Yesterday, Sandro Magister posted a lengthy post
chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/?eng=y
about the case of the 9-year-old Brazilian girl whose twin pregnancy (resulting from rape by her stepfather) was aborted medically - about whom the fairly new president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Mons. Rino Fisichella, wrote a controversial front-page editorial for L'Osservatore Romano last March that was approving of the abortion.
For a number of reasons, I decided against posting it right away, but today on his blog, Magister provides additional eyebrow-raising information about this confused case, which should supplement a reading of his longer article (and an accompanying article refuting Fisichella's position, written by a Belgian theologian who is a member of three pontifical academies, including the Pontifical Academy for Life, and who decided to raise the issue to the Pope himself].
The Fisichella episode ties in with two other incidents this week in which ranking Curial officials have made questionable statements reported in the media as 'Vatican statements' of "Vatican positions' even if they were stated as the personal opinion of the prelate speaking.
One was by Mons. Agostino Marchetto, an official of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (and a respected scholar of Vatican-II) who denounced as "xenophobic and anti-Christian" a draft legislation by the Italian Parliament which would regulate the treatment and the actions of illegal immigrants. It prompted a clarification from both the Vatican spokesman and the Italian bishops' conference that the prelate was speaking for himself.
The other was by the Vatican Archivist, Mons. Sergio Pagano, who commented during a presentation of the new book containing all the documentation of Galileo's trails by the Roman Inquisition that "The Church should learn from the Galileo episode that it should not speak prematurely about ongoing research such as those on stem cells and genetics".
Pagano is neither a biologist nor a theologian, as even the secular Italian media pointed out, and in any case, the Church opposes embryonic stem cell research, not all stem-cell research, and it opposes the use of new genetic technology for eugenics, not genetic research in general! He promptly issued a clarification.
All this raises the question of a lamentable lack of prudence and discretion on the part of ranking prelates who should know better, because when they say something in public these are inevitably reported as "Vatican statements' by virtue of the positions they hold.
However, the most troubling and controversial of recent cases continues to be Mons. Fisichella's 'exception-making' on the principle of abortion, in a case where the health of the pregnant girl was not an issue.
Here is a translation of Magister's blog.
Vatican 'secrecy' - but not really:
Pro-life academicians want their president
to explain his position but he refuses;
so does the CDF and the Secretariat of State -
and now they want the Pope to step in
Translated from
July 4, 2009
To the facts published in yesterday's article in
www.chiesa about the controversy over the abortion of a twin pregnancy in a 9-year-old Brazilian girl, some important behind the scenes facts must be added.
The article by Mons. Rino Fisichella, published March 15 on Page 1 of
L'Osservatore Romano, was striking not only or that it said and how it was published but because Fisichella is the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
Well, 27 out of the 46 members of the Academy wrote a joint letter on April 4 to Fisichella, asking him to correct the 'erroneous' position he had espoused in the article.
Fisichella answered them on April 21, declining to do so.
[Come on, what reasons did he give????]
On May 1, 21 of the signatories wrote Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, requesting the CDF to issue a clarificatory note on the Church doctrine about abortion.
The letter was delivered to Levada on May 4, but there was no response. The academicians were told by an official at the CDF that their letter had been sent to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, "because Fisichella wrote the article at Bertone's request".
[Now this gets really hairy-scary! Why ever would Cardinal Bertone have rushed to make a federal case out of the Brazilian incident? This was just a few days before the condoms controversy, but it had received a lot of attention in the Brazilian and French media, although apparently Mons. Fisichella was not in full possession of the facts when he wrote the article. It got pushed out of the 'hot issues' in Brazil and France after the Pope made his statement about condoms and AIDS.]
Two members of the Academy therefore decided to send the Pope directly a dossier on the entire case.
On June 8, Benedict XVI was said to have discussed the case with Bertone and ordered publication of a declaration that would clarify the Church stand on abortion
[presumably one that would cover delicate cases such as when the pregnancy happens to a child!]
Such a statement has yet to be published.
There are those who oppose its publication in
L'Osservatore Romano [which had previously tarnished itself further by refusing to publish the reply of the Brazilian bishops involved in the case, to Fisichella's article which, they point out, was written without full knowledge of the facts and without even consulting them].
These quarters feel that the clarification should be given through reserved channels and only to the bishops and the academicians involved in the case.
This is madness! It is as though Bertone and Fisichella have realized how 'rash' they were to begin with, and would now like to sweep their embarrassment under the rug. But it's the Church and the Pope who bear the brunt of being seemingly inconsistent about applying the doctrine on abortion, which also leaves in confusion all those faithful who are aware of this controversy!
Both Bertone and Fisichella - like Marchetto and Pagano - are obviously intelligent men who would not have reached where they are if they were stupid.
One can only conclude that ego can get in the way so much that even prelates like them - whose loyalty to the Pope and the the Church one cannot doubt, either - find self-assertion to be more irresistible than consideration of the larger picture, namely, what is good for the Church and for the faithful.
That is why we all need to continually pray for the men and women of the Church - because the Pope cannot do everything by himself nor without the intelligent cooperation of those who work with him and everyone else who carries out the work of the Church.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/02/2010 03:07]