Busy Pope

It seems every time I turn around – or sit down at the computer – Pope Benedict has come out with another interesting homily, address or somesuch. I’m going to try to look at what he’s been saying over the past couple of weeks, starting with what he’s had to say about life.

(Most of the English versions of these texts are going to be found at either Zenit or the Papa Ratzinger Forum, since few have them have been officially translated yet.)

This year is the 40th anniversary of the encyclical Humanae Vitae  – July 25 was the date of its promulgation. On May 10, the Pope addressed participants in a conference on the encyclical, a conference sponsored by the Pontifical Lateran University. A translation, from PRF (scroll down)

Your contributions now form part of a vast production which has been growing in the course of decades, on an issue that is so controversial but nonetheless so decisive for the future of mankind.

Already, the Second Vatican Council, in the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes, addressed men of science, asking them to join forces to reach a unity of knowledge and a consolidated certainty on the conditions that could favor an ‘honest regulation of human procreation’ (GS, 52).

My predecessor of venerated memory, the Servant of God Paul VI, published on July 25, 1968, the encyclical letter Humanae vitae. That document became very quickly a sign of contradiction.

Elaborated in the light of anguished decision, it constitutes a significant act of courage in reaffirming the doctrine and tradition of the Church. That text, so often misunderstood and wrongly interpreted, provoked much discussion if only because it provided the beginnings of a profound dispute that has marked the lives of entire generations.

Forty years since its publication, that teaching not only manifests its truth unchanged but also reveals the farsightedness with which the problem was confronted.

Indeed, it describes conjugal love is described within a global process that is not arrested by a division between body and soul nor rest only on sentiment that is often precarious and fleeting, but assumes the unity of spouses and their total sharing in a reciprocal acceptance of offering themselves to each other with the promise of faithful and exclusive love that is their own free choice.

How can such love be closed to the gift of life? Life is always an invaluable gift. Every time we witness its emergence, we perceive the power of the creative action of God, who trusts in man, and in this way, calls on him to build the future with the strength of hope.

The Magisterium of the Church cannot exempt itself from reflecting in a way that is always new and profound on the fundamental principles regarding matrimony and procreation. But what was true yesterday remains true today.

The truth expressed in Humanae vitae does not change, Rather, precisely in the light of new scientific discoveries, its teaching had been made more actual and urges reflection on its intrinsic value.

The key word to enter consistently into its contents is ‘love’. As I wrote in my first encyclical Deus caritas est, “Man is truly himself when his body and soul are intimately united… It is neither the spirit alone nor the body alone that loves: it is man, the person, a unified creature composed of body and soul, who loves” (No. 5).

Without this unity, a person loses value and one falls into the great danger of considering the body as an object that can be sold and bought (cfr ibid.).

In a culture subjected to the dominance of ‘having’ over ‘being’, human life risks losing its value. If the exercise of sexuality becomes a drug which would subject a partner to one’s own desires and interests, without respecting the wishes and rhythms of the beloved person, then what needs to be defended is not only the true concept of love but, in the first place, human dignity itself.

As believers, we could never permit that the dominance of technology should infect the quality of love and the sacredness of life.

It is not by chance that Jesus, speaking of human love, refers to what God achieved at the start of creation (cfr Mt 19,4-6). His teaching recalls the freely-given act with which the Creator intended to express not only the richness of his love, which openly gives itself to everyone, but also wished to impress a paradigm on which mankind’s behavior should model itself.

In the fecundity of conjugal love, man and woman participate in the Father’s creative act and make evident that at the origin of their married life is a genuine Yes that is pronounced and truly lived in reciprocity, and that is always open to life.

This word of the Lord remains unchanged in its profound truth and cannot be annulled by the different theories which, in the course of the years, have succeeded each other and sometimes contradict each other.

Natural law, which is the basis of recognizing the true equality among men and peoples, deserves to be recognized as the source which can inspire even the relationship between spouses in their responsibility to generate children.

The transmission of life is inscribed in nature, and its laws remain as the unwritten standard to which everyone should refer. Every attempt to ignore this principle will remain sterile itself and has no future.

It is urgent that we rediscover again an alliance which has always been fruitful when it is respected, and which has love and reason in the forefront.

An acute teacher like Willian St. Thierry could write words that we feel to be profoundly valid even for our time: “If reason instructs love, and love enlightens reason, if reason is converted to love, and love allows itself to be confined within the bounds of reason, then together they can result in something great” (Nature and greatness of love, 21,8).

What is this ’something great’ that we may expect? It is the emergence of a responsibility for life which makes fruitful the gift of self that spouses make to each other. It is the fruit of a love that can think and choose in full freedom, without allowing itself to be conditioned disproportionately by the eventual sacrifice it will entail.

From this comes the miracle of life that parents experience for themselves, something extraordinary that is fulfilled in them and through them. No mechanical technique can replace the act of love that two spouses exchange as a sign of the greater mystery which sees them as protagonists and participants in the act of creation.

Unfortunately, one is witnessing more often sad incidents involving adolescents, whose behavior shows an incorrect idea of the mystery of life and of the risky implications of their actions. The emergency in education, which I have often referred to, has a special urgency with regard to the issue of life.

I hope that very special attention may be given to young people above all, so that they may learn the true sense of love and may be prepared through an adequate education in sexuality, without being distracted by ephemeral messages that prevent them from getting to the essence of truth which is in play.

