo Padre os
chame à pedra, que devemos pensar? Quando o Cardeal Kasper, depois de ter sido
convidado a pregar no consistório, se pronuncia publicamente no mesmo sentido,
que devemos concluir? Quando após o sermão, por ele pronunciado, com o mesmo
objectivo, aos confrades Cardeais, o Papa lhe faz um panegírico afirmando entre
outras coisas que aquela é verdadeiramente uma teologia feita de joelhos, isto é
verdadeiramente orante e, por isso, fica subentendido, inspirada por Deus;
poder-se-á ainda duvidar que apesar de todas as declarações de rejeição da
mundanidade e de fidelidade à doutrina da Igreja, Francisco esteja manifestando
o propósito de pressionar, influenciar ou encaminhar os católicos e em
particular o Episcopado no sentido de aderirem e acolherem as teses dos
mencionados Cardeais? (as quais, suspeito que sejam heréticas porque contrárias
à Revelação manifestada na Sagrada Escritura e na Tradição interpretadas solenemente
no Concílio de Trento e proclamadas colegialmente no Concílio Vaticano II e no
Catecismo da Igreja Católica). Eu não afirmo que assim seja - e acresce que há
quem diga que a questão é meramente disciplinar, o que na minha miserável opinião
é um completo desatino -, mas que o efeito, embora não desejado, tem sido de
total desorientação e confusão afigura-se-me tão claro como a água límpida.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Seja como for, os motivos invocadas
pelo Cardeal Kasper e outros, tal como foram publicitadas pela comunicação
social, denotam uma irracionalidade, uma ausência de Fé e de confiança na Graça
de Deus pasmosas. Contrapor o Juízo ao Amor e a Verdade à Misericórdia, não é
somente uma volição presunçosa de separar aquilo que Deus uniu, mas ainda uma
tentativa de introduzir uma desunião e discordância, ou pelo menos uma dialéctica
de pendor hegeliano, no Deus Uno e Trino. À honra de Cristo. Ámen.</span></div>
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<![endif]-->Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-40084354282642980912014-02-11T18:37:00.000+00:002014-02-11T18:37:39.938+00:00Spiritual Healing After Sexual Abuse - Dawn Eden interview by John Burger<div class="p1">
In <a href="http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/2903/Spiritual_Healing_After_Sexual_Abuse.aspx">CWR</a></div>
<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Dawn Eden sees herself as a missionary. Herself a victim of sexual abuse
as a child, abuse that was healed in part through her journey of faith,
she now envisions bringing God's healing to other victims, particularly
those who are underserved, such as prisoners.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Eden, a Catholic convert who grew up Jewish, weaves her story of abuse
with those of saints who suffered abuse of various kinds. In <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594712905/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1594712905&linkCode=as2&tag=thedawnpatrol-20"><em>My
Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints</em></a>, she offers advice on how victims can heal through learning some of those stories, through prayer, and through forgiveness.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="p1" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
In an interview with <em>Catholic World Report</em>, the author of the 2006 best-seller <em>The Thrill of the Chaste</em>
offers suggestions on how the Church can reach out more effectively to
victims of abuse, whether that abuse took place in the Church or in the
victim’s very own home. </span></div>
<div class="p1" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: What led you to write this
book? </strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Dawn Eden: </strong>I myself am a victim of
childhood sexual abuse. For me, when I received the grace of faith in Christ at
the age of 31, I was instantly healed of the depression and temptations to
suicide that had dogged me since my teens and which I later learned were the
effects of post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by the abuse. But what I
discovered during my first years as a Christian, during which I was a
Protestant, was that although I had experienced this dramatic healing from the
worst aftereffects of the abuse, I still had other effects to contend with,
including anxiety, flashbacks, and hyper-sensitivity. And my thought as a new
Christian was that the fact that I had not yet received healing from these effects
meant that I wasn’t fully surrendered, that I didn’t have enough faith. So I
blamed myself for my own seeming failure to be living completely within the
light of the risen Christ.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Five
years after becoming a Christian I made the decision to become Catholic, and I
was received into the Church in 2006, at the age of 37. Once I was a Catholic I
knew there was nowhere else to go; I was home. And I also instinctively felt
from what I understood of the Catholic faith that somehow the wounds I retained
from the abuse, these effects had some kind of meaning in Christ, that they
weren’t my fault. But I struggled to understand what meaning these wounds might
have.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Two
things happened in 2010 that led me to a new and deeper healing. The first was
an experience I had on an Ignatian retreat, where for the first time I really
began to see my own wounds in light of the wounds of Christ. And I realized,
with Christ now being glorified and yet retaining his wounds, that if I united
my own wounded heart to the wounded and glorified heart of Jesus, then somehow
my wounds could become the crack that Christ’s light could get in. This was a
revelation for me because all this time I’d been thinking that my wounds <em>separated</em> me from the love of Christ,
that they were simply an obstacle. But this insight made me realize that in
fact I could actually find healing in Christ not in spite of my wounds but <em>through</em> my wounds. My wounds could lead
me to greater intimacy with God through realizing my dependence upon him for
everything, and through personally participating in the victory over sin that
Jesus won for me through his passion.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
The
second insight I received in 2010 was when I picked up a book called <em>Modern Saints</em> by Ann Ball, and that’s
where I discovered the story of Blessed Laura Vicuña. Ann Ball describes Bl.
Laura, as many people do, as another Maria Goretti. Certainly her story is very
similar in that she died while still quite young, in the early 20th century.
And she died following being brutalized by a man who sought to sexually
victimize her. But in reading Bl. Laura’s story, I noticed a difference in that
while Maria was brought up in a devout Catholic home so that the abuse she
suffered was truly an intrusion upon her sheltered life, Bl. Laura lived with
an abuser for three years. She was abused by her mother’s lover.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
And
this was very similar to my own experiences as a child. After my mother’s
divorce, I was raised by my mother; I was made to live in what was truly a
sexually porous environment where I was not protected from adult nudity, from
pornography, from graphic sex talk, and where I too was molested by one of my
mother’s boyfriends.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
What’s
more, whereas Maria Goretti, on her deathbed, heroically forgave her abuser,
Laura did something additional that was particularly meaningful for me because
besides forgiving her abuser, she forgave her mother, who enabled the abuse.
She actually offered her life for her mother’s conversion. When I read that, I
broke down crying because I realized how relevant it was for me, as I was still
needing to forgive my mother for not protecting me. Then I thought if Laura’s
story was so healing for me, imagine how it would be for others. And I realized
how relevant it would be for others because statistics show that if a child is
living in a household where the father is not present and where there is a man
in the household who is not the child’s father, that child is <a href="http://www.heritage.org/static/reportimages/EEA0FD6D99F6101F8BC8B1038F51A0BC.gif">33 times</a> more likely to suffer sexual
abuse than in a household where the father <em>is</em>
present. So in that sense, Bl. Laura’s story was really modern, with modern
relevance, and that was the direct inspiration for my wanting to write a book
on healing from childhood sexual abuse through the lives of saints who have
suffered such abuse. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: How can saints help a
person overcome the effects of abuse?</strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Eden: </strong>I would say the most common
toxic effect of childhood sexual abuse is the misplaced guilt that the child is
likely to carry throughout life unless the victim makes a concrete and
persevering effort to counter it. Children tend to blame themselves for the
evil that others perpetrate upon them. In some ways this misplaced shame and
guilt is a survival mechanism, because if the child is abused by a parent or
guardian, or if a parent or guardian in some way is enabling the abuse by not
protecting the child, then the child may still think, “As bad as my situation
is, if this guardian goes away, I will have nobody to protect me.” So,
subconsciously, the child thinks, “Therefore I can’t blame my parents or
guardian; I have to just blame myself and say I must have wanted it.”
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
When
the adult who has internalized this misplaced guilt learns there is a saint who
suffered similar wounds and whom the Church now acknowledges to be in heaven,
then the adult can begin to feel free of this guilt and realize “I couldn’t
have been responsible for this abuse. This abuse could not have been my sin.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: How did you choose which
saints to focus on? </strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Eden: </strong>The first thing I did was look
for saints who had suffered childhood sexual abuse, and in doing so I looked
for saints whose stories were well documented. For that reason I left out St.
Dymphna, although she is a very popular saint and I have met people who
experienced healing through her intercession. But anyone who tries to find
literature on St. Dymphna will discover that all we have are legends.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Now,
legends don’t mean that this person didn’t live or wasn’t heroic. But what it
does mean is that this person’s story was likely in some way embellished over
time—to the point that we can’t say with certainty that these events happened
in a particular way, or we can’t verify particular details.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
I
wanted, rather, for people reading these stories to know that these things
really happened. And that’s important too because victims are often told by
people who were around at the time of the abuse, “Oh that didn’t really happen.
Nobody remembers it in that way.” So to be able to point to saints’ lives and
say, “This thing happened to this saint,” and this was independently verified,
it helps to validate victims’ own experiences.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Second
of all, I looked for saints who had experienced any kind of trauma because most
people who have suffered childhood sexual abuse will experience some effect of
trauma. It’s important to note that not everyone who has suffered childhood
sexual abuse will experience post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is a
constellation of symptoms, and only a minority will have that full-blown
disorder. But if you meet anyone who has suffered childhood sexual abuse it is
likely that he or she will have experienced at least one PTSD symptom, such as
anxiety, depression, temptation to self-harm, flashbacks, hyper-sensitivity.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
So
saints who have suffered any kind of trauma often provide for us models of
coping with the effects of the abuse. In this sense, even saints who didn’t
suffer sexual abuse, such as Ignatius of Loyola or Thérèse of Lisieux, can yet
teach us a great deal through their lives and spirituality. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: What do you hope this book
will accomplish? How can it be used to help victims? </strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Eden: </strong>The voice that I use in the book
is directly speaking to adults who were victimized in childhood, but the
overall structure of the book is really designed to provide a model for priests
and pastoral caregivers in walking with victims. We live in a “Band-Aid”
culture, and what little outreach we have towards victims of abuse tends to be
focused on bringing them instant healing. For example, we might have
charismatic-type healing Masses or retreat weekends, which are designed to
bring victims an infusion of the Holy Spirit that will just turn them around in
one night or weekend. Now, I don’t mean, by singling these things out, to say
we shouldn’t have such outreach at all. Any effort by Catholics to reach out to
the wounded is better than nothing. What’s more, certainly, dramatic healings
can happen, and I can vouch for that fact since, as I said, when I first
received the grace of Christian faith, I was instantly healed of the temptation
to self-harm. And that was huge for me. But after that instant healing there
were still effects that remained in me, and without a solid understanding of
what the Church teaches on redemptive suffering, the fact that I wasn’t
instantly healed of some of my effects actually, unfortunately, led me to blame
myself for the effects that remained in me.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
And
that’s the problem with the “Band-Aid” approach, when we rely too heavily on
this idea that grace is going to immediately change the whole person.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
What
we need to do instead is remember what St. Thomas Aquinas says in the first
question of his <em>Summa Theologiae</em>,
that grace does not destroy nature. Grace <em>perfects</em>
nature, and while we certainly should ask God for healing in faith, we should
remember that God does not normally heal every aspect of any illness in a
second, in an instant. God’s normal way of working is to plant seeds in us,
which unfolds over time. So the priest or pastoral caregiver is to truly,
through his or her ministry, participate in the unfolding of God’s grace in the
victim’s heart, then this priest or pastoral caregiver needs to himself be
patient with God’s grace and to help the victim recognize the incremental steps
through which we become conscious of our identity as sons and daughters of God.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
It’s
those steps that I delineate in the book, and I use the examples of saints to
help the victim progress and the pastoral caregiver to walk with the victim to
enable God’s healing to unfold over time.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
I’m
very interested in speaking to prisoners and groups of people who are in
recovery. I’ve made a personal consecration of my celibacy to the Sacred Heart
of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and I’m in the process of
requesting to be called to a diocesan consecration. So my hope is that God is
going to use me in a deeper way as a missionary of God’s healing to vulnerable
and underserved populations. I have a small fund set up for transportation to
prisons and other places where I might be able to do missionary talks. I’ve
already spoken to prisoners in Philadelphia and to women convicted of
prostitution who are in a rehabilitation program. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: What can the average
Catholic do if he or she encounters someone struggling with a past marked by
sexual abuse? </strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Eden: </strong>The first thing is to weep with
those who weep. Normally, our first instinct is simply to solve the problem, to
push the person to look beyond their pain. But it’s much more helpful to really
be present for the person who is suffering, to acknowledge their pain, to
affirm that what was done to that person was wrong.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Second,
and very importantly, we should pray for that person. And third, when the
person is ready, we can do what’s in our power to help that person find both a
competent spiritual director who has experience with victims of abuse, and a
therapist, preferably a Catholic therapist. In my book, I do recommend both
therapy and spiritual direction for victims, and I emphasize the importance of
finding a therapist who either is Catholic or at least respects one’s Catholic
faith. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: You became a Catholic in
2006, at the height of the sexual abuse scandal. Was that a hurdle for you, in
coming into a Church that was depicted in the media, at least, as full of
abusive priests and enabling bishops?</strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Eden: </strong>It did at first make me
suspicious of the Church, which is one of the reasons why I delayed entering,
because I received Christian faith in 1999, and the scandal broke in 2002. I
remember asking Catholics at the time of the scandal about how they could be
part of a Church that had these evils within it, and I remember being surprised
by the response of my Catholic friends, that they were just as furious about
the abuse as anyone. From the way the news reported things, I had just assumed
that all Catholics were like Bill Donohue [president of the Catholic League for
Religious and Civil Rights], simply circling the wagons and assuming that every
single accusation against a priest had to be a malicious lie invented by the
media or people out to get money from the Church.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
So,
learning that Catholics themselves were grieving over the abuse itself—not just
grieving that the abuse was exposed but that it had actually taken place—helped
me become more open to entering the Church.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
What
really won me was the Church’s consistent witness for the dignity of human
life, because abuse is a very soul-destroying experience. It’s a kind of
murder. For someone to abuse another person—especially to abuse a child—the
abuser has to, in his or her heart, really deny the humanity of this child and
just look at the child as an object. So when I saw the Church’s love for human
life at every stage, particularly the Church’s unceasing affirmation of the
dignity of life in the womb, that was what made me realize that only the truth
proclaimed by the Church was capable of protecting children from abuse. The
fact that sinful, fallen human beings who are members of the Church yet disobey
God’s law does not take away from the truth of the law as proclaimed by the
Church. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: You said earlier that the
structure of your new book is “designed to provide a model for priests and
pastoral caregivers in walking with victims.” Do you think victims are able to
trust priests in the Catholic Church to help them overcome sexual abuse, after
such a barrage in the media following the Boston scandal in 2002?</strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Eden: </strong>The best answer I can give you
is what a friend said to me recently about the experience of his mother, who
left the Church as a teenager after being treated uncharitably by a priest, and
returned as an adult. He said it takes just one bad priest to run someone out
of the Church, but it takes just one good priest to bring someone back in. And
I think that’s exactly right. But most of all, it takes prayer, from all the
members of the Mystical Body, for the return of the lost sheep. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: What are your thoughts on how
the Church has responded to the problem of abusive clergy and the cover-up that
took place in various dioceses? </strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Eden: </strong>I think there are certain
aspects of the response that are very good; for example, the emphasis that any
and all abuse by a representative of the Church needs to be reported, not only
to the Church but also to the proper authorities.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
I
think that also there are certain elements of the Dallas Charter for the
Protection of Children and Young People that are very positive and needed, such
as that a diocesan commission needs to investigate any and all claims of abuse.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
At the
same time I believe that so much more needs to be done. For one thing, recent
cases such as occurred with Bishop [Robert] Finn [of Kansas City, Mo.] show
that we need to follow what rules we have in place. This also came up with the
recent case with the archbishop of Minneapolis-St. Paul
[local media have reported failures by the archdiocese in
dealing with clergy who sexually abused children].
We badly need to follow our own rules because the rules are only as good as the
observance of them.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
What
little outreach we’ve had to victims needs to be dramatically improved. First
of all, <a href="http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/a-victim-in-search-of-healing">as was pointed out by a victim</a> at the first Vatican conference
on abuse, which was held in 2012, it’s very important that we offer spiritual
help to victims. Right now, if someone contacts the victim assistance program
of a diocese, the victim will be offered psychological help but very little, if
any, spiritual help. If we’re not offering spiritual help, we’re not being
Church because anyone who is a victim of evil needs to know that God did not
will that evil for them, and that God loves them. And how much truer is this for
someone who’s been abused by a representative of the Church. So much
improvement needs to be done in the area of spiritual help.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Secondly,
what little outreach we have to victims is mostly to victims of clergy abuse.
It’s understandable that that should be our first priority, but it shouldn’t be
our only priority. Here, Bill Donahue is right, in that while we should not at
all minimize the grave evil of clergy abuse, it’s true that only a tiny
percentage of child sexual abuse is committed by clergy or religious. About
half of all childhood sexual abuse takes place in the child’s own home, and the
rest of the abuse takes place usually in the private home of a neighbor or
family friend or is committed by a teacher or someone else who has the
opportunity to be in close proximity to the child, or by a peer.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
So if
we’re only reaching out to those people who have been victims of clergy abuse,
we’re failing to bring the healing of Christ to a large number of people who
need it.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Now
the statistics on sexual abuse are very under-reported because of the misplaced
guilt and shame associated with such abuse. They’re also under-reported because
given the comprehensive sexual education that we now have, children are taught
from an early age that it’s natural for them to act out sexually. So many
people grow up being abused who don’t even mentally write what was done to them
as abuse. So when you hear the statistics, which are still quite high—that one
out of four women and one out of six adult men report having been sexually
abused in childhood—you have to wonder if those numbers aren’t higher, which,
I’m sure they are.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
And
second, those numbers only refer to what is referred to as <em>contact</em> sexual abuse. There are a far greater number of people who
have been victimized in childhood by non-contact sexual abuse, such as exposure
to pornography, intentional exposure to adult nudity or to graphic sex talk.
