Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “The Christian conscience has a deep need to be nourished and strengthened by the many profound militant motivations in favour of the right to life. This is a right which demands to be supported by everyone because it is the most fundamental of human rights”. On 24 February the Pope received delegates participating in the 13th general assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life, and in the international congress entitled "Christian conscience in support of the right to life," being held in the Vatican on February 23 and 24.
Referring to what is stated in Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium vitae, Pope Benedict XVI recalled that Christians are continually called to “face the many attacks to which the right to life is exposed. In this they know they can rely on motivations profoundly rooted in natural law which can therefore be share by all people of upright conscience”. If much has been done to make these motivations better known among Christians and in the civil society, it is also true that “all over the world attacks against the right to life have multiplied assuming even new forms”.
In Latin America and in many developing countries there is growing pressure to legalise abortion and promote population control policies, “although these methods are known to be pernicious also on the economic and social level”. In the most developed countries “there is growing interest for most advanced bio-technological research to install subtle and widespread Eugenic methods even obsessive search for the ‘perfect child’, with spreading artificial procreation and various forms of diagnosis to guarantee selection”, laws are passed to legalise abortion, and there is increasing pressure to legalise alternatives to married life. “In these situations the conscience, often overwhelmed by collective pressure - the Pontiff observed -, is not sufficiently aware of the gravity of the problems at stake, and the strength of the strongest weakens and appears to paralyse even those with the best of intentions.”
Hence the urgent need to appeal to consciences, especially those of Christians. “The formation of a conscience which is truthful, because it is founded on truth and upright, because it is determined to follow its dictates without contradiction, betrayal is a difficult and delicate but indispensable task. And sad to say this task is hampered by many factors ” the Pope continued referring the a growing rejection of Christian tradition and the idea of some that “to be free the individual conscience must be free of all reference to tradition and all references based on reason. Conscience, an act of reason aimed at the truth of things, ceases to be light and becomes simply a backdrop against which the media society throws the most contradictory images and impulses.”
Today it is necessary to “re-educate to the desire for knowledge of the authentic truth, to defence of one’s freedom to choose faced with masse behaviour and the lure of propaganda, to nurture a passion for moral beauty and a clear conscience”. This is a task for parents and educators, and for the Christian community for its faithful. “We cannot be content with a fleeting contact with the principal truths of the faith in childhood, what is needed is a path to accompany the different stages of life, opening the mind and heart to welcome the fundamental duties on which the existence of the individual and the community are founded - Pope Benedict XVI said -... Without continual and qualified formation still more problematic is the capacity for judgement with regard to problems posed by bio-medicine in matters of human sexuality, unborn life, procreation, treatment of patients and the most helpless sectors of society.”
The Pope called on families and parish communities to support formation for young people and adults: “besides Christian formation to know the person of Christ, his Word and the Sacraments, in teaching the faith the children and adolescents it is necessary to include the discourse on moral values regarding the human body, sexuality, human love, procreation, respect for life in all its stages and behaviour contrary to these principal values. In this specific field the work of priests must be opportunely assisted by lay educators, including specialists, with the task to guide ecclesial realities with their science illuminated by the faith”.
Pope Benedict XVI called on scientists, doctors, legislators and politicians to contribute “by teaching and by example” to “reawaken the clear and eloquent voice of conscience in many people’s hearts”. He recalled the teaching of the Council which said lay people “should learn how to distinguish carefully between those rights and duties which are theirs as members of the Church, and those which they have as members of human society. Let them strive to reconcile the two, remembering that in every temporal affair they must be guided by a Christian conscience, since even in secular business there is no human activity which can be withdrawn from God's dominion." (Lumen gentium, 36). Last of all the Pope said: “life is the first good received God, the foundation of all other rights; and to guarantee equal right to life for all is a duty and on it the future of humanity depends”. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 26/2/2007 - righe 63, parole 902)
