Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director, Priests for Life Pope Francis and President Obama met in Rome, and the
meeting has naturally generated commentary, both before and after the fact,
including by the President himself at the National Prayer Breakfast last
month.
I am confident that the meeting itself will bear good
fruit. I am not so confident that the commentary about it will bear as much
fruit.
What I mean is that I believe we are heading for a media
and blogosphere circus in which commentary after commentary will reinforce
the error that we can promote “human rights” and “social
justice” while ignoring the most fundamental right of the most
vulnerable people: the right to life of the children in the womb.
It’s not because I think the Pope or his advisors aren’t
fully committed to protecting them. They certainly are. And I have had the
privilege of conversing with the Pope about the pro-life efforts of the
Church.
But there is a profound contradiction between
Obama’s position in favor of abortion and the Church’s position
against it, and my concern arises from the fact that so much commentary
makes light of this contradiction, either by saying it’s not
important, or by pretending it’s not there.
And sometimes
this impression is given in commentary even by those who share the
Church’s pro-life position.
Miguel Diaz, a Catholic
theologian who served as Obama’s ambassador to the Vatican until
recently, commented,
“Some said that under [Pope John Paul II]
and [President Ronald Reagan] there was a meeting of the minds, and
it’s potentially true again under Obama and Francis around the issues
of social justice.” But in reality, that is not
potentially true at all.
The contradiction between
Obama’s position and the Pope’s position on the right to life
is a contradiction about the very core and foundation of social justice.
Without the right to life, everything else falls. Pope Francis himself made
reference to this in his recent Apostolic Exhortation,
Evangelii
Gaudium, when he said,
“[D]efense of unborn life
is closely linked to the defense of each and every other human right. It
involves the conviction that a human being is always sacred and
inviolable…Once this conviction disappears, so do solid and lasting
foundations for the defense of human rights, which would always be subject
to the passing whims of the powers that be.” (n. 213) Pope John Paul II, about to be canonized as a saint, made a similar
point 25 years ago in another Apostolic Exhortation,
Christifideles
Laici,
"[T]he common outcry, which is justly made on
behalf of human rights -- for example, the right to health, to home, to
work, to family, to culture -- is false and illusory if the right to life,
the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other
personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination." (n.
38) And Cardinal Renato Martino, who served as President
of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, that is, the
Vatican’s office charged with fostering the understanding and pursuit
of social justice within the whole Church, explained,
"The
Holy Father speaks of the protection of life as the fundamental realization
and respect for human rights. Without that realization, without that
respect for the right to life, no other discussion of human rights can
continue." (Interview on EWTN, 2004.)
That’s the
kind of commentary we need to see about the discussion between the
President and the Pope.
