Fatima Perspectives #1209
On the front page of L’Osservatore Romano for June 16 we read the headline that “Pope Francis Denounces the Plague of Selective Abortion,” followed by the rather tiny subheading “And he recalls that the family in the image of God, man and woman, is the only one.”
The story references an address by Francis to a delegation from the Forum of Family Associations, found here, wherein he stated the following during impromptu remarks (translation mine):
“Children are the greatest gift. The children who are welcomed as they come, as God sends them, as God permits – even if they are sometimes sick. I have heard it said that it is fashionable, or at least habitual, in the first months of pregnancy to conduct certain examinations, to see if the child is not well, or to see if there is some problem… The first proposal in that case is: ‘Should we dispose of him?’ The homicide of children. And to have a tranquil life, an innocent is put out.
“When I was a boy, the history teacher told us something that the Spartans did when a malformed baby was born: they carried him to the mountain and threw him down, to preserve ‘the purity of the race.’ And we remained stunned: ‘But how, how can this be done, poor children!’ It was an atrocity. Today we do the same. Have you wondered why you do not see so many dwarfs on the street? Because the protocol of many doctors – many, not all – is to ask the question: ‘Is it [the fetus] defective?’. I say this with pain. In the last century the whole world was scandalized by what the Nazis did to preserve the purity of the race. Today we do the same, but with white gloves….
“Then today – it hurts to say – we talk about ‘diversified’ families: different types of families. Yes, it is true that the word ‘family’ is an analogical word, because we speak of the ‘family’ of the stars, the ‘families’ of the trees, the ‘families’ of the animals … it is an analogical word. But the human family as an image of God, man and woman, is the only one. It is the only one.”
How rarely, if ever, the Pope has spoken with such clarity on moral questions involving marriage and procreation — in the midst of a veritable campaign to accommodate habitual violations of the Sixth Commandment by the divorced and “remarried” and an upcoming Synod on “Youth” that is already promising to be a front for “gay” activism.
Too bad the Pope made no such statement to the people of Argentina two days before, when the country’s House of Representatives voted (June 14, 2018) to “legalize abortion through 14 weeks of pregnancy.” Instead, on the very day the vote was taking place, he sent “cordial greetings to all those following the World Soccer Championships” which he views as an opportunity for “encounter and fellowship”.
And too bad the Pope, at least for now, intends to address the 2018 World Meeting of “Families” in Dublin, to which his own Vatican has invited Father James Martin to speak on “how the church can welcome families with LGBT members. The invitation sends a clear and powerful message from the Vatican to LGBT Catholics, their parents and their families: you belong and you are welcome.”
The most consistent aspect of this pontificate has been its inconsistency on moral questions, but always with an overall tendency away from the constant teaching and discipline of the Church. Were the Pope’s remarks on June 16 the beginning of a reversal of that tendency, or just another indication of his yes and no, maybe so, approach to marriage and procreation, which even includes the empaneling of a commission to “re-read” Humanae Vitae in light of Amoris Laetitia?
We can only pray for the Pope, defend the truth when he fails to do so, and await with confidence the fulfillment of the Virgin’s promise that the current confusion in the Church will end with the triumph of Her Immaculate Heart once we have a Pope who consecrates Russia to Her, precisely as She has requested.
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