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Recent remarks from the president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life indicate that the Catholic Church continues to pivot away from defending the most vulnerable in their earliest and latest stages of existence.
Cardinal Vincenzo Paglia told an Italian journalism conference April 21 that for the sake of preserving the common societal good, the church would accept laws supporting assisted suicide.
“It cannot be excluded that in our society, a legal mediation is practicable that allows assisted suicide,” said Paglia, alluding to a judgement in 2019 from Italy’s Constitutional Court outlining limited conditions for assisted suicide. Patients must be “kept alive by life-sustaining treatments and suffering from an irreversible pathology, a source of physical or psychological suffering that he considers intolerable, but fully capable of making free and informed decisions,” it states.
The cardinal then referenced a bill the Italian Parliament is considering to expand those conditions.
“The bill approved by the Chamber of Deputies basically went along these lines,” Paglia said. “Personally, I would not practice assisting suicide, but I understand that legal mediation can constitute the greatest common good concretely possible in the conditions in which we find ourselves.”
One week before Paglia’s remarks, the Netherlands announced it approved euthanasia for children younger than 12.
Paglia’s comments drew immediate criticism. The John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family, which has no connection to the Vatican, demanded his resignation. Damian Thompson, who covers the Catholic Church for The Spectator in Britain, referred to the cardinal’s previous remarks on abortion in this scathing tweet:
“This Pontifical Academy of Death strikes again. It doesn’t matter what clarifications Paglia issues; the fact that he says this stuff openly illustrates the theological chaos of the Bergoglio pontificate.”
As FrontPage Magazine reported in September, Paglia stated that the church would not oppose Italy’s Law 194, which legalized abortions in the first trimester and permits them afterward only if the mother’s life is in danger or if the fetus shows “serious abnormalities or malformations,” the law states.
“I believe at this point that Law 194 is a pillar of our social life,” he said in August. When pressed whether the law was up for debate, he replied, “No, absolutely not.”
Tommaso Scandroglio, reporter for the Catholic newspaper La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, perfectly described the impact: “It is as if the president of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League is declaring himself in favor of the Holocaust.”
Paglia’s remarks on assisted suicide not only contradict Catholic teaching but also Pope Francis’ public statements. The church’s catechism calls euthanasia “murder.”
“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 and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator,” the catechism elaborates. “The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded.”
The catechism also precludes assisted suicide, even if a patient requests it.
“Even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted,” it says. “The use of painkillers to alleviate the sufferings of the dying, even at the risk of shortening their days, can be morally in conformity with human dignity if death is not willed as either an end or a means, but only foreseen and tolerated as inevitable Palliative care is a special form of disinterested charity. As such it should be encouraged.”
In a general audience 15 months before Paglia’s remarks on assisted suicide, Francis said the following:
“We must accompany people towards death, but not provoke death or facilitate any form of suicide. Remember that the right to care and treatment for all must always be prioritized, so that the weakest, particularly the elderly and the sick, are never rejected. Life is a right, not death, which must be welcomed, not administered.”
So why does Paglia still have his position?
Francis is applying the tactics of Fabian socialists to ignite the doctrinal change he desires. Francis’ public support for historic teaching mollifies inattentive Catholics. But his unwillingness to discipline favored subordinates who state diametrically opposed positions reveals his true intentions.
Indeed, those subordinates are the tools Francis uses to expedite his desired changes.
Take abortion, as FrontPage Magazine has reported in depth. On the one hand, Francis equated procuring an abortion to “hiring a hitman,” the catechism describes abortion as a “moral evil,” and canon law demands Catholics who persist “in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion…without previous sacramental confession.”
Nevertheless, the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, offered a tepid response to the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in June. An editorial defined the issue as “a question of developing political choices that promote conditions … in favor of life” by “ensuring adequate sexual education, guaranteeing health care accessible to all and preparing legislative measures … overcoming existing inequalities.”
More importantly, the head of the Vatican’s highest theological body dissuaded American bishops in 2021 from withholding communion from Catholic politicians who support abortion. Those politicians include two of Francis’ favorites: Joe Biden, the virtual president, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker. Both support Francis’ primary focus on environmental sustainability and economic redistribution.
“It would be misleading to give the impression that abortion and euthanasia alone constitute the only grave matters of Catholic moral and social teaching that demand the fullest level of accountability on the part of Catholics,” wrote Cardinal Luis Ladaria, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Like Paglia, Ladaria retains his position. So does Bologna Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, considered a possible papal successor, who called Law 194 “an important secular solution, so much so, I think, that nobody intends to call it into question.”
