News

Thursday August 5, 2010


Defy Spanish Abortion Law: Vatican Cardinal

By Hilary White

ROME, August 5, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The head of a major Vatican dicastery and the former archbishop of Toledo, has criticised lawmakers on both left and right who supported the new Spanish abortion law that allows virtual abortion-on-demand.

Antonio Cardinal Cañizares Llovera, the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and Sacraments, referred to the “dictatorship of relativism” that has allowed this law to be put in place that he said will destroy democracy.

“Whoever denies the right to life is against democracy and leads society to disaster,” Canizares told summer course attendees last week at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid.

There can be no true justice, he said, in a country which is “killing the innocent” since justice requires the protection of the life of the unborn child. Instead, the law considers the unborn child a “something, not someone or a who”.

The cardinal called on Spaniards to defy the law that he said was not possible to respect. Where a law “legitimizes” abortion or euthanasia, he said, it “ceases to be a true morally binding civil law”.

“Let us refuse to support any initiative that goes against life, not give our support to individuals, institutions, works or measures to be or intended to go against life, we can not associate ourselves with those who deny something so fundamental.”

This does not constitute civil disobedience, he said, but an effort to “defend society” and the “immense value of life”. Canizares, moreover, identified the trivialization of sexuality and gender ideology as elements behind the “contempt” for the unborn and for the new abortion law.

“Instead of intervening to defend the innocent in danger, the law authorizes and contributes to a death sentence… A nation that kills its own children is a nation without future,” he warned.

Abortion, he said, is a “crime against the person and the common good,” a “violation” of the moral order and of human rights. He decried as “disgusting” the applause given the new law in some sectors, “How can you applaud a law to kill?”

Read related LSN coverage:

Interview: Head of Vatican’s Liturgical Office says Principle of Refusing Communion is “Charity in Truth”

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jul/09072304.html

| Send Letter to Editor