These things all can have lasting toxic effects when perpetrated upon a child.
Just think about some of the things children see on television, including all
the sexual violence that you can see day or night on TV. We’re a culture that
has grown up with deep wounds. If the Church is going to be Church, we have to
come up with a vocabulary for affirming that people <em>are</em> wounded, and pointing them toward the healing that can only be
found in Christ. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: Your first book dealt with
chastity. Have you heard of ways in which it has helped young people lead
chaste lives?</strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Eden: </strong>The response to <a href="http://www.thrillofthechaste.com/"><em>The Thrill of the Chaste</em></a> has been deeply gratifying for
me. I still hear very often from people who have read it whose lives were
positively affected by it. Perhaps the most beautiful experience of it was when
a reader from Ireland invited me to her wedding. I went, and at the end of the
speeches, when the bride was speaking, she said none of this would have been
possible were it not for one woman here, who wrote this book, because she had
been living away from her Catholic faith. Reading <em>The Thrill of the Chaste</em> brought her back to the practice of the
faith, motivated her to become a speaker with an Irish-based group called Pure
at Heart, which promotes chastity, and then it was through her chastity and
pro-life activism that she met her husband, who is also a prominent supporter
of pro-life causes in Ireland. It’s very rare for someone, within her own
lifetime, to have the opportunity to see the ripple effects of the good things
she has put into this world. So that for me was a special gift and grace. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: What do you think of the
way or ways the Church is responding to our sometimes hyper-sexualized culture?</strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Eden: </strong>There’s a need for more artists
and writers and media producers to create entertainment that reflects the
Catholic world view. Certainly Barbara Nicolosi Harrington[founder of Act One,
a training program for Christian screenwriters in <a href="http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/2903/Spiritual_Healing_After_Sexual_Abuse.aspx#" id="_GPLITA_1" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent ! important; border: medium none ! important; display: inline ! important; float: none ! important; height: auto ! important; margin: 0px ! important; min-height: 0px ! important; min-width: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important; text-decoration: underline ! important; vertical-align: baseline ! important; width: auto ! important;" title="Click to Continue > by Fun2Save">Hollywood<img src="http://cdncache-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent ! important; border: medium none ! important; display: inline ! important; float: none ! important; height: 10px ! important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px ! important; min-height: 0px ! important; min-width: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important; vertical-align: super ! important; width: 10px ! important;" /></a>] is a leader in
this regard, and I highly recommend the Internet sitcom <a href="http://www.keyrowpictures.com/episodes/">Ordinary</a>,
which is a Catholic sitcom about the life of a new priest in a parish. It’s
done not like those Hallmark Hall of Fame, syrupy shows but with the same kind
of entertainment value as TV shows like <em>The
Office</em> or <em>Community</em> but without
the obscenities or gratuitous sex or violence of such shows.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
But we
need much more of this because people can really be converted through good
books. <em>I</em> was converted through a
novel, when a rock musician I was interviewing recommended the novel <em>The Man Who Was Thursday</em>, by G.K.
Chesterton. So the more that we make a concerted effort to produce good art
that is informed by our Catholic faith, the more we will find ourselves
evangelizing the culture in important and needed ways. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: Let me ask you about your
name, Dawn Eden. Is it a pen name? </strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Eden: </strong>My birth certificate says Dawn
Eden Goldstein. I was born in 1968, the time of “flower power” (it was the same
year as <em>Humanae Vitae</em> as well). My
parents liked the sound of the name Dawn Eden. So with the name Dawn Eden as my
first and middle name, as a teenager, I realized that it made a good pen name,
and so I’ve been calling myself that ever since. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: When you became a Catholic,
did you add another? </strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Eden: </strong>I took the Confirmation name
Lucy, not only after the martyr, St. Lucy, but also after St. Lucy Filippini.
I’d been really touched by the holiness of a Filippini sister I’d met who had
co-written a biography of St. Lucy Filippini, <em>Forever Yes</em>, and I was inspired reading that biography. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: Besides writing books, what
are you doing these days?</strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Eden: </strong>I’m currently a full-time
graduate student in theology at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate
Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington. I’m finishing up a
Sacred Theology Licentiate, which is a pre-requisite that I need to do a Sacred
Theology Doctorate in Rome. My hope is to be a professor at a Catholic college.
I’m doing my STL on St. Thomas Aquinas and John Paul II on redemptive suffering
and looking at how the suffering that we undergo in this life, when united to
Jesus’ passion, helps to dispose us for the life of the resurrection. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: In the book, you describe
growing up in a Jewish family where you had heard arguments against belief in
Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. Later you became a Christian and still later,
a Catholic. What was it that convinced you that the arguments you had heard
growing up were not true?</strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Eden: </strong>I was basically Evangelical. I
became Christian through a local community church that was Adventist. I asked
the pastor if I could just get a generic baptism—Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit—and not have to take the Adventist vows.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
I
really have to thank my mother for sowing the seeds of my conversion. Although
my walk with my mother has included the need to forgive her (I should add, by
the way, that my mother does not remember all the things that I remember, but
those things that she remembers she deeply regrets), by some mystery, it’s also
through my mother that I became disposed to faith in Christ—through my mother’s
witness—because when I was a teenager and an agnostic it was right at the time
that I began to lose my Jewish faith that my mother had a conversion and
entered the Catholic Church. She ended up not identifying as Catholic for long,
but she retained faith in Christ. Hearing her speak about Jesus as the
fulfillment of the promises made to the Jews helped me to overcome obstacles I
might have.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Also I
really saw that Christian faith effected a transformation in my mother so that
she found a certain kind of ground to stand on that she hadn’t had before. She
had really been searching all her life and had gone through all of these
different New Age beliefs and experimented with different faith traditions
before finding the truth of Christ and really accepting Jesus as the Messiah
who was promised.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
So
just seeing the change that faith worked in her made me desire to have that
same change in me, even though it took 15 years after my mother’s conversion
before I could be fully open to that grace of conversion myself. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: Are there aspects of your
Judaism that survive in your life as a Christian? </strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Eden: </strong>When I first became a Christian
I was drawn to the branch of Protestantism that calls itself Messianic Judaism.
In this area I was very influenced by my mother, who herself had come to
identify as a messianic Jew. Even as a new Catholic I was initially sympathetic
to people who were arguing that we needed more Jewish-style prayers in Catholic
devotional life and that sort of thing.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Since
becoming a Catholic, I’ve learned that there is not just one rite of the
liturgy; we have many rites that have been approved, not just the Roman Rite
but other rites which are more ancient—the Eastern rites. And what I’ve come to
believe is that, with regard to the Catholic prayer life as it has organically
developed through the different rites, if you rightly understand what it is that
we pray, it is the complete fulfillment of Jewish prayer and it does not need
any kind of Jewish prayer to be extrinsically laid upon it. The Catholic Mass,
even in its most modern form, as the Mass of Paul VI, when it’s reverently
celebrated, fulfills all the aspects of Torah and Temple sacrifice that Moses
and the prophets preached about and that God revealed to them. And so I do
believe that Catholic prayer life as it stands in the liturgy books is a
perfect fulfillment of Jewish faith.
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Where
I believe the Church has room to improve is in the reception of the Second
Vatican Council’s document on relations with non-Christian religions. <em>Nostra Aetate</em> is a tremendously
important document that takes in the most essential aspects of Catholic
doctrine from the Council of Trent, as well as before and since, and places
them in a framework that is relevant to contemporary concerns. Everyone should
<a href="http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/2903/Spiritual_Healing_After_Sexual_Abuse.aspx#" id="_GPLITA_0" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent ! important; border: medium none ! important; display: inline ! important; float: none ! important; height: auto ! important; margin: 0px ! important; min-height: 0px ! important; min-width: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important; text-decoration: underline ! important; vertical-align: baseline ! important; width: auto ! important;" title="Click to Continue > by Fun2Save">study<img src="http://cdncache-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent ! important; border: medium none ! important; display: inline ! important; float: none ! important; height: 10px ! important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px ! important; min-height: 0px ! important; min-width: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important; vertical-align: super ! important; width: 10px ! important;" /></a> this document and really internalize it, in terms of their understanding
of the relationship of Jewish faith and Jewish people to Christians, and I
think that in this respect Pope Francis is really going to move us forward. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>CWR: You don’t think <em>Nostra Aetate</em> has been fully received by
the laity?</strong></span>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Eden: </strong>No, it hasn’t. We still suffer
from various errors. On the one hand, there’s the extreme replacement theology,
a kind of extreme supersessionism, which teaches that because the Church is the
New Israel, therefore all God’s promises to the Jews are void, and the Jews are
simply enemies of Christ. This is the kind of theology that you see espoused by
E. Michael Jones and his supporters, and the Society of St. Pius X, very sadly
and tragically. It’s an ideology that has unfortunately been a source of schism
in the Church.
</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
On the other side you have ideas like that which were
propounded in the early 2000s, in a USCCB document on relationships with the
Jewish people, <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2009/09/23/abraham-foxman-vs-the-usccb-clearing-away-the-ambiguities/">and this document was since
corrected</a>, I think, through the intervention of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This other side makes a
dual-covenant claim, which is that the Jews have their covenant and we have
ours, and if we just leave the Jews alone, then they’ll be saved. And that’s
simply not true, and that’s not what the Council teaches. And here is where a
right understanding of what Pope Francis is now teaching in his new apostolic
exhortation, would be very helpful. Because when the Pope says we are not to
proselytize, he doesn’t mean we are not to evangelize. When the Church speaks
about not proselytizing Jews, for example, it’s speaking about not singling out
Jewish people the way that Jews for Jesus does, for example—not drawing a
bull’s eye on someone and saying, “You need to be saved because you are
Jewish.” Rather, we evangelize by saying that<em> everyone</em> needs the Good News.
And we can adapt our style of evangelization to different cultures, to
their needs, but we will not just say any one particular people who are outside
the Catholic Church are in any more need of salvation than any other people
outside the Church.
</span></div>
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-48938638934425532352014-02-06T11:58:00.000+00:002014-02-06T11:58:22.118+00:00Liga Católica en EEUU: Informe malicioso e impreciso de ONU contra Vaticano no tiene fundamento<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">NUEVA YORK, 05 Feb. 14 / 06:32 pm (<a href="http://www.aciprensa.com/" target="_self"><b>ACI</b></a>).-
El director de <a href="http://www.aciprensa.com/noticias/liga-catolica-en-eeuu-informe-malicioso-e-impreciso-de-la-onu-contra-el-vaticano-no-tiene-fundamento-alguno-44434/#" id="_GPLITA_0" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent ! important; border: medium none ! important; display: inline ! important; float: none ! important; height: auto ! important; margin: 0px ! important; min-height: 0px ! important; min-width: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important; text-decoration: underline ! important; vertical-align: baseline ! important; width: auto ! important;" title="Click to Continue > by Fun2Save">la Liga</a>
Católica en Estados Unidos, Bill Donohue, escribió una aguda crítica al
informe que el Comité de los Derechos del Niño de la ONU presentó hoy
en el que pide al Vaticano cambiar su postura ante el <a href="http://www.aciprensa.com/aborto/index.html">aborto</a>
y la homosexualidad para, supuestamente, superar el problema de los
abusos sexuales. El líder católico rebati'o una a una las imprecisiones y
mentiras del documento de 15 páginas.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Bill Donohue señala que el texto “no contiene ni una sola nota al pie o
cualquier otro modo de explicación, pero sí proporciona una gran
cantidad de pruebas en cuanto a su verdadera agenda”. “El comité de la
ONU utiliza el abuso sexual de menores como pretexto para su verdadero
objetivo: quiere que el Vaticano se someta a su autoridad, y no sólo en
los casos que involucran el derecho internacional: quiere la <a href="http://www.aciprensa.com/iglesia/index.html">Iglesia</a>
Católica cambie el Derecho Canónico y adopte una ética sexual secular.
De ese modo, constituye uno de los más ambiciosos esfuerzos jamás
efectuados por un comité de la ONU, que es además profundamente
ignorante de los datos”.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
En la página 3 del informe, prosigue Donohue, “el comité señala que la <a href="http://www.aciprensa.com/santasede/index.html">Santa Sede</a>
debe ‘adoptar las medidas necesarias para retirar todas sus reservas y
para garantizar la primacía de la Convención [de la ONU] sobre las leyes
y reglamentos internos’. (Su énfasis) es bastante explícito: ‘el Comité
recomienda que la Santa Sede haga un estudio exhaustivo de su marco
normativo, en particular, del derecho canónico, con el fin de garantizar
el pleno cumplimiento de la Convención’".</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
En otras palabras, continúa, “la enseñanza de la Iglesia Católica, el
magisterio, es decir, el Papa en comunión con los obispos, debe ceder
ante la ONU. Eso equivaldría a pedirle al Congreso de los Estados Unidos
que se asegure de que sus leyes se ajusten a las de la ONU”, algo que
considera una muestra de una “arrogancia sin par”.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
En las páginas 12 y 13, indica Donohue, el comité dice que no solo
quiere que la Iglesia Católica cambie sus enseñanzas sobre el aborto y
la anticoncepción, sino que también dice la Iglesia tiene que hacer más
en cuanto al VIH /<a href="http://www.aciprensa.com/sida/index.html">SIDA</a>.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
“Es dolorosamente obvio que estos especialistas no han pensado bien este
asunto. A saber: si todo el mundo siguiera las enseñanzas de la Iglesia
en cuanto a la sexualidad, no tendríamos este problema en primer lugar.
Para ser exactos, los que adquieren el VIH / <a href="http://www.aciprensa.com/sida/index.html">SIDA</a> por lo general lo hacen porque viven una <a href="http://www.aciprensa.com/vida">vida</a> imprudente, en claro contraste con la súplica de la Iglesia por la abstinencia”.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
El comité está tan determinado a mandar a la Iglesia que exige un cambio
en el Derecho Canónico y se dirige el Vaticano “para pedir que las
escuelas católicas cambien sus libros de texto y eliminen supuestos
‘estereotipos de género’. Esto no sólo es un ejemplo más de su abuso de
poder sino que el comité no proporciona una sola evidencia para sostener
su exigencia”.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Donohue comenta luego que “alguien debería decirles a estos expertos que
el Vaticano no le dice a las escuelas católicas qué libros de texto o
planes de estudio debe adoptar. Pero para los fanáticos del control, el
delegar es un concepto difícil de entender”.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
El comité instruye luego al Vaticano sobre la necesidad de tener
"programas de concientización", instando a "la formación sistemática"
para aquellos que trabajan con menores. “¿Acaso no saben quiénes
comenzaron estas iniciativas? Nosotros no somos los que carecemos de
programas de capacitación obligatorios: los culpables se encuentran en
otras comunidades religiosas y en las escuelas públicas. Esto explica
por qué el abuso sexual no es un problema en las comunidades católicas
actualmente como si es un problema en otros lugares. El comité tiene que
ponerse al día, suponiendo que tenga un verdadero interés en el tema”.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
En la página 8 el comité pide al Vaticano que ponga fin a los castigos
corporales, señalando que debe modificar "las leyes, tanto del Derecho
Canónico como la de la Ciudad del Vaticano". Irónicamente, la ONU
detalla cómo diez mil niños sirios han sido asesinados y torturados en
los últimos tres años.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Los niños en Siria, explica Donohue son violados y golpeados "con
objetos de metal, látigos y bastones de madera y metal" y también les
arrancan las uñas de las manos y los pies. Reciben choques eléctricos en
los genitales y son quemados con cigarrillos. La mayoría de estos actos
de barbarie son perpetrados por agentes del gobierno. “Sin embargo, no
hay una sola demanda para que las autoridades sirias cedan ante la ONU.
Allí están demasiado ocupados preguntándose si la hermana Mary Alice
está golpeando con una regla a algún alumno inquieto”.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Bill Donohue precisa que “el único intento de aportar pruebas es un
fracaso colosal: en la página 7 se cita a las Lavanderías de la
Magdalena como una institución que obligó a muchachas a ‘trabajar en
condiciones análogas a la esclavitud y fueron a menudo objeto de un
trato inhumano, cruel y degradante, así como de abuso físico y sexual’.
Esto es una mentira total: el Informe McAleese, una investigación
autorizada por el gobierno irlandés, muestra que nada de eso es cierto”.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Finalmente, el informe dice que la Iglesia necesita poner fin a la
práctica de las “cajas para bebés”. En muchos países hay estas cajas
junto a orfanatos. Se ponen ahí para permitir que muchachas embarazadas
fuera del <a href="http://www.aciprensa.com/Familia/matrimonio.htm">matrimonio</a> o que no pueden cuidar a sus bebés, le permitan a otros criar a sus pequeños.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Esto concluye Donohue, “es una práctica humana, una que se practica
ampliamente en Corea del Sur. Lo que no es humano es matar a los bebés
en el útero, que es precisamente lo que el comité de las Naciones Unidas
recomienda. Por pura demagogia, no hay forma de superar este informe.
