Right,the parents of baby Alfie.
When 'a supplement of prudence'
would help against misuse
of what this pope says or writes
Translated from
March 11, 2018
Much discussion has been going on about a judgment by the High Court of Justice in London last February 20 authorizing the doctors at the Alder Hay Children's Hospital in Liverpool to allow baby Alfie Evans to die by suspending his breathing support and nourishment.
It has become controversial for Catholics because Judge Hayden, to justify his decision, cited, among other things, Pope Francis’s message sent to Mons. Vincenzo Paglia of the Pontifical Academy for Life, to be conveyed to a regional meeting of the World Medical Assocation on end-of-life issues, a meeting organized by Mons. Paglia’s academy at the Vatican last November.
Without getting into the merits of the question [euthanasia], I believe it is an opportunity to reflect on this aspect: A civilian judge cites the words of the pope to justify a decision that goes against the moral teaching of the Church. How is that possible? Was the pope’s message not in line with the magisterium of the Church?
It would seem to be, if one reads his text, in which he refers to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, to a CDF declaration on euthanasia in May 1980, and to an address on the subject by Pius XIII in 1957. So the pope’s message did reiterate some firm aspects of Catholic morality. Though one might perhaps remonstrate with a statement towards the end of the message, in which he writes:
“Within democratic societies, these sensitive issues must be addressed calmly, seriously and thoughtfully, in a way open to finding, to the extent possible, agreed solutions, also on the legal level.” But let that be.
Nevertheless, the pope’s message has been used to authorize an action condemned by Catholic morality. Was this a case of abuse on the part of Judge Hayden, or did the pope’s message effectively constitute an assist for that decision?
It seems to me that
objectively (without getting into intentions, which I am not capable of judging),
it was an assist. Why? Because at a time when the debate on euthanasia is particularly heated in society, the pope in his message avoided addressing euthanasia per se, but instead chose to address ‘overzealous treatment’. Not that morality should not also ponder this issue
[how much treatment of difficult cases is justifiably necessary and realistic, and when can such treatment be stopped with moral justification?], but at this point, I don’t think this is the question of the day. Of course, what the pope wrote about overzealous treatment was correct, but it was not relevant to the major end-of-life issue today which is euthanasia.
Some will say,
“But the pope in his message does reaffirm the Church’s position on euthanasia 'which is always wrong, in that the intent of euthanasia is to end life and cause death'.” True, but it is a statement made almost
en passant, in a context where he is exclusively addressing overzealous treatment and the ‘proportionality of care’. Even his reference to the Catechism bears this out. The Catechism dedicates four paragraphs to euthanasia (2276-2279), but the pope only cites #2278 which – nota bene – refers to overzealous treatment.
It seems obvious to me that such a message would have provided the English judge with a beachhead on which to make the decision he did. Indeed, I think we find here an illustration of one of the cases anticipated by the pope in
Evangelii gaudium:
There are times when the faithful, in listening to completely orthodox language, take away something alien to the authentic Gospel of Jesus Christ, because that language is alien to their own way of speaking to and understanding one another. With the holy intent of communicating the truth about God and humanity, we sometimes give them a false god or a human ideal which is not really Christian. In this way, we hold fast to a formulation while failing to convey its substance. This is the greatest danger.
So sometimes, as the pope himself points out,
it is not enough to simply reiterate correct statements, when such statements are not placed in the right context or are not made at the right time and without taking into account what the recipients of the message may effectively perceive. In which case, a ‘supplement of prudence’ would really help.
One cardinal speaks up for Alfie Evans,
but we have not heard from the pope
Translated from
After Charlie Gard, we now have the case of Alfie Evans, 22 months, afflicted with an incurable disease, for whom the High Court of London authorized a planned death by suspending his breathing support and his nourishment.
Like Charlie’s parents, Tom Evans and Kate James, both Catholics, are resisting the execution of the sentence on Alfie every way they can. A tide of prayers and appeals has been generated in their support, many of the appeals personally addressed to Pope Francis.
In fact, there are two upsetting elements in this story.
- The first is that to justify his decision, Judge Anthony Hayden cited a passage from a November 2017 letter of the Pope to Mons. Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
- The second is that
not a word has come from the pope or any other Vatican authority to protest the instrumental use of the pope’s words to justify the death sentence for Baby Alfie.
To make maters worse, Mons. Paglia himself, when questioned by the magazine
Tempi on March 9, justified Hayden’s decision in toto, even his use of the pope’s words. Moreover, Paglia also justified the recent end-of-life law passed in Italy - contrary to the disapproval expressed by the president of the Italian bishops’ conference, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti – citing two ‘authorities’ dear to Paglia who support the new law.
One is the Executive Council of the Union of Catholic Jurists in Italy, headed by Prof. Francesco D’Agostino; and the other is the study group on bioethics of the journal of the Jesuits in Milan, led by Fr. Carlo Casalone, former Jesuit provincial superior in Italy, and Maurizio Chiodi, the moral theologian who made headlines recently for his ‘re-reading’ of Humanae vitae, which he says,
approves the use of artificial contraceptives.
