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| Francis |
“In short, Pope Francis has restored to
office a man ultimately responsible for the distribution of condoms and
abortifacient drugs, while removing from the office the man who tried to ensure
that Malteser International remained faithful to Catholic teaching.” (Matthew McCuske)
Does Pope Francis actually oppose Church teaching on
contraception? This summary raises the question
by Matthew McCuske
February 1, 2017 (Voice of the
Family) – The circumstances surrounding the
resignation of the Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta,
and the appointment of a “papal delegate” to assist in the “renewal” of the
order, raises further questions about the extent to which Pope Francis
assents to the teaching of the Catholic Church on questions of sexual ethics.
In this article we will revisit previous concerns regarding Pope Francis’s
position on contraception, in the light of recent events.
At the heart of the crisis in the
Order of Malta is the distribution of contraceptives and abortifacient drugs,
over a number of years, by Malteser International (MI), the humanitarian arm of
the order. Edward Pentin has provided details of MI’s programmes in his
comprehensive article on the subject. An
investigation by the Lepanto
Institute provides further information
about MI’s work promoting condoms and abortifacient drugs worldwide. Amongst
their findings the following facts stand out:
- MI distributed
52,190 condoms in Burma (Myanmar) in 2005 and 59,675 in 2006
- A World Health
Organisation report from 2006, entitled Reproductive Health
Stakeholder Analysis in Myanmar 2006 includes “family planning”
among MI’s “areas of expertise”, “contraception” amongst its “activities”
and “birth spacing” amongst its “future plans”. The report also reveals
that MI provided oral contraceptives to 2,500 women in one Burmese
township.
- In 2007 MI received
a four-year grant of $1.7 million from the Three Disease Fund, for whom
they distributed over 300,000 condoms in Burma.
- In 2012 MI
entered a partnership with Save the
Children to carry out a joint project, for
which they received $2.1 million from the Global Fund, to distribute yet
more condoms in Burma during the period from 2013-2016.
Malteser International was headed
throughout this period by Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager. An internal
investigation by the Order of Malta found that von Boeselager was ultimately
responsible for the programmes that involved the distribution of condoms and
abortifacient drugs. His role at MI was one of the major factors that resulted
in his dismissal from the role of Grand Chancellor by the Grand Master, Fra
Matthew Festing, on 6 December 2016, after he twice refused to resign. Von
Boeselager appealed to the Vatican. A commission was appointed to investigate
his dismissal. Edward Pentin has provided extensive, and disturbing
information, about the make-up of this
commission, which seems to have consisted largely of von Boeselager’s friends
and associates. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which is a sovereign
entity, refused to accept the legitimacy of this interference into their
internal affairs.
On 24 January 2017 Fra Matthew
Festing was asked to resign
by Pope Francis and acceded to this
request. The following day Pietro Cardinal Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State,
stated that Pope Francis was declaring null and void all Fra Festing’s acts
since 6 December, thus nullifying the dismissal of von Boeselager. Fra
Festing’s resignation was accepted by the Sovereign Council of the Order of
Malta on 28 January and it was announced that von Boeselager was restored to his
position as Grand Chancellor of the order.
In short, Pope Francis has restored
to office a man ultimately responsible for the distribution of condoms and
abortifacient drugs, while removing from the office the man who tried to ensure
that Malteser International remained faithful to Catholic teaching.
In the light of this, and of his decision not
to confirm that he accepts Catholic
teaching on the existence of intrinsically evil acts, it is reasonable to
review other concerns regarding Pope Francis’s position on the morality of
using contraceptive methods. The list below draws readers’ attention to
important incidents of which we are aware; it is not intended to be exhaustive.
5 March 2014 – Pope Francis is
interviewed by Corriere della Sera.
He is asked “At half a century from Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae, can
the Church take up again the theme of birth control? Cardinal Martini, your
confrere, thought that the moment had come.” In his reply Pope Francis stresses
that “Paul VI himself, at the end, recommended to confessors much mercy, and
attention to concrete situations”. The pope also stated, “The question is not
that of changing the doctrine but of going deeper and making pastoral
(ministry) take into account the situations and that which it is possible for
people to do. Also of this we will speak in the path of the synod.” The full
implications of these words will become clearer during the two-year synodal
process.
