In an address today to the diplomatic corps, Pope Benedict XVI urged representatives that:“[a] concern and commitment for the environment should be situated within the larger framework of the great challenges now facing mankind.”This larger framework refers to man’s attitude to man. Pope Benedict highlights the contradiction between a promotion of environmental concerns and a disregard for the protection of human life, itself the crown of creation.
“If we wish to build true peace, how can we separate, or even set at odds, the protection of the environment and the protection of human life, including the life of the unborn? It is in man’s respect for himself that his sense of responsibility for creation is shown. As Saint Thomas Aquinas has taught, man represents all that is most noble in the universe (cf. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 29, a. 3).”Benedict also took the opportunity to reject the myth that the world is suffering from a shortage of food. (Too often this myth is used as a smokescreen for the agenda of pro-abortionists to destroy human life through brutal family planning policies and the promotion of abortion.)
“Furthermore, as I noted during the recent FAO World Summit on Food Security, ‘the world has enough food for all its inhabitants’ (Address of 16 November 2009, No. 2) provided that selfishness does not lead some to hoard the goods which are intended for all.”The multi-faceted nature of governmental policies effecting a culture of death were highlighted by Pope Benedict and he reflected on the difficulty which those with religious beliefs face in being an active part of the moral reform needed to help improve the environment and society. This difficulty arises due to the often aggressively anti-religious legislation in West:
“The community of believers can and wants to take part in this, but, for it to do so, its public role must be recognized. Sadly, in certain countries, mainly in the West, one increasingly encounters in political and cultural circles, as well in the media, scarce respect and at times hostility, if not scorn, directed towards religion and towards Christianity in particular. It is clear that if relativism is considered an essential element of democracy, one risks viewing secularity solely in the sense of excluding or, more precisely, denying the social importance of religion. But such an approach creates confrontation and division, disturbs peace, harms human ecology and, by rejecting in principle approaches other than its own, finishes in a dead end.”Such relativism, culminating in the ‘dead end’ of increased abortions, will be foisted upon the next generation of English schoolchildren via the government’s plans to impose universal sex education through the Children, Schools and Families bill being debated today in the House of Commons. Through this legislation, the government wants to use all state secondary schools, including Catholic ones, as centres for promoting access to contraception and abortion services. Sadly the government's plans are being supported by both the Catholic authorities and the Anglican authorities in England and Wales
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