Es tan malicioso como impreciso”.</span></div>
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-49710918695933054622014-02-06T11:55:00.000+00:002014-02-06T11:55:23.400+00:00L'Onu dichiara guerra alla Chiesa - di Massimo IntrovigneIn <a href="http://www.lanuovabq.it/it/articoli-lonu-dichiara-guerra-alla-chiesa-8372.htm">NBQ </a><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Il 5 febbraio 2014 il Comitato per i Diritti del Fanciullo delle
Nazioni Unite ha diffuso un rapporto di sedici pagine sulla conformità
dei comportamenti dello Stato della Città del Vaticano alla Convenzione
delle Nazioni Unite sui Diritti dell’Infanzia, cui la Santa Sede ha
aderito «con riserva». L’adesione con riserva – che peraltro la Santa
Sede aveva affermato di poter superare in futuro – è dovuta al timore
che la Convenzione autorizzi un’eccessiva ingerenza di organi delle
Nazioni Unite negli affari interni degli Stati sottoscrittori. Per
questa stessa ragione il Parlamento degli Stati Uniti non ha mai
ratificato la Convenzione, che pure il governo americano aveva firmato
nel 1995, così che negli USA non è mai entrata in vigore.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Prima di esaminare il documento</strong> – la cui
superficialità e faziosità ideologica lasciano davvero perplessi, e
giustificano ampiamente le riserve quanto ai rischi d’ingerenza e
violazione dei diritti sovrani degli Stati – occorre precisare che cos’è
il Comitato per i Diritti del Fanciullo. Si tratta di un corpo di
diciotto esperti eletti dagli Stati che hanno aderito alla Convenzione,
le cui raccomandazioni non sono giuridicamente vincolanti. Si tratta
dunque di una delle innumerevoli commissioni di esperti delle Nazioni
Unite, per di più nominata con il «manuale Cencelli» dell’ONU, che tende
a dare qualche posticino in qualche commissione a tutti gli Stati. <br /><br /><strong>Tanto per dare un’idea, uno dei diciotto membri</strong>,
che ha funzione di vice-presidente, è stato designato dall’Arabia
Saudita, e fino al 2013 un altro membro veniva dalla Siria, noti esempi
di tutela dei diritti umani in genere e di quelli dei bambini – e delle
bambine – in specie. Durante l’indagine sulla Santa Sede (anche il suo
mandato è scaduto nel 2013) la personalità più in vista, influente e
nota del Comitato è stata la peruviana Susana Villarán, sindaco di Lima e
cattolica «adulta» in perenne polemica con i vescovi del suo Paese, in
particolare con il cardinale arcivescovo di Lima mons. Juan Luis
Cipriani, per il suo sfrenato attivismo a favore del «matrimonio»
omosessuale, dell’ideologia di genere e dell’aborto. Nota marciatrice
dei gay pride, la Villarán si è distinta per i suoi attacchi alla Chiesa
in materia di aborto e di omosessualità e ha simbolicamente «sposato» –
il «matrimonio» omosessuale in Perù per ora non c’è – coppie di persone
dello stesso sesso, fra cui la sua compagna di partito e stretta
collaboratrice Susel Paredes e la sua «fidanzata» Carolina.
Provocatoriamente, le cerimonie si sono svolte nel Parco dell’Amore di
Lima, dove tradizionalmente gli sposi peruviani si fanno fotografare
sotto la celebre statua «Il bacio» dello scultore Victor Delfín.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Chiarito dunque con chi la Santa Sede si è trovata ad avere a che fare,</strong>
leggiamo insieme il bizzarro documento. Il Comitato nota una serie di
settori dove la Santa Sede non rispetterebbe la Convenzione sui Diritti
dell’Infanzia, e raccomanda al Vaticano le opportune riforme. Esaminiamo
i settori principali. Primo: omosessualità – che non c’entra molto con i
diritti dell’infanzia, ma viene fatta rientrare affermando che il
Comitato si preoccupa di tutelare «gli adolescenti e i bambini gay,
lesbiche, bisessuali e transgender». Per difendere questi bambini
precoci il Comitato invita la Chiesa a seguire «la dichiarazione
progressista rilasciata da Papa Francesco nel luglio 2013» – il famoso
«chi sono io per giudicare?», che però si riferiva alle persone, che
certo non vanno mai giudicate in quanto tali, e non ai comportamenti o
alle leggi – e a ripudiare «i precedenti documenti e dichiarazioni
sull’omosessualità». Come questa entrata a gamba tesa nel campo della
dottrina morale cattolica rientri nelle competenze di un Comitato per i
Diritti del Fanciullo non è veramente spiegato.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Secondo: uguaglianza fra uomini e donne.</strong> La Santa
Sede è criticata perché non usa sempre un linguaggio «gender inclusive» e
perché parla di «complementarietà» del ruolo maschile e femminile, il
che implica che i due ruoli siano diversi, il che è contrario
all’ideologia che il Comitato vuole imporre.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Terzo: punizioni corporali.</strong> Dopo un excursus sulle
Case Magdalene irlandesi, che mostra come i membri del Comitato passino
troppo tempo al cinema e abbiano visto il pessimo film di Peter Mullan –
a parte le imprecisioni, il tema non sembra di bruciante attualità
posto che l’ultima di queste case è stata chiusa nel 1996 –, il rapporto
si schiera contro qualunque forma di punizione corporale, con
considerazioni non solo pedagogiche, che potrebbero essere in parte
condivisibili, ma anche teologiche. Si chiede che la Santa Sede «si
assicuri che un’interpretazione della Scrittura tale da non giustificare
le punizioni corporali si rifletta nell’insegnamento della Chiesa e […]
sia incorporata nell’insegnamento e nell’educazione teologica». A
prescindere dal merito, è interessante notare come il Comitato pretenda
addirittura di dettare alla Chiesa come vada interpretata la Sacra
Scrittura.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Quarto: pedofilia</strong>. Con una completa assenza di note e
riferimenti precisi, si parla di «decine di migliaia» di bambini
vittime dei preti pedofili. Sarebbe interessante sapere da dove vengono
queste statistiche, mentre si sa da dove vengono certe informazioni
contenute nel rapporto su un presunto intervento del 1997 del nunzio in
Irlanda monsignor Luciano Storero (1926-2000) perché i vescovi irlandesi
nascondessero i preti pedofili alle autorità civili. Vengono da un
attacco del 2011 del governo irlandese alla Santa Sede, pieno di
inesattezze, cui la Santa Sede – come abbiamo a suo tempo documentato su
queste colonne – ha risposto in modo dettagliato. <br /><br /><strong>Intendiamoci: questo giornale ha sempre premesso a ogni discorso sui preti pedofili</strong>
che purtroppo, come ci hanno insegnato Benedetto XVI e Papa Francesco,
la pedofilia nel clero è un dramma reale, non inventato, che non va
nascosto e di cui vanno indagate le cause, che derivano anzitutto dal
diffondersi di una morale «lassista» e «progressista» nei seminari e tra
i sacerdoti. Tuttavia il rapporto riprende statistiche folkloriche e
accuse indiscriminate. Loda alcune misure introdotte dalla Santa Sede
nel 2013, ma dimentica tutte quelle precedenti, in un maldestro
tentativo di contrapporre il Vaticano di Papa Francesco a quello di
Benedetto XVI. Soprattutto, si dimentica di dire che queste misure hanno
funzionato, e possono costituire anzi un modello per altre istituzioni
che hanno gli stessi problemi di pedofilia e che sono assai meno
vigorose della Santa Sede nel contrastarli. Mi scuso per lo spot
pubblicitario, ma devo rimandare al libro appena uscito che ho scritto
con lo psicologo Roberto Marchesini <em>«Pedofilia. Una battaglia che la Chiesa sta vincendo»</em> (Sugarco, Milano 2014), dove si troveranno dati e cifre precise.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Quinto: aborto.</strong> Dopo avere evocato il consueto caso
pietoso della bambina brasiliana di nove anni che aveva abortito nel
2009, il Comitato «richiede con urgenza alla Santa Sede di rivedere la
sua posizione sull’aborto e di modificare il canone 1398 del Codice di
diritto canonico relativo all’aborto, allo scopo di precisare le
circostanze in cui l’aborto è permesso». A questa «urgenza» ha già
risposto Papa Francesco nell’esortazione apostolica «Evangelii gaudium»:
s’illude chi si aspetta «che la Chiesa cambi la sua posizione su questa
questione. Voglio essere del tutto onesto al riguardo. Questo non è un
argomento soggetto a presunte riforme o a “modernizzazioni”. Non è
progressista pretendere di risolvere i problemi eliminando una vita
umana».</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Sesto: contraccezione.</strong> La Santa Sede è invitata a
«garantire agli e alle adolescenti l’accesso alla contraccezione», che
peraltro non è un’alternativa all’aborto, visto che contemporaneamente
va loro garantita la «salute riproduttiva» il che, come si è visto,
implica modificare la dottrina cattolica sull’aborto.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>La Chiesa – lo abbiamo detto – ha più volte riconosciuto le responsabilità</strong>
di un certo numero di preti e vescovi nel vergognoso dramma della
pedofilia, e ha preso misure drastiche che si stanno rivelando efficaci.
Questo documento tuttavia è la prova di come la tragedia dei preti
pedofili sia usata come pretesto e come clava per aggredire la Chiesa
Cattolica e ingiungerle «con urgenza» di cambiare la sua dottrina in
materia di omosessualità, aborto e contraccezione, affidando a
commissioni di esperti «politicamente corretti» perfino
l’interpretazione della Sacra Scrittura.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>Il 18 novembre 2013, citando il romanzo <em>Il padrone del mondo</em> </strong>di
Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914) Papa Francesco ha denunciato il
tentativo totalitario d’imporre alla Chiesa la «globalità egemonica» del
«pensiero unico». I poteri forti – fra cui rientrano certamente certi
comitati di certe organizzazioni internazionali – ci dicono, ha detto il
Papa, che «dobbiamo essere come tutti, dobbiamo essere più normali,
come fanno tutti, con questo progressismo adolescente». Poi purtroppo
«segue la storia»: per chi non si adegua al pensiero unico arrivano,
come ai tempi degli antichi pagani, «le condanne a morte, i sacrifici
umani». Sbaglia chi pensa che siano cose di un passato remoto, «Ma voi –
ha chiesto il Papa – pensate che oggi non si facciano, i sacrifici
umani? Se ne fanno tanti, tanti! E ci sono delle leggi che li
proteggono». È perché la Chiesa si oppone a queste leggi che, usando la
tragedia – reale – della pedofilia tra il clero come punto di partenza e
come pretesto, la si colpisce con aggressioni che stanno ormai
diventando intollerabili.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-41366737987587381982014-01-24T17:14:00.000+00:002014-01-24T17:15:23.696+00:00A coadopção em uniões homossexuais - por Pedro Vaz Patto<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]--><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> Foi aprovado na generalidade o
projeto-lei nº 278/XII, que permite a coadoção em uniões homossexuais, ou seja,
a adoção por uma pessoa casada com outra do mesmo sexo (ou a ela unida de
facto) quando em relação a esta já esteja estabelecida a filiação, natural ou
adotiva. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Deve,
desde já, salientar-se que a alteração legislativa proposta permitirá tornear
facilmente a atual proibição da adoção conjunta por pares do mesmo sexo, deixando
«<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">entrar pela janela aquilo a que se
fechou a porta</i>»: basta que uma das pessoas adote singularmente, ou (os
casos mais frequentes na prática) que uma mulher recorra à procriação
artificial num país que não a proíba, e depois o seu cônjuge, companheira ou
companheiro, solicite a coadoção.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dizem os apoiantes do projeto que se trata
apenas de proteger situações já existentes. Mas função de uma qualquer lei não
é reconhecer factos consumados ou regular situações já existentes, ela vigora
para o futuro e abre (ou não) as portas a novas situações. Aqui, trata-se da
possibilidade de alcançar, pela via indicada, alguns dos resultados a que
chegaria através da legalização da adoção conjunta por pares homossexuais. É
bom ter presente este facto para não cair na ilusão de que o projeto aprovado
difere substancialmente de outros que foram rejeitados e que admitiam a adoção
conjunta por pares do mesmo sexo. Trata-se de uma opção estratégica de alcançar
o mesmo resultado de forma gradual e menos ostensiva.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Isso
mesmo (que se trata de um passo a que logicamente se seguirá outro) resulta com
clareza da exposição de motivos do projeto-lei em discussão, onde se afirma:</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>«<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;">Não se trata,
portanto, <u>para já</u>, de revisitar temas como o do alargamento do instituto
da adoção a todas as pessoas, <u>solução que, a bem da verdade, tudo incluiria</u>,
mas de</span></i><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"> …» (sublinhado meu).</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>E nessa exposição de motivos também
se faz referência explícita às duas situações acima referidas (a adoção
singular e o recurso à procriação artificial), em relação às quais a codaoção
permitirá contornar a proibição da adoção conjunta. Um objetivo que nem está
muito escondido, pois.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Deve também sublinhar-se, na mesma
linha, que o projeto-lei serve, sobretudo, um propósito de afirmação ideológica
de uma nova configuração da família (de acordo com a chamada <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ideologia do género</i>), mais do que o de
resolução pragmática de situações concretas de desproteção jurídica.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A eventual desproteção tem sido
grandemente exagerada pelos proponentes e partidários da alteração legislativa
proposta. Ao contrário do que por vezes quase se dá a entender, as crianças em
questão, tendo já estabelecida a filiação quanto a um dos progenitores, em nada
ficam limitadas nos seus direitos de acesso à saúde ou educação (a diferença
que a este respeito pode verificar-se com a coadoção é apenas a de que as
decisões tomadas nesses âmbitos passam a ser partilhadas pelos dois
progenitores). Tanto assim é que, atualmente, na maior parte dos casos de
segundo casamento de uma pessoa viúva com filhos menores não se verifica a
coadoção pelo cônjuge. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Em caso de morte do progenitor, a
criança não será certamente abandonada ou entregue a uma instituição (como
parecem dar a entender os proponentes e partidários do projeto em discussão). O
companheiro ou cônjuge do falecido poderá adotar singularmente, ou poderá
ser-lhe confiada a criança a outro título.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Não pode esquecer-se que há muitas
formas de proteção da criança que não passam pela adoção, a qual supõe a rutura
do vínculo com o progenitor natural e a criação de um vínculo o mais possível
semelhante ao da filiação natural.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Não pode esquecer-se que, de acordo
com o artigo 1986º do Código Civil, a coadoção supõe a rutura com o progenitor
natural, eventualmente já falecido, e com a sua família (os avós e tios,
eventualmente ainda vivos), o que acentua o absoluto cancelamento da figura do
progenitor natural (pai ou mãe), situação particularmente problemática quando o
adotante não for do mesmo sexo do falecido (não podendo, pois, substitui-lo
simbolicamente).</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A possibilidade de coadoção proposta
não é, pois, necessária para resolver questões concretas de desproteção (há
outras formas de o fazer) e, sobretudo, cria outros problemas, como veremos de
seguida.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Abre a porta a situações em tudo
equiparáveis às de adoção conjunta nos casos de adoção singular por parte de
uma pessoa homossexual (não excluída pela legislação vigente) seguida da
coadoção pelo cônjuge, companheiro ou companheira, ou de recurso por uma mulher
homossexual à procriação artificial num país estrangeiro, seguida da coadoção
pela companheira.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Neste último caso, a fraude à lei (a
obtenção de um efeito não querido pelo legislador sem violação direta da lei,
deixando que «<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">entre pela janela aquilo a
que se fechou a porta</i>») é dupla: obtém-se o que o legislador não quis ao
proibir a adoção conjunta por pares do mesmo sexo, e ao proibir a procriação
artificial fora do âmbito patológico da infertilidade. Porque assim é, e porque
é evidente que outro passo da estratégia global a que assistimos também passa
pela abolição desta proibição, justifica-se que adiante se faça uma referência
a esta outra proposta.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As objeções à adoção conjunta por
pares homossexuais estendem-se, pois, ao projeto-lei em discussão (relativo à
codaoção) e, por isso, serão, de seguida, expostas tais objeções.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Por outro lado, mesmo para as
situações de crianças filhas naturais de uma pessoa que vive numa união
homossexual, a coadoção causa sérios danos à construção da sua identidade
psíquica, como veremos de seguida. Não é o mesmo, por um lado, ser reconhecido
como filho de uma pessoa (pai ou mãe) que pode viver com outra do mesmo sexo e,
por outro lado, ser reconhecido (com toda a força social e simbólica da lei)
como filho de dois pais (e nenhuma mãe), ou de duas mães (e nenhum pai). Também
analisaremos de seguida esta questão mais em profundidade.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As
finalidades e o espírito do instituto da adoção</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>O
superior interesse da criança<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #333333;"></span></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Afirma-se recorrentemente que a legalização
da adoção por pares do mesmo sexo é uma exigência do princípio da igualdade e
não discriminação em função da orientação sexual. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No entanto, a adoção não pode ser encarada
como direito dos candidatos, mas como direito da criança. Não são os candidatos
à adoção que têm direito a adotar, são as crianças órfãs ou abandonadas que têm
o direito a ser adotadas. Estas não podem ser objeto ou instrumento de
direitos ou de reivindicações dos candidatos à adoção. São sujeitos de
direitos, não objeto de direitos de outrem. O bem das crianças prevalece sempre
sobre os interesses dos candidatos à adoção, mesmo que daí decorra um tratamento
diferenciado desses candidatos (porque não é um direito destes que está em
causa), seja em razão da saúde, das capacidades económicas ou da orientação
sexual.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>É esse bem que justifica a inadmissibilidade
da adoção por pares do mesmo sexo, porque essa adoção priva as crianças da
figura paterna ou materna, quando ambas são imprescindíveis e insubstituíveis
para o seu crescimento harmonioso.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>O princípio da igualdade supõe o tratamento
igual do que é igual e o tratamento diferente do que é diferente. E, na perspetiva
do bem da criança, é diferente que seja educada por um pai e uma mãe ou por
dois pais ou duas mães.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sempre presidiu ao regime da adoção a ideia
de que esta visa criar entre adotantes e adotado não quaisquer laços de afeto,
mas aqueles que mais se aproximam dos que são próprios da filiação natural (ver
artigo 1974º, nº 1, b), do Código Civil)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Por isso, exige-se um certo desnível etário entre adotantes e adotado,
por exemplo. Entre avós e netos haverá o mais intenso dos afetos, mas não o
relacionamento que é próprio da filiação (e, por isso, não podem aqueles adotar
estes). Entre duas pessoas de idades próximas poderá certamente haver relações
de afeto, mas não o relacionamento próprio da filiação (e, por isso, não poderá
uma deles adotar a outra). A adoção visa, pois, criar entre adotantes e adotado
laços que se aproxima o mais possível da filiação natural (de acordo com um
velho brocardo: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">adoptio imitat natura</i>).
