Catholic leaders give uncompromising pro-life message

The news so far this week has brought reports of Catholic bishops speaking out courageously for life and family around the world:

• In Scotland, Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow has said that: “[I]t is wrong in principle for someone to take their own life” and “it is wrong in principle for someone to help them to do so.”
• In Oregon, America, Bishop Robert Vasa of Baker has ended his diocese's sponsorship of a local hospital which was performing sterilisations.
• In the Philippines, the bishops' conference has said that the distribution of free condoms in Manila "undermines the significance of human sexuality and love and and deserves the condemnation of the entire population"
• At the Vatican, Cardinal Carlo Caffarra has written that: "It's impossible to consider oneself a Catholic if that person in one way or another recognizes same-sex marriage as a right," said Cardinal Carlo Caffarra of Bologna.*
• And Pope Benedict told the Romanian bishops last week that they should respond to "the scourges of abortion [and] birth control by methods contrary to the dignity of the human person" by "organis[ing] improved pastoral care of the young."

When the full weight of the Catholic Church is put behind an uncompromising pro-life stance, lives can saved in large numbers. For example, the educational effort by the Catholic Church in Poland was effective in massively reducing Poland's abortion rate. And LifeSiteNews.com reports that the Philippines has one of Asia's lowest HIV rates, no doubt thanks to the resilience of the Philippines bishops' conference.

The pro-life movement in this country in England and Wales could achieve so much more if the Catholic bishops' conference here would end its collaboration on pro-life/pro-family issues with our anti-life/anti-family government. "For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?" (1 Cor.14:8)

*(The reason why the Catholic Church's teaching on homosexuality is so important for the pro-life cause can be found in Pope John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae. In paragraph 97, Pope John Paul teaches that it is an illusion to think that we can build a true culture of human life if we do not offer adolescents and young adults an authentic education in sexuality, and in love, and the whole of life according to their true meaning and in their close interconnection.)

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