Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - The latest news is that now Spain has a new law on a so-called Biological Will, “the right to be able to choose to die with dignity” (Sic!). Although this is not the place for a detailed analysis of the bill, it is necessary to point out the persistence of a relative trend which has marked that country for several years. A trend which fails to correspond to the actual sentiments of the Catholic people of Spain, but which is forced on them through the media and ideologically by a political idea determinant rather than determined, with regard to the will of the people.
Although the “secularist zapaterian wind” appears to have ceased, its consequences are still visible and will continue to be seen until it becomes absolutely clear that any legislative measures against the human person, inevitably in the end harm society undermining the whole nation.
Unfortunately this observation alone, reveals the subordination of the person to the state, typical of certain ideologies of a secularist nature.
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “ Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia […] is morally unacceptable. Thus an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person ”. (Cf. CCC n. 2277).
Now Italy faces a major task: a clamp down on Europe's trend towards self-destruction. The 'old' continent, as the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said, has fallen into a state of “self-hate”, and is on its way apparently inexorably to “taking leave from history ” (Cf. Pera-Ratzinger, “Senza Radici”, Milan 2005).
Italy, as if has often happened in history, can and must represent the workshop of Europe's moral reawakening: the place, the space of thought and civilisation, in which to reaffirm, with confidence and conviction, that the human person is absolutely untouchable with regard to any sort of manipulation; the values of human life, death, the family and education cannot be “submitted” to the laws of individuals or governments, instead they obey the dignity and the structure of the human being, and laws cannot fail to recognise and sustain this untouchable nature.
In order to shoulder such a great task, of historical importance, Italy has before it only one path: the family.
Without wasting, indeed by putting to use the important legacy of last year's 'Family Day', from which emerged proposals and persons capable of giving new life to the family and with it, society and the common good, it is urgent and necessary to put the natural and public institute of the family back at the centre of the country's social, political and economic attention.
Every initiative in favour of the family, is in actual fact, a reality and an initiative in favour of the whole of society, since, the family safeguards and promotes the values on which the whole of society is founded: human life, education, respect for others, solidarity, care for the vulnerable and the elderly, and the best of everything which has been generated by the humanist and Christian culture.
The country should not lose the important intuition of Family Day which placed the family at the centre of the debate: only through the family, will Italy really change, make a fresh start, grow and become a cultural workshop capable of offering new answers to herself and to Europe. To prevent the 'old' continent, from “taking leave of history”. (Agenzia Fides 24/4/2008; righe 42, parole 527)
