CNS STORY: Academy for Life to stand united despite dissent, says archbishop

ACADEMY-LIFE Feb-12-2010 (910 words) xxxi

Academy for Life to stand united despite dissent, says archbishop

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- After rumblings of discontent within the Pontifical Academy for Life, its president said the academy is moving forward and working to speak as a united body.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella told Catholic News Service Feb. 12 that when there are "very delicate situations from an ethical point of view and there are always possibilities of different interpretations, we must try as much as possible to make our voices heard as a symphony and not a cacophony."

Christine De Marcellus Vollmer, one of several academy members who had asked the archbishop to clarify remarks he made in March concerning the abortion performed on a nine-year-old girl in Brazil, told CNS Feb. 9 that the situation had been resolved and any possible confusion over his remarks were clarified.

Members of the academy were holding their general assembly at the Vatican Feb. 11-13 on the theme "Bioethics and Natural Law."

Several news outlets predicted the meeting would be marred by conflict and some went so far as to say the future of the academy was in doubt because some members had been highly critical of the way Archbishop Fisichella reacted to the abortion case in Brazil.

After doctors in Recife, Brazil, aborted the twins of the young girl who had been repeatedly raped by her stepfather, the archbishop criticized the way the local archbishop had handled the situation.

Archbishop Fisichella wrote in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, March 15 that the local archbishop had put too much emphasis on the punishment of automatic excommunication incurred by the girl's parents and the doctors who carried out the abortion and didn't show enough pastoral care or compassion for the people involved.

He reiterated the church's teaching on the serious evil associated with direct abortion and the automatic excommunication of those directly involved. But he also urged compassion for "those who allowed (the girl) to live and who will help (her) regain hope and faith despite the presence of evil and the wickedness of many."

Vollmer, who chairs the board of the Washington-D.C.-based Alliance for the Family, told CNS that the article seemed to suggest "it was alright to abort twins because it may have saved the little girl's life; then you're opening the door very, very wide to abortion."

Newspapers in Latin America, in fact, had interpreted the archbishop's words to mean the Vatican had softened its stance on abortion by suggesting that when the mother's life was in danger it would be permissible to terminate a pregnancy, she said.

She and others within the academy requested the archbishop clarify his remarks, "but he didn't feel he wanted to do that," she said.

Some members then asked the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to release a clarification, she said, which it did in L'Osservatore Romano July 11.

The congregation wrote that any confusion over the church's stance on direct abortion had been caused by "the manipulation and exploitation of Archbishop Rino Fisichella's article."

The congregation said the archbishop had outlined the church's opposition to direct abortion while taking into account "the dramatic situation of the child -- who, it turns out-- was accompanied with pastoral delicacy" by the local archbishop.

Vollmer said she believed the doctrinal congregation's note had clarified the situation "to the public's satisfaction."

One academy member who did not appear to be satisfied was Msgr. Michel Schooyans, a retired professor of theology and philosophy at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. He did not attend the academy's general assembly because of a health problem.

In early February, Msgr. Schooyans widely circulated among journalists an article he wrote criticizing Archbishop Fisichella.

While he didn't name the archbishop directly, the Belgian priest quoted from the archbishop's March 15 article and said it was one example of many in which some members of the church were engaged in a dangerous form of "bogus compassion."

Msgr. Schooyans said it was the same false compassion that compelled some church authorities to pretend priests accused or suspected of sexual abuse of minors had done nothing wrong.

"In both examples, referring to pedophilia and the Recife case, instead of expressing compassion for the young and innocent victims, 'compassion' is extended to those who have inflicted immense harm on these victims: doctors in Recife, clergy elsewhere," Msgr. Schooyans wrote.

When asked about the priest's critique and whether there was a sense of discontent within the academy, Archbishop Fisichella said, "If a member of the academy, if some people, for reasons of political exploitation, wanted to misconstrue my words, it is not my responsibility. Rather it's the responsibility of those who wanted to create a situation of conflict."

The archbishop said the mood at the academy's February meeting was "serene and calm" and that members were happy with the closed-door proceedings, which gave them an opportunity to work in small groups.

"This is the first time after many years that the academicians have been able to come together, working together with their different expertise and also achieving, we hope, a thorough and commonly held synthesis" of recommendations concerning the many bioethical questions facing the world today, he said.

Among the biomedical controversies the academy members were studying, he said, were: the fate of frozen embryos; research on embryonic stem cells; the genetic testing and pre-selection of embryos in artificial reproductive techniques; the RU-486 pill; assisted suicide; and a new form of eugenics in which advances in genetic engineering may allow people to manipulate an embryo's genetic traits.

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