Good evening. This is Steve Jalsevac, the managing director and a co-founder of LifeSitenews and I want to welcome you to this second LifeSiteNews webcast.
The first webcast, titled, We are at war”, was broadcast on Friday, Sept. 27. If you have not heard that first webcast, I strongly urge you to do so since it includes important information about the mission and history of LifeSiteNews and why we must cover so many different, but related issues.
Tonight, we are taking on another controversial subject, “Pope Francis and the pro-life and pro-family movements.” In the promotional article for this webcast there was a link to a list of the numerous past articles that LifeSiteNews has written on Pope Francis. Please at least glance at all the titles which will give you a good idea of all that we are discussing tonight.
When he was first elected pope, like most of you, we had never even heard of Cardinal Borgoglio. After some quick investigation we found amazing statements he made in the past on the life and family issues.
In 2005, responding to efforts to legalize abortion in Argentina, the Cardinal urged Catholics to “defend the right to life even if they deliver you to the courts or have you killed.” We found more with the same theme and have to admit that this was some of the very strongest language we had ever heard from a bishop on the issue.
When the same-sex marriage issue also arose in Argentina that same year, he strongly argued strongly this effort was “the total rejection of God’s law engraved in our hearts.” “Let’s not be naïve,” he said. “We’re not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the father of lies,” (that means the devil,) “who seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.” So, again, Cardinal Bergoglio was exceptionally blunt on yet another issue very important to LifeSiteNews readers.
Then he was elected Pope on March the 13th of this year. And a strange thing happened – at least as perceived by those deeply involved in trying to defend life and family. He essentially said nothing on these subjects for the next 4 and one-half months – even during the June 16 Mass in Rome to celebrate Pope John Paul II’s 1995 Gospel of Life encyclical.
This year the Mass had been billed as the event when the new pope would finally reveal his strong views on abortion and other life issues. And yet, the Pope’s surprisingly subdued homily didn’t really mention much about those issues. LSN editor-in-chief John-Henry Westen and I were there in Rome at the time. The word “abortion” was clearly, deliberately avoided and none of Pope John Paul II’s strong statements in that awesome encyclical were quoted. Many found this bewildering.
Then on July 28th the big controversies began to break – the Press Conference with Pope Francis during the return flight from the hugely successful World Youth Day in Brazil, and soon after the two lengthy off-the-cuff magazine interviews.
During the in-flight press conference, Pope Francis was asked by a Brazilian reporter, “You did not speak about abortion, about same-sex marriage. In Brazil a law has been approved which widens the right to abortion and permits marriage between persons of the same sex. Why do you not speak about this?”
Francis replied, “the church has already spoken clearly on this. It was unnecessary to return to it just as I did not speak about cheating, lying or other matters on which the church has a clear teaching. And then the reporter said, “but the young are interested in this.” And he responded, “yes, though it wasn’t necessary to speak of it, but rather about the positive things that open up the path to young people. Isn’t that right? Besides, young people know perfectly well what the Church’s position is.”
The problem is, most of those heavily involved in pro-life and pro-family work know that the vast majority of young people in the world do not understand the church’s teachings on these issues. They do know orthodox Chistianity is opposed to all these things, but they are very weak, if not totally ignorant of the why and that is because they haven’t been taught. They have no idea of the great benefits and love behind these teachings. At least that is what almost all life and family activists have been seeing in their work for many years.
Another question was, “How does your Holiness intend to confront the question of the gay lobby?”(which referred to the now well-known substantial influence of unrepentant, active homosexuals within the Church). He responded, “so much is written about the gay lobby. I still haven’t found anyone with an identity card in the Vatican with gay on it.” “If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has goodwill, then who am I to judge him. And that phrase, “who am I to judge?” has been repeated again and again in numerous media to justify support for homosexual advancements and by dissident Catholics who insist the church must change its teaching on the issue.
In the Jesuit magazine interview of September 23rd, Pope Francis was quoted stating, “we cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraception methods.” Many of us wondered who he was referring to that insists on only those? We don’t know of any. “But when we speak about these issues”, Francis added, “we have to speak about them in a context. The teaching of the Church for that matter is clear, he continued, “and I am a son of the Church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.” He added that “the church pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of this disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.”
