Pope Benedict rejected the concept that abortion could be considered a human right on Friday and urged European leaders to do everything possible to raise birth rates and make their countries more child-friendly.
The 80-year-old German Pontiff told diplomats and representatives of international organizations that Europe could not deny its Christian roots because Christianity had played a decisive role in forging its history and culture.
“It was in Europe that the notion of human rights was first formulated. The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself,” he said in an address at the former imperial Hofburg Palace.
“This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right — it is the very opposite. It is a deep wound in society.”
Update: The full text of the Pope’s speech is here and it includes the following:
It was in Europe that the notion of human rights was first formulated. The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself. This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right ”“ it is the very opposite. It is “a deep wound in society”, as the late Cardinal Franz König never tired of repeating.
In stating this, we are not expressing a specifically ecclesial concern. Rather, we are acting as advocates for a profoundly human need, speaking out on behalf of those unborn children who have no voice. I do not close my eyes to the difficulties and the conflicts which many women are experiencing, and I realize that the credibility of what we say also depends on what the Church herself is doing to help women in trouble.
I appeal, then, to political leaders not to allow children to be considered as a form of illness, nor to abolish in practice your legal system’s acknowledgment that abortion is wrong. I say this out of a concern for humanity. But that is only one side of this disturbing problem. The other is the need to do everything possible to make European countries once again open to welcoming children. Encourage young married couple to establish new families and to become mothers and fathers! You will not only assist them, but you will benefit society as a whole. We also decisively support you in your political efforts to favour conditions enabling young couples to raise children. Yet all this will be pointless, unless we can succeed in creating once again in our countries a climate of joy and confidence in life, a climate in which children are not seen as a burden, but rather as a gift for all.
Another great concern of mine is the debate on what has been termed “actively assisted death”. It is to be feared that at some point the gravely ill or elderly will be subjected to tacit or even explicit pressure to request death or to administer it to themselves. The proper response to end-of-life suffering is loving care and accompaniment on the journey towards death ”“ especially with the help of palliative care ”“ and not “actively assisted death”. But if humane accompaniment on the journey towards death is to prevail, urgent structural reforms are needed in every area of the social and healthcare system, as well as organized structures of palliative care. Concrete steps would also have to be taken: in the psychological and pastoral accompaniment of the seriously ill and dying, their family members, and physicians and healthcare personnel. In this field the hospice movement has done wonders. The totality of these tasks, however, cannot be delegated to it alone. Many other people need to be prepared or encouraged in their willingness to spare neither time nor expense in loving care for the gravely ill and dying.
“It was in Europe that the notion of human rights was first formulated.”
I think that it was formulated in Holy Scripture with:
Gen 4:10 And he (God) said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.
Gen 4:11 And now [art] thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand;
Amen, Pope Benedict.
And I call on all Leftist Episcopalians to renounce the [url=http://www.rcrc.org/] open claim that children are subhuman and deserve to die.[/url]
Poor Pope Benedict XVI, so anachronistic, so unenlightened, so exclusive, so misogynistic. He may be the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, but with an attitude like that, he’d never make it as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal church.
As Louie’s crew has shown (& why has been so silent recently?), pro-gay and pro-abortion go hand in hand: the culture of death and the culture of sterility.
My theory is that pro-gay, pro-abortion, falling birth rates, euthanasia, et.al. are out-growths of a materialist approach to life, as they seem to recur in prosperous societies. Bp. Love seems to be addressing materialist issues in the pastoral letter also posted on this site, though not abortion explicitely.
And I remain a Benedict groupie: I love my German Shepherd.
Far worse than that #2 the leftists see pregnancy as just another STD. They don’t even give this “disease” the minor dignity of being sub-human. Its just another illness or unfortunate problem to to be cut out or medicated away and set them free for their next roll in the hay. And, I too, like #5, love the German Shepherd…what a brilliant light in the darkness.
And from a purely pragmatic point of view, with the rise in abortion comes the decline of population growth and hence the decline of the young ones who can take care of their elders–i.e. Social Security.
Mark Steyn’s book [i] America Alone [/i] details this in a most interesting manner.
But more important, God has said that He knows us as we are present in our mothers’ wombs. That’s enough to put a human face on a “fetus!”
Ah, but you see, drjoan, that’s exactly what a lot of the proponents of abortion are looking for. Take this example from Episcopal Life page:
“I have taken the position that I will not support any charity that aims to help the underprivileged of the world unless it includes a component that strives to limit or reduce population of the target group. I am convinced that help with no effort to contain population probably serves only to increase the number of the underprivileged group.”
Scrooge lives!
Why is it that whenever Benedict XIV speaks, we could easily substitute the headline with: “Pope still Catholic; religious liberals surprised, frustrated” ?
