Thanks to Steve Jalsevac of LifeSite News for linking to this letter!
Fr. Pavone, the National Director of Priests for Life, says,
No, the Pope is not diluting the anti-abortion focus of the Church.
As the Director of Priests for Life, known worldwide as a ministry within the Catholic Church that urges more preaching, teaching, and action against abortion, I was asked by many alarmed and confused people these past few days about the reported comments of the Pope that the Church should not be “obsessed” with this issue, and that there should be “balance” and “context.
Is the pope saying we should talk less about abortion? Is he saying that the emphasis the Church has placed on this issue has been a mistaken emphasis?
When I first received these inquiries via emails and text messages, I was actually in the presence of Pope Francis, in the dining room of his residence. I had spoken just hours earlier, at the invitation of the Vatican, about the Church’s defense of the unborn child, and about the clear and strong position of the Church, expressed in many documents, that the right to life is our first right and the foundation and condition for all the others.
So the news came to me with more than a little irony, and I immediately began to tell worried pro-life warriors that they had no reason to think that the Pope no longer wanted the Church to focus on abortion.
The Pope is, as I said myself, giving the world context for the pro-life movement. The letter from Father Pavone is short, clear, and reassuring, and concludes this way:
This approach radically strengthens the Church’s opposition to abortion, because the Pope is saying not simply that it breaks the Fifth Commandment (“You shall not kill”), but that more fundamentally it breaks the First Commandment (“You shall not have other gods besides me”) and that to disrespect life is to abandon God himself.
Nobody should worry or think that the Pope is in any way diluting the Church’s strong and unchangeable stance against abortion, or contradicting all that has already been said and written, in documents like The Gospel of Life, about the urgent priority that this issue deserves. Some 50 million children are killed by abortion around the world each year. If we want to know how much we should focus on it, we only have to use human reason and ask what our response would be if 50 million adults throughout the world were killed each year by terrorism.
Long live the pro-life movement, and long live the Pope!
Hear, hear! Thank you, Father Pavone.