Well there were more confusing, if not disturbing statements by the pope that you have heard and read about in LifeSiteNews and elsewhere. The most hurtful of all to many who have endured great hardship, personal abuses and sacrifices for decades was in the text of the next interview with the atheist Eugenio Scalferi published on October 1st in the anti-Catholic Republica newspaper.
In that interview it was reported that Pope Francis told Scalveri that “youth unemployment and loneliness among the elderly” are the “the most urgent” problems facing the Church, and the “most serious of the evils that afflict the world these days.” Jaws dropped. Few knew how to respond to this, given the worldwide slaughter of unborn and other innocents that has been growing since the late 1960s.
Regarding this last item, it was later reported that Scarferi did not take notes or record the interview, so the pope’s comments may not have been entirely accurately reported. However, they are likely to be very close to the truth since the Pope was shown and approved the article and it was published in L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper. Also, to this date, there have been no denials of what was published in the article.
There has been an international tsunami of reaction to all of this. And it is still going on. It has fallen into especially three camps.
One has been the very liberal media of the world who have been ecstatic over these comments by the pope. They are almost universally interpreting the situation as indicating that finally, the Church has a leader who is open to changing, or at least to putting far less emphasis on the Church’s moral teachings, which they, the media, have been obsessed with for many years.
The second group has been the numerous dissidents within the Church itself who have been publicly giddy with delight, and consistently so, from the flagship American dissident Catholic newspaper, the National Catholic Reporter to even Pope Benedict’s chief despiser, the infamous former Catholic theologian priest, Hans Kung.
They see this pope as their supposed savior from all that John Paul II and especially Benedict did to reverse the rebellion against the church’s moral and other teachings since the 1960s. What we are seeing now is exploitation of these statements by Pope Francis to try to undo the previous two pope’s great achievements and to smear them as having been intolerant, pre-Vatican II reactionaries.
In a recent Focus magazine article it was reported that since last 14 March, “satisfaction prevails here that the “brakemen” of John Paul II and Benedict XVI have finally been gotten rid of.”
This theme of a rebuking contrast between Francis and the reactionary previous popes has been growing.
The third major group has been certain faithful Catholics who are perfectly fine with whatever the Pope says. For this group, a pope is never to be even questioned, let alone criticized.
So, what has the Pope really been saying? What did he mean by all the statements I have noted and many more I have not even mentioned? Is the massive positive reaction by all the enemies of Christian morality, in the media, and within the church, and in other parts of the secular world, worth giving a lot of credibility to?
We are not saying they are. Our role is mainly to report these things. Quite frankly, however, it just cannot be denied that there has been enormous, negative fallout from the interpretations of Pope Francis’s off-the-cuff remarks. That is happening everywhere. At LifeSiteNews, because we scour all the media and so much other communications around the world, we have probably seen much more of this than most people.
Tonight, we are going to try to unmuddy the waters that many people feel they are in over this.
We are going to ask our special quest speakers to relay their various views on the controversy.
So let me first introduce our guest speakers. Our first speaker will be Father Frank Pavone, the national of priests for life. He is one of the most prominent pro-life leaders in the world. A full list of his involvements, achievements and travels would take more time than we have. We are privileged to have him with us this evening.
Next will be professor Janet E. Smith who is well known in US Catholic circles. She teaches Life Ethics at Sacred Heart major seminary in Detroit. Janet has written much on Pope Paul Vi’s encyclical Humanae Vitae and has travelled far and wide giving talks on that encyclical and other issues. Professor Smith is also a regular columnist for the Catholic Register and she blogs on Catholic vote.org.
Third is Father Shenan Bouquet who joined Human Life International, the world’s largest pro-life organization, as its new president in the fall of 2011. He has been travelling all over the world in his new capacity giving hundreds of talks in all the issues that we cover at LifeSiteNews and more. He also gives retreats and educational seminars on the theology of the body and, like Fr. Pavone, has appeared numerous times on EWTN.
Lastly, our own LifeSiteNews editor-in-chief for 16 years, and co-founder, John-Henry Westen, will wrap up the presentations part of the evening and answer the question, “How can pro-life and pro-family activists promote the Culture of Life in a positive way, but without sacrificing anything of the truth?
So we have four top people to comment on this controversy and then our managing editor John Jalsevac, will moderate the important question and answers portion of the evening.
Let’s begin now with Fr. Frank Pavone and his reflections on this issue of the confusion around the remarks of Pope Francis.