Word: lifeness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...controversy over specific ecclesiastical policies may overshadow the overarching theme of John Paul's pontificate thus far: the Christian belief in social justice, based on the absolute value of each human life, on which there is little dispute in the American church. Such a philosophy underlies not only the Pope's stance on abortion but his attack, often in the same speeches, on racial discrimination, economic disparities, war, terrorism and "national security" as an excuse for oppression. Though a supposed contradiction between the "liberal" and "conservative" aspects of John Paul perplexed some observers last week, there...
...regarded as a matter of personal gratification unconnected with social responsibility or, of course, with sin. Even among U.S. Catholics the trend is toward the belief that any individual act whatever is acceptable if it can be thought to foster love or self-esteem and enrich the life of the participants. The position of the Roman Catholic Church is that self-gratification alone is morally dangerous and that sex must be linked to commitment to marriage, children, the family, society-that its pursuit must be a reinforcement of fidelity rather than an encouragement to promiscuity. The chief issues stirred...
...find "decent and human means" of birth control (by implication, the Pill). Morality depends on the good of the child, the couple and the family, not "the direct fecundity of each and every particular act," the report concluded. But in 1968 Paul's encyclical Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life) totally rejected this theory. It declared all "artificial" methods of birth control unacceptable, thus touching off a sustained campaign of public dissent by theologians and wide disobedience among the laity, especially in the U.S., that has few parallels in modem Catholic history...
...even among relatively liberal Catholics there is negligible backing for abortion on demand. In fact, no front-rank Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish or Muslim theologian has yet developed a serious argument for totally open abortion, though most countenance abortion in extreme cases, such as when the mother's life is threatened...
...concerns whether traditional Jewish and Christian teaching should be incorporated into secular law. Catholics themselves