Ora, a filiação natural supõe sempre um pai e uma mãe.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Para além disso, qualquer criança adotada
enfrenta a problemática da aceitação da adoção («<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de onde venho?</i>»; «<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">quem são os
meus pais?</i>»), uma prova muito mais difícil de superar quando os adotantes
têm características radicalmente diferentes das dos pais naturais e
habituais.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Criar “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">novas
formas de família</i>”, suscitar experimentalismos sociais é o que há de mais
contrário às finalidades da adoção. Esta pretende (na medida do possível) que a
criança adotada em nada se distinga da que vive com os progenitores naturais. É
compreensível que muitos pais adotantes procuram que seja pouco divulgado
(designadamente junto de outras crianças) que o seu filho é adotado: porque
este não deve sentir-se diferente dos outros por isso. Ora, isso nunca será
possível em caso de adoção por pares do mesmo sexo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A importância das figuras materna e paterna,
a imprescindibilidade e insubstituibilidade de uma e outra, sempre foi
salientada pelos estudos de psicologia do desenvolvimento infantil e só a
polémica em torno da adoção por pares homossexuais deu origem a afirmações
contrárias a tal ideia. O que sempre se afirmou em estudos de desenvolvimento
da psicologia infantil (em “tempo não suspeito”, sem qualquer relação com a
polémica em causa) não pode agora ser ignorado. De resto, essas conclusões são
confirmadas pela intuição e bom senso de qualquer pessoa.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sempre se reconheceram os danos que podem
acarretar a ausência da mãe e a ausência do pai no desenvolvimento de uma
criança e um jovem. Sempre se salientou a necessidade de filhos de pais
separados não perderem a ligação com o pai, porque a mãe, por muito competente
que seja, nunca substitui o pai (e, por isso, se vem generalizando o regime de
guarda conjunta).</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Afirma, por exemplo, Trayce Hansen, psicóloga
com prática cínica e forense na Califórnia<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a> :</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>«<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">O amor
materno e o amor paterno, ainda que igualmente importantes, são
qualitativamente distintos e dão lugar a relações paterno-filiais diferentes.
Especificamente, a combinação do amor de mãe, que mostra uma devoção
incondicional, e o amor de pai, que põe condições, resulta essencial para o
crescimento de um filho. Qualquer destas formas de amor pode ser problemática
sem a outra. Porque aquilo de que um filho necessita é de um equilíbrio
complementar que proporcionam ambos os tipos de amor e relação.</i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Só os pais
heterossexuais oferecem aos filhos a oportunidade de estabelecer relações com o
progenitor do mesmo sexo e o de sexo contrário. As relações com ambos os sexos,
na etapa inicial da vida fazem com que se torna mais fácil para um filho
relacionar-se com ambos os sexos mais tarde. Para uma menina, isso significa
que entenderá melhor e interagirá de forma mais adequada com o mundo masculino,
e que se sentirá mais confortável no mundo das mulheres. E para o rapaz, a
inversa será verdadeira. Ter uma relação com “o outro” (o progenitor do outro
sexo) também incrementa a probabilidade de que um filho seja mais empático e
menos narcisista. (…)</span></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Um progenitor
do sexo oposto ajuda o seu filho ou filha, conforme os casos, a controlar as
sua próprias inclinações naturais, ensinando-lhe, com a palavra e de forma não verbal,
o valor das tendências contrárias. Este ensino não só facilita a moderação,
como amplia também o mundo de cada filho, ajudando-o a ver mais além do seu
próprio e limitado ponto de vista.</span></i><span style="color: #333333;">» </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>O crescimento da criança faz-se por etapas e
essas etapas exigem umas mais da mãe e outras mais do pai.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A relação da criança com a mãe é
essencial nos primeiros anos de vida (quem o poderá negar, e com base em que
estudos?). A mãe tem uma maior sintonia com as delicadas necessidades dos seus
filhos e entende melhor as suas emoções, sendo, por isso, mais adequada a sua
capacidade de resposta a tais necessidades e emoções. A ausência da mãe nessa
fase é traumática e pode gerar comportamentos antissociais no futuro.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mas, da mesma forma que a relação com a mãe
é essencial nos primeiros anos de vida, é essencial mais tarde a relação com o
pai, para que a criança se ‘desapegue’ da mãe e assim cresça como pessoa autónoma.
Não bastam os afetos para crescer, para tal são necessárias regras e autoridade
(corretamente entendida, esta significa isso mesmo: ajudar a crescer). O papel
da figura paterna acentua este aspeto. Em relação aos rapazes, o papel do pai
ajuda-os a controlar os impulsos agressivos e sexuais (o que a mãe não pode
fazer, porque não os experimenta da mesma forma). Não é por acaso que a ausência
do pai está na origem de muitos dos problemas de delinquência juvenil, por
exemplo.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A importância dos papéis materno e paterno
não decorre de uma rígida, tradicional e ultrapassada divisão de tarefas entre
homem e mulher. A dualidade das dimensões masculina e feminina da realidade
humana vai muito para além dessa divisão tradicional, não se confunde com ela,
mas existe e representa uma riqueza.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dois pais ou duas mães não é, pois, o mesmo
que um pai e uma mãe. Se assim, fosse, se fosse suficiente o afeto, porque
deveriam ser dois (e não um), ou só dois, os progenitores? São dois porque um é
diferente em relação ao outro, não é uma fotocópia do outro, completa e
enriquece, com a sua especificidade, a pessoa e a tarefa do outro. Um dá uma
riqueza que o outro não tem.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Afirma, nesta linha, o filósofo
francês Xavier Lacroix<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a> que «</span>todos
crescemos num duplo jogo de identificação e diferenciação, todos recebemos o
amor segundo estas duas cores e estas duas vozes, masculina e feminina», pois
nenhuma delas esgota a riqueza do humano. Assumir legalmente a filiação por
duas pessoas do mesmo sexo é, de acordo com a filósofa francesa Sylviane
Agacinsky<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a> «negar violentamente a
incompletude e finitude de cada um do sexos em relação ao outro, é simbolizar,
aos olhos dos visados e de toda a sociedade, a negação da limitação de cada um
dos sexos» e, consequentemente, a negação da riqueza da dualidade sexual.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Diz-se que
interessa apenas a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">competência parental</i>,
e não o sexo dos progenitores, e que as pessoas homossexuais não são, nesse
aspeto, inferiores às pessoas heterossexuais. Mas a mais competente das mães
nunca poderá substituir um pai, tal como o mais competente dos pais nunca
poderá substituir a mãe. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Nenhum de nós
tem como referência dois progenitores indiferenciados (o <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">progenitor A </i>e o<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> progenitor B</i>,
como passou a constar de documentos oficiais em países que legalizaram a adoção
por pares do mesmo sexo), mas a sua mãe (que é única, não uma de entre uma
série de mães <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A </i>e <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">B</i>) e o seu pai (que é único, não um de
entre uma série de pais <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A </i>e <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">B</i>). E quem foi privado de alguma dessas
referências não deixa de lamentar profundamente esse facto. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 35.4pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Também há quem
alegue que a criança educada por dois pais ou duas mães não deixa de manter
relacionamentos com pessoas de sexo diferente do dos progenitores (avós, tios,
professores, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">etc.</i>). Mas o
relacionamento com o pai e a mãe é único e insubstituível (sabe-o bem quem
passa pela trágica experiência da perda de um deles). Traduz-se numa presença
constante e marcante no plano da construção da identidade, De modo algum a
ausência da mãe (designadamente na fase inicial da vida) pode ser suprida pelo
relacionamento com outras mulheres. De modo algum a ausência do pai
(designadamente em caso de separação dos progenitores, ou na fase da
adolescência) pode ser suprida pelo relacionamento com outros homens. Se assim
fosse, poucos danos teria a institucionalização de crianças (danos tantas vezes
invocados pelos partidários da adoção por pares do mesmo sexo), quando esta a
priva do relacionamento com um pai e uma mãe únicos e irrepetíveis, sem a
privar necessariamente do relacionamento com pessoas de ambos os sexos.<span style="color: #333333;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Também se alega com frequência que há
crianças educadas (e bem educadas) por um só progenitor. É verdade que muitas
crianças são educadas por um só progenitor. Mas essa não é a situação ideal,
como, mais do que quaisquer outras pessoas, sabem os progenitores que
involuntariamente se veem nessa situação. De qualquer modo, também serão
diferentes a situação de uma criança educada só por uma mãe e a situação de uma
criança educada por duas mães, com o que isto significa de quebra da relação
única e irrepetível com a mãe (“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mãe só há
uma</i>”).</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Isso mesmo pode responder-se à alegação de
que se a lei vigente não obsta à adoção singular por uma pessoa homossexual,
não se vê por que deverá obstar à adoção conjunta por pares homossexuais (ou à
coadoção). Na perspetiva do bem da criança, pode sempre dizer-se que a adoção
conjunta (por um pai e uma mãe) é preferível à adoção singular
(independentemente da orientação sexual do adotante). E, por outro lado, é
diferente ser reconhecido como filho de um pai ou de uma mãe (independentemente
da orientação sexual destes) e ser reconhecido como filho de dois pais ou duas
mães. Esta é uma questão que não se coloca na adoção singular, mas se coloca na
adoção conjunta e na coadoção (como veremos melhor de seguida).</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Uma última questão deve ser salientada.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Independentemente do dado objetivo da
necessidade de um pai e uma mãe para o crescimento harmonioso da criança
adotada, se esta for a</span>dotada por pares do mesmo sexo poderá ser encarada
com estranheza pelas outras crianças e pela sociedade em geral, poderá ser
marginalizada ou estigmatizada. As pessoas que assumem publicamente a sua
homossexualidade assumem as consequências negativas (eventualmente injustas)
que daí possam advir no plano da sua imagem social. Estão no seu direito de o
fazer. Mas não têm o direito de forçar crianças a sofrer consequências desse
tipo. As crianças não podem ser transformadas em bandeiras de reivindicações
das pessoas homossexuais. Seria uma forma de as instrumentalizar, e o instituto
da adoção não pode servir para isso.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Pessoas que justamente denunciam a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">homofobia
</i>(no sentido do desrespeito, discriminação e marginalização das pessoas
homossexuais) ainda presente na nossa sociedade parecem esquecer-se desse
fenómeno quando reivindicam o pretenso direito de adoção por pares
homossexuais. E muitas vezes até invocam a naturalidade com que são encaradas
nas escolas e outros ambientes crianças educadas em uniões homossexuais, que a
todos se apresentam como tendo dois pais ou duas mães. Mas isso significaria
que a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">homofobia </i>já tinha desaparecido
da nossa sociedade, o que essas mesmas pessoas recusam categoricamente para
outros efeitos.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Este dano para a criança também é agravado com a coadoção. Apresentar-se
como filho de uma pessoa que vive com outra do mesmo sexo (num relacionamento
cuja natureza homossexual até poderá ser deixada ao âmbito da privacidade) é
uma coisa, apresentar-se (com a dimensão pública do registo civil) como filho
de dois pais ou duas mães é, no plano do eventual estigma social (que agora
analisamos, mas também de outros, que adiante analisaremos), outra.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Também se diz, a este respeito, que é a criança que, nestes casos, já
considera ter duas mães, ou dois pais, limitando-se o registo a consagrar isso
mesmo, uma realidade já existente. No entanto, e como é óbvio, nunca é a
criança que espontaneamente passa a considerar como mãe a companheira da mãe
biológica (ou adotiva), ou como pai o companheiro do pai biológico (ou
adotivo). Ela fá-lo, obviamente, porque assim foi ensinada. Ninguém lhe
perguntou a opinião e ninguém lhe deu alternativa.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Aliás, o particular cuidado com o bem da criança que exige qualquer
decisão (legislativa ou judicial) em matéria de adoção, a sempre aconselhável
precaução, e o objetivo de proporcionar à criança uma família igual às outras
(fora de qualquer experimentalismo social), tudo isso tem especial justificação
precisamente porque se trata de uma decisão de adultos em regra (salvo o caso
de crianças maiores de catorze anos, de acordo como disposto no artigo 1981º,
nº 1, a), do Código Civil) sem o consentimento da criança visada<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Em
suma, e regressando à questão inicial da exigência da igualdade, não pode em
nome da igualdade dos adultos candidatos à adoção (igualdade em função da
orientação sexual) originar-se uma desigualdade das crianças adotadas (em
função das quais é concebido o instituto da adoção): desigualdade entre, por um
lado, as crianças que são educadas por um pai e uma mãe, e, por outro lado, as
crianças que, deliberada e intencionalmente, são privadas de uma dessas
insubstituíveis figuras.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;">Os danos da
coadoção em uniões homossexuais na perspetiva do bem da criança</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Já acima se salientou que o projeto-lei em
discussão permitirá contornar, também numa perspetiva de futuro, a proibição da
adoção conjunta por pares homossexuais. Não se trata, pois, e apenas, ao
contrário do que vem sendo salientado por proponentes e partidários desse
projeto, de dar proteção jurídica a situações já existentes (até porque, como
já vimos, essa proteção nem sempre é necessária, ou pode ser obtida de outra
forma).</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mas mesmo para situações já existentes </span>de
crianças filhas naturais de uma pessoa que vive numa união homossexual, a
coadoção causa sérios danos à construção da sua identidade psíquica. Não é o
mesmo ser reconhecido como filho de uma pessoa (pai ou mãe) que pode viver com
outra do mesmo sexo e ser reconhecido (com toda a força social e simbólica da
lei e do registo civil) como filho de dois pais (e nenhuma mãe), ou de duas
mães (e nenhum pai).</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Para a construção dessa identidade, a criança necessita sempre de um pai
e de uma mãe, mesmo que algum destes exista apenas na sua memória ou na sua
imaginação, exista apenas no plano da sua representação mental. Mas a
eliminação legal de uma dessas duas figuras, com o reconhecimento de dois pais
ou duas mães, vem obstaculizar, artificial e violentamente, a possibilidade
dessa<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>representação mental.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>O
pedopsiquiatra e psicanalista françês Christian Flavigny (ouvido pela
Assembleia Nacional francesa a propósito da legalização do casamento e adoção
homossexuais) salienta (em <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Je veux papa
et maman – «père- et- mère» congédiés par la loi</i>, Salvator, 2013) como a
identidade da criança se constrói a partir da noção de que foi gerada pela
união entre o pai e a mãe. Isso é possível quando ela é adotada por um homem e
uma mulher, que sempre poderiam ser seus pais biológicos, mas nunca quando é
adotada por duas pessoas do mesmo sexo, ou coadotada por uma pessoa do mesmo
sexo do progenitor, que nunca poderiam ser seus pais biológicos, como ela sabe.
Neste caso, a adoção serve de ficção legal falsificadora e geradora de uma
confusão prejudicial à construção dessa identidade. Convenhamos que será difícil
explicar a essa criança (numa nova versão da “história da cegonha”) como é que
na sua origem pode estar uma relação entre pessoas do mesmo sexo… </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Vejamos
mais em profundidade o que afirma Christian Flavigny na obra referida:</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
questão da sua origem inquieta a criança desde muito cedo, não como questão
técnica, mas como questão existencial. «<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Porque
é que eu estou aqui? Será que eu sou uma boa resposta àqueles que me trouxeram
ao mundo? Ele orienta a sua busca para a diferença de sexos dos seus progenitores,
em relação à qual ele sabe ser a chave. É a chave afetiva que lhe interessa;
como é que a diferença dos sexos suscitou a atração entre eles? Esta atração
explica a sua vinda ao mundo; a questão agita o seu desperta afetivo</i> (…)
(pg. 48)</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Quando
a criança vive num ambiente homossexual o sentimento dos adultos e a vida
afetiva da criança separam-se; separam-se porque a vida afetiva homossexual é
alheia à geração. A criança sabe bem que a geração entre pessoas do mesmo sexo
é inconcebível (ao contrário da geração entre pais adotivos de sexo diferente).
