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VATICAN, December 11, 2002 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family has released a Lexicon of the Family” in order to point out the deceptive language which is used by advocates of abortion and homosexuality at the United Nations.  Zenit News reports that the 1000-page volume is go on sale in Italy next year but no date has been set for an English edition.  Pro-life activists working at the United Nations told LifeSite that developing countries are often misled by the deceptive language used at the United Nations.  The lexicon points out that such misleading language introduces grave moral confusion.  Examples described in the Lexicon are:  “Voluntary interruption of pregnancy,” when referring to abortion “reproductive health,” when talking about contraception   Cardinal López Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, explained that “When the family is discussed in the U.N. or in national parliaments, ambiguous terms and concepts impede a real understanding of the speaker’s intentions.” The “greater part of references to the family, to children, to woman, are vitiated by an almost Orwellian language. Phrases are articulated that never define clearly the concept that is really being expressed,” the Cardinal told the Italian newspaper Avvenire (as translated by Zenit)  The Cardinal explained that, for instance, when there is talk of “discrimination of woman” in reality “there is no concern for the feminine condition, but a desire to put across that the family is the place where woman’s aspirations are abused.”  With regard to the term “gender” the Cardinal noted that “At present there are many experts who no longer refer to the biological fact, but to the cultural option. According to this logic, sexual identity should not be rooted in human nature, but in the tendency that the individual is free to embrace. In this way, an attempt is made to put heterosexual and homosexual couples on the same plane.”

See the Zenit coverage at:  https://zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=28650