ROME –\u00a0Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, appointed president of the Vatican\u2019s Academy for Life (PAV) around this time last year, is a passionate man with a big mission and a sackful of energy and hope that easily spills out.<\/p>\n
Entrusted by Pope Francis with taking the Church\u2019s pro-life witness out on the road, breaking it out of its self-referential ghetto, the PAV\u2019s task is \u201cto witness to the Gospel of mercy and convince as many people as possible to live in that dimension,\u201d he told me in Rome shortly after the consistory to create new cardinals.<\/p>\n
The pope\u2019s marching orders to him last year were clear. The field-hospital Church \u201crealizes its mission of salvation and healing, precisely in the lives of individuals most threatened by the new culture of competition and disposal,\u201d Francis said in the chirograph creating the new PAV.<\/p>\n
That means being out on \u201call the human frontiers,\u201d walking alongside humanity to help create \u201ca more human humanity, according to the mercy of God and not according to violence and oppression,\u201d is how Paglia interprets it.<\/p>\n
The archbishop had liked a\u00a0Crux<\/em>\u00a0article I had\u00a0written<\/a>\u00a0defending the PAV\u2019s appointment of the British Anglican ethicist, Rev. Nigel Biggar, who was recommended as a member of the Academy by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, primarily because of his work on euthanasia.<\/p>\n The appointment had scandalized some former PAV members because Biggar had once claimed in an interview to be in favor of reducing the UK\u2019s legal abortion upper limit to 18 weeks.\u00a0This was not, obviously, the Catholic position, although the bishops of England and Wales have been happy in the past to urge even 20 weeks (it is currently 24) as a stepping-stone to outlawing all abortion.<\/p>\n But the larger point I made was that Biggar was not there because he was a Catholic, but to help the Academy dialogue and create consensus beyond the Church\u2019s boundaries (which is the purpose, after all, of a Vatican academy).<\/p>\n The article provoked various reactions, among them a critical one from the president of Human Life International, Father Shenan J. Boquet, who\u00a0argued<\/a>in\u00a0Crux<\/em>\u00a0that \u201chonoring\u201d Biggar with membership of the PAV created the impression \u201cthat the Church does not take its teaching against abortion as seriously as it once did.\u201d<\/p>\n I was interested in Paglia\u2019s response to this remarkable claim, but the archbishop preferred not to respond through me. Instead, we agreed, he would explain the PAV\u2019s new strategy and vision and the important role non-Catholic members could play in promoting them.<\/p>\n Paglia, 72, has a vast, engaging smile and expansive hands that cause his green-inlaid pectoral cross to bounce up and down when he talks. The cross belonged to Archbishop Oscar Romero, the slain Salvadoran martyr, of whose sainthood cause, unblocked by Benedict XVI shortly before he resigned, he is the postulator.<\/p>\n Even though Paglia\u2019s last Vatican job was president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, appointed by Benedict, putting Romero\u2019s postulator in charge of the Academy for Life sent clear signals about what Francis saw as the weakness of the Vatican body, created in 1994 by St. Pope John Paul II to research and study bioethical issues.<\/p>\n Its narrow focus and endless squabbling between members meant that the PAV for many years epitomized the \u201cself-referential\u201d Church, creating a culture of ideological purity, even fanaticism, that was both unattractive and ineffective at influencing the wider world.<\/p>\n He wants to broaden the witness. Being pro-life, Paglia says, certainly means being against abortion and euthanasia, but it means also combating the oppression of children. \u201cAnd it also means being aware that in just six months in the United States 6,600 people died after being shot.\u201d<\/p>\n (I checked the veracity of this figure. Indeed, some 13,286 people were killed in the U.S. by firearms in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured. Remarkably, pro-life groups in the U.S. are almost entirely silent about this.)<\/p>\n Paglia is one of the early members and founders of the Rome-based Community of Sant\u2019Egidio, which runs the \u201chumanitarian corridors\u201d bringing refugees safely into Europe from Iraq and Syria. Among its many famous campaigns is a worldwide bid to ban capital punishment.<\/p>\n That, I suggest, is also a pro-life issue, even if it is not considered \u201cnon-negotiable\u201d for many of the groups that wave that banner.<\/p>\n \u201cIdentical subject: Pro-life,\u201d Paglia agrees, adding: \u201cI can\u2019t be pro-life if I pollute the atmosphere. I can\u2019t be pro-life and throw away the elderly. I can\u2019t be pro-life and engage in the kind of genetic modification that is against the dignity of life. I can\u2019t be pro-life and create a daughter in a test tube.\u201d<\/p>\n This is, obviously, a rather richer and less politically circumscribed agenda than that of most pro-life groups.