Take gender ideology, as FrontPage Magazine also reported in depth. Though Francis has called it “ideological colonization,” and Ladaria’s body denied German bishops in 2021 the authority to bless same-sex unions, Francis endorses three subordinates who support them: the Rev. James Martin, San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy and Luxembourg Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich.
Martin, one of Francis’ communications advisors, uses his various platforms to promote gender ideology, including transgender surgery for children. McElroy called for “radical inclusion” of all LGBTQ Catholics, regardless of whether they repent from homosexual sex, which both the catechism and the Bible call immoral.
Hollerich, whom Francis appointed to his circle of closest advisors in March, even said he rejects church teaching on homosexuality. Martin, a fellow Jesuit, went so far as to question “whether the biblical judgement is correct.”
All three men’s positions reflect a trending view among Francis’ acolytes in Catholic leadership: Moral doctrine depends on human consensus, not divine revelation, as Paglia stated at the journalism conference.
“The Catholic Church does not have a package of ready-to-wear, ready-made truths, as if it were a distributor of pills of truth,” he said. “Theological thought evolves in history, in dialogue with the Magisterium and with the experience of the People of God in a dynamic of mutual enrichment.
“The Church’s intervention and witness, inasmuch as she too participates in public, intellectual, political and juridical debate, is situated on the level of culture and dialogue between consciences. The contribution of Christians is given within the different cultures, neither above – as if they possessed a truth given a priori – nor below – as if believers were bearers of a respectable opinion, but detached from history. Between believers and non-believers, there is a relationship of mutual learning.”
A professor of moral theology at St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y., the Rev. Thomas Berg, strongly disagrees.
“That’s a sad caricature of how we come to know moral truth. Missing words from Paglia’s remarks: Jesus, Gospel, grace, intrinsic evil,” Berg tweeted before issuing his ultimate rebuke to Paglia:
“His idiotic remarks serve zero purpose in the cause of defending the dignity of human life and overcoming throw-away culture.”
Yet those remarks serve a fundamental purpose in Francis’ cause of remolding the Catholic Church into an ally of secularist, materialist, globalist utopians.
Lets be honest, the Catholic Church lost its moral credibility by the 9th century.
Idolizing infallible indecencies indicate irreconcilable inspirations…. ironically immoral.
That late, huh? 😉
Let’s be honest, Christianity leads to theocracy and the Catholic Church has always wanted to regain its theocracy and make it truly, catholic, which means universal, which means global, which means globalism.
Towards that end it makes perfect, logical, strategic, sense to join forces with the communists and the Muslims to destroy their common enemy, Capitalism, and then fight each other for power.
The Counter Reformation lives on.
“There is a precedent for their strategy. In the German election of 1933, the communists supported the Nazis, on the premise that they could fight each other for power later, but must first destroy their common enemy, capitalism. Today, Catholicism and communism may well cooperate, on the premise that they will fight each other for power later, but must first destroy their common enemy, the individual, by forcing mankind to unite to form one neck ready for one leash.” – Requiem for Man, Ayn Rand
Eugenics was and still is, a scientific experiment led by rational reasoning people.
You obviously have no idea what reason. rationality. or science are.
It’s a wonder you don’t include Phrenology, Freudianism, Global Warming, and Alchemy in your list of “rational sciences”.
But you do? You manage to include Objectivism in that list of yours as a “rational science”
Let’s be honest? Really? You…being honest? You are incapable of honesty. Just an anti-religious agenda that You have concocted and cobbled together from the works of the rest of the frauds in your particular religion.
You couldn’t find honesty with two hands and flashlight.
“Throw-away culture.”
I think the church lost it’s way, when so many others did, in the late 60’s.
Society seems to have gone steadily downhill since then.
Embracing the casual, rejection of formality and ceremony, removing Latin from mass, nuns no longer wearing habits. Hymns replaced by 60’s feel-good tunes.
The selection of Pope Francis, which I guess we can call “assisted suicide”.
The big change came with Varican II, which, among other things, replaced the infallibility of the Pope with the infallibality of the Church, thus making the Vatican an entity ruled by committee (the College of Cardinals) that by Papal decree. I was raised Catholic. I’m old enough to have seen these changes in action.
The College of Cardinals was not invented in the 1960’s. Bergoglio has pretty well destroyed it, not put it “in charge.”
True. The College of Cardinals was invented in 1150, and their authority evolved over the centuries. Here’s a good article about them (if I’m allowed to post it…)
https://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/documentazione/documents/cardinali_documentazione/cardinali_documentazione_generale_en.html#The%20College%20of%20Cardinals
I totaly agree! I’ve seen the gradual deteriorization of the church founded by Christ, due to the “worldly roaches” coming out of Vatican II. This is probably the Third Secret of Fatima coming to life before our eyes! Let those who have eyes see the truth! Let those who have ears….hear! Christ said: “GO AND SIN NO MORE”! But now, we have Cardinals and Bishops encouraging others to sin….going against The Lord, Himself, and Holy Scripture!
