Vatican official refuses to resign in abortion flap
The Vatican's top bioethics official has dismissed calls for his resignation following an uproar over his defense of doctors who aborted the twin fetuses of a 9-year-old child who was raped by her stepfather, the Associated Press reports.
Monsignor Renato Fisichella told the AP on Monday that he refused to respond to five members of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy for Life who questioned his suitability to lead the institution.
Fisichella wrote an article in the Vatican's newspaper in March saying the Brazilian doctors didn't deserve excommunication as mandated by church law because they were saving the girl's life. The call for mercy sparked heated criticism from some academy members who said it implied the Vatican was opening up to so-called "therapeutic abortion" to save the mother's life.
To quiet their complaints, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a clarification in July, repeating the Catholic Church's firm opposition to abortion and saying Fisichella's words had been "manipulated and exploited."
But that didn't stem the criticism, which boiled up again last week when the academy — an advisory body to the pope made up of lay and religious bioethics experts from around the world — held its annual plenary assembly.
Five members of the 145-odd member body issued a statement Feb. 16, at the end of the closed meeting, again questioning Fisichella's suitability for office.
They took him to task for his opening speech, in which he described the criticism over his article as being motivated by spite, according to participants. And they accused him of manipulating the Vatican's July clarification to make it appear that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had vindicated his original article.
"Far from creating unity and genuine harmony in the academy, Archbishop Fisichella's address ... had the effect of confirming in the minds of many academicians the impression that we are being led by an ecclesiastic who does not understand what absolute respect for innocent human lives entails," the five wrote.
"This is an absurd state of affairs in a Pontifical Academy for Life but one which can be rectified only by those who are responsible for his appointment as president."
Comments
And yet another example of the intransigent nature of religious absolutists. They let their sense of morals stand in the way of doing what is right, even if it might cost a nine year old incestuously raped child her life. Religion is rubbish.
Posted by: Robert Littel | February 23, 2010 11:51 AM
The excommunication law has never made any sense and should be revised. Clearly this is not a case that warranted excommunication. The church needs to balance it's position on abortion with compassion and understanding.
Posted by: ravensfan | February 23, 2010 2:17 PM