Social Systems Urged to Adapt For Aging Populations

VATICAN CITY—Social and legal systems must be changed to accommodate the world's growing elderly population, authorities said at the launch of a Vatican conference on aging.

Archbishop Javier Lozano Barragan, head of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, said the late-October meeting was meant to address demographic shifts as well as changes in attitudes toward the old and the ill.

Pointing out that there are more people worldwide who are over 60 than those who are younger than 15 years old, he said “this means profound changes regarding society, the economy, politics, and human culture.”

The archbishop noted that “old age has a lesson … for the next generation and for the next century” which should not be ignored, because it “gives a profound sense to life.”

Father Jose Redrado, secretary of the health care workers' council, pointed out that Pope John Paul II himself is aging, yet remains an example for all. People should regard the last years of life as a time of opportunity, he said, and not of decline.

“The last chapter of life which an elderly person writes must be written with much enthusiasm and with joy,” the priest continued, “and this … presents a personal, ecclesial, and social challenge.”

Views on Suffering Have to Change, Institute Chief Says

VATICAN CITY—PierUgo Carbonin, director of the gerontological institute at Rome's Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, said the Church and society must come to terms with euthanasia by changing people's perspectives on suffering. He was speaking at the Vatican conference on aging.

“When people resort to euthanasia, it is usually not because of the incurability of a disease or because of unbearable pain, but because of a lack of social support,” he explained, adding that euthanasia is viewed as “an escape route from enormous economic problems faced by the old.”

Those concerns are bound to worsen, Carbonin said, as the population of retired people in industrialized societies grows, while the tax-paying base shrinks.

Unless societies raise their ages of retirement or force workers to pay more taxes, he said, there will be increasing tension over limited financial resources for the elderly.

“The big problem is solidarity between the generations,” Carbonin added, “and not conflict between them.”

Don't Reduce People To Mere Things, John Paul Warns

VATICAN CITY—Differing scientific concepts of human nature can have significant impact, especially when individuals are reduced to things, Pope John Paul II said.

Speaking Oct. 27 during a plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Science, the Pontiff said “the repercussions on man and on the regard that scientists have for him are far from negligible.”

“The principal danger consists in reducing an individual to a thing, or in considering him in the same way as other natural elements, therefore relativizing man, whom God has placed at the center of creation,” he continued.

Scholars in physics, astronomy, mathematics, neuroscience, and other fields, as well as authorities on the humanities, gathered for the Oct. 26-29 meeting with the theme “Changing Concepts of Nature at the Turn of the Millennium.”

They were to discuss how scientists and humanists can accommodate divergent views in a way which makes sense as the new millennium approaches.

Pope John Paul pointed out that as scientific disciplines have proliferated, they have brought about varying and unaccustomed ways of viewing human nature, including reducing it to instinct and biology alone.

“In a certain number of current theories, one finds this temptation to reduce the human being to this purely material and physical reality, making man a being who behaves only like other living species,” the Pope said.

But humanity, he later added, is uniquely able to discern the existence of a Creator, and to have religious faith.

A person's capacity for reason and will allow self-determination and the ability “to enter into communication with God, to respond to his appeal and to realize one's self according to one's own nature,” the Pope told the gathering.

“In fact, because he is of a spiritual nature, man is capable of welcoming the supernatural realities and achieving eternal happiness, freely offered by God.

“This communication is rendered possible because God and man are two essences of a spiritual nature.”

In Costa Rica Development is Tied To Strength of Family

VATICAN CITY—To continue and to strengthen its role as a model of peace, democracy, and justice in Central America, Costa Rica should give greater support to the family and improve its educational programs, Pope John Paul II said.

Meeting Oct. 29 with Costa Rica's new ambassador to the Vatican, the Pope urged greater cooperation between the Church and state in protecting the traditional family.

“What happens within the family has deep repercussions on the whole social fabric,” the Pope said. “It is in the family, especially the Christian family, that children learn from their parents to respect human life, which is sacred and inviolable from the moment of conception.”

The family along with the Church and Christian society teach people the values they need “in the struggle against corruption, violence, delinquency, and moral degradation in its most varied and painful manifestations,” the Pope said.

“Collaboration in this field between the state and the Church in the schools and through the means of social communications is indispensable for protecting and promoting the family as a sanctuary of life and love, as the educator of persons and as the promoter of development for all.”

Pope John Paul praised Costa Rica for its 50-year-old practice of not having a standing army.

The money saved, he said, has been used for education, health care, and programs to fight poverty.

He encouraged the government, the Church, and businesses to work together to do even more to help the country's poor, especially through education and vocational training programs. Counselors at Abortion Clinics Must Have ‘Mind of Christ at Calvary’