After the Academy for Life,
the JPII Institute for Family Studies
gets a new face under Bergoglio
[In both cases, the face is embodied in Mons. Paglia]
June 28, 2017
After every prospective member is carefully sifted [for ideological appropriateness, one supposes], the new members of the Pontifical Academy for Life appointed on June 13 by Pope Francis have new surprises in store every day.
The same thing is going on at the Lateran University-based John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family - like the Academy for Life, assigned by this pope to be under the supervision of Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia.
At the Academy, the first big uproar was over the appointment of the Anglican moral theologian Nigel Biggar, who openly advocates abortion
up to “18 weeks after conception.”
Asked to comment on this appointment by Vatican Insider, Mons. Paglia sought to justify the appointment by asserting that Biggar - apart from words he exchanged in 2011 with the staunchly pro-abortion philosopher Peter Singer - “has never written anything on the issue of abortion” and that on the end of life “he has a position absolutely in keeping with the Catholic one.”
But it didn’t take much to discover that neither statement corresponds to the truth, and that Biggar has expressed his liberal positions on abortion in a 2015 article for the
Journal of Medical Ethics, and on euthanasia in his 2004 book
Aiming To Kill. The Ethics of Suicide and Euthanasia.
[Is there any other way to put it? Lying has become SOP for Bergoglians starting with the founder himself!]
Then it was noted that other new members of the academy are rather far from the Church’s positions:
- Katarina Le Blanc of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, who uses stem cells taken from human embryos fertilized in vitro;
- Japanese Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka, who in spite of his fame for producing pluripotent stem cells artificially has by no means ruled out continued research on the use of embryonic stem cells, and explains why in an article in the scientific journal
Cell & Stem Cell.
- the Israeli Jew Avraham Steinberg, who admits abortion should be allowed in some cases and who approves of the destruction of 'unwanted' human embryos for scientific use;
- Maurizio Chiodi, a leading Italian moral theologian, who in his book
Ethics of life makes allowances for artificial reproduction,
if it is supported by an “intention of fertility.”
[But what other intention is there for artificial reproduction??? To create embryos that can be destroyed for scientific research? How diabolically monstrous is that!]
Meanwhile, as at the Academy, the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family is also about to get new statutes, via papal chirograph.
First of all,
the name of the institute will be changed, dropping the name of the Pope who created it,
[Who would have thought any pope would have the shameless chutzpah to do this???] but will be called “Institute of Studies on the Family” or something similar, and will be incorporated within the Pontifical Lateran University under the direct authority of its current rector, Bishop Enrico dal Covolo.
The proponents of the new course are justifying this loss of autonomy for the institute saying it would reinforce the value of the graduate degrees in moral theology, doctorates, and master’s degrees that it confers, and that it would be able to expand its curriculum by integrating it with that of the university and extending its international scope.
But apart from the fact that the John Paul II Institute already has numerous branches in Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Australia, one initial practical effect of this change will be that its faculty can be reshaped at will, bringing in new professors and new scholars from the Lateran University and from other universities, pontifical or not.
This would suffice to get around the wall of doctrinal discipline erected by its current professors, almost all of them united in holding firm to the course of John Paul II and the institute’s first three presidents: Carlo Caffarra, Angelo Scola, and Livio Melina.
Melina was removed last summer and replaced with the Milanese theologian PierAngelo Sequeri, contextually with the appointment of Archbishop Paglia as Grand Chancellor of the institute. Scola, who went on to become cardinal, then Patriarch of Venice and currently archbishop of Milan, was the big loser to Jorge Mario Bergoglio in the conclave of 2013.
Caffarra, who also became a cardinal and is now archbishop emeritus of Bologna, is known for his frankness of speech toward Pope Francis. He is, of course, one of the four cardinals who have publicly asked him to bring clarity on the “dubia” generated by his magisterium specifically on the subject of marriage and family, and have recently written to him asking to be received in audience. In both cases without the pope dignifying them with a reply.
One example of the Wojtylian course inherited from the previous management and along which the present group of professors continue is the “Handbook” on the interpretation of “Amoris Laetitia” edited by professors José Granados, Stephan Kampowski, and Juan José Pérez-Soba, in complete continuity with the preceding magisterium of the Church.
But the first changes of allegiance are showing up, too. The most sensational is that of Gilfredo Marengo, since 2013 a professor of theological anthropology at the institute. He was one of Scola’s favorite disciples when he was president, and even afterward, but now he has cast his lot with Mons. Paglia.
It is not by chance that Marengo has been made coordinator of the commission (which includes Institute president Sequeri) that is supposed to open the way to
a reinterpretation of Paul VI’s encyclical on contraception, Humanae Vitae, in the light of “Amoris Laetitia.” [The horror, the horror! The hubris, the hubris!]
It remains to be seen what will happen with the satellites of the institute, which are also hardly inclined to submit to the new course. The most powerful is that of Washington, with a pugnacious faculty wholly on the Wojtylian course and well financed by the Knights of Columbus, whose supreme head, Carl Anderson, is also professor and vice-president there.
In any case, the students and professors still at the John Paul II Institute are forging ahead, without giving up.
In the next issue of the Institute’s magazine,
Anthropotes, there will be an article by a doctoral student from Milan, Alberto Frigerio, presenting a thorough critique of the book [
B]“Amoris laetitia: a turning point for moral theology” [A Satanic turning-point, indeed!] edited by Stephan Goertz and Caroline Witting, published in Italy by San Paolo, and which expresses the most progressive positions of German theology.
It was with none other than the most noted 'moral theologian' of Germany today, Eberhard Schockenhoff – author of a recent essay in
Stimmen der Zeit that made a big stir - that dismissed Institute president Livio Melina crossed swords during a conference in Nysa, Silesia, for a hundred Polish moral theologians, in the presence of two auxiliary bishops from Poznan and Lublin.
The episcopal conference of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden asked him to lecture during a day of study on “Amoris Laetitia” held in Hamburg two months ago.
In Poland, Melina contradicted the positions of Schockenhoff point by point, demonstrating the baselessness of the presumed “paradigm shift” that many associate with the magisterium of Pope Francis. And the bishops of Poland, in their guidelines for the application of “Amoris Laetitia,” completely agree with him.
Melina’s talk, given on June 12, will also be published in the next issue of
Anthropotes, with the title: “The challenges of ‘Amoris laetitia’ for a moral theologian.”
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/06/2017 15:57]