When pro-life is not pro-life enough

A row between a senior Vatican official and members of the Pope's Academy for Life exposes a worrying fault line in the pro-life movement writes Michael Kelly

''Astounding and incorrect,'' was how the Vatican's chief spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi SJ described a letter, released at the weekend, by five members of the Vatican's Academy for Life challenging the position of their President Archbishop Rino Fisichella.

Archbishop Fisichella, a career theologian who used to head the Pope's own university the Pontifical Lateran University, was hand-picked by Benedict XVI in 2008 to head the prestigious academy at the vanguard of the Church's efforts to defend the dignity of all human life.

It's a serious charge to allege that the Pope's most important pro-life champion ''does not understand what absolute respect for innocent human lives entails'' as the breakaway members of the academy have insisted.

Compassion

The criticism of Archbishop Fisichella stemmed from an article he wrote last year, which said a Brazilian archbishop's response to an abortion performed on a 9-year-old girl had shown a lack of pastoral care and compassion.

Last March it emerged that the Brazilian child had conceived twins as a result of being repeatedly raped by her stepfather.

Brazil only permits abortions in cases of rape or health risks to the mother and doctors insisted that the girl's case met both these conditions, but Archbishop José Cardoso Sobrinho rejected this and announced the excommunication of the girl's mother and the doctors involved, saying the abortion was ''a crime in the eyes of the Church.''

Penalties

Archbishop Fisichella, in an article published shortly afterwards in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, reiterated the Church's teaching on the serious evil associated with direct abortion and the penalties involved. But he also wrote that the local archbishop had put too much emphasis on the punishment of automatic excommunication incurred by the girl's mother and the doctors who carried out the abortion and didn't show enough pastoral care or compassion for the people involved.

The girl ''should have been defended, hugged and held tenderly to help her feel that we were all on her side,'' Archbishop Fisichella said.

Clarification

Four months later, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) published a clarification saying that any confusion over the Church's stance on direct abortion had been caused by ''the manipulation and exploitation of Archbishop Rino Fisichella's article.''

The CDF clarification apparently came after complaints from some members of the Academy for Life.

When the academy met at the Vatican last week, many observers expected the disagreement to take centre-stage. But the issue was not raised.

In their statement, the five renegades said they had made ''a political decision'' to not publicly question Archbishop Fisichella's leadership during the assembly's proceedings because ''an open challenge to [Archbishop] Fisichella in the assembly would have divided the academy.''

The academy, however, seemly fairly full-square behind the archbishop against his detractors. Sources have indicated that the criticism was widely circulated among the 159 members yet only five chose to sign it.

Speaking at the Vatican this week, Fr Lombardi said the group had not yet made a copy of their letter available to Pope Benedict XVI or the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

Request

''It's a bit strange that persons who are members of an academy address a request of this kind without addressing it to the competent authorities,'' Fr Lombardi said. ''It's astounding and seems incorrect that such a document be given public circulation.''

In what seems rather uncharitable, another reason the group decided not to openly dissent during the meeting was because they believed there was ''a reasonable hope that the Holy Father will recognise the need to provide [the archbishop] with an occupation better suited to his abilities.''

According to the statement, Archbishop Fisichella described criticism against him over the Brazil case as ''personal attacks motivated by spite''.

The dissenters statement insisted they they have ''the impression that we are being led by an ecclesiastic who does not understand what absolute respect for innocent human lives entails.

''This is an absurd state of affairs in a Pontifical Academy for Life, but,'' seeming to lay the blame at the Pope's door, ''one which can be rectified only by those who are responsible for his appointment as president.''

Signatories

The signatories of the statement included: Luke Gormally, a senior research fellow of the London-based Linacre Center for Healthcare Ethics; Christine De Marcellus Vollmer, chairwoman of the Washington-based Alliance for the Family; Msgr Michel Schooyans, a retired professor of theology and philosophy at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium; Dr Maria Smereczynska of Poland; and Dr Thomas Ward, president of the British National Association of Catholic Families.

The row exposes a wider fault-line in the pro-life movement which is also evident in the Church in the United States. Many US commentators have been annoyed that Pope Benedict XVI has not more clearly rebuked American politicians for their support of abortion.

George Weigel, a veteran American commentator who has also been critical of Pope Benedict's teaching on social justice, objected to articles in the Vatican newspaper praising President Barack Obama: the articles, he contends, are written by ''ill-informed European journalists who imagine that they understand American history, the American political scene''.

Michael Novak, a prominent American conservative has also criticised the stance arguing that L'Osservatore Romano had ''published glowing, star-struck, teenage praise of President Barack Obama'' and ''seems not to grasp the fundamental realities of abortion politics in America''.

Bullish

When asked about the criticism Archbishop Fisichella was bullish in his response: ''If a member of the academy, if some people, for reasons of political exploitation, wanted to misconstrue my words, it is not my responsibility. Rather it's the responsibility of those who wanted to create a situation of conflict,'' he said.

Attempts by The Irish Catholic to contact several members of the Pontifical Academy for Life this week were unsuccessful and calls to some of the signatories of the statement went unreturned.

It's almost a year not since the article first provoked controversy. In the absence of any action from Pope Benedict XVI in that period it now seems obvious that Archbishop Fisichella retains the confidence of Pope Benedict XVI. The fate, however, of the five dissenting voices is less secure. It seems unlikely that the archbishop will tolerate members of his academy publicly and bitterly opposed to him.