«<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">É, então, pedido ao progenitor um
esforço de clarificação afetiva no interesse do seu filho; se o seu
companheiro, ou companheira, de vida homossexual não embarcam no estatuto de
segundo progenitor, mesmo que desempenhem o mais precioso dos papéis
educativos, então a criança pode orientar-se na sua situação e não a considerar
consequência de um erro por si cometido, ou um defeito que o tenha atingido. Aí
reside o essencial para a sua vida psíquica; se assim não for, se o progenitor
mistura a ligação ao filho com a sua vida afetiva homossexual, essa orientação
complica-se, a situação da criança baralha-se. E deve acrescentar-se o
seguinte: o caráter desastroso para a criança decorrerá sobretudo da pretensão
das leis de descarregar sobre ela esta baralhação, esta confusão deliberada da
vida afetiva dos adultos que não está na origem da geração e da ligação filial
da criança; assim se opera uma ação funesta para com ela</i>» (pg. 65)</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>«<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Toda a criança focaliza a vinda ao mundo das
crianças na união pai-mãe, toda a criança sabe que a união homem-mulher conduz
à vinda ao mundo das crianças, que a geração é menos uma noção biológica do que
psicológica e afetiva. Reclamar a integração do companheiro ou companheira de
vida homossexual enquanto segundo progenitor, é, portanto, forçar pela via
jurídica o que não deriva da vida afetiva.</i>» (pg. 87)</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>«<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Se as leis tentam fazer avalizar o
inconcebível, elas frustram a reflexão da criança através de uma legalização
artificial: isso é uma placagem filiativa. Legalizar o segundo progenitor em
união homossexual, é um truque legislativo para satisfazer os adultos; a
criança em questão terá, por causa disso, a sua vida psíquica complicada. È
impor-lhe que acredite no inconcebível; a legalização de uma falsidade que
há-de ser uma armadilha para essa criança</i>.» (pg. 90)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>«<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A
questão não é que uma pessoa homossexual eduque uma ou mais crianças, é impedir
qualquer confusão para a criança envolvida; que um companheiro ou uma
companheira homossexual sejam considerados como um segundo progenitor,
reclamação das associações, falsificaria o vínculo de filiação. É fundamental
para a criança envolvida numa vida relacional dos adultos sem a união pai-mãe,
que permaneçam distintos a sua vida afetiva (homossexual, ou ausente, etc.) e o
vínculo filial com a sua mãe; mais raramente é o seu pai, mas a questão é a
mesma. Infringir isso através de novas leis introduziria uma modificação da
natureza da adoção; ela é concebida como uma forma de geração credível, que
permite à criança estabelecer a sua razão de ser a partir da sua família
adotiva. Abri-la àqueles e àquelas cuja união coloca num beco sem saída a
geração é alterar esse seu princípio básico.</i>» (pg. 96).</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Assim,
e em conclusão, independentemente de o projeto-lei em discussão abrir as portas
a resultados equiparáveis aos que resultariam da eliminação da proibição da
adoção conjunta, mesmo para as situações já existentes de crianças com filiação
estabelecida em relação a um dos progenitores que vive numa união homossexual,
a coadoção, longe de beneficiar essas crianças, para elas acarreta graves
danos. Danos que afetam o núcleo essencial do seu direito à identidade pessoal
(artigo 26º, nº 1, da Constituição da República).</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;">Consenso
científico?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Já acima se salientou que a importância de
uma mãe e de um pai sempre foi afirmada pelos estudos de psicologia do
desenvolvimento infantil e só a polémica em torno da adoção por pares homossexuais
deu origem a afirmações contrárias a tal ideia.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mas não pode ignorar-se a recorrente alusão a
e</span>studos que alegadamente comprovam que as crianças educadas por pares
homossexuais não revelam diferenças ou danos psicológicos particulares em
relação a outras crianças. A <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American
Psychological Association </i>assumiu tal posição com base numa compilação
desses estudos efetuada em 2005. Há quem fale, por isso, em “consenso
científico” a respeito desta questão. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Pode, porém, e antes de mais, ser contestada a metodologia usada em
muitos desses estudos, tal como a conclusão que deles se retira.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
razões dessa contestação têm a ver com a pouca representatividade dos números;
o facto de os estudos em causa incidirem, sobretudo, em crianças com laços de
filiação biológica a um dos membros do “casal” (o que não deixa de ser, nalguns
aspetos, diferente de uma adoção conjunta); o facto de se basearem na
comparação entre crianças educadas por pares de lésbicas, por um lado, e
crianças a cargo de mães celibatárias heterossexuais, mas sempre na ausência do
pai, por outro lado; o facto de se fazer a comparação entre, por um lado, um
grupo de pessoas homossexuais de nível social e cultural predominantemente
superior ao da população em geral e, por outro lado, um grupo de pessoas
heterossexuais representativo da população em geral; o facto de as
consequências a mais largo prazo ainda não terem sido estudadas; o facto de os
casos serem selecionados entre militantes do direitos dos homossexuais, e não
de forma aleatória, e de os dados recolhidos assentarem, em grande medida, nas
declarações destes<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[4]</span></span></span></span></a>;
e o facto de os entrevistados homossexuais conhecerem a agenda política
subjacente ao estudo<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[5]</span></span></span></span></a>. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Vários desses estudos, baseados nas declarações dos “progenitores”
homossexuais, concluem, até, pela vantagem para as crianças, do comportamento
homossexual por eles assumido, o que naturalmente suscita suspeitas a respeito
da objetividade e imparcialidade desses estudos.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Um estudo que não enferma desses vícios (pela sua extensão, por não
conter distorções de níveis sociais e culturais dos entrevistados, por se
basear em declarações de jovens adultos educados por pares homossexuais, por
comparar estas situações com as de famílias heterossexuais compostas por um pai
e uma mãe não separados), dirigido pelo professor da Universidade do Texas Mark
Regnerous<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[6]</span></span></span></span></a>,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>demonstra o contrário. Em quinze de entre quarenta parâmetros de
bem-estar emotivo e relacional, os filhos educados por casais heterossexuais
compostos por um pai e uma mãe não separados apresentam vantagens em relação a
crianças educadas por pares homossexuais.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Que não se verifica alguma espécie de “consenso científico” resulta bem
evidente, por exemplo, da discussão desta questão ocorrida recentemente em
França. Na Assembleia Nacional foram ouvidos psiquiatras, psicólogos e
psicanalistas com opiniões radicalmente diferentes<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[7]</span></span></span></span></a>. Vários especialistas nas
áreas da pediatria, da psicologia e da pedopsiquiatria subscreveram o manifesto
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ne touchez pas papa et maman</i>,
publicado no <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Le Monde</i>,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>de oposição à adoção por pares homossexuais<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[8]</span></span></span></span></a>.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Numa situação em que se dividem os peritos, deve reger o <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">princípio da precaução </i>(“<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mais vale prevenir do que remediar</i>”; há
que “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">jogar pelo seguro</i>”): porque
há-de prevalecer sempre o bem das crianças candidatas à adoção e porque estas
(que muitas vezes já sofreram suficientes traumas e privações) não podem ser
“cobaias” e objetos de experiências de resultados incertos e arriscados.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Não pode esquecer-se que temos em
confronto, de um lado, uma experiência de milénios no âmbito das culturas mais
variadas (uma experiência que demonstra que o pai e a mãe biológicos são, em
regra, quem de forma mais adequada educa os filhos) e, do outro lado, uma
experiência limitada no número de pessoas envolvidas, no espaço e no tempo. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Uma
última observação se impõe.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Quando
se invoca o pretenso “consenso científico”, parece que se quer, em nome de um
cientismo dogmático, encerrar o debate, como se a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Americam Psychologial Association </i>impedisse as sociedades e os
Parlamentos de todo o mundo, de divergir da sua opinião. Ora, não podem ser
canceladas as dimensões antropológica, ética, política e jurídica da questão.
Afirma, a este respeito, Xavier Lacroix (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in
La confusion…</i>,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> cit</i>, pg. 117 e
118): «<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Os desafios da paternidade, como
os da maternidade, tal como a noção de saúde e de bem- estar, não relevam apenas
do âmbito da verificação; relevam da ética, isto é, da preocupação pelo
crescimento do humano. É, de qualquer modo, paradoxal, aplicar métodos médicos
a questões fundamentais. Refugiar-se por detrás da aparente objetividade do
quantitativo é evitar colocar as questões do sentido e do valor. Há aí uma
opção deliberada segundo a qual qualquer avaliação moral, qualquer julgamento
normativo, surgem como literalmente insuportáveis</i>»<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #333333;"></span></i></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><span style="color: #333333;">A adoção e a institucionalização<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>das crianças</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>É também recorrente a alegação de que a
adoção por pares homossexuais será preferível à institucionalização de
crianças, desta forma privadas do precioso afeto de uma família </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>É enganoso apresentar a adoção por pares
homossexuais como uma solução para a institucionalização de crianças, como se
fosse essa possibilidade a solução para ‘esvaziar’ as instituições que
recolhem crianças abandonadas ou maltratadas. Não há falta de casais heterossexuais
candidatos à adoção e os pares homossexuais candidatos à adoção são em número muito
pouco significativo (bastante inferior ao do próprio universo dos pares
homossexuais). </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>O problema da institucionalização de
crianças poderia ser debelado, não com a abertura à adoção por pares homossexuais,
mas com o esforço de superar a seletividade revelada pelas intenções de muitos
dos candidatos a adotantes, que pretendem apenas a adoção de crianças
recém-nascidas, saudáveis e da mesma raça que eles. Esse esforço passa por uma
maior generosidade dos candidatos, mas também por mais apoios a estes. Nada tem
a ver com a adoção por pares homossexuais.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A necessidade de evitar a
institucionalização de crianças não pode levar a prescindir da exigência dos
requisitos da adoção, como se a adoção em quaisquer condições fosse sempre
preferível à institucionalização de crianças. A adoção não pode ser apenas um <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mal menor</i> para a criança, tem de ser um <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bem</i> para ela. As crianças mais
problemáticas, que mais privações sofreram e sofrem, carecem, ainda mais do que
as outras, de um crescimento harmonioso e equilibrado, para o que são
importantes um pai e uma mãe.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>De qualquer modo, a reivindicação da
possibilidade de adoção por pares homossexuais nunca é apresentada como um
último recurso para evitar a institucionalização de crianças, a considerar
apenas quando a adoção por casais heterossexuais não fosse possível. É sempre
apresentada como um direito das pessoas em uniões homossexuais em pé de
igualdade com os casais heterossexuais. Assim, de acordo com essa reivindicação,
nunca seria possível, na adoção de uma criança, com o fundamento de que tal
seria por si só melhor para ela, dar preferência a um casal formado por um pai
e uma mãe em relação a uma união formada por dois pais ou duas mães. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Jurisprudência
do Tribunal Europeu dos Direitos do Homem</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Tem
sido recentemente invocado, com insistência, em apoio da possibilidade de
coadoção em uniões homossexuais, o acórdão do Tribunal Europeu dos Direitos do
Homem proferido no caso <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">X e outros contra
Áustria</i> (1901/07)<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[9]</span></span></span></span></a>, onde se considerou
contrário à Convenção Europeia dos Direitos do Homem o regime austríaco que, em
matéria de coadoção, distingue as situações de uniões de sexo diferente e
uniões do mesmo sexo, e em cuja fundamentação se faz uma referência expressa a
Portugal como um dois países onde vigora o mesmo tipo de discriminação alegadamente
contrária a tal Convenção. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Deve,
porém considerar-se o seguinte.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>O
acórdão em questão produz efeitos apenas no caso concreto nele apreciado e não
corresponde a uma jurisprudência uniforme. Contém sete votos de vencido (contra
nove favoráveis), sendo particular motivo de divergência o facto de a coadoção aí
em causa, pela companheira da mãe biológica, fazer cessar os vínculos com o pai
biológico, que está vivo e nunca deixou de cumprir os seus deveres de alimentos
para com o filho (situação que não encontraria cobertura no regime proposto
pelo projeto-lei em apreço, que exclui a coadoção quando estão vivos ambos os
progenitores naturais).<span style="color: #333333;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>O acórdão não corresponde a uma
jurisprudência uniforme porque podem ser invocados outros em sentido contrário.
Assim, o acórdão, também recente (de 15 de março de 2012) proferido no caso <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gas Dubois contra França</i> (25951/07)<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftn10" name="_ftnref10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[10]</span></span></span></span></a>. </span>Neste,
o Tribunal não considerou contrário à Convenção Europeia dos Direitos do Homem
o regime, então vigente em França, que negou a possibilidade de coadoção à
companheira de uma mulher que havia recorrido à procriação artificial na
Bélgica (sendo que tal recurso não era admitido pela lei francesa). Uma
situação semelhante a outras, já acima referidas, não permitidas pela lei
portuguesa vigente e a que o projeto-lei em apreço abre as portas, como vimos.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Em
suma, também não foi o acórdão proferido no caso <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">X e outros contra Áustria </i>que encerrou este debate.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.0pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>O regime da procriação artificial, o
próximo passo?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Com
acima se salientou, o projeto-lei em apreço abre a porta à possibilidade de
recurso por uma mulher homossexual à procriação artificial num país estrangeiro
onde tal seja legal, seguido da coadoção pela companheira. Neste caso, a fraude
à lei (a obtenção de um efeito não querido pelo legislador sem violação direta
da lei, deixando que «<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">entre pela janela
aquilo a que se fechou a porta</i>») é dupla: obtém-se o que o legislador não
quis ao proibir a adoção conjunta por pares do mesmo sexo, e ao proibir a
procriação artificial fora do âmbito patológico da infertilidade. Porque assim
é, e porque é evidente que outro passo da estratégia global a que assistimos
também passa pela abolição desta proibição, justifica-se que se faça uma
referência a esta proposta.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Já
foram apresentados entre nós projetos-lei de alteração da regulação da
procriação medicamente assistida, no sentido de garantir o acesso a essa
técnica a mulheres sós ou numa relação homossexual, independente do diagnóstico
de infertilidade. Essa proposta chegou a ser saudada por representar uma quebra
da «<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">desigualdade ancestral que reduz as
mulheres a apêndices dos homens</i>»<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftn11" name="_ftnref11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[11]</span></span></span></span></a>, isto é, a que exige
necessariamente o contributo destes para a procriação.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>O
alcance antropológico e ético da alteração proposta merece atenção e
aprofundamento. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Na
verdade, não se verifica uma desigualdade a este respeito. A natureza colocou,
neste aspeto, homens e mulheres em estrito pé de igualdade: as mulheres não
procriam sem os homens, mas os homens também não procriam sem as mulheres.
Ninguém é mãe sozinha e ninguém é pai sozinho. Não se trata de um desígnio a
corrigir ou anular, como se não tivesse sentido. Cada um dos sexos não pode
deixar de reconhecer, assim, a importância do outro. Assim se exprime a
estrutural relacionalidade da pessoa humana, que se realiza na comunhão com o
outro. Essa comunhão está na origem da vida a partir da unidade da diversidade
mais elementar: a que distingue homens e mulheres. Da riqueza da dualidade
sexual nasce a vida. Associar a geração da vida à comunhão e ao amor (a vida é
fruto do amor e o do amor nasce a vida), e à riqueza da dualidade sexual, não é
um “engano” da natureza, mas um desígnio maravilhoso a aceitar e acolher.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
alteração proposta pretende consagrar uma visão radicalmente diferente: a
procriação como instrumento de realização de um projeto individual, e não
relacional. O filho tende, assim, muito mais, a ser encarado como espelho do
único progenitor, e já não como dom a acolher na sua alteridade e unicidade.
Passa a ser visto como objeto de um direito que se reivindica. É o “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">direito à parentalidade”</i> que está em
jogo - afirma-se em defesa da proposta em questão.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
procriação medicamente assistida tem sido encarada, à luz da lei vigente (que
não deixa de ser também merecedora de críticas, por outras razões) como forma
de suprir a infertilidade, não como simples alternativa à procriação natural
(ver artigo 4º da Lei nº 32/2006, de 26 de julho). Não é (como, num plano
semelhante, não o é a adoção) um instrumento de “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">experimentalismo social”</i> ou de “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">engenharia
social</i>” ao serviço de “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">novas formas
de família</i>”. A criança gerada através de procriação medicamente assistida,
como a criança adotada, tem o direito a uma família como as outras, a uma
família tanto quanto possível próxima da que tem origem na procriação natural. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Não
se trata de impor um modelo de família ou uma forma de encarar a maternidade.
