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Email: "CATHOLIC LEADERS SEE CONSPIRACY AGAINST FAMILY"

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BY LifeSiteNews.com Vatican Update from Catholic World News for October 2, 1997 VATICAN (CWN)—As the world encounter with families opened in Rio de Janeiro, and awaited the arrival of Pope John Paul II, one Vatican official spoke of a “conspiracy” against family life, while a leading Latin American prelate accused the United States of engaging in a crusade to promote abortion. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, spoke at the opening of the Rio congress. He told an audience of 2,500 official delegates from all across the world that families play the crucial role in the development of any society, and that earnest Catholics must fight against “harsh and systematic attacks” against family integrity, which he attributed to “a global conspiracy against life.” The cardinal, who is Colombian by birth, cautioned against the tendency of Christians to sequester themselves in “safe” havens, and insisted that in order to save themselves and their societies—and to spread the message of the Gospel—Catholic families must become engaged in the “culture wars.” The best defense of the family, he said, will come from families themselves. And the defense of the family is a principle element of the “new evangelization” which will help the Church usher in the 3rd Christian millennium. Following Cardinal Trujillo to the podium, a prominent American legal scholar followed up on the prelate’s argument, saying that many international organizations—particularly the United Nations—are engaged in efforts to promote contraception, with enormous negative consequences for family life. Harvard professor Mary Ann Glendon, who acquired considerable experience in working with international organizations when she headed the Vatican delegation to the UN conference on women in Beijing, said that powerful lobbying groups were leading international bodies toward a posture that would favor the autonomy of children over parental discipline, and homosexual activity over married love. Archbishop Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegulcigalpa, Honduras, completed the argument by pointing a finger directly at the United States, which he said is the ultimate source of the campaign that is now undermining family life, especially in Latin America. The archbishop, who is the president of the Latin American bishops’ conference CELAM, complained that the US sees Latin America in simplistic terms, as a source of illegal immigrants and of drug traffic. “They fall into the fallacy of thinking that we are underdeveloped because we are populous,” he continued, and as a result the US political leadership sponsors heavy-handed measures to control population. While organizations backed by US aid have distributed condoms and lobbied for legalized abortion, Archbishop Rodriguez said, the fundamental problems of the region cannot be solved without a change in individual attitudes and individual behavior. The Church in Latin America, he said, must face the real problems of the region, which include consumerism, individualism, and the growth of religious sects. http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/catholic-leaders-see-conspiracy-against-family/

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