To provide false illusions about love or to deceive them about the genuine responsibilities that they are called on to assume with the exercise of their own sexuality does not do honor to a society that claims to have principles of freedom and democracy.

Freedom should unite itself to truth, and responsibility to strength of dedication to the other to the point of sacrifice. Without these components, the community of men cannot grow, and the risk of enclosing oneself in a circle of asphyxiating selfishness is always lying in ambush.

The teaching expressed in the encyclical Humanae vitae is not easy. Nonetheless, it conforms to the fundamental structure through which life has always been transmitted since the creation of the world, respecting nature and in conformity with its demands.

Respect for human life and the safekeeping of human dignity require us
to leave nothing undone so that everyone may participate in the genuine truth of responsible conjugal love, in full adherence to the laws written in the heart of every man.

On Monday, he addressed the Italian “Movement for Life.”

 

Your visit falls on the 30th year since abortion was legalized in Italy, and it is your intention to propose a profound reflection on the human and social effects that it has produced in the civilian and Christian community during this time.

Looking at the past three decades, and considering the present situation, one cannot fail to acknowledge that to defend human life has become today practically more difficult, because a mentality has been created for the progressive debasement of its value, now entrusted to individual judgment.

As a consequence, there has been less respect for the human being himself, a value which is at the basis of every civil coexistence, regardless of the faith one professes.

Certainly, the causes which lead to painful decisions like abortion are many and complex. If, on the one hand, the Church, faithful to the command of its Lord, does not tire in reiterating that the sacred value of every man’s existence has its roots in the Creator’s design, on the other, it stimulates and promotes every initiative in support of women and families that will create conditions favorable to welcoming life, and to the protection of the family as an institution based on matrimony between a man and a woman.

Allowing recourse to the interruption of pregnancy not only has failed to resolve the problems which afflict many women and not a few nuclear families, but has opened a wound in our society, already aggravated by profound sufferings.

In truth, commitment has been profuse during all these years, not only from the Church, to meet the needs and respond to the difficulties faced by families. But we cannot hide from the fact that many problems continue to grip today’s society, preventing many young people from getting married and raising a family, because of the unfavorable conditions in which they live.

Lack of secure employment, laws that often lack protection for mothers, the impossibility of assuring adequate sustenance to children, are some of the impediments which seem to stifle the expression of fruitful love, even as they open the door to a growing sense of mistrust in the future.

Therefore, it is necessary to unite all efforts so that the different institutions may once again place at the center of their activities the defense of human life with priority attention to the family, the cell in which life is born and develops.

The family must be helped with every legislative instrument that will facilitate its formation and its educative work in today’s none-too-easy social context.

For Christians, this fundamental unit of society is always open as an urgent and indispensable field of apostolate and of testifying to the Gospel: to protect life in all its phases with courage and love.

Because of this, dear brothers and sisters, I ask the Lord to bless the activities which, as Centers of Aid to Life and as a Movement for Life, you carry out to prevent abortion even in the case of difficulty pregnancies, working at the same time on the educational and cultural levels, as well as in public debate.

It is necessary to testify concretely that respect for life is the first form of justice that must be applied. For anyone who has the gift of faith, this becomes a binding imperative, because a follower of Christ is called on to be ever more the ‘prophet’ of a truth that can never be eliminated: God alone is the Lord of life.

Every man is known and loved, desired and guided, by him. The greatest and most profound unity of mankind lies in the fact that every human being is the realization of a unique plan of God, and everyone has his origin from God’s creative principle. Thus, one understands why the Bible says whoever profanes man, profanes a possession of God (cfr Jn 9,5).

This year is the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has the merit of having allowed different cultures, juridical expressions and institutional models to converge around a fundamental nucleus of values, and therefore, of rights.

As I reminded the member-nations during my recent visit to the United Nations, “human rights should be respected as an expression of justice and not simply because compliance can be compelled through the will of legislators. The promotion of human rights, therefore, remains the most effective strategy for eliminating inequalities among nations and social groups, as well as for improving security.”

Because of this, your commitment in the political field is even more praiseworthy as an aid and stimulus to institutions so that they may give the proper recognition to the word ‘human dignity’.

Your initiative with the Commission for Petitions at the European Parliament, in which you affirm the fundamental values of the right to life from conception, of the family founded on the matrimony between a man and a woman, of the right of every human being conceived to be born and to be educated in a family with parents, further confirms the solidity of your commitment and your full communion with the Magisterium of the Church, which has always proclaimed and defended such values as ‘non-negotiable’.

Dear brothers and sisters, when he met with you on May 22, 1998, John Paul II exhorted you to persevere in your task of love and defense of human life, and recalled that thanks to you, so many babies have experienced the joy of the invaluable gift of life.

Ten years later, it is I who thank you for the service that you have given the Church and society. How many human lives you have saved from death!

Continue along this path and do not be afraid, because the smile of life will triumph on the lips of all the babies and their mothers.

I entrust each of you, and all the persons you encounter in the Centers for Aid to Life, to the maternal protection of the Virgin Mary, Queen of the Family, and as I assure you of remembrance in my prayers, I bless you all from the heart as well as all those who are part of the Movements for Life in Italy, in Europe and in the whole world.