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Cardinal Alfonso TrujilloROME, June 15, 2006 (CWNews.com/LifeSiteNews.com) – Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo is unabashed by the heated controversy that has greeted a new Vatican document on human procreation. The president of the Pontifical Council for the Family told the Italian daily La Repubblica that the public uproar is “positive.”

Family and Human Procreation, a 60-page statement released by the Pontifical Council for the Family on June 6, raised some cries of protest because of its vigorous defense of Church teachings on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, contraception, and assisted procreation. But Cardinal Lopez Trujillo noted that the response has included strong statements of support as well.

Moreover, the public discussion has drawn attention to the Church’s teaching, providing a new opportunity to influence secular culture, the cardinal observed. “We added nothing that was not already in the ecclesial tradition,” he remarked.

Family and Human Procreation should be a reminder to politicians, the Colombian cardinal continued. “The politician who does not follow Catholic moral teachings is cordially invited to re-read the doctrine of the Church, the anthropological arguments, and the truths that have a validity in and of themselves—not from the perspective of faith but simply from the human perspective,” he said.

Asked whether the Church might lose the sympathy of some people who take different positions on disputed political issues, Cardinal Lopez Trujillo conceded that “there is a certain risk.” But that risk is outweighed, he said, by the obligation of Church leaders to provide clear teaching, to warn of the dangers of exploiting human persons, and to offer convincing arguments in an effort to sway those who disagree.

The president of the Pontifical Council for the Family refused to be drawn into a discussion of public statements by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the retired Archbishop of Milan, who had adopted a more liberal stand on issues such as embryonic-tissue research. Cardinal Lopez Trujillo said that he would not comment on the Italian cardinal’s statements because “partial and incomplete opinions are often reported in the papers.” However, he did say that “what I read, and what emerged from the newspaper accounts, was not a position in accord with Church doctrine.”