Pope Benedict: Inaction To The End?

Pope still in charge, but nowhere to be seen.

I have renounced to write yesterday about the latest antics of that heretical troop we insist in calling German Catholic Clergy, because my doctor would not have approved; but the life of a blogger is such that he cannot escape the adrenaline and the anger (because he reads the news aggregators, and therefore all the heretical filth lands on his computer screen at some point), and will have to report on the very worst of what is happening around us.

Today is one of those days, and it is another day when the culpable inaction of the present Pontiff comes to light in its entirety.

The German bishops, united in counsel and heresy, have now decided a raped woman can receive the so-called “morning after pill”. The poor men are confused or, more probably, disingenuous, and they still think or say they think that, for some reason we don’t know, an embryo isn’t an embryo until they say it is, and therefore the destruction of said embryo isn’t abortion until they please to call it so. En passant, they forget the Church is against contraception, too; but they are way past these minutiae, aren’t they now…

This is grave enough. This would also, of course, call for a prompt intervention of the Pope. Actually, it is fair to say the first duty of every Pope should be to prevent these situations to arise, and to correct the mistakes and punish those responsible when they do. As widely expected, we have seen nothing of the sort, once again reinforcing the impression that this papacy is a replay of Pope Paul VI’s one, plus Summorum Pontificum.

Alas, worse has happened since. Not only has the Vatican simply not acted – which was largely to be expected – but the present head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Bishop Carrasco, even agrees with them.

In doing so, Bishop Carrasco goes not only against logic, common sense and basic Catholicism, but he even openly contradicts a formal paper of his own organisation on this matter, published in 2000.

The text of this instructive document is published in its entirety at the end of this message for future reference, and because it is very sound reading.

Bishop Carrasco is obviously Pope Benedict’s choice for the job, exactly as Archbishop Paglia and Archbishop Mueller are. It is difficult to find another modern Pope so catastrophically wrong in his appointments, and it is even more difficult to find a justification for his inaction after his appointees, for whose action he will have to answer one day, conduct attack attacks to fundamental tenets of the Catholic church undisturbed. This, obviously, in addition to the attacks already daily moved to Catholic truth from the German clergy, from bishops and Cardinals he either appointed or allowed to remain in place unpunished and even undisturbed.

The sad reality, that I do not read often around the Internet but I think should be said, is that this Pope is the son of the same rotten Vatican II climate which produced the Muellers and The Meisners, the Lehmanns and the Zoellitschs, and the Woelkis of the world. You can take Pope Benedict out of Germany, but you can’t take Germany out of Pope Benedict. The proof of this is in front of our very eyes, with the offensive of the German clergy becoming now outright shameless, in the knowledge nothing will happen in Rome, where a Pope is still in charge, and therefore still responsible.

We can be accessory to other people’s sin by silence, which means that a terrible responsibility rests on the shoulders on this Pope; a responsibility that cannot be excused with an impairing disease, and therefore cannot be excused at all; then last time I looked, weakness in front of the enemy wasn’t a virtue.

I do not agree with those who mourn the end of this papacy. If you ask me, this papacy can’t end too soon. We need a strong Pope, which even the presently reigning Pontiff had at least to good sense to acknowledge.

We might, of course, end up with what they call a “Benedict clone” (God forbid!), and if things go really wrong we could even end up with a worse one (God forbid even more!). But I never thought that one should be satisfied or appeased with leaders being mediocre, just because they could be worse.

The German clergy has polluted the Church in the last fifty years. It is time this influence is stopped.

Please Lord, please give us a strong, orthodox Pope.

