LifeNet

Pope Francis: abortion & care for ecology interrelated

From the National Journal on today's Encyclical "On Care for Our Common Home".

#1 on National Journal's "six points from the Encyclical."

Population Control Is Not the Answer

For Pope Francis, caring about the environment goes hand in hand with taking a strong stand against abortion. "Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion," the encyclical says. "How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?"

Francis suggests that efforts to slow population growth are misguided and a distraction from the underlying cause of the world's environmental crisis—the hoarding of the Earth's resources by the rich and powerful. "To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues," the encyclical says.

We would expect the encyclical to make the connection - for Catholics it should be self-evident.

 

The Holy Father speaks out on euthanasia

Or the mis-appropriately named "right to die."

“How great a lie,” he wrote, “lurks behind certain phrases which so insist on the importance of ‘quality of life’ that they make people think that lives affected by grave illness are not worth living.”

Pope Francis invited people to see the world and those who are sick or in need of care with “the wisdom of the heart”, which is pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, merciful, certain and sincere.

“It is a way of seeing things infused by the Holy Spirit in the minds and the hearts of those who are sensitive to the sufferings of their brothers and sisters and who can see in them the image of God,” he wrote.

Having “wisdom of the heart” means going out of oneself and serving others with compassion and without judgment – unlike those who, in the biblical story of Job, who thought Job’s misfortune “was a punishment from God for his sins”, the Pope said in his message.

“True charity is a sharing which does not judge, which does not demand the conversion of others; it is free of that false humility which, deep down, seeks praise and is self-satisfied about whatever good it does,” he wrote.

 

New Year reminder: Pope Francis on abortion

Since most of the media likes some of what Pope Francis says, while ignoring his abortion statements, here's a good refresher. From Christianity Today, back in April.

In the headline the Holy Father is quoting Vatican II

Abortion and infanticide are 'unspeakable crimes', says Pope

He described the right to life as "first and most fundamental right" upon which all other civil rights are based on.

"It is therefore necessary to reiterate the strongest opposition to any direct attack on life, especially innocent and defenceless."

Quoting the Second Vatican Council, Pope Francis said: "From the moment of its conception, life must be guarded with the greatest care while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes."

Taking the pro-life message in a different direction to many other pontiffs, Pope Francis linked the cause of fighting abortion to the establishment of global social and economic justice.

LifeSiteNews.com quoted the Pope as saying: "This economy kills. It considers the human being in himself as a commodity; a commodity that you can use and then throw away."

He described one of modernity's "most serious risks" as being "the divorce between economics and morality".

Sharing his view of the world, Pope Francis said he saw on the one hand "a market equipped with every technological innovation" and on the other "elementary ethical standards of human nature more and more neglected".

All human life, the Pope said, is "a gift from God" and that those who understand it as such see life as "a valuable and intangible asset, to be protected by all means and not to be discarded".

And more from the article -

he also urged those attending to not become so focused on the unborn child that care for the mother is forgotten.

Speaking about how to engage with women considering abortion, Pope Francis said: "I encourage you to always act with a style of nearness, of closeness: that every woman feels regarded as a person who is heard, accepted, and accompanied."

In this direction, he praised the work of the 'Gemma Project' which helps women facing crisis pregnancies, and helps facilitate long distance adoptions.

Pope: "Abortion Evidence of Throwaway Culture"

Pope Francis, speaking today -

"For example, it is frightful even to think that there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day," he said. Francis has generally limited his exhortations about abortion, saying church teaching is well known and that he prefers to speak less about the church's moralizing rules and more about its positive, welcoming message.

 

Statement from the Jesuit Superior General on the election of Pope Francis

Statement from the Jesuit Superior General on the Election of Pope Francis

In the name of the Society of Jesus, I give thanks to God for the election of our new Pope, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., which opens for the Church a path full of hope.

All of us Jesuits accompany with our prayers our brother and we thank him for his generosity in accepting the responsibility of guiding the Church at this crucial time. The name of "Francis" by which we shall now know him evokes for us the Holy Father's evangelical spirit of closeness to the poor, his identification with simple people, and his commitment to the renewal of the Church. From the very first moment in which he appeared before the people of God, he gave visible witness to his simplicity, his humility, his pastoral experience and his spiritual depth.

"The distinguishing mark of our Society is that it is . . . a companionship . . . bound to the Roman Pontiff by a special bond of love and service." (Complementary Norms, No. 2, § 2) Thus, we share the joy of the whole Church, and at the same time, wish to express our renewed availability to be sent into the vineyard of the Lord, according to the spirit of our special vow of obedience, that so distinctively unites us with the Holy Father (General Congregation 35, Decree 1, No. 17).

P. Adolfo Nicolás S.J.

Superior General

Rome, 14 March 2013

A new Pope! Here are past statements by Pope Francis on various life issues

We gathered these comments from an email Randall Terry sent around and from a couple of other sources, including Pope Francis' new wikipedia entry. We have highlighted a document from the 2007 Latin America Bishops Conference well worth referencing in the future.

ON ABORTION

- In 2007 Cardinal Bergoglio stated, “We aren’t in agreement with the death penalty,” he said, “but in Argentina we have the death penalty. A child conceived by the rape of a mentally ill or retarded woman can be condemned to death.”

In 2007, following Pope Benedict’s meeting with Latin American bishops, the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America produced a joint statement, known as the Aparecida Document; it was presented by Cardinal Bergoglio himself.

APARECIDA DOCUMENT

Paragraph 436: We hope that legislators, heads of government, and health professionals, conscious of the dignity of human life and of the rootedness of the family in our peoples, will defend and protect it from the abominable crimes of abortion and euthanasia; that is their responsibility. Hence, in response to government laws and provisions that are unjust in the light of faith and reason, conscientious objection should be encouraged. We must adhere to “eucharistic coherence,” that is, be conscious that they cannot receive holy communion and at the same time act with deeds or words against the commandments, particularly when abortion, euthanasia, and other grave crimes against life and family are encouraged.  This responsibility weighs particularly over legislators, heads of government, and health professionals.

On the Need for the Church to Evangelize:

"We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a church that is wrapped up in its own world: when a church becomes like this, it grows sick. It is true that going out on to the street implies the risk of accidents happening, as they would to any ordinary man or woman. But if the church stays wrapped up in itself, it will age. And if I had to choose between a wounded church that goes out on to the streets and a sick, withdrawn church, I would definitely choose the first one."
 

On Unwed Mothers

 
"In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don't baptize the children of single mothers because they weren't conceived in the sanctity of marriage. These are today's hypocrites. Those who criticize the church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it's baptized!"
 

On the Elderly and Infirm:

“Today,” he wrote, “elderly people are discarded when, in reality, they are the seat of wisdom of the society. The right to life means allowing people to live and not killing, allowing them to grow, to eat, to be educated, to be healed, and to be permitted to die with dignity.”  – Cardinal Bergoglio/Pope Francis