<\/p>\n Human Life International, for example, describes its mission as confronting the \u201cevils of abortion, contraception, euthanasia\/assisted suicide, and the redefinition of marriage,\u201d but makes no mention of the small arms trade or the death penalty (there are close to 3,000 currently on death row), both of which Francis explicitly alluded to as life issues in his address to the U.S. Congress in September 2015.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have now the urgent task of broadening our vision,\u201d confirms Paglia. \u201cIt would be a mistake to stop and read only the first chapter in a book of 20 chapters.\u201d<\/p>\n But with limited resources, I object, surely you have to prioritize? What will the Academy try to work on first – perhaps Benedict\u2019s insight, developed in\u00a0Laudato Si<\/i>, of a human ecology?<\/p>\n In fact, says Paglia, the PAV has already been working for some time – even before the current changes – on re-reading the early chapters of the Bible in the light of modern challenges. And he offers me what he calls a \u201cfirst reflection.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen God creates humanity He doesn\u2019t make an individual; humanity is already plural. He makes a man and a woman. The diversity is right there at the origin. Any attempt to simplify this is a betrayal of what is human.\u201d<\/p>\n Therefore, he says, so-called \u201cgender theory\u201d represents a cultural step backwards: It is the inability to appreciate difference. Then there\u2019s the fact, he adds, that God trusts the man and the woman with two great missions: To care for the environment as the home for all, and to create the social ties that go from the family to the city and the nation.<\/p>\n What the Academy feels called to work on, he says, is this great theme linking environment and generation. Paglia wants the Church to speak about such matters attractively, showing the integral inter-connectedness of life ethics – not just speaking out against what oppresses life, but pointing to what is beautiful.<\/p>\n He cites a homily of Romero\u2019s during the funeral of a priest in which the Archbishop of San Salvador dwelt on the theme of giving up your life for others. For some, he said, this will mean actually spilling blood, as he did, for but almost everyone else it will still mean sacrificing your life, as a\u00a0woman does when she gives birth to a child and raises it. She becomes a martyr to that child.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is how to talk in favor of life and against abortion,\u201d Paglia says. \u201cNot stuck in a fortress raising the flags of a few principles.\u201d<\/p>\n The pope says as much in\u00a0Amoris Laetitia<\/i>\u00a0#37, \u201cthat there is no sense in simply decrying present-day evils, as if this could change things.\u201d People need to be shown truth, and helped to live it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have the compelling but difficult task,\u201d says Paglia, \u201cof helping people to change their lives. Of helping our cities to change. Of helping children to be born. Of helping our children not to come to school with pistols to shoot others.\u201d<\/p>\n The canvas may be broad, but the PAV has an immediate focus in October:\u00a0A major conference \u00a0on a topic that the Charlie Gard case (which came to public attention after I met Paglia) has highlighted, namely \u201caccompanying life in the technological era.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the challenges posed by technology is an ideology, transhumanism, that puts its faith in science as a means of perfecting human beings. In\u00a0Laudato Si\u2019<\/i>, Francis calls this the \u201ctechnocratic paradigm\u201d – the severing of creation from its Creator, a mentality of extreme utilitarianism.<\/p>\n The issue of birth control, for example, is far broader than birth prevention. It\u2019s about tackling the growing desire to manipulate birth: Test-tube babies, wombs for rent, and so on. \u00a0Paglia is keen to show that a baby in its mother\u2019s womb is an irreplaceable, nine-month process of creating life: \u201cIt\u2019s not like sticking yogurt in a refrigerator.\u201d<\/p>\n PAV will also be tackling an issue that the Charlie Gard case has highlighted: End-of-life care.\u00a0Together with institutions in Italy and elsewhere, Paglia has brought together religious leaders to sign an agreement on the importance of palliative care, which is the subject of a major meeting in January 2018.<\/p>\n It is vital for the PAV\u2019s credibility that such efforts are the fruit of as broad a consensus as possible: hence the inclusion of two Jews, a Muslim, an Anglican and more than one nonbeliever in the Academy\u2019s new line-up of members.<\/p>\n Paglia says they have chosen people who are all \u201clovers of life\u201d even if they might not be on exactly the same page as the vast majority of the 50-odd\u00a0members<\/a>, many of whom, including household pro-life Catholic names, are reconfirmations rather than appointments.<\/p>\n