On the other hand, only one voice – rather marginal, at that – has been raised in the hierarchy against the London sentence and the exploitation of the pope’s words. It is that of Cardinal Elio Sgreccia, 90, who headed the Pontifical Academy for Life from 2005-2008, and currently its only honorary member, even though he is certainly not of the same mind as the Academy which was completely overhauled by the pope, with many of its new members open supporters of abortion and/or contraception.
On March 8, Cardinal Sgreccia published on his blog an article entitled "The gift of life" written by Fr. Roberto Colombo, professor of biochemistry at the Catholic University’s Rome Faculty of Medicine and Surgery. It is a commentary opposite to that of Paglia and denounces the wrongness whereby the London judge cited the pope’s words to support his decision.
[I shall not reproduce and translate it here because Colombo's argument simply cites the pope’s words against overzealous treatment, without Fr. Scalese’s observation that euthanasia was only mentioned once in passing in the entire message.]
Marco Tosatti's reaction to the latest outrage from Paglia takes a wider perspective...
Mons. Paglia, Alfie Evans, and the pope’s predilection
for close advisers who have a deplorable past
Translated from
March 11, 2018
The deplorable interview given by Mons. Vincenzo Paglia to Tempi on the Alfie Evans case struck me hard.
- Not so much for the statements he made – which were not surprising from someone who has eulogized the 'spirit of Pannella’
[Italy’s longtime Radical Party leader and proactive advocate of all things anti-Catholic from abortion on demand to homosexuality and same-sex union, who died last year].
- Not so much because the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life should be
a priori suspicious when the pope’s words are used to decree someone’s death.
- Not even so much because, perhaps mistakenly, I observe a vein of superficiality about the interview (and I apologize if I am wrong), when other persons have expressed themselves with far more prudence and profundity on the subject – after all, we are talking here of a human life, aren’t we?
- Not so much because a man who may not be an expert on bioethics but is certainly well-experienced and astute as Paglia ought to have known (or did he know) that the Supreme Court is to review the verdict, and therefore,
there are those who could use his words this time to decide that baby Alfie’s parents do not have the right to seek, even if in vain, something or someone who could give them some hope for their child.
No, Paglia’s words struck me forcibly because they came almost at the same time as statements made by Cardinal Errauuriz on the pope’s recent trip to Chile and on the Barros case. The cardinal wrote a letter to all the bishops of Latin America to explain that the pope’s trip to Chile was not a flop but ‘highly positive’.
He took no responsibility whatsoever for the Karadima scandal nor for that resulting from the pope’s nomination of Mons. Juan Barros as Bishop of Osorno despite protests from the Catholics of Osorno and accusations made against Barros by those who had successfully lodged accusations against Fr. Karadima. All this despite the fact that Errazuriz himself had decided to shelve the original charges against Karadima, saying he did not believe the victims.
[And that he is on the pope's advisory council of 9 cardinals, and ought to have advised him on the Barros nomination and how insisting on it was really counter-productive.]
What does this have to do with Paglia, you may well ask. It’s all of a piece.
- Because Errazuriz, like Paglia, is one of the pope’s good friends and advisers.
- As is Cardinal Mahony, former Archbishop of Los Angeles who had to leave office because of the serious cover-ups he engineered for some sex-offender priests.
- As is Cardinal Danneels, former Archbishop of Brussels, who was documented on tape seeking to cover up for a Belgian bishop who was abusing his own nephew;
- or even the late Cardinal Murphy O’Connor, former Archbishop of London, who had a pending case filed by laymen with the CDF for mismanagement of abuse cases.
The point is that
all these persons are advisers to this pope, and (with the exception of Paglia), were among his grand electors at the time of the Conclave, and thus close to him.
He seems to have a predilection for persons with a colorful past. Think of Mons. Ricca, now spiritual counsel for IOR; or Paglia himself in his previous office as Archbishop of Terni, where he is remembered not just for the homoerotic mural he commissioned for the Cathedral, in which he himself wearing his bishop’s hat, is depicted amid other naked men, but also for the financial mess he left behind. The list could go on, and it’s not a short one.
This Pontiff prides himself in having an excellent memory, and to have always had it. For sure, in matters of governance, persons with a past can present certain advantages – at the very least, one of owing gratitude to the pope for their new privileged status in the Church. But this does not necessarily guarantee their competence for the positions they are named to. Because blind loyalty and competence are not synonymous. On the contrary.
Imagine if Benedict XVI had even just one or two persons close to him who had the questionable character or background of those Bergoglio favors! We would never have heard the end of it. Cardinal Bertone, B16's most unfortunate appointment, may have had issues at the time - mainly doing disservice to Benedict XVI by his bad decisions on corporate matters (luckily caught in time for Benedict to reverse them) - but he was never perceived to be a 'bad' person, just not right for his job. The unfortunate episode of renovating his post-retirement digs at the Vatican with some bills paid for by the Bambino Gesu foundation came while he was Secretary of State for Bergoglio. He tried nothing like that under Benedict XVI, thank God!
Yet here we have a pope who has an entire coterie of courtisans that includes not just pseudo-intellectuals like Spadaro and Tucho Fernandez but shady characters like those mentioned by Tosatti. And everyone in the mainstream media seems to think there is nothing wrong with that, because no one points it out, much less to comment negatively on it.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/03/2018 00:34]