Mundabor

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PONTIFICAL ACADEMY FOR LIFE

STATEMENT ON THE SO-CALLED
“MORNING-AFTER PILL”

As is commonly known, the so-called morning-after pill recently went on sale in Italian pharmacies. It is a well-known chemical product (of the hormonal type) which has frequently – even in the past week – been presented by many in the field and by the mass media as a mere contraceptive or, more precisely, as an “emergency contraceptive”, which can be used within a short time after a presumably fertile act of sexual intercourse, should one wish to prevent the continuation of an unwanted pregnancy. The inevitable critical reactions of those who have raised serious doubts about how this product works, namely, that its action is not merely “contraceptive” but “abortifacient”, have received the very hasty reply that such concerns appear unfounded, since the morning-after pill has an “anti-implantation” effect, thus implicitly suggesting a clear distinction between abortion and interception (preventing the implantation of the fertilized ovum, i.e., the embryo, in the uterine wall).

Considering that the use of this product concerns fundamental human goods and values, to the point of involving the origins of human life itself, the Pontifical Academy for Life feels the pressing duty and definite need to offer some clarifications and considerations on the subject, reaffirming moreover already well-known ethical positions supported by precise scientific data and reinforced by Catholic doctrine.

* * *

1. The morning-after pill is a hormone-based preparation (it can contain oestrogens, oestrogen/progestogens or only progestogens) which, within and no later than 72 hours after a presumably fertile act of sexual intercourse, has a predominantly “anti-implantation” function, i.e., it prevents a possible fertilized ovum (which is a human embryo), by now in the blastocyst stage of its development (fifth to sixth day after fertilization), from being implanted in the uterine wall by a process of altering the wall itself.

The final result will thus be the expulsion and loss of this embryo.

Only if this pill were to be taken several days before the moment of ovulation could it sometimes act to prevent the latter (in this case it would function as a typical “contraceptive”).

However, the woman who uses this kind of pill does so in the fear that she may be in her fertile period and therefore intends to cause the expulsion of a possible new conceptus; above all, it would be unrealistic to think that a woman, finding herself in the situation of wanting to use an emergency contraceptive, would be able to know exactly and opportunely her current state of fertility.

2. The decision to use the term “fertilized ovum” to indicate the earliest phases of embryonic development can in no way lead to an artificial value distinction between different moments in the development of the same human individual. In other words, if it can be useful, for reasons of scientific description, to distinguish with conventional terms (fertilized ovum, embryo, fetus, etc.) different moments in a single growth process, it can never be legitimate to decide arbitrarily that the human individual has greater or lesser value (with the resulting variation in the duty to protect it) according to its stage of development.

3. It is clear, therefore, that the proven “anti-implantation” action of themorning-after pill is really nothing other than a chemically induced abortion. It is neither intellectually consistent nor scientifically justifiable to say that we are not dealing with the same thing.

Moreover, it seems sufficiently clear that those who ask for or offer this pill are seeking the direct termination of a possible pregnancy already in progress, just as in the case of abortion. Pregnancy, in fact, begins with fertilization and not with the implantation of the blastocyst in the uterine wall, which is what is being implicitly suggested.

4. Consequently, from the ethical standpoint the same absolute unlawfulness of abortifacient procedures also applies to distributing, prescribing and taking the morning-after pill. All who, whether sharing the intention or not, directly co-operate with this procedure are also morally responsible for it.

5. A further consideration should be made regarding the use of themorning-after pill in relation to the application of [Italian] Law 194/78, which in Italy regulates the conditions and procedures for the voluntary termination of pregnancy.

Saying that the pill is an “anti-implantation” product, instead of using the more transparent term “abortifacient”, makes it possible to avoid all the obligatory procedures required by Law 194 in order to terminate a pregnancy (prior interview, verification of pregnancy, determination of growth stage, time for reflection, etc.), by practising a form of abortion that is completely hidden and cannot be recorded by any institution. All this seems, then, to be in direct contradiction to the correct application of Law 194, itself debatable.

6. In the end, since these procedures are becoming more widespread, we strongly urge everyone who works in this sector to make a firm objection of moral conscience, which will bear courageous and practical witness to the inalienable value of human life, especially in view of the new hiddenforms of aggression against the weakest and most defenceless individuals, as is the case with a human embryo.

Vatican City, 31 October 2000.

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