Trata-se de dar primazia ao bem do filho, que não pode ser <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">coisificado</i> como objeto de um direito. Não há um <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">direito </i>ao filho; o filho é um <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dom</i>. O bem do filho exige que ele seja
fruto de uma relação, e não de um projeto individual. E exige que ele não seja
intencionalmente privado de uma mãe ou de um pai. É ele que tem direito, não
tanto a um progenitor indiferenciado (como pretende a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ideologia do género</i>, ao pretender que se fale em “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">parentalidade”</i>), mas a uma mãe e a um
pai, por todas as razões acima indicadas. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>O
que se propõe é que da procriação artificial nasçam crianças sem pai (sempre
haverá um pai genético, necessariamente anónimo, mas apenas isso), já não por
acidente inevitável, mas de forma intencional e programada.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>O
projeto-lei em apreço, não sendo relativo ao regime da procriação artificial,
vem, por via indireta e como vimos, facilitar e incentivar o recurso, (ainda)
proibido à face da legislação portuguesa, a tais técnicas fora do âmbito do
objetivo de suprimento de situações patológicas de infertilidade. Tais técnicas
deixam de ser (contra o que pretende a lei vigente- ver o referido artigo 4º da
Lei nº 32/2006) um método subsidiário de procriação e passam a ser um método
alternativo de procriação. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Numa
fase seguinte, pretender-se-á que homens homossexuais possam recorrer à
maternidade de substituição para que nasçam crianças sem mãe (ou com uma mãe a
quem é, de forma violenta e desumana, negada a maternidade por imposição
contratual e legal). Ainda não foram apresentados em Portugal projetos nesse
sentido (foram apenas no sentido de por essa via ser suprida uma situação
patológica de infertilidade), mas tal passo já foi dado noutros países.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Todos
estes passos vão no sentido da instrumentalização do filho como objeto de um
pretenso “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">direito à parentalidade</i>”. O
que contraria o princípio da dignidade da pessoa humana em que assenta a
República portuguesa (artigo 1º da Constituição).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
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<![endif]--><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">Pedro Maria Godinho Vaz Patto</span></b> </div>
<br />
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="IT" style="mso-ansi-language: IT;">I<span style="color: #333333;">n www. mercatornet.com</span></span></i><span lang="IT" style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: IT;">,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
</i>2/6/2009</span><span lang="IT" style="mso-ansi-language: IT;"></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: IT;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="IT" style="color: #333333;">in Nouvelle Cité</span></i><span lang="IT" style="color: #333333;">, nº560, março-abril 2013, pg. 25.</span><span lang="IT"></span></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in L´Osservatore Romano</i>, 4-5/2/2013.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[4]</span></span></span></span></a> Afirma a propósito Xavier
Lacroix (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in La confusion des genres –
Réponses à certaines demandes homosexuelles sur le mariage et l´adoption</i>;
Bayard,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paris, 2005, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pg 111), citando Caroline Eliacheff <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in </i>«Malaise dans la psychanalyse», <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Esprit </i>nº 273, março-abril 2001, pg. 74,
que quando se sabe que um médico não pode emitir um certificado de aptidão para
a prática desportiva sem ter examinado a criança, «<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">é de espantar a liberdade que tomam os investigadores norte-americanos
de dizer o que quer que seja sobre crianças que nunca viram</i>».</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn5" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[5]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> <span lang="EN-GB">Ver, a respeito destas falhas metodológicas, Loren
Marks, «Same sex parenting and children´s outcomes: a closer examination of the
Americam Psychological Association´s brief on lesbian and gay parenting», <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in Social Science Research</i>, vol. 41, 4,
julho de 2012, pgs. 735-751 (especificamente sobre os estudos invocados pela <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American Psychological Association</i>);
Richard Fitzgibbons, «Same sex adoption is not a game», <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in </i></span></span><a href="http://www.mercatornet.com/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: windowtext; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">www.mercatornet.com</span></i></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">, 18/11/2011; e Xavier Lacroix, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La confusion…, cit.</i>, pgs 109 a 118.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn6" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[6]</span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"> «How different are the adult children of
parents who have same-sex relationships. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Findings from the New Family Structures» <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in Study Social Science Research </i>vol 41,
4, julho 2012, pgs,752-770, acessível em </span><a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049%20089%20X12000610"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: windowtext; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049
089 X12000610</span></i></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">)</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn7" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftnref7" name="_ftn7" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[7]</span></span></span></span></a>
ver <a href="http://www.la-croix.com/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">www.la-croix.com</span></i></a>,
16/11/2012</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn8" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftnref8" name="_ftn8" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[8]</span></span></span></span></a>
Ver <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">www.avvenire.it</i>., 26/4/2013</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn9" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftnref9" name="_ftn9" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[9]</span></span></span></span></a>
Acessível em <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in </i><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">http://hudoc.echr.coe.int</i>.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn10" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftnref10" name="_ftn10" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn10;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[10]</span></span></span></span></a>
Também acessível em <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in </i><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">http://hudoc.echr.coe.int</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn11" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8322558455983006167#_ftnref11" name="_ftn11" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn11;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: PT; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: PT;">[11]</span></span></span></span></a>
São José Almeida <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in Público </i>de
24/12/2011.</div>
</div>
</div>
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-22683421062706636372014-01-20T19:26:00.000+00:002014-01-20T19:26:03.908+00:00A circunferência rectangular - por Nuno Serras Pereira
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">20. 01. 2014<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Eu sei que parece incrível mas
confesso que sempre pensei que a função ou melhor a missão de um órgão de
informação católico fosse a de informar e a de formar. Porém, tenho verificado
que é exactamente o contrário. A extraordinária emissora católica (?) do
episcopado português tem, mais uma vez, vindo a demonstrar exactamente o contrário
– embora depois dê aparências de emendar a mão com uma </span><a href="http://rr.sapo.pt/informacao_detalhe.aspx?fid=1357&did=136302"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Nota</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
que não passa de uma minúscula ilha no vasto oceano dos serviços noticiosos.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Não obstante, os leitores dos
garatujos que vou esboçando estejam habituados a ler, sempre com crescente
espanto, as minhas estravagâncias inconcebíveis, estou em que se desatasse a
redigir artigos sobre os quadrados triangulares ou sobre as circunferências
rectangulares não duvidariam que tinha ultrapassado infinitamente todos os
limites do razoável. Pois… Mas ninguém se assombra com as repetições ao longo
do dia, todos os dias, na “informação” da rr da expressão “casais homossexuais”
(sic = assim mesmo). Se isto não é desinformação nem deformação então não existe
diferença alguma entre a verdade e a mentira, o certo e o errado, a realidade e
a alucinação delirante.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">E, no entanto, seria tão fácil
dizer: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">os pseudocasais homossexuais</i>;
ou <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">os impropriamente (falsamente)
chamados casais homossexuais</i>; ou <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">entre
pessoas do mesmo sexo a que uma lei injusta e, portanto, carecida de qualquer
autoridade ou valor denomina de casais homossexuais</i>, etc. Claro que poderá
sempre argumentar-se que não é prático, que são frases extensas… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Mas entre ter que dizer mais
algumas palavras e não ser objectivamente cúmplice da propaganda da ideologia
do género a escolha parece-me clara. Além de que não só se deixa de incutir nas
mentalidades dos ouvintes essa venenosa e perversa ideologia como, pelo contrário,
se infunde a verdade nas consciências dos mesmos.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">À Honra e Glória de Cristo,
Caminho, VERDADE, e Vida. Ámen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-51493323717987343192014-01-19T15:47:00.000+00:002014-01-19T15:47:55.197+00:00The New Homophiles and Their Critics - by Austin Ruse<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In <a href="http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/the-new-homophiles-and-their-critics?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29">Crisis</a></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="first-child " style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong><span class="cap" title="T"><span>T</span></span>his
new school of writers and thinkers</strong> that I have called <a href="http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/the-new-homophiles">the New
Homophiles</a> are not without their critics. How could they not be? After all,
while they want a warmer embrace from the Church, they want more than that and
some of it seems at variance with the wishes and perhaps even the teachings of
the Church.</span></div>
<div class="first-child " style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Some of their critics come from their own ranks, those with chaste same-sex
attraction but who also believe the New Homophiles have gone too far.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Terry Nelson runs a <a href="http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/the-new-homophiles-and-their-critics?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29#" id="_GPLITA_0" style="background-attachment: scroll; background-image: none; background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: repeat; border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; display: inline !important; float: none !important; height: auto !important; margin: 0px; min-height: 0px !important; min-width: 0px !important; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-top: 0px !important; vertical-align: baseline !important; width: auto !important;" title="Click to Continue > by safesaver">blog</a>
called “Abbey Roads in Ordinary Time” where he regularly takes after New
Homophile propositions. In an October 2010 post he wrote about the idea that St.
Aelred was gay or at least same-sex attracted. This is a major point among the
New Homophiles who believe Aelred’s book “<i>Spiritual Friendship</i>” offers a
treatise for how to be gay and chaste and still experience intensely loving
relationships with another man.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Aelred wrote, <i>“It is no small consolation in this life to have someone you
can unite with in an intimate affection and the embrace of holy love, someone in
whom your spirit can rest, to whom you can pour out your soul, to whom pleasant
exchanges, as to soothing songs, you can fly in sorrow … with whom spiritual
kisses, as with remedial salves, you may draw out all the weariness of your
restless anxieties.”</i></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Sounds pretty gay to my modern ears, and to the New Homophiles, too.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Terry Nelson begs to differ, as do Aelred scholars. He says the Aelred-as-gay
meme is of recent vintage, “…a novel theory postulated in the mid-twentieth
century … those who make this claim are looking at this from our
nineteenth–twenty-first century perspective and contemporary understanding of
same-sex relations as posited by gay culture today.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He accuses the New Homophiles of playing something of a “doctrinal shell
game” where “just about every time a couple of them write anything
‘ground-breaking’ they seem to be challenged by readers as to their orthodoxy.
Subsequently they appear to backtrack and present voluminous explanations of
what they really meant to say … it seems to me the underlying intention is to
normalize homosexuality and to declare gay is good.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This gets to the most serious problem with the New Homophile proposition,
their insistence on maintaining their gay identity. Melinda Selmys, a formerly
active Lesbian who publishes books at <em>Our Sunday Visitor</em>, now married
with six children, actually calls herself “queer.” She and her friends want to
be known as gay and they want the Church not just to welcome but to celebrate
their gayness.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Not a homosexual himself, Michael W. Hannon comes to the debate from a more
academically rigorous point of view than Terry Nelson but he, too, takes issue
with this main proposition of Ron Belgau, Chris Damian and the rest, that it is
perfectly fine to maintain a gay sexual-identity.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In a <i>First Things</i> essay last fall, Hannon criticized Pope Francis for
his casual use of the term “gay people.” He calls the concept of homosexuality
“unmerited by its pedigree” because it was constructed in the nineteenth century
when the classical notion of the sodomite “was set up as the bearer of a
distinct and pervasive psychological persuasion.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Hannon believes the heterosexual-homosexual construct is “masquerading … as a
natural categorization, applicable to all people in all times and places
according to the typical objects of their sexual desires.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He says, “…this framework puts on airs, deceiving those who adopt its
distinctions into believing that they are worth far more than they really
are.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Hannon warns, “Our young people … now regularly find themselves agonizing
over their sexual identity, navel-gazing in an attempt to discern their place in
this allegedly natural framework of orientations.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Paul Scalia wrote a widely read essay in <i>First Things</i> nine years ago
called “<i>A Label that Sticks</i>.” A well-regarded priest in the Diocese of
Arlington, Virginia and at the time chaplain to the Courage chapter in
Arlington, Scalia offered a warning about the dangers of young people
identifying themselves as gay.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He said educators uniformly try to keep kids from labeling themselves and
others as such things can “reinforce prejudices.” The exception, however, is for
those who experience same-sex attraction. For them there is a whole educational
apparatus waiting to identify, encourage, label and then lock them under gay
amber for all time.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Scalia says at a time of general adolescent confusion about almost
everything, such labels are tempting to the child because he wants to belong
somewhere and to others “because of their convenience and efficiency. They are
common, close at hand, and make quick work of a difficult issue. But they also
identify a person with his homosexual inclinations. They presume that a person
is his inclinations or attractions; he is ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’.” He insists—in
keeping with the Church—“People’s sexual inclinations do not determine their
identity.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The most prolific of the New Homophile critics is Daniel Mattson, a working
musician and himself same-sex attracted, also living chaste, but insisting he is
not “gay” but rather simply a man and a child of God. He says the word “gay”
does not accurately describe who or what he is. Those who use it, like the New
Homophiles, are not faithful to the theological anthropology of the Church.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Mattson sees the New Homophile embrace of the gay identity as “counter to the
truth of man and therefore an obstacle to authentic self-knowledge.” He says
“Though people may describe themselves by using terms like ‘gay’ or ‘queer’
which are commonly used in today’s culture, as Christians who believe in man
created in the image of God, we should ask if these cultural terms are, in fact,
true ontological categories of the human person, in accord with the blue print
of human existence.” Mattson insists the “clear definition of our sexual
identity [is] revealed to us by Scripture and the Church.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Mattson says “Since I am Catholic, the sexual identity I am called to embrace
is my maleness; my true sexual orientation is towards women, my true sexual
complement.” He says his attraction to men is not a new essential orientation
but a “disorientation” that “does not exist within God’s blue print for
humanity.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In 1986, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger issued the “Pastoral Letter on the Care of the Homosexual
Person” where he wrote, “Today the Church provides a badly needed context for
the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person as a
‘heterosexual’ or a ‘homosexual’ and insists that every person has a fundamental
right Identity: the creature of God, and by grace, his child and heir to eternal
life.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Mattson says he takes no umbrage at the phrase objectively disordered,
something the New Homophiles bristle at, and that he views his same-sex
attraction as a disability “in some ways similar to blindness or deafness.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Against the New Homophiles he does not see same-sex attraction as a gift “in
and of itself.” He insists that any goods “supposedly unique to homosexuality
are common to man, and all that is good in man is the result of being made in
the image and likeness of God.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He opposes the New Homophile notion of “gay exceptionalism” flowing from the
supposed good of homosexuality. “No,” he says, “the good is the redemptive
healing work of God that begins when we honestly acknowledge that homosexuality
is a wound” and he says that if same-sex attracted persons take this view they
can become “wounded healers.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Most people were not even aware the New Homophiles were even out there. Most
of us discovered it when they were given a regular home at <em>First Things</em>
last year, something that has concerned any number of faithful Catholics.
Mattson was given a few chances to engage their ideas there but then he was
mysteriously dropped without a word last summer.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">What is needed now is for serious Catholic theologians to engage the New
Homophile proposition. These folks are not going away, and neither should they.
But should their ideas be bandied about without real heavyweight consideration?
Most of them are only recently decanted PhDs, not that there is anything wrong
with that, but they are proposing things that are new and even esoteric and are
going largely unchallenged.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And even if they cannot convince the Church to develop or change the teaching
on homosexuality, and they probably can’t, the real problem is their ideas are
circulating and, according to one priest who deals with these issues,
undermining the pastoral work of the Church. This priest bluntly told me, “They
are in their ivory towers, they are not pastors and they are not only
undermining our work but they are undermining the wishes of Catholic
families.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Think of it this way. Your 14-year-old son feels different from the other
guys at school. For whatever reason, he always has. He confides this to a
counselor who asks him about his sexual orientation. Your son says that maybe
the difference he feels is that he is gay. The apparatus kicks in to place him
under the gay amber for life.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Now, do you want your son to talk to Chris Damian, one of the New Homophiles
who has said he would tell that young man to “Seek to draw yourself more fully
into the Church and to discern how this might be a gift in your life and in
others’ lives.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Or do you want him to meet Daniel Mattson and Father Paul Scalia who would
tell the boy, “You are not your sexual inclinations. You are not ‘gay.’ What you
are is a man and a Son of God.”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">At first blush there seems to be very little difference between the two, but
as you gaze more closely at all that is packed into the New Homophile
Proposition, you realize the difference is immense and may be profoundly
harmful.</span></div>
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-40663377939275431822014-01-19T15:40:00.000+00:002014-01-19T15:41:56.604+00:00Cuomo to Catholics: You’re Not Welcome in NY - by George J. Marlin<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="small"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In <a href="http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2014/cuomo-to-catholics-youre-not-welcome-in-ny.html">TCT</a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></span><span class="small"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I was born in New York State and
have lived here for more than 61 years. During that time I have paid plenty in
state and local taxes and have served the public in a number of capacities
including two terms as Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and
New Jersey.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I am also a Catholic and a member of
New York’s Conservative Party, have served on the transition teams of
governors-elect George Pataki (R) and Andrew Cuomo (D), and have been a member
of Cuomo’s Council of Economic and Fiscal Advisors.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Yet despite my public service and
the large chunk of my earnings that have gone to support New York’s governmental
maze, according to Governor Cuomo, </span><a href="http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/203801/cuomo-extreme-conservatives-have-no-place-in-the-state-of-new-york/">I
should move out of the Empire State</a><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Why? Because I am pro-life, oppose
same-sex marriage, and have doubts about Cuomo’s 2013 hastily prepared gun
legislation (the SAFE Act) that permits you to buy a gun with a 10-round
magazine, but bans using more than seven shots if you need to defend
yourself. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Here’s what Cuomo said this past
Friday on “The Capital Pressroom,” an Albany radio talk show, about a large
segment of NY voters:</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Who are they? Are they these extreme
conservatives who are right to life, pro-assault weapons, anti-gay? Is that who
they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives,
they have no place in the state of New York because that’s not who New Yorkers
are.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In an unguarded moment, Governor
Cuomo stated publicly what many on the Left have been privately thinking for
years: that pro-life and pro-traditional marriage supporters are Ku Klux
Klan-like bigots who should either shut up or get out.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Cuomo has not only written off
millions of New York Christians and Jews (among others) as unfit citizens, he
has yanked the welcome mat from under half the nation’s population, who, public
opinion polls indicate, oppose abortion and same-sex marriage.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">As for those who “have no place in
the state of New York,” the person at the top of that list must be the
Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan. That’s because Dolan has proudly
followed in the footsteps of his predecessors who were unabashed defenders of
Church teachings in the public square.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">For instance, Cardinal Terence
Cooke, NYC’s seventh archbishop (1968-1983), whose cause is being promoted for
sainthood, publicly fought the passage of the state’s 1970 liberal abortion
bill. And the week <i>Roe v. Wade</i> was handed down by the Supreme Court, he
issued a pastoral letter that was read in every parish condemning abortion as a
“fundamental moral evil.” Cooke inaugurated the annual Respect Life week and
established “Birth Right,” a service to help pregnant women who choose not to
abort their babies.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">As for “gay rights,” every year
Cooke opposed proposed legislation in New York’s City Council that would have
amended the administrative code to outlaw discrimination due to “sexual
orientation or affectional preference.” You read that right.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">A typical statement expressing the
Church’s position, released by Cardinal Cooke in April 1978, reads:</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">If the bill has an underlying
purpose, to advocate and gain approval of homosexual behavior and lifestyle,
then there is no way in which the Catholic Church in the City of New York may
find it acceptable. And there is no way in which we can remain silent on the
issue.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The Catholic Church’s moral teaching
differentiates between “orientation” and “behavior” for both homosexuals and
heterosexuals. While a person’s orientation is not subject to moral evaluation,
there is no doubt that a person’s behavior is subject to evaluation. Homosexual
behavior and an attendant homosexual life style is not in accord with Catholic
moral teaching and is, in fact, harmful to all persons who become involved;
heterosexuality is the norm for human behavior.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">And lest we forget, in the mid-1970s
Cooke had an ally in his fight against abortion and gay rights: Mario Cuomo,
father of the current governor.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The <i>New York Times</i> reported
during Cuomo the Elder’s unsuccessful 1974 primary run for lieutenant governor
that he said in a televised debate that “he would have voted against the 1970
law that relaxed abortion curbs in the state.” The <i>New York</i> <i>Daily
News</i> and the <i>Post</i> also reported that, in his unsuccessful 1977 run
for mayor, Mario said he would veto a gay rights bill “that would give
homosexual teachers the right to proselytize or advocate their
lifestyle.”</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">I wonder if Governor Andrew Cuomo, a
baptized Catholic and a graduate of Archbishop Molloy High School and Fordham
University, will demand that Cooke’s cause for canonization be, well, aborted
because the cardinal was an “extremist” for defending the teachings of his
Church. Will ask his father, himself a former governor, to leave the state for
having politically incorrect thoughts forty years ago?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">By claiming that people who disagree
with his cultural views “have no place in the state of New York,” Cuomo has
joined those whom historian Richard Hofstadter described as “totalitarian
liberals,” people who employ illiberal means to achieve so-called liberal
reforms.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Cardinal Dolan and the bishops of
New York’s other eight dioceses have an obligation to respond and to condemn
anyone – especially any Catholic public figure – who threatens those who adhere
to Church doctrine.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 14pt; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George
has predicted that he will die in his bed, his successor will die in prison, and
his successor will die a martyr. We may not be quite there yet. But unless
Church leaders and others act quickly and forcefully, Catholics and others of
traditional moral views may find themselves not simply marginalized, but – if
some politicians have their way – facing something very like exile in their own
nation.</span></span></div>
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-77588634578912771122014-01-18T16:31:00.000+00:002014-01-18T16:38:14.286+00:00«La Chiesa é l' ostacolo da abbattere» - di Massimo IntrovigneIn <a href="http://lanuovabq.it/it/articoli-la-chiesa-e-lostacolo-da-abbattere-8214.htm">NBQ</a><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Il 16 gennaio 2014 la Pontificia Commissione Teologica Internazionale ha pubblicato</b>
un corposo documento «Dio Trinità, unità fra gli uomini. Il monoteismo
cristiano contro la violenza» (<a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_20140117_monoteismo-cristiano_it.html">aqui em HTML</a>; <a href="http://www.laciviltacattolica.it/articoli_download/extra/DocumentoCTI.pdf">aqui em PDF</a>), presentato come frutto di cinque anni di
lavoro e come testo specificamente approvato e rivisto dal Prefetto
della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede, il prossimo cardinale
Gerhard Müller. Temo di essere facile profeta se prevedo che questo
documento, lungo e complesso, sarà letto da pochi, avrà scarsa eco sui
media e finirà rapidamente nel dimenticatoio. Male: perché questo grande
lavoro, voluto e richiesto da Benedetto XVI e ora completato sotto Papa
Francesco, è di qualità veramente notevole e denuncia un'aggressione
senza precedenti alla Chiesa che è in atto da parte della cultura
laicista dominante, rispondendo colpo su colpo.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>«La Chiesa è l'ostacolo da abbattere». Così il documento descrive</b>
l'attuale temperie culturale, dove agguerriti poteri forti danno il
tono non solo alla cultura dominante nelle università, ma anche alla
maggior parte dei media. Come si cerca di abbattere la Chiesa?
