The president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care noted this
week that respect for human life is what fosters the comprehensive
development of nations.
Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski made his comments during a conference on
Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical “Caritas in veritate.”
The event was
organized by the Political Charity International Association and held at
Rome’s Sacro Cuore University.
Archbishop Zygmunt said the Church’s social doctrine pays special
attention to the protection of human life.
Since the 1970s, he
explained, the threats to human life have increased as laws that
protected the right to life against abortion, euthanasia, artificial
insemination and in vitro fertilization began to be undermined. Such
actions led to the human embryo being “reduced to a mere thing,” he
added.
These problems constitute “major challenges for Christian social
teaching and demand an adequate response,” he added, pointing to John
Paul II’s encyclical “Evangelium vitae” and Benedict XVI’s “Caritas in
veritate” as cornerstones for addressing them.
Archbishop Zimowski warned against “an anti-life mentality” whose
advocates attempt to pass it off to other countries as “cultural
progress.”
“This mentality has increased because of laws contrary to
life that have been enacted in the most economically developed
countries,” he continued.
These laws end up defending attacks on human
life, such as abortion, as if they constituted “rights of individual
freedom.”
The task for believers who deal with a society on these terms is “to
develop an ethos capable of presenting arguments in psychological and
socio-cultural terms about the meaning and value of the norms that
respect human life,” the archbishop continued.
“We must overcome very
abstract or formal arguments that do not lend themselves to an adequate
approach to the present experience,” he said.
The archbishop also urged a change in today’s idea of the “quality of
life,” understood only in terms of financial success, physical beauty
and unrestrained consumerism, with no room for the relational, spiritual
and religious dimensions of existence.
He also referred to the urgency of changing today’s paradigms. Life
is not a product but rather a “gift that must be appropriately
appreciated,” especially in families, “who have the task of supporting a
culture of life.”
SIC: CNA/INT'L
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