13 October 2014 – The
heterodox relatio post disceptationem of
the Extraordinary Synod is published, after having received the personal
approval of Pope Francis. This
document adopts an ambiguous approach towards contraception, and an approach to
conscience and the natural law of
a kind that will inevitably undermine the Church’s moral teachings. The
alternation between orthodox restatements of Catholic doctrine and ambiguous
and erroneous statements will be followed in all succeeding synodal documents.
19 October 2014 – The final report of the Extraordinary Synod makes the approach
of the above relatio its own. The treatment
of contraception and the natural law are examined in more detail in Voice
of the Family’s analysis of the
document.
16 January 2015 – Pope Francis
makes reference to Humanae Vitae in an
address to families in the Philippines, once more laying emphasis not on the
central doctrine of the encyclical but on his contention that Paul VI “was
very merciful towards particular cases, and he asked confessors to be very
merciful and understanding in dealing with particular cases. But he also had a
broader vision: he looked at the peoples of the earth and he saw this threat of
families being destroyed for lack of children.” The implication of this
passage, especially in light of the comments of 19 January below, is that
contraception might be tolerated in particular cases, and that the Church’s
teaching is a “broader vision” or ideal. This would reflect the “gradualism” adopted in the synod documents and in Amoris Laetitia.
19 January 2015 – Pope Francis, during a press conference on his return flight from Manila, tells
journalists that the encyclical letter Humanae Vitae, was not
about “personal problems, for which he then told confessors to be merciful and
understand the situation and forgive, to be understanding and merciful” but
rather about “the universal Neo-Malthusianism that was in progress”. Thus he
frames Humanae Vitae not as being principally about a
universally binding norm but rather as a political response to an ideological
movement. During the same press conference he criticises a mother who had
eight children by Caeserean section and accuses her of being guilty of tempting
God. He goes on to say that Catholics should practice “responsible parenthood”
and shouldn’t “breed like rabbits”.
17 June 2015 – Pope Francis appoints climate scientist Hans Schellnhuber to the
Pontifical Academy of Science. Schellnhuber believes that there is a
“population problem” and has previously stated that the “carrying capacity of
the planet” is “below 1 billion people”. Schellhuber’s positions have been analysed
in more detail by Voice of the Family in this article.
18 June 2015 – Pope Francis promulgates the encyclical letter Laudato Si endorsing the
theory of climate change and the environmentalist agenda. The encyclical makes
no direct reference to contraception despite the close interrelationship
between the environmental and population control movements. This connection is
exemplified by the Vatican’s selection of Hans
Schellnhuber and Carolyn Woo, then President and CEO of Catholic Relief Services, an American
organisation that has funded groups that promote abortion and contraception, to
present the document at its launch.
23 June 2015 – The Instrumentum Laboris of the Ordinary Synod
is published. This document, which was approved by Pope Francis prior to its
release, gravely undermines the Church’s teaching on contraception, and her
moral teachings in general. This is explained in detail in Voice of the
Family’s analysis of the document.
10 September 2015 – 65 academics
appeal to the fathers of the upcoming
Ordinary Synod to reject “the distortion of Catholic teaching implicit in
paragraph 137” of the Instrumentum Laboris. They write: “Paragraph
137 addresses a key document of the modern Magisterium, Humanae Vitae,
in a way that both calls the force of that teaching into question and proposes
a method of moral discernment that is decidedly not Catholic. This approach to
discernment contradicts what has hitherto been taught by the Magisterium of the
Church about moral norms, conscience, and moral judgment, by suggesting that a
well-formed conscience may be in conflict with objective moral norms.”
24 October 2015 – The final report of the Ordinary Synod continues to adopt a gravely
problematic approach to the moral law, and
to the issue of contraception in particular.
30 November 2015 – Pope Francis
asserts, in the context of a question regarding the use of condoms
to prevent the transmission of HIV, that there could be a conflict between
the fifth and sixth commandments.
A German journalist asked: “Is it not
time for the Church to change its position on the matter? To allow the use of
condoms to prevent more infections?”
