By Gudrun Schultz
VATICAN CITY, April 24, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Abortion and euthanasia are “terrorism with a human face,” said Vatican leader Archbishop Angelo Amato, Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in an address to chaplains April 23.
In his address on the theme ‘The problem of evil: theological and philosophical reflections,’ Archbishop Amato condemned the media for glossing over the reality of social evils with language games, saying abortion, homosexual marriage and euthanasia “remain almost invisible” in media reports that present them as an “expression of human progress,” Spero News reported earlier today.
“When we read papers, or browse the internet, or turn on our TVs and radios, we are presented with what could be likened to a perverse film on evil, which is ‘filmed’ each and every day in all four corners of the world, focusing on scenes of an increasingly cruel nature depicting the thousands of daily provocations from international terrorism”.
Archbishop Amato referred to abortion clinics as “slaughterhouses of human beings,” and included as evils those parliaments of “so-called civilized nations where laws contrary to the nature of the human being are being promulgated, such as the approval of marriage between people of the same sex…”
The media hides “the tragic reality of the facts,” the Archbishop said, “For example, abortion is called ‘voluntary interruption of pregnancy’ and not the killing of a defenseless human being, an abortion clinic is given a harmless, even attractive, name: ‘centre for reproductive health’ and euthanasia is blandly called ‘death with dignity’.”
Evil today “is not just an action carried out by single individuals or identifiable groups,” Archbishop Amato said, “but it comes from obscure sources, from laboratories of false opinions, from anonymous powers who brainwash us with false messages and judge behaviour which adheres to the Gospel as retrograded and ridiculous”.
“Unfortunately, when we cannot close the libraries of evil, neither can we destroy its films which are reproduced like lethal viruses,” he said, but Christians must ask God to “strengthen us through the formation of true conscience which seeks and loves good and avoids evil”.
Archbishop Amato’s comments were the latest in a series of recent statements by Vatican officials and Pope Benedict XVI in addressing a proposed law that would give legal recognition to homosexual couples.