Ascrivendole la responsabilità di tutte le violenze più gravi della
storia. Queste, si afferma, derivano dalla fede nell'esistenza di verità
assolute garantite da Dio creatore di una natura che la ragione può
conoscere e decifrare come verità. Derivano, cioè, dal rifiuto cattolico
del relativismo: e dal monoteismo, che rende fanatici e intolleranti.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>C'è, anzitutto, un «disegno totalitario del pensiero unico»</b>,
fondato su un «sentire relativistico totale»: è la dittatura del
relativismo, che aggredisce chiunque pensi che esista la verità. Anzi,
la verità «viene esplicitamente indicata come una minaccia radicale per
l’autonomia del soggetto e per l’apertura della libertà. Soprattutto
perché la pretesa di una verità obiettiva e universale, di riferimento
per tutti, supposto che sia accessibile allo spirito umano, viene
immediatamente associata ad una pretesa di possesso esclusivo da parte
di un soggetto o gruppo umano. Essa porterebbe così alla giustificazione
del dominio dell’uomo che ne rivendica il possesso sull’uomo che,
secondo questa pretesa, ne è privo. In conseguenza di questa
rappresentazione della verità, che la ritiene inseparabile dalla volontà
di potenza, anche l’impegno per la sua ricerca, e la passione della sua
testimonianza, sono viste a priori come matrici di conflitto e di
violenza fra gli uomini».</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Per la dittatura del relativismo, di questa violenza sarebbe responsabile la Chiesa</b>
perché insegna il monoteismo. Se c'è un solo Dio c'è anche una sola
verità. Se invece ci sono più dei, allora sono possibili più verità.
Solo il politeismo garantisce il relativismo. C'è una vera inversione
rispetto alla tradizionale storia delle religioni, anche laica, che
considerava il monoteismo un progresso rispetto al politeismo. Questo
«rovesciamento del quadro moderno è inaspettato: ora il monoteismo è
arcaico e dispotico, il politeismo è creativo e tollerante».</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Per mettere in conto ai cristiani</b> - che certo talora
nella storia hanno ceduto alla tentazione della violenza, ma assai meno
di altri, e certo meno delle ideologie anticristiane - anche massacri
commessi da altre religioni, continua il documento, si ricorre a una
categoria che la storia delle religioni ha invece da tempo messa in
discussione, quella delle «tre grandi religioni monoteistiche», che
esprime certo qualcosa di vero ma tratta l'ebraismo, l'islam e il
cristianesimo. - che sono invece molto diversi fra loro - come se il
loro «monoteismo» fosse identico. È un notevole merito del documento
denunciare «la sommaria classificazione dell’ebraismo, del cristianesimo
e dell’islam, come le tre grandi “religioni monoteistiche”», perché si
tratta di tesi diffuse anche nel mondo cattolico. Lo scopo per cui il
moderno laicismo ripropone queste vecchie teorie non è il dialogo
interreligioso ma l'attacco alla religione, il cui scopo principale è
attaccare il cristianesimo, anzi attaccare in particolare la Chiesa
Cattolica. «Non possiamo passare sotto silenzio il fatto che, in qualche
parte intellettualmente rilevante della nostra cultura occidentale,
l’aggressività con la quale viene riproposto questo “teorema”, si
concentra essenzialmente nella denuncia radicale del cristianesimo». «La
puntigliosa identificazione del cristianesimo cattolico come l’ostacolo
da abbattere, nella lotta contro il monoteismo che diffonde la violenza
religiosa nel mondo, nonostante tutto, non cessa di stupire».</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Il documento ribatte colpo su colpo a queste accuse</b>.
Interpreta alcune affermazioni bellicose dell'Antico Testamento,
mostrando che s'inquadrano in uno specifico contesto storico, vanno
lette anche come metafore della lotta contro il Diavolo e il male
morale, e soprattutto sono state superate dal messaggio del Vangelo. In
una parte di non agevole lettura del documento, ispirata al Magistero di
Benedetto XVI, si fa anche notare che il cristianesimo ha permesso per
la prima volta nella storia la distinzione - non la separazione - fra
religione e politica, e ha fondato l’autonomia della politica, superando
ogni tentazione teocratica.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Non è vero, si aggiunge, che il politeismo è tollerante</b>:
nel clima culturale creato dalle religioni politeistiche si sono
consumate autentiche stragi contro i seguaci di religioni diverse.
Associare politeismo e tolleranza appare persino «stravagante». La
stessa «religione politeistica dell’impero romano, a sua volta, con
tutta la straordinaria modernità del suo concetto di cittadinanza, e
della sua struttura multi-etnica e multi-religiosa, perseguitò con
specifico accanimento il cristianesimo, colpevole di rifiutare
l’incensazione dell’imperatore come figura divina. La risposta si
espresse nella testimonianza non violenta e nell’accettazione del
martirio cristiano». Non parliamo, poi, delle ideologie moderne,
portatrici di «un crescente e sconcertante dispiegamento di stili di
vita e di comportamento ispirati alla violenza: spontanea, immediata,
distruttiva. Sempre più inconsapevole di se stessa, e persino eticamente
giustificata», o consacrata dalle leggi. Le ideologie, specie quelle
distruttive del XX secolo, sono in realtà i nuovi politeismi, dove
«l’uomo ostile al Dio buono e creatore, nell’ossessione di “diventare
come Lui”, diventa un “Dio perverso” e prevaricatore nei confronti dei
suoi simili. Dal politeismo di queste controfigure narcisistiche del
“Dio perverso”, che viene dal peccato fin dall’origine, non può venire
nulla di buono per la pacifica convivenza fra gli uomini».</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Oggi l'aggressione contro la Chiesa Cattolica e i cristiani continua</b>, fondata sul<br />«pregiudizio
– tipico del modello razionalistico – secondo il quale, anche sul piano
esistenziale e sociale, c’è un solo modo per affermare la verità:
negare la libertà o eliminare l’antagonista». L'orizzonte è quello
dell'eliminazione di Dio e dell'imposizione - ora suadente, ora violenta
- dell’ateismo, con la conseguente negazione della libertà.
«L’eliminazione di Dio, stabilita sulla base di una ragione
"naturalistica", si associa oggi frequentemente alla risoluzione
"biologica" della libertà umana. In questa prospettiva il nostro
cervello si è costruito il pensiero di Dio per ragioni legate ad un
determinato stadio evolutivo: in funzione del governo della complessità,
per compensare l’inevitabilità della frustrazione, come dispositivo di
neutralizzazione della morte».</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>La religione è dunque una patologia, che va eliminata</b>.
Il futuro che le ideologie preparano all'umanità è però un futuro di
violenza e di morte. Già oggi viviamo - conclude il documento - nel
«tempo della persecuzione», che «deve essere sostenuto, nell’attesa
della conversione sperata per tutti. Di questa pazienza, di questa
sopportazione, di questa tenacia dei “santi” nel portare la tribolazione
dell’attesa, noi siamo in debito di riconoscenza verso molti fratelli e
sorelle perseguitati per la loro appartenenza cristiana. Noi onoriamo
la loro testimonianza come la risposta decisiva alla domanda sul senso
della missione cristiana in favore di tutti. L’epoca di una nuova
evidenza a riguardo del rapporto fra religione e violenza fra gli uomini
è aperta dal loro coraggio. Dovremo sapercelo meritare. Dell’avvento di
questa nuova epoca, e dei frutti dello Spirito che ne devono seguire,
la Madre del Signore deve essere considerata l’insostituibile custode.
La coscienza e l’invocazione della sua speciale intercessione, dovrà
essere un tema speciale della nostra conversione e della nostra
preghiera».</span></div>
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-55357973734653640852014-01-16T11:05:00.000+00:002014-01-16T11:05:14.054+00:00Homossexuais contra co-adopção: «Soy homosexual, no gay»: testimonio de Jean-Pier en la manifestación pro-familia de RomaIn <a href="http://www.religionenlibertad.com/articulo.asp?idarticulo=33330">ReL</a><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="textoarticulo_rel">El sábado 11 de enero en Roma tuvo lugar
una manifestación en defensa de la familia, la primera organizada por
La Manif Pour Tous Italia (<a href="http://www.lamanifpourtous.it/" target="_blank">www.lamanifpourtous.it</a>) en la que participaron más de 4.000 personas. <br />
<br />
Publicamos a continuación de forma íntegra el discurso de Jean-Pier
Delaume-Myard, francés, un hombre con sentimientos homosexuales y que se
define como homosexual, pero que está en contra de redefinir el
matrimonio y de que se entreguen niños a parejas del mismo sexo,
privándoles de la posibilidad de crecer con un padre y una madre.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #001387; font-weight: bold;">Discurso de Jean-Pier Delaume-Myard,</span><br />
<em>Roma, 11 de enero de 2014 <br />
</em><br />
Queridos amigos, ¡buenas tardes a todos! Desgraciadamente no tengo la
suerte de hablar vuestro bello idioma, por lo que os ruego que me
permitáis hablar en francés. Soy muy feliz y es para mí un honor estar
aquí en Italia, junto a vosotros, con La Manif pour Tous Italia.<br />
<br />
<strong>Lo que nos reúne hoy aquí es el valor fundamental de la familia</strong>.
Nosotros mismos formamos una bonita y gran familia que va más allá de
las fronteras nacionales, porque la familia es una y universal.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel">Que se hable de esto aquí, en vuestro
país Italia, como en el nuestro Francia, o en otros países europeos o en
todo el mundo, no importa. De hecho, me gustaría recordar a mi amigo
Bobby que lucha como nosotros en los Estados Unidos contra los lobbies
gais porque no queremos que la mujer sea considerada una mercancía, <strong>no queremos que los niños sean privados voluntariamente de un padre o de una madre</strong>, o de ambos.<br />
<br />
Conozco un poco Italia. He tenido ocasión de venir varias veces, en
circunstancias distintas. La primera vez fue en 1981, después de una
grave enfermedad que me había trastornado durante mi adolescencia. Para
dar gracias al Señor por haberla superado fui a San Damiano, dónde aún
vivía Mama Rosa que había visto a la Virgen María. Después tuve la
suerte de venir a Roma para participar en una audiencia privada con el
Papa Juan Pablo II. Pero he venido también en otras ocasiones. El <a href="http://www.religionenlibertad.com/articulo.asp?idarticulo=33330#" id="_GPLITA_0" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent ! important; border: medium none ! important; display: inline ! important; float: none ! important; height: auto ! important; margin: 0px ! important; min-height: 0px ! important; min-width: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important; text-decoration: underline ! important; vertical-align: baseline ! important; width: auto ! important;" title="Click to Continue > by safesaver">vínculo<img src="http://cdncache-a.akamaihd.net/items/it/img/arrow-10x10.png" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent ! important; border: medium none ! important; display: inline ! important; float: none ! important; height: 10px ! important; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3px ! important; min-height: 0px ! important; min-width: 0px ! important; padding: 0px ! important; vertical-align: super ! important; width: 10px ! important;" /></a> que me une a Italia es también de tipo afectivo; de hecho, viví 8 años con un amigo italiano.<br />
<br />
En el mes de noviembre de 2012, en Francia los medios de comunicación
anunciaron que todas las personas homosexuales estaban a favor del
matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo y que todos los homosexuales
querían hijos.<br />
<br />
En realidad me estaban robando mi voz, <strong>estaban robando nuestra voz, de nosotros homosexuales que no habíamos pedido nada de todo esto.<br />
</strong><br />
Por este motivo decidí coger papel y bolígrafo como un simple ciudadano y
escribir en el sitio web de una conocida publicación semanal francesa: <em>Le Nouvel Observateur</em>.<br />
<br />
Ese artículo, titulado “<strong>Soy homosexual, no gay: ¡detened esta confusión!” </strong>dio la vuelta rápidamente en la red con más de 110.000 visitas.<br />
<br />
En el artículo escribo, entre otras cosas, que “no estoy orgulloso de
mi orientación sexual, no más de lo que un hetero lo esté de la suya».<br />
<br />
Quiero recordar claramente que “los gais hacen referencia a una cultura, a un estilo de vida. <strong>Necesitan que su carnicero, su panadero, su kiosquero sean gais. Quieren vivir con otros gais</strong>…
Yo, como homosexual y como individuo de una nación, he elegido siempre
habitar y actuar sin preocuparme de la orientación sexual de mis vecinos
o de mis compañeros de trabajo”.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel">En el artículo planteo también una
pregunta importante: “¿Por qué quieren una ley en favor del matrimonio
entre personas del mismo sexo? ¿Para las personas homosexuales o para
los centenares de “gais” que viven en las zonas chic de París?”.<br />
<br />
Después de esto <strong>hemos fundado un colectivo llamado HomoVox (<a href="http://www.homovox.com/" target="_blank">www.homovox.com</a>) que reúne a centenares y centenares de homosexuales que se oponen a la ley sobre el matrimonio gay</strong>. <br />
<br />
He tenido la posibilidad de dar un testimonio en video y la he aceptado
de buen grado. Después de tantos artículos y testimonios, el 25 de enero
de 2012 me reuní con el Presidente de la República Francesa.<br />
<br />
Cuando<strong> le dije que la ley sobre los matrimonios gais era en
realidad el árbol detrás del cual se escondía el bosque de la maternidad
subrogada </strong>y de la reproducción medicamente asistida, él me respondió: “No soy para nada favorable a esto y me expresaré en contra”.<br />
<br />
En Francia tenemos serias dudas sobre esta cuestión. Sabemos que en
ocasión de la presentación de la proxima ley sobre la familia, en marzo,
algunos diputados de la actual mayoría depositarán enmiendas en favor
de la reproducción medicamente asistida y de la maternidad subrogada.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel">Como homosexual, desde el principio de mi compromiso, <strong>no trabajo en favor de un partido político </strong>y menos aún en favor de una comunidad; a mí no me gusta el comunitarismo.<strong> Combato en conciencia y con todas mis fuerzas para que cada niño tenga un padre y una madre</strong>.<br />
<br />
Si yo fuera heterosexual, habría perseguido el mismo fin, es decir, ¡el de la racionalidad!<br />
<br />
Mi compromiso no tiene nada que ver con mi orientación sexual.<br />
<br />
Me he comprometido porque si uno tiene un mínimo de compasión por los seres humanos, ciertamente <strong>no se puede aceptar que un niño se quede sin puntos de referencia sociales</strong>.<br />
<br />
Me he comprometido porque si dentro de veinte años me encontrase con un chico o una chica, hijo de una pareja del mismo sexo, <strong>no quiero que me reproche por haberle privado de la posibilidad de tener un padre o una madre,</strong> como cada niño, hijo de una pareja divorciada, de una pareja de hecho o casada. <strong>¡Para todos son necesarios un padre y una madre!</strong><br />
<br />
Me he comprometido porque <strong>mi deseo de tener hijos no tiene que tener como consecuencia la llegada al mundo de un niño sin el afecto materno</strong>.<br />
<br />
Me he comprometido porque, como persona responsable, no quiero tener que
responder un día a mi hijo, cuando me pregunte quién era su madre, que
su identidad no es distinta al número de un cheque. <br />
<br />
En Francia, La Manif Pour Tous no sólo es víctima de discriminación,
sino que es objeto también de graves violencias por parte de la policía o
de duras condenas judiciales. Estoy pensando en <strong>Nicolas, un joven de 23 años detenido el 19 de junio de 2013 por llevar puesta una sudadera de La Manif Pour Tous</strong> en los Campos Elíseos y condenado a ¡dos meses de cárcel!<br />
<br />
Las Autoridades de mi país <strong>no han querido oir la voz de una petición que había recogido ¡700.000 firmas!</strong><br />
<br />
En Francia la ley que abre al matrimonio de las parejas del mismo sexo
ha sido votada deprisa a mano alzada en su segunda lectura ¡con el fin
de preservar la paz social!<br />
<br />
En Francia las más altas autoridades han declarado que éramos 300.000 personas, cuando <strong>en realidad se han manifestado más de ¡un millón de ciudadanos!<br />
</strong><br />
Quisiera también aprovechar esta ocasión para dar las gracias de parte
de La Manif Pour Tous a uno de vuestros connacionales, Luca Volontè,
antes Presidente del PPE en Estrasburgo. <br />
<br />
Gracias a uno de vosotros, queridos amigos italianos, el comité de los
ministros del Consejo de Europa ha planteado con fecha 23 de abril de
2013 una pregunta al Gobierno francés acerca de la gestión de las
manifestaciones en favor de la familia y <strong>ha pedido con insistencia al Gobierno que dé explicaciones. Cosa inédita en la patria de los derechos del hombre. </strong>Gracias Sr. Luca Volontè.<br />
<br />
Si mañana en Francia o en Italia se aprobaran la maternidad subrogada o la reproducción asistida, desgraciadamente <strong>no seremos nosotros quienes pagaremos las consecuencias. Las pagarán, ante todo, los mismos niños</strong>, privados del derecho legítimo a la filiación directa. Les privaremos del derecho a tener un padre y una madre.<br />
<br />
Pagarán las consecuencias los mismos homosexuales, porque <strong>son estas mismas leyes las que están creando la homofobia, no los que se manifiestan.</strong><br />
<br />
Hoy no tenemos necesidad de llevar puesto una vestido de novia para tener los mismos derechos.<br />
<br />
El deseo de tener un hijo es una realidad singular y dolorosa. Yo lo sé. Pero nosotros homosexuales <strong>no pedimos a la sociedad un bricolaje legislativo para cambiar la realidad.</strong><br />
<br />
La política del gobierno francés no tiene otro objetivo más que el de matar a la Familia. <strong>El gobierno “familiafóbico” mata a la familia.<br />
</strong><br />
La Manif Pour Tous en Francia sigue pidiendo la abrogación de la ley que autoriza el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo.<br />
<br />
Además de la necesaria abrogación de dicha ley, proponemos que se
reconozca la filiación en el seno de la familia. Un niño no es una
mercancía de trueque ni carne de cañón; es un ser humano que tiene el
derecho de conocer el origen cultural, geográfico, social y religioso de
sus padres.<br />
<br />
En lo que respecta <strong>las próximas elecciones europeas</strong>,
recordaremos a los candidatos la importancia de las decisiones que están
llamados a tomar. Los candidatos deberían firmar una carta en la que
declaran proteger a la familia y respetar a las personas.<br />
<br />
Os invitamos a hacer lo mismo en Italia porque estamos convencidos de
que la familia es el lugar mejor para crecer y ser educados.<br />
<br />
Estamos convencidos de que la familia es la célula base de la sociedad y
que la familia asegura el futuro y el progreso del país.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">El 21 de octubre pasado publiqué un libro titulado <em>HOMOSEXUAL contra el matrimonio “para todos”</em>. Esta publicación ha sido <strong>censurada por los medios de comunicación por la presión ejercida por el lobby LGBT.</strong></span></span></span></span></span></span><br /><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><strong>
</strong></span></span></span></span></span></span><br /><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Este lobby <strong>me acusa de ser un traidor porque no pienso igual que los dos mil gais de París</strong>. Es una actitud completamente homofóbica por su parte. Significa que un homosexual no puede ni pensar ni actuar autónomamente.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br /><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span></span></span></span></span><br /><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Más grave es el hecho de que <strong>he recibido amenazas de muerte en la web. </strong>¿Quién es homófobo, La Manif Pour Tous o ellos?</span></span></span></span></span></span><br /><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span></span></span></span></span><br /><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Nosotros ciudadanos italianos o franceses, hombres y mujeres razonables,
homosexuales o heterosexuales, proseguiremos nuestro camino de hombres
responsables que quieren dejar tras de sí un planeta donde los hombres
con H mayúscula no sean un bien comercial.</span></span></span></span></span></span><br /><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span></span></span></span></span><br /><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
La denominada libertad, querida por algunos, no debe condenar al hombre y
su diversidad. El derecho a la diferencia debe seguir siendo la única
libertad del ser humano. ¡La naturaleza es la única que puede vigilar!</span></span></span></span></span></span><br /><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span></span></span></span></span></span><br /><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
Por eso, La Manif Pour Tous os da las gracias por haber creado La Manif
Pour Tous Italia. Os agradezco de corazón vuestra calorosa
acogida. Gracias a todos, nos volveremos a ver pronto, con ocasión de
una <strong>gran manifestación europea. ¡No renunciaremos nunca!</strong></span></span></span></span></span></span><br /><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span></span></span></span></span><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span class="textoarticulo_rel"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><br />
<em>(Traducción de Helena Faccia Serrano, Alcalá de Henares)</em></span> </span> </span> </span> </span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-86224420451515790212014-01-15T16:58:00.003+00:002014-01-15T16:58:43.340+00:00“Reprotech” Ushers in a New Eugenic Age - by Mark D. Oshinskie<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">In <a href="http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/reprotech-ushers-in-a-new-eugenic-age?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CrisisMagazine+%28Crisis+Magazine%29">Crisis</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Following the devaluation of babies</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> in the 1970s and 80s in the developed world,
babies became scarce and, consequently, desirable once again. Now, any
means used to make babies is seen as good, as long as pregnancy occurs at a
convenient time.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Some cannot
conceive naturally. The prevailing view is that those who cannot do so should
have free access to such reproductive technologies as in vitro fertilization
(IVF) or the purchase of gametes, i.e., sperm and eggs. Yet, many do not know
what occurs in IVF labs and others do not care, as long as offspring result.
