Another senior member of the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV) has issued
an open
letter condemning the organization’s president, Archbishop Rino Fisichella,
for refusing to retract his article in which he appeared to condone the
abortion of the unborn twins of a nine-year-old rape victim in Brazil.
Professor Josef Seifert, a member of the PAV and an eminent professor of
philosophy, wrote in response to a request for information from
LifeSiteNews.com (LSN), that he is in full agreement with the five signatories
of a statement published
by LSN February 17. That statement was also supported by Judie Brown,
president of American Life League.
“In
my view, notwithstanding that a decision is solely in the Pope’s authority,
Mons. Fisichella is absolutely unfit for being President of PAV.”
Fisichella’s article, published March 15, 2009 by the Vatican’s newspaper
L’Osservatore Romano, asserted, contrary to the teaching of the Church, that
the Brazilian doctors who aborted the twins did not merit automatic
excommunication. Fisichella said that such cases are “a difficult decision for
the doctor and for the moral law itself.”
The only issue, Seifert said, on which he differed from the statement by
the five PAV members was their suggestion that Archbishop Fisichella should be
employed elsewhere in the Church. Although, he said, Fisichella has “a
brilliant mind,” a “superb education,” and an “extraordinary linguistic
talent,” his statements opposing the Church on abortion, “would make it
impossible to nominate him as bishop of a diocese, let alone of a diocese
linked to a Cardinal’s hat and rank.”
“Only an unshakeable and courageous commitment to the full extent of
Catholic teaching can qualify a person for such influential and responsible
positions for the flock for which Christ has laid down his life.”
Seifert related that while attending the meeting of the PAV in Rome in
February, in hope of reaching a solution “in peace and truth,” he had prepared
a document restating the teaching of the Church and asked Archbishop
Fisichella to sign it together with all the members of the Academy. This
document, he hoped, could, “settle all our differences … restore authentic
tranquility of order,” and be presented to the pope. The text included a
renewal of the oath taken by PAV members to uphold Catholic teaching.
Prof. Seifert told LSN, “I showed this text to Mons. Fisichella before
intending to have us distribute it together. He refused.”
In his original article, commissioned by the Vatican’s Secretariat of
State, Fisichella implied that the abortion had been a life-saving act of
mercy, reiterating the claims made by the pro-abortion Brazilian press that
the child-mother’s life was in danger should the pregnancy be allowed to go to
term.
Addressing the girl, he wrote, “Others deserve excommunication, not those
who have permitted you to live.”
Given Fisichella’s responses to the criticisms by PAV members and his
statements to the press, Prof. Seifert said, “It is to be feared that Mons.
Fisichella truly remains firmly and immovably with his article’s positions,
not even regretting privately” the “tremendously damaging consequences” of its
implied justification of abortion.
Seifert, who is the founder and rector of the International Academy of
Philosophy in Liechtenstein, analyzed Fisichella’s article again, saying it
clearly implies that the abortion “was even a good act under the
circumstances.” This view he identified as that of “proportionalism” or “consequentialism,”
utilitarian ethical theories opposed to the concept of an objective absolute
moral law that underpins Catholic moral theology.
These ideas, he said, “are in full tune” with those Catholic theologians
who have dissented from Catholic moral teaching, especially since the general
revolt against Pope Paul VI’s anti-contraception encyclical Humanae Vitae in
1968.
Indeed, the L’Osservatore Romano article was eagerly seized upon by the
international press, as well as prominent abortion campaigners, as an example
the Vatican at its highest levels backing away from its condemnation of
abortion in all circumstances. Typical of the many headlines was one by the
Washington Post, “Vatican Official Defends Child's Abortion.”
To date, Archbishop Fisichella has not only refused to retract his article,
but in his opening address to the PAV members in February, continued to defend
it, claiming that a later clarification from the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith had completely “vindicated” him. At that meeting, he accused his
critics of acting out of “spite” and a desire to “create a situation of
conflict.” Fisichella told Catholic News Service on February 12, that the mood
of the meeting was “serene and calm,” and attributed the criticisms to
attempts at “political exploitation.”
When, following February’s meeting, the five members issued their open
letter to LSN suggesting that Fisichella should be removed as president of the
PAV, he responded in an article by Associated Press, “I won't respond to these
people. Too much space already has been given to them.”
Although Seifert was not among the signatories of the earlier statement,
upon reflection, he said, “it seemed to me right and necessary not to remain
silent, also towards the Press, about an extremely important doctrinal matter
and one that puts many lives of unborn babies and souls in peril and hence is
of utmost practical, ethical, and spiritual consequence.”
“The press,” he said, “had been badly misinformed about the meeting of our
Assembly. I thought the time for silence was over.”
He decried “what amounted to the bishop’s condoning acts of abortion … thus
abandoning his flock and feeding it with pernicious errors rather than with
truth.”
He added, “If I were a bishop and had the most brilliant and knowledgeable
seminarian of the world asking me to ordain him as a priest after having held
similar views about abortion, I would never ordain him to be a priest and if I
were to do so, would fear for my eternal salvation.”
Seifert denied that his motives, and those of his fellow PAV members, were
spiteful, saying that he prays for Fisichella “daily by name,” and said that
the criticisms have been written with “a bleeding heart, not a fanatic
interest in battles and in-fights.”
**See
the complete text of Professor Seifert's letter to LifeSiteNews**
"Those who have the highest places in My Son's
Church are now using their rank to destroy the truth. You cannot build on the
carnal nature of mankind, the fallen nature of mankind.
"You must now, My children, read the direction given
you by Saint John. He was given the prophecy of your times. You are in those
days, My children, the days of apostasy." - Our Lady of the Roses,
October 6, 1975
"My child, they converse of the secret that I
gave at Fatima. It is a simple explanation. It could not be fully revealed
because of the drastic nature of My message. How I warned and warned that
satan would enter into the highest realms of the hierarchy in Rome. The Third
Secret, My child, is that satan would enter into My Son's Church." -
Our Lady of the Roses, May 13, 1978
"I gave Lucy the Revelation as a temporary secret—as I revealed [the Third
Secret] to you on two occasions. Make a concerted effort to bring its entirety
to Our children on earth. The hierarchy have not listened to My
counsel—thirty-two years lost in indecision and fear of exposure. The Faith is
shattered for many." - Our Lady of the Roses, April 29, 1992
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