The Catholic church is woke, and so are many other denominations. Many synagogues are suffering from wokeness.
Although I despise the Islamic religion, I admit there is much it teaches which I agree. Muslims seem to get the concept of holiness better than a lot of Christians. They are comfortable with hierarchy and gender differences. They are not infected by wokeness that I can tell.
As Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff has stated and predicted, religion is more dangerous to freedom, liberty, and capitalism than socialism. America on its present course will eventually collapse into a theocracy.
He has said over and over that Christianity prepared the ground for socialism and socialism is preparing the ground back to theocracy.
If you want to maintain a totalitarian state that lasts more than 75 or 100 years, a totalitarian state that lasts indefinitely for a third reich, another thousand years, the only way to do it is with religion.
Socialism is a religious fish out of its religious waters and must jump back into religion to last indefinitely.
The problem with that analysis is that the “woke” activists in the United States hold contempt for any religion that either doesn’t conform to their ideology or they can’t exploit for their own purposes. It might be more accurate to say that Marxism, Nazism and “woke-ism” are, at least, pseudo-religions with their own creeds and mythologies (bourgeois oppression of the proletariat, excessive Jewish influence, “white supremacy,” respectively) that demand ultimate subservience.
Marxism in all its forms is religion disguised as rational science. The objective identification of Marxism in all its forms is to identify it as pseudo-science, or crypto-religion, religion in hidden form, not pseudo-religion.
The reason Marxism is aligning more strongly with Islam, right now, is because Christianity has become weakened, leashed, and diluted by the cultural ascendancy and dominance of reason since the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment, a transformation that Islam and the Muslim world never went through. But give it time, reason as the dominant cultural force in the West is collapsing as we speak, Wokism is a current result, Nazism was an earlier result. The West has been going through a slow collapse of reason since 1781 when Kant published his attack on reason, “The Critique of Pure Reason”.
“Religion versus America” – Leonard Peikoff
Just as no one cares about you, no one cares about your boyfriend Lenny Peekaboo.
But at least now I know where you got your crackpot idea about “Christianity preparing the ground for socialism and socialism preparing the ground back to theocracy.”
I thought you were a paranoid mess all by yourself. I guess not. You can’t even come up with your own silly ideas.
I’m still waiting for that theocracy to take hold, just like it did in the European Union, the Soviet Union and Communist China. Oh wait………………………………it never happened.
Golly gee gosheroonie. Swing and a miss again.
it is a sad sad thing this Communist who calls himself Pope and likens himself to Jesus by living outside the Vatican… costing an annual cost of $2,000,000 just for the show of pretend… Propaganda in the Vatican… visited by fellow Communists Obama Michael Moore Pelosi Biden and other prominent Communists to solidify their solidarity in the Communist goal of Global Communist Government as warned by Our Lady of Fatima… who also by the way, showed the little children, Hell and all the souls suffering and spoke of all the souls that would be taken by SATAN’s lies, and find themselves in eternal damnation. for those who have fallen into the belief there is no God nor Heaven nor Hell… for those who believe in genderism and socialism and communism and hateism and racism and all the other trickery of the fallen one… theirs will be the souls who suffer eternally… prayer and the rosary and giving up suffering for the souls who are the greatest in need.. the Catholic Church under the corrupt Cardinals and Bishops desire nothing less than the destruction of traditional Catholicism and the destruction of America.
He doesn’t live outside the Vatican. He doesn’t live in the Apostolic Palace.
Bergoglio promotes every junk-science hoax whose object is the murder of billions of people. The entire Catholic hierarchy, except Carlo Maria Viganò, has participated in the 3-year conspiracy of silence regarding everything related to the Covid hoax. At the moment, Americans are dying at the rate of 600,000 per year. No US bishop has uttered a syllable of warning to the people concerning the death shots. The only thing protecting the bishops from violence is the fact that it has not occurred to anyone, in years, to wonder what the bishops think about anything.
Do they still support aa President(Biden)who supports Abortion?
Sadly, yes. Biden and the Catholic bishops have the exact same political and ideological agenda. So do Biden and Francis. The American bishops, therefore, are quite willing to look the other way concerning abortion, as is the Vatican, which I’ve reported for FrontPage numerous times.
Biden is one of these scoundrels who manipulates his religion to make himself look good politically. He probably gives less of a damn about real Catholicism than Stalin did.