Italian abortion law is pillar of society says Francis-appointed Archbishop

Abortion, Paglia hits rock bottom rooting for Law 194: 'A pillar'

 Interviewed by Rai Tre, the President of the Pontifical Academy for Life touches the bottom of his formal collaboration with evil by defining Law 194 as "a pillar of society" and saying that it is "absolutely not up for discussion". We are at ground zero of morality and  of faith: we have a Bishop who is President of an academy founded to protect life who protects a law that destroys life. The Law 194 becomes a moral absolute: this is how abortionists speak. In a normal situation, he should be shown the door today.

 

250,000. That's more or less the number of words in the Italian language. They are many, yet they are not enough to adequately comment on the words of Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, regarding Law 194, the norm that has legitimised procured abortion in our country.

Yesterday, RAI 3, the  Agora program- Summer. The presenter, Giorgia Rombolà asked Monsignor Paglia, one of the guests present, what he thought about abortion, which, mainly because of a post by Chiara Ferragni, entered the political debate in view of the elections. Paglia replies: 'I think that Law 194 is now a pillar of our social life. Sic. The best comment would be a blank page, but we are obliged and uncomfortable to say something.

We have hit rock bottom, we are at a point of no return, at ground zero of morality, faith, reasonableness and consistency. We have the President of an academy founded to protect life protecting a law that destroys life. It is as if the president of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League organisation were to declare himself in favour of the holocaust. It would be a contradiction in terms and a living oxymoron. If the principal representative of the main Vatican institution founded to oppose, among other social phenomena contrary to life, abortion, defends abortion, it means that, from the human point of view, we have now reached within the Church a total overthrow of Catholic moral principles and a radical revolution in doctrine. Paraphrasing Archbishop Giacomo Biffi, we could say that Peter's boat will not sink, but its occupants all seem to have drowned.

Law 194, which has allowed the killing, yes killing, of more than 6 million children, is for Paglia a pillar, so fundamental that, when asked by the presenter if Law 194 was under discussion, the Monsignor re0iterated: 'No, but absolutely, absolutely! It is Law 194 that becomes a moral absolute, not abortion. Law 194 therefore cannot be touched. We are sorry to say this, but that is how abortionists speak. How is it possible to defend an instrument of death? A rational atheist would not do so. Even more so a believer. Even more so should a Christian, a Catholic. Still more a man of the cloth. Still more a Bishop or Archbishop as in Paglia's case. Even more, finally, the person responsible for the pastoral care for life at global level. Recalling a reflection by the Pontifical Academy for Life itself on the theme of collaboration (Moral reflections on vaccines prepared from cells from aborted human foetuses, 5 June 2005), we must, alas, conclude that Bishop Paglia with those words has expressed formal collaboration with evil because he considers an unjust law to be just, because he endorses the rationale of that law: it is legitimate to kill the unborn.

Paglia then, following a trite script, fires the usual cartridge: let us apply the good parts of Law 194, which would be Articles 2 and 5, to encourage motherhood, that is, to avoid abortions. We had already talked about this at the time in an article in June 2018 to which we refer for more detail. Here we only recall the summary of the reasons expressed there why it is impossible to say that Law 194 should be better applied to decrease abortions: "The real narrowness of the scope of the legal obligations, the impossibility of sanctioning health workers who do not do their duty, the fact that it is the abortionist doctor who has to dissuade the woman, mean that Law 194 can be applied very well and at the same time not at all jam the abortion machine that kills a child every five minutes. Thus in Law 194 there is no real prevention of abortion, not because Articles 2 and 5 are misapplied (phenomenological defect), but because of the intrinsic structure of Law 194 (legal defect)'. It therefore seems mind-boggling to declare that in order to combat abortion it is necessary to better apply a law that permits abortion. No, to combat abortion, among other things, the law permitting abortion must be repealed. Even a child would get it.

Lastly, in his speech Paglia puts his finger on the birth rate and on the fact that it is necessary to incentivise births (following the all-worldly spirit that one should never speak ill of anything, but only well of everything, except for populists, sovereignists, traditionalists and the rich, etc.). But doesn't Paglia know that, with the data to hand, the first cause of lacks of births in many western countries, Italy included, is precisely to be found in abortion and therefore in that social pillar that is Law 194? One fifth of all conceptions end in voluntary abortion. Paglia wants to incentivise births by 20%? Dis-incentivise abortion, don't encourage it by speaking well of Law 194. How can one speak well of a law that exterminates children in piles and then complain that few children are born?

Paglia's exit, who in a normal situation should be escorted to the door today, adds dismay to dismay also because we are now living in a period, if not golden, then certainly silver in the world regarding the legal protection of unborn life. Only last June, the US Supreme Court sent the Roe vs Wade ruling that legitimised abortion nationwide into the dustbin. There secular judges fight abortion and here, instead, a Bishop at the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life does not fight abortion but defends it. Because defending Law 194 means defending abortion. And any rhetorical mystification can never erase this evidence, this equivalence.

According to Paglia's thinking, therefore, pro-life marches and rallies should be emptied of meaning, unless they march to defend Law 194 and, paradoxically, to support the birth rate.  The abortionist then thanks him because he will in fact have an easy time objecting to the pro-life militant: 'If your boss is in favour of Law 194, why do you criticise it instead? He does not question it and therefore Law 194 is an insurmountable boundary. There is no going back'. If anything, the discussion could be shifted to how many children we manage to give birth to, net of abortions: in other words, how many we will give birth to and how many we will abort because both choices are legitimate (Law 194 implicitly says so).

Paglia is no stranger to such doctrinally erroneous pronouncements, but this time he has surpassed himself because he has been, unfortunately, of an adamantine clarity in manifesting his heterodox thought, which remains his and certainly not the Church's. See, in this regard, Evangelium vitae: "Laws which, with abortion and euthanasia, legitimise the direct suppression of innocent human beings are in total and irremediable contradiction to the inviolable right to life proper to all human beings. [...] Laws authorising and favouring abortion and euthanasia are therefore radically opposed not only to the good of the individual but also to the common good and are therefore completely devoid of genuine legal validity. [...] Abortion and euthanasia are therefore crimes that no human law can claim to legitimise. Such laws not only create no obligation of conscience, but rather raise a grave and precise obligation to oppose them by conscientious objection'. (nos. 72-73. See also nos. 20, 59, 69).

Considering Law 194 a pillar of society - and Paglia was not describing a common judgement merely reported by him, but expressing his own judgement - is not a poisonous mushroom that has sprouted in the Catholic forest overnight, but is the last poisoned fruit of a plant that has been alive and well in the Church for some time. The plant of heresy that passes off error as doctrinal deepening and development (but can a truth ever become the opposite of itself?). The plant of dialogue at all costs pushed so far to the extreme that, with their trousers down, in order to dialogue and not contradict anyone, they go so far as to import the perverse ideas of the enemy without duties. The plant of pastoral care without doctrine that leads to embracing not only the sinner, but also sin. The plant of mercy without justice, which erases sin and guilt, excuses everyone and everything and accepts everyone and everything. The plant of ecclesial relativism in which liquid and indistinct pluralism is put in place of truth, an antiquity to be discarded. The plant of discernment that places the exception as the rule. Finally, the plant of atheism because only those who have forgotten God, those without faith, can be in favour of abortion.

However, the Holy Spirit has, it must be said, a lot of spirit. While Paglia was speaking, the viewer could read on the screen in the top right-hand corner: 'Tonight at 9.20 p.m. film The Infidels'.

Source

See also Sexual revolution in the Vatican