In his response Pope Francis stated:
“Yes, it’s one of the methods. The moral of the Church on this point is found
here faced with a perplexity: the fifth or sixth commandment? Defend life, or
that sexual relations are open to life?”
In fact there can never be any
conflict between the commandments of the decalogue. Pope Francis further implies that the Church’s teaching on
this matter is not a priority:
“This question makes me think of one they once asked Jesus: ‘Tell me,
teacher, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Is it obligatory to heal?’ This
question, ‘is doing this lawful,’ … but malnutrition, the development of the
person, slave labor, the lack of drinking water, these are the problems. Let’s
not talk about if one can use this type of patch or that for a small wound, the
serious wound is social injustice, environmental injustice, injustice that…I
don’t like to go down to reflections on such case studies when people die due
to a lack of water, hunger, environment…when all are cured, when there aren’t
these illnesses, tragedies, that man makes, whether for social injustice or to
earn more money, I think of the trafficking of arms, when these problems are no
longer there, I think we can ask the question ‘is it lawful to heal on the
Sabbath?'”
10 December 2015 – Cardinal Turkson
suggests that the world might be
overpopulated and states that “this has been talked about, and the Holy Father
on his trip back from the Philippines also invited people to some form of birth
control, because the church has never been against birth control and people
spacing out births and all of that.” He later stated that he should have used
the term “responsible parenthood” rather than “birth control.”
18 February 2016 – Pope Francis seems to suggest that condoms are a “lesser of two evils” that can be
used to prevent the transmission of the Zika virus and again makes the
erroneous assertion that there can be “conflict between the fifth and sixth
commandments” of the decalogue. He also seems to suggest the question of
contraception is a “religious problem” rather than a “human problem”. This
incoherent approach to the moral law was already predicted by Voice of the
Family, in our analyses of
the synodal documents.
19 February 2016 – The Vatican
press office confirms that
Pope Francis intended to approve the use of condoms in certain cases in his
remarks of the previous day.
8 April 2016 – The Apostolic
Exhortation Amoris Laetitia is promulgated. This document builds on the erroneous approach adopted in the
synodal documents towards conscience and the natural law and pursues false
approaches to moral theology, including
gradualism, situation ethics, and fundamental option.
1 September 2016 – Pope Francis
states that he is “gratified” by the adoption of the United
Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which include “universal access
to sexual and reproductive health”. These terms are understood to include
contraception and abortion by UN agencies, national governments and
international agencies. Archbishop Mupendwatu, of the Pontifical Council for
Healthcare Workers, had earlier told the World Health Assembly in Geneva that
the Holy See welcomed the SDGs unreservedly and that Goal 3, on the two goals
that call for “universal access to sexual and reproductive health” was the
key to achieving all the other goals. The pope’s assertion that he is
“gratified” by goals that will lead to further killing of unborn children
threatens to destroy the credibility of the strong statements that he has made
in opposition to abortion during his pontificate.
19 September 2016 – Four cardinals write to Pope Francis asking him to resolve five dubia they have about the doctrine of Amoris Laetitia.
These dubia, which raise questions regarding the nature of
conscience and the existence of intrinsic moral evils, are of great relevance
to the Church’s teaching on contraception.
24 October 2016 – Pope Francis praises Bernard
Häring, a moral theologian and influential
dissenter from Humanae Vitae. He told the 36th general
Congregation that Häring was the “first to start looking for a new way to help
moral theology to flourish again” and that “in our day moral theology has made
much progress in its reflections and in its maturity”.
14 November 2016 – The four cardinals make the text of
the dubia public after
Pope Francis informs them that he does not intend to give an answer. The pope’s
decision not to explain clearly the meaning of his own text strengthens the
common perception that his teaching is deliberately ambiguous and intended to
undermine the Catholic faith.
The examples listed above demonstrate
the extent to which the pontificate of Pope Francis has caused widespread
doubts and confusion concerning the doctrine of the faith. In this hour of
great crisis for the Church we must turn to God, with ever greater confidence,
offering prayer and penance that he will soon manifest His almighty power and
bring deliverance to His Church.
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