{"id":26162,"date":"2020-08-28T23:12:24","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T21:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/?p=26162"},"modified":"2020-08-28T23:12:51","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T21:12:51","slug":"life-should-never-be-used-as-a-political-weapon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/life-should-never-be-used-as-a-political-weapon.html","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Life\u2019 should never be used as a political weapon"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Elise Ann Allen<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Aug 28, 2020<\/div>\n

ROME \u2013 As US presidential elections heat up and \u201clife issues\u201d are expected to figure prominently in the campaign, the Vatican\u2019s top official in the area has cautioned against turning the pro-life cause into an ideological weapon, saying making the protection of life a political football risks doing \u201cgreat harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLife is a great gift that comes from God \u2026 No one achieves life on their own. We all receive it, and we receive it not to keep it, but to multiply it like those talents in the Gospel,\u201d Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Vatican\u2019s Academy for Life, told\u00a0Crux<\/em>\u00a0in an interview.<\/p>\n

It is because the life of each unique individual \u2013 from its natural beginning to its natural end \u2013 is a gift, he said, \u201cthat the human person is never a means but always an end. Period.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
Referring to the United States\u2019 current presidential race, where appeals to religion and life issues have become a core strategy for both President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, Paglia said issues of ethics and morality are not solely the concern of one nation, but they have become \u201ca global issue.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Because of this, he said, Christian churches in the U.S. ought to feel \u201ca universal responsibility\u201d toward life, and called for greater engagement on the life issue \u201cin all its dimensions \u2026That is, a perspective of global bioethics, one that engages all the major topics that touch on life, of the individual and of the human family.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would do great harm,\u201d he said, \u201cif some topic of bioethics is extracted from its general context and put toward ideological strategies. It would do great harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cToday we are all called to discover a new alliance that goes beyond politics,\u201d he said, describing it as an alliance in which \u201call believers and all men and women of goodwill commit to saving all the lives of all the peoples who live in this one common home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why I believe that to instrumentalize some topic for political ends or for laziness [in one\u2019s own] horizon\u201d is harmful, he said, voicing hope that the whole of Christianity, not just in the United States, \u201cfinds in men and of goodwill an alliance so that the lives of all, particularly the weakest, are defended from the beginning to the end, from the mother\u2019s womb until the moment of death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paglia is among the speakers featured at this weekend\u2019s second virtual \u201cEncounter\u201d of the Pan-American Network for Life and the Right to Life of the Latin American Bishops\u2019 Conference (CELAM). This edition of the digital gathering will focus on John Paul II\u2019s 1995 encyclical,\u00a0Evangelium Vitae<\/em>, meaning, \u201cThe Gospel of Life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slated to take place Aug. 29 from 9-10:30 a.m. local time in Colombia, the event is a follow up to an initial virtual meeting held in June, after the Pan-American Network\u2019s establishment in 2018 to track the prolife work undertaken by national bishops\u2019 conferences and lay movements active on the continent.<\/p>\n

Additional speakers will include American Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Vatican department for Laity, Family and Life, as well as Father S\u00e9rgio Grigoleto, executive secretary of Latin American Bishops Conference, among others.<\/p>\n

Due to the coronavirus, there will be no in-person gathering, but the discussion and speeches will be broadcast live from CELAM\u2019s fan-page and Facebook account, and from its YouTube channel.<\/p>\n

In his comments to\u00a0Crux<\/em>, Paglia stressed that the Catholic Church\u2019s insistence on the respect and value of human life is indicative of the belief that human beings are the center of God\u2019s creation, rather than things, including scientific progress or the economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this sense, everything that doesn\u2019t respect the human person\u2026is a sin against the Gospel of life,\u201d he said, insisting that Christians pay closer attention to issues surrounding the beginning and end of life, which he said have \u201cunfortunately been forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great responsibility for Christians to find again, both in Biblical tradition and in the long tradition of the Church, that patrimony of human knowledge which led Paul VI to say in 1964, in his speech to the United Nations, that the Church is an expert in humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pointing to the global crisis caused by the COVID-19 coronavirus, Paglia said he believes the pandemic was \u201ca sort of slap\u201d that awoke a society too confident in its technological prowess, and too little aware of people\u2019s dependence on one another.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went to the moon, we are going to Mars, but it took that invisible molecule to bring us all to our knees, both people and institutions,\u201d he said, adding that the sense of fragility has been a reminder \u201cof the interconnectedness of us all. No one is an island.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat each of us do always impacts others,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we put on masks, we put them on not just to defend our lives, but also to defend others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paglia said the pandemic also offers an opportunity to focus on models of development that are more inclusive and attentive to inequalities, as opposed to \u201ca development that is economically sick.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are all in the same storm, but not all in the same boat, and the most fragile are overwhelmed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When it comes to life issues, Paglia voiced belief that a sense of solidarity and respect for vulnerable lives can also be the solution to turning life issues into ideology.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first time we are living together with four generations,\u201d he said, adding that to promote a \u201cGospel of life\u201d means fostering dialogue among the generations and to support one another as humanity navigates the complex task of learning to guide technology and the market, rather than being guided by them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an enormous task,\u201d he said, and urged Christians to engage in \u201can attentive dialogue in every sense, the humanist and the technological.\u201d<\/p>\n

CRUX<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Elise Ann Allen Aug 28, 2020 ROME \u2013 As US presidential elections heat up and \u201clife issues\u201d are expected to figure prominently in the campaign, the Vatican\u2019s top official in the area has cautioned against turning the pro-life cause into an ideological weapon, saying making the protection of life a political football risks doing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26026,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,11,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-interviste","category-rassegna"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/paglia.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26163,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26162\/revisions\/26163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vincenzopaglia.it\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}