You have to understand, Hippo_Regius, that for 26 years, a certain type of Catholic, with a grim look and clinched jaws, announced that the next pope would be better. Then they got Papa Ratzinger…
The fact of the matter is that not only is the pope Catholic, but based on the Christian moral Tradition, he may be one of the few genuinely Christian church leaders left in a major church in “Christendom.’
Pope Benedict is correct.
When we kill unborn infants, we kill human being to who God has given souls. From that instant of receiving their souls, the ‘unborn’ become equals in their “right to life” with the ‘born.’
This is not just a Christian concept, it stems from the Jewish concept of the “neshama.”
But, the revisionists believe that they are wiser than God and for that, they will receive their reward.
Benedict is surely correct. To see abortion as a human right is so incongruous, it is difficult to parse. But abortion is like divorce; some are necessities. Both should be rare but legal. It is a serious moral crime to bring a child into the world so deformed, so handicapped, that it life is to be utterly miserable. But who are we to judge? The very same people who render judgements all day long, since the power to render judgments is the very essence of living a civilized life.
You not only say, #13, that it is all right to abort a seriously defective child, but you say it is morally wrong not to. But who is to judge what life will be “miserable?” Won’t we begin, under such a regime, to decide that lives that are not “useful” should be eliminated? How about lives that are “useful” but “sub-optimum?” Where does this stop, and what principles will be used to make that decision?
hurrah hurrah for el papa! #3- you made me laugh aloud!!
Thank the Lord he sent Pope Benedict to this godless and foolish generation.
[i]It is a serious moral crime to bring a child into the world so deformed, so handicapped, that it life is to be utterly miserable.[/i]
So why stop at birth. When these miserable creatures do get born, and we see they are miserable, let’s just put them in a plastic bag and put them out of their misery. Perhaps we should spare children the suffering of poverty by gassing them. Yep, Larry, you are definitely onto something.
You analogy is flawed, anyway: divorce is not, per se, a sin. If the bond of matrimony is indissolvible, there still is no sin unless one of the parties attempts another marraige. The murder of unborn children, however: that’s a “necessity”?
#14: Your objections are reasonalbe, of course, and the risks are precisely as you say. But who are we to judge, you ask. The same people, I answer, who make such judgments all the time, of right and wrong, of life and death. Can I guess “in utero” whether severe autism will create a life of misery for itself and is parents. Not with certainty; there’s never certainty. But I can make a good and reasonable guess, and I MUST make it, for failing to make such a judgment, is cowardice.
The potential abuse of such a position is always there and unavoidable. Shall I not make a serviceable cough medicine because it can be used to make crystal meth? Shall I not make guns because they can commit crimes? But we need to assess the potential abuses before we undertake the actions, and so I have implored all of you to watch the scientists at work because the potential for abuse far exceeds the benefits possible. See the entry above on artificial intelligence.Not easy, K, but unavoidable.
The necessity makes me dreadfully uneasy, indeed, but this is because there is such an echoing absence of principles by which such judgments can be made. Larry
See #16’s overkill. Such hyperbole is counterproductive because the very excesses it suggest are unusable as a standard precisely because they are extremes; no debate is possible because exremes make common ground – the criterion for debate – impossible. He left out, for example, the practical good to be derived from shooting all criminals. Wouldn’t tht be a good idea?
Such a position can be derived from my position if you are willing to agree that any proposition can be assessed on the basis of its excesses. LM
Mr. Morse –
There is no common ground here: you are advocating the murder of unborn children based on your presumed duty to make a judgement regarding their quality of like. I stand on completely different ground (as it were). My hyperbole is not an “extreme” of your moderate argument, but the extension of your immoral argument to a logical conclusion.
It seems to me that to make the judgment that a life can be not worth living is to have a view of human worth that is incompatible with the fundamental message of the Gospel. To make the judgment that all human life has intrinsic value in the eyes of God is by no means “cowardice”. And the viewpoint quoted by #8 seems likewise utterly depraved – amazing how the trappings of civilization and the acquisition of wealth can coexist with such disregard for human rights, and scandalous the impudence of the haves to dictate the reproductive rights of the have-nots!
I am not at all unsympathetic to the parents of seriously disabled children; it’s tough, no question. And although I am generally a conservative small-government voter, I do favor public support systems for those among us who really truly can’t take care of themselves.
These arguments are not really from the extremes, Larry. I am living in India (for one more week!). I seldom see disabled people; the ones I do see with crippled limbs are usually beggars. Given the lack of medical care which most of the population suffers, I should see lots of people with split lips, lots of Down Syndrome, spina bifida, and so on. I don’t see such people, because they are either aborted (middle and upper class) or killed at birth (lower classes). The same is true to some extent about little girls — sex ratios are seriously skewed because boy children are preferred. This is an extremely slippery slope you are headed down. Extremely slippery.