The zeitgeist favoring “reprotech” obscures the serious social problems that
reproductive technologies both reflects and facilitates.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">For example,
the growing demand for IVF is, in large measure, a response to Western cultural
changes. As birth control and abortion became widely available, sex was
more reliably separated from procreation and childbearing has been widely
postponed. Deferring parenthood into the mid-thirties and beyond worked for
some, but has created many fertility clinic users. Further, aside from
delaying child-bearing, contraception enabled serial sexual partners and over <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/std/default.htm?s_cid=bb-nchhstp-nr-sam-002" target="_blank">ten million new cases of sexually transmitted infections</a>
(STIs) each year, which scar reproductive organs and also impair
fertility. IVF is often used to bypass these obstacles.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">IVF and the Effectuation of the Brave New World</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><br />
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Such academic
commentators as <a href="http://http/www.amazon.com/Life-Liberty-Defense-Dignity-Challenge/dp/1594030472/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389769689&sr=1-5&keywords=leon+kass" target="_blank">Leon Kass</a>, <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/ourposthumanfuture/FrancisFukuyama" target="_blank">Francis Fukuyama</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Enough-Staying-Human-Engineered-Age/dp/0805075194" target="_blank">Bill McKibben</a> have observed that human genetic engineering,
nanotech and robotics will demoralize individuals and damage human
community. They write, for example, of futuristic highly-skilled
classical pianists or athletes who know that their parents purchased strong
musical or athletic genes for them, and of the existential crises caused
regarding the source of, and credit for, their respective
accomplishments. They observe that democracy will become untenable if
some use these technologies to create a master race. They view these
threats to community as prospective, though imminent, as cloning and gene
manipulation research continues in earnest.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">These
warnings are, at once, an exaggeration and an understatement. They are an
exaggeration because, although genomic research has enabled scientists to
identify the effects of many DNA sequences, we are still a
while (vagueness deliberate) away from having a clearer sense of which
genes influence many other traits. They are also an exaggeration
because many have observed that, to date, gene manipulation efforts reveal
that genes cannot often be simply cut and pasted, one for another, especially
without causing serious unanticipated effects.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The authors
understate the dangers posed by IVF because, in the interim at least, this
reprotech enables efforts to clear these technological hurdles. It uses
the same lab equipment and provides cumulating knowledge, techniques and an
oversupply of embryos needed to advance genetic engineering and cloning.
IVF is to genetic engineering and cloning what nuclear power plants are to nuclear
weapons proliferation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Reprotech’s
effects on the aforementioned commentators’ concerns are understated in
another, more important way. The same ethic of reproductive control that
animates IVF also allows egg and sperm shopping, genetic screening and embryo
selection—or its companions, sex-selection or eugenic abortion. One may
maintain that the embryo is not a person but one cannot dispute that the embryo
at seven days tells us much about the person at 27 years. With its multi-embryo
production, IVF already enables parents to select between embryos
for numerous lifelong traits, including sex and disability. Despite
their backgrounds, sperm and egg shoppers display distinct preferences for
gametes from tall, conventionally attractive gamete sellers with much formal
education. These choices are clearly intended and they are
not futuristic practices, which may never become available; they occur
every day.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Thus, even
if genetic manipulation or cloning never become possible, the eugenic age is
already well underway and is accepted by our consumer-sovereign society.
If prospective parents don’t like their unborn’s genes, they can, and
often do, end the life. For example, over 90 percent of fetuses
diagnosed with Downs Syndrome are aborted. Not in some futuristic hell,
but today, we are ending disability through a medically mediated rendering of
Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” by purging the disabled.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In a
society that increasingly and appropriately declines to execute even serial
killers, it seems inconsistent to effectively impose prenatal capital
punishment/genocide on the disabled. Consider further the effects of
genetic screening on the self-perception of the able-bodied. How does it
feel to know you were born because you met the standards of your parents and a
quality control inspector? In place of unconditional love, reprotech
allows the introduction of discrimination with regard to human dignity based on
biological, psychological or educational development, or based on
health-related criteria.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Some commentators
have suggested that eugenic abortion or embryo selection could be legislatively
limited to genes with “life-or-death” diseases. That proposal does not inspire
confidence.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">First, who
can say that a disabled or a relatively brief life—even one with much
suffering—is not worth living? As John Paul II stated in <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae_en.html" target="_blank"><i>Evangelium Vitae</i></a> (1995), “The courage and serenity
with which so many of our brothers and sisters suffering from serious
disabilities lead their lives when they are shown acceptance and love bears
eloquent witness to what gives authentic value to life, and makes it, even in
difficult conditions, something precious for them and for others.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Most
parents will de-select embryos or abort fetuses whose genes suggest they will
someday have MS, ALS, breast cancer or Huntington’s. These conditions
seldom kill, or even afflict, the young. Besides, as many have observed,
the lines between disease and trait or cure and enhancement are quite
blurry. What will be the legislative status of embryos that have genes
for schizophrenia? Deafness? Depression? Below average
intelligence or height? Even limiting either genetic manipulation or
embryo selection for seemingly esthetic purposes seems impossible, given
society’s and the law’s strong support for reproductive choice. And with
reproductive choice as the guiding principle, how will we prohibit parthenogenesis,
artificial wombs or chimeras?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The
majority of parents allowed to choose between having a fully capable—or
perhaps, ultracapable—child, on the one hand, or casting a diffuse vote for an
already attenuated democracy on the other, will serve themselves, not the
larger group. As genomic knowledge and embryo selection
increase, the pressure to have “perfect” kids will only intensify.
As the number of people with imperfections decreases, society’s
acceptance of, and support groups and services for, the imperfect will
shrink. Stanford Law Professor Hank Greely has predicted that, given
these competitive pressures, within 50 years, most Americans will be the
product of IVF. While allowing for some incorrect predictions in
individual cases, genetic screening will cause the social stratification and
personal alienation that the commentators fear, even without the genetic
manipulation they foresee.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">All we have
to do to advance this dystopia is more of what is already done: embrace
reprotech, screen gametes/embryos and use/implant those with the traits the
parents want. Even if we could agree on and proscribe what constituted
abuses of these practices, regulation of these micro-scale technologies, which
involve high stakes to their demanding consumers and the clinics that compete
for their business, and which occur behind closed doors in hundreds of office
parks, is impracticable.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Distributive Concerns</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">On a population-wide
basis, American medicine is better at generating revenue than it is at
advancing health. Americans spend twice as much per capita on medical
care as does any other nation and America ranks twenty seventh in life
expectancy, just slightly ahead of Cuba.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Medical
insurance funds hundreds of billions of medically unnecessary treatments. We
routinely test for conditions that are only remotely possible. One in six
adults takes psychoactive drugs, largely because ordinary sadness is now
considered a disease. Sports surgeries are performed to enable
40-somethings to continue to run marathons and ski, instead of taking up
walking.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">IVF fits
squarely within this model of providing elective treatments for the affluent,
while the poor do without basic goods and services, and medical care, in the
United States and, especially, abroad. The typical IVF cycle costs
$12,000 and multiple cycles are common. Insurance coverage for IVF is
legislatively mandated in 15 of the most populous states. By itself, IVF
adds over 5 percent to medical insurance premiums. The insurance cost of IVF
grows sharply when the inflated costs of post-natal care for IVF offspring are
considered. A recent study concluded that twins cost six times ($105,000)
and triplets twenty times ($400,000) more than do single babies. Multiple
births have increased six-fold because IVF often involves the implantation of
multiple embryos. In a lengthy article in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/magazine/the-two-minus-one-pregnancy.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank"><i>New York Times Magazine</i></a> entitled “The Two Minus One
Pregnancy” (2012), we learn that multiples are often reduced in number, in
utero, by injections of potassium chloride into the hearts of the “excess,”
seemingly weaker, fetuses. While the fertility industry gains an increasing
share of insurance dollars, public health/environmental protection measures
that would benefit all people are seriously underfunded in relation to the
threats presented.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">In addition
to misallocating resources, IVF facilitates human exploitation. Like many
commercial processes, it allows child-bearing to be outsourced to low income
surrogates in the US and abroad. Instead of mothers producing their own
eggs, eggs are harvested from well-pedigreed college students, who risk their
health and deplete a significant part of their egg supply, which may endanger
their own fertility and accelerate menopause and which enables what the
progressive commentator <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Human-Body-Shop-Engineering/dp/0895264188/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389764696&sr=8-1&keywords=the+human+body+shop" target="_blank">Andrew Kimbrell</a> called “technological adultery.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Reprotech’s Impact on Self-Perception</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><br />
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Apart from creating a
genetically privileged class, reprotech already affects the perception of other
beings and basic kinship or solidarity. Despite vast demographic,
ideological and personality differences, until about thirty years ago, humans
shared a common, mysterious origin in the union of a woman and a man.
This is no longer universally the case. In its place, reprotech,
immensely profitable in a slow growth economy, applies a corporate model, not
only in its technical practices, but in its advertising and competition for
market share.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Increasingly,
as life is manufactured and sold, it becomes less awesome and more like
other possessions.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">While
reprotech is the ultimate reductionist activity—sperm plus egg plus gestation
equals human—it cannot be reduced into its component parts; like all things, we
must take its benefit and harm as a unitary whole. As children have
become products of subjective desires and labs, life has been radically altered
in ways unreported by the TV news. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Relativism and utilitarianism have
taken firm hold. God has been removed from most discourse. Churches of
all denominations are nearly empty. Marriage is postponed and eschewed and
is increasingly separated from childbearing and raising; more adults live alone
and more children live with one parent than ever. A hook-up culture has
supplanted the mutual affection and acceptance of courtship.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The
perception and treatment of children have also changed: instead of being born
in the fullness of time, many are prenatally frozen or their births are
scheduled, they are formula-fed, placed in day care, over-managed and
overscheduled. Social scientists report numerous indicia of sharply diminishing
social cohesion since the 1970s. Have contraception, abortion and
reprotech singlehandedly caused each of these changes? No, but they fit
squarely within a cultural context that makes everything, even human life, bend
to individual sovereignty, engineering principles and ultimately,
commerce. As Waclav Havel wrote, “The tragedy of modern man is not that
he knows less and less about the meaning of his life but that it bothers him
less and less.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Fundamentally,
reprotech places the interests of the individual above those of the
community. Using it is like building one’s home on the beach at Normandy
or in Yosemite Valley. It pleases the consumer and their family and
friends. But it costs the culture something more precious and universal,
namely the notion of the sacred and the continuation of a society where genetic
advantage cannot be purchased. Reprotech has generated many offspring.
But with its effects on human perception and community, reprotech users should
not expect the emerging world to resemble the one their parents grew up in, or
be much of a place to raise children.</span></span></div>
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Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8322558455983006167.post-27005847341912024022014-01-13T12:06:00.002+00:002014-01-13T12:06:59.242+00:00Papa Francisco: «Suscita horror sólo el pensar en los niños que no podrán ver nunca la luz, víctimas del aborto»In <a href="http://infocatolica.com/?t=noticia&cod=19689">Infocatólica</a><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">El papa Francisco ha exclamado este lunes que «suscita horror sólo el
pensar en los niños que no podrán ver nunca la luz, víctimas del
aborto». El pontífice ha hecho estas declaraciones en su discurso al
cuerpo diplomático acreditado ante el Vaticano. El papa recibió a los
embajadores acreditados ante la Santa Sede para el tradicional mensaje
de felicitación del año y en su discurso repasó los actuales conflictos y
problemas sociales del planeta.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> El pontífice<strong> introdujo el tema del aborto en uno de los pasajes de su amplio discurso</strong> en el que se refería a los sufrimientos de los niños y a la cultura del «descarte», tanto de alimentos como de las personas.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">El Santo Padre aseveró que «<strong>la paz además se ve herida por cualquier negación de la dignidad humana</strong>,
sobre todo por la imposibilidad de alimentarse de modo
suficiente».Sobre esto agregó que las principales víctimas de la
hambruna son «sobre todo los niños».</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">El Papa<strong> volvió a denunciar «la cantidad de alimento que se desperdicia cada día</strong> en muchas partes del mundo, inmersas en la cultura del descarte». Entonces añadió:</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">«Por desgracia, objeto de descarte no es sólo el alimento o los
bienes superfluos, sino con frecuencia los mismos seres humanos, que
vienen descartados como si fueran cosas no necesarias. Por ejemplo, s<strong>uscita
horror sólo el pensar en los niños que no podrán ver nunca la luz,
víctimas del aborto, en los que son utilizados como soldados,
violentados o asesinados en los conflictos armados, o hechos objeto de
la trata de personas</strong>, esa tremenda forma de esclavitud y que es un delito contra la humanidad».</span><br />
</blockquote>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">El Vicario de Cristo había expresado el rechazo al aborto en su primer exhortación apostólica, publicada el 26 de noviembre.</span></div>
Amor, Verdade e Vidahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01753595218323030043noreply@blogger.com