A senior member of the Roman Curia has said Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s
description of himself as a Taoiseach who happens to be a Catholic, but
not a Catholic Taoiseach, “does not make any sense”.
Irish-American Cardinal Raymond Burke, prefect of the Vatican’s
Apostolic Signatura, effectively its Supreme Court, said: “One cannot,
as a Catholic politician, excuse oneself from the question of abortion
by claiming one should not bring one’s Catholicism into the political
realm.”
He said: “Of course, the church does teach that abortion is evil, but
the evil of abortion can also be known by human reason. The natural law
is to do good and avoid evil and the first prerequisite is to safeguard
and promote human life. The distinction made in the [Taoiseach’s]
statement . . . therefore does not make any sense.”
He added: “If the natural law is not upheld, people enter a culture of
death which, when it becomes prevalent, destroys the people.”
‘Hungering for leadership’
Cardinal Burke said: “I was raised in an Irish Catholic family which
had a keen sense of the moral law. I go back to Ireland regularly and
there are many wonderful people in Ireland hungering for leadership.”
He was interviewed in this week’s Irish Catholic. In an interview with the Catholic Voice published last February, the cardinal said priests should exclude from receiving communion politicians who support abortion.
‘Tragic’
Asked for his views on the death of Savita Halappanavar, he said: “The death of Savita Halappanavar is indeed tragic. It is, however, contrary to right reason to hold that an innocent and defenceless human life can be justifiably destroyed in order to save the life of the mother.
“The Irish people, and especially the Irish Government, should be very
alert to the kind of argumentation which will be used by the secular
media and by secular ideologues, in general, claiming that the
destruction of the new human life in her womb could have saved the life
of Savita Halappanavar and, therefore, would have been justified. Such
an argument is absurd in itself. Even though, if the reports are
correct, Savita Halappanavar requested an abortion, her request would
not have made it right for the law to permit such an act which is always
and everywhere wrong.”
This week’s Irish Catholic also carries the results of a poll
conducted last month which found that 86 per cent of those surveyed
believed “the decision to introduce abortion” should be put to a
referendum rather than be left to the Oireachtas and that the same
number believed “politicians should be allowed a free vote” on the
issue.
The poll was conducted by Amárach Consulting on behalf of the anti-abortion Family & Life group.