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CANADIAN ARCHBISHOP SAYS CATHOLIC POLITICIANS CANNOT SUPPORT STEM CELL BILL C-13

VANCOUVER, January 30, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Archbishop Adam Exner of Vancouver has issued a statement warning that Catholic and other pro-life Members of Parliament may not support the proposed legislation on stem cell research. Pavel Reid, Director of the Archdiocesan Office for Life and Family told LifeSite that Archbishop Exner issued the document so that his direction to the politicians would be in the public record. The Statement dated January 2, 2003 follows:

STATEMENT

Re: Bill C-13 and Section 73 of Evangelium Vitae

A number of Catholic and other pro-life Members of the Parliament of Canada have been invoking section 73 of the encyclical Evangelium vitae as a justification for voting in favour of Bill C-13, the "Act Respecting Human Reproduction."

In no way can section 73 be used to justify such a vote.

Section 73 is very clear in teaching that a legislator may not vote for legislation that is intrinsically unjust. "In the case of an intrinsically unjust law... it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to 'take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or to vote for it." And Bill C-13 is certainly intrinsically unjust legislation, violating human rights and dignity in numerous ways and gravely so.

Section 73 goes on to speak of the 'problem of conscience' that can arise "in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law... in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on." There is no such more permissive law at present in Canada, nor is there one about to be voted on. We have only the present legal vacuum and the unjust law that would be created if Bill C-13 was signed into law.

There is a moral difference between diminishing the evil in an already existing unjust law and positively to create such an injustice in law by the passage of an unjust law when no law had previously existed. To vote for Bill C-13, a legislator would involve himself or herself in the creation of unjust law-and not in its amelioration

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