God always blesses his Church with the type of leader it needs at each time in history. That was certainly true when the College of Cardinals elevated Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy in 2005.
For the last 15 years, a key document for those of us in the pro-life movement has been Evangelium Vitae. Published by Pope John Paul II, it spoke of the “sacred value of human life from its very beginning until its natural end.” As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, then-Cardinal Ratzinger played a major role in setting the tone for this encyclical that guides us to this day.
The process for producing the encyclical began with a consistory of cardinals called in 1991 by Pope John Paul. The future Pope Benedict presented a comprehensive report in which he said, “By allowing the rights of the weakest to be violated, the state also allows the law of force to prevail over the force of law.” He saw with perfect clarity that “the Church must make claims and demands on public law and cannot simply retreat into the private sphere.”
We accepted those words as a challenge. While every effort pro-lifers make on behalf of the unborn is significant, even sacred, we must understand that the only way to end abortion is in the political sphere. Here in the United States, that means overturning Roe vs. Wade. Pope Benedict has endorsed that effort in his writings since becoming Pope.
In 2005’s “God Is Love,” his first encyclical letter, the Pope asserts that “to say we love God becomes a lie if we are closed to our neighbor.” The pro-life movement is all about love for our neighbors, particularly those in the womb and those whose frailty or illness has pushed them to the margins of society. Later, he writes that the Church “cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice.” Our mandate could not be clearer.
When President Obama visited Pope Benedict at the Vatican last year, the Pope presented the president with two documents, the encyclical Caritas in Veritate and Dignitas Personae, a document on bioethics. A key point of the former document is that social justice cannot advance unless the right to life is protected. This is where pro-abortion politicians and parties so often get it wrong. They trumpet support for human rights, human development and social justice, but also think abortion belongs to those categories. In Dignitas Personae, the Pope reaffirms that just the opposite is true.
“Openness to life,” he writes, “is at the center of true development. When a society moves towards the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man’s own good. If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of a new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away.”
I had the privilege of meeting the man who would be pope many times when I worked in Rome for the Pontifical Council for the Family from 1997 to 1999. As a cardinal and now as pope, Benedict XVI keeps his focus on pro-life issues. Those of us who work to protect the “least of our brothers” have a powerful leader indeed.
Father Frank Pavone is national director of Priests for Life.
About This Series
Now more than ever, we need to be reminded of what a Pope is. On the rock of Peter our Church is built. To him and his successors — Christ’s vicars — have been entrusted the keys of the Kingdom of heaven. Christ prayed for him that his faith might not fail, that he might strengthen his brethren.
The untold story right now in the media is how much God has worked through Pope Benedict XVI in his first five years as Pope. That’s why we began to commission short essays to honor him for his anniversary just a few weeks ago.
As the media tries in vain to pin the lion’s share of the blame for the developing abuse scandal on him, those essays are now taking on a meaning and depth we couldn’t have imagined. We’re fortunate to have this man leading us, and these tributes tell why.
We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we did.
— The Editors
Dan Burke: Call to Prayer: Seven Resources for your Lenten Journey
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Following loss of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen in Rochester NY we faithful sheep were greatly strengthened there by the writings and CDF work of Cardinal Ratzinger. Heartfelt thanks to the Holy Father for that vital blessing back then and for remaining the SAME PERSON for reliable guidance today as Christ’s Vicar, Benedict XVI. [emphasis may be added, below]
In assisting John Paul II to bring us Evangelium Vitae by 1995 (“EV” or Gospel of Life), Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in 1991 about the sacredness of man – “human life is untouchable because it is divine property.” Indeed, God wants to protect His Personal Treasures – us. Reciprocally, we have exactly the right background for *empathizing* with Jesus’ having to witness *daily slaughters* of His unborn children: after all, we demand respect for our far less valuable possessions!
In another 1991 paragraph, “Ratzinger” begins with “To sum up everything … in the struggle for life, **talking about God** is indispensable”. INDISPENSABLE means our attention and follow-through!
http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/threatstohumanlife.htm#ratzinger
Though EV is necessarily about LIFE one recognizes the special SEED planted in EV by the Holy Spirit. It bids we not fail to talk about God and God’s Rights to thus strengthen those tempted to abort *and* to generally improve pro-life strategy. This under-developed seed is found in EV9: “…“the blood is the life” (Dt 12:23), and life, especially human life, belongs only to God: for this reason whoever attacks human life, in some way **attacks God himself**.”
Hence it is true: a clear parallel exists between “Respect Life” as proper response to LIFE-under-attack and “Respect God” as proper response to GOD-under-attack. The Holy Spirit thereby gives the green light to develop and preach the SUM = RL + RG to fight more effectively in this titanic spiritual battle.
But how best to develop that seed and the potential empathy within us and others —to respect and defend God’s Treasures, perhaps even for the day of our own or a friend’s struggle with a “need” to abort? On April 16, 2008, in DC, gifted “Ratzinger” as Benedict XVI brought the crucial guidance for all to the USCCB, highlighting the necessity “to cultivate a relationship with Him who came” and stressing that “the object of our preaching … should be to help people establish and nurture that living relationship with “Christ Jesus, our hope.”” But that urging is yet to be reflected in pro-life strategy and from Church pulpits here, in any broadly significant way, for example as a national public introduction of the “Respect God” *Half* of the solution. See this Open Letter published shortly before Benedict arrived in the United States.
http://www.michnews.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/443/19939
The letter is clearly in harmony with Benedict’s beliefs. The Respect God approach deals with influences *which prompt the tempted* to choose to kill God’s children, especially due to the known natural tendency to doubt immediate Personhood.
On the yet unresolved *immediate-personhood* question, there is some good news—keeping in mind that it is God’s dominion and NOT knowledge of “ensoulment moment” that is decisive for our duty to respect God and defend HIS new human creations. What may be new is how Cardinal Ratzinger’s great question in his “Donum Vitae” and repeated in his papal “Dignitas Personae” – “how could a human individual not be a human person?” – how that prompts us to see a solution consistent with the teaching that God creates us “to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him in this world …”
That is, the quite considerable numbers of spontaneous abortions need not be God-Imaged human beings or persons at all, if in fact their seriously flawed DNA and other related structures FALL OUTSIDE *GOD’S own “specs”* for ensouling. When outside God’s specifications, NATURE rejects them, by God’s design. Some unintended abortions of *ensouled* persons can also occur for “other physical reasons” that we may or may not be able to diagnose. What may be “new” is recognizing that all complex physical constructions have tolerances beyond which something ceases to *be* that “something”. God is comfortable with His own specs.
Since God knows ALL things, He need not ensoul what He knows *beforehand* is outside His specs. This possibility does not affect any binding Catholic beliefs. In Humani Generis, Pius XII does not forbid Catholics to think Adam’s *body* (not his soul) could have developed via random processes during some God-designed evolution. Nor does seriously flawed DNA mean that God makes “knitting mistakes” in creating us—once we understand that randomness in natural processes commonly leads to “distributions” some of which *naturally fall outside a desired range”.
“Soul problems” like those for Twinning and some “chimerizations” are also easier to accept as non-problems because God knows exactly what will happen and acts appropriately to fill all “soul needs” in ways we can’t check. By analogy, # 1257 of the Catechism notes that God Himself is not bound by statements made *for us* re the sacraments; neither is he bound to *robotically* “ensoul”—or to ensoul per our philosophies in the puzzling cases!
No matter our perception we must *treat* the embryos as if they are persons—out of respect for God’s dominion and for each and all that could be God-Imaged persons.
Lastly and crucial to the growing movements to pursue a national “Personhood Human Life Amendment”, it is *improper* to ask voters to ignore the lack of resolution of the immediate-personhood question and then vote to attempt to *define* immediate personhood “into existence”, despite the plausible realities noted above. Philosophical uncertainties about immediate personhood will cause defeats aided also by a number of foreseeable legal complexities, including criminalization aspects sure to arise when something is defined without firm basis.
A better path is to ask voters to approve an HLA which gives legal protection to the unborn for all but three cases, out of Respect for Creator God whom we highly honor in the Declaration of Independence. That’s an honest vote. Forget defining immediate personhood. Since almost all denominations theoretically respect God, there is *realistic* chance to win.
In line with how the Gospel of Life handles the “limit the evil” principle, the three cases of rape, incest and life (but not health) of the mother must, in the proposed HLA, be *explicitly* named for required periodic future *state-reviews for their removal* in individual states. With that approach, the three categories are not “approved exceptions” but instead represent the small percent of the killings which cannot yet be abrogated nationally, analogous to what is noted in EV n 73. Moreover, the three uncorrected evils do not represent a compromise for they truly represent the state of society which is not yet ready to trust God all the way. This type of HLA saves almost all babies and aborting-couples, thereby “lessening [the] negative consequences [of unlimited abortions] at the level of general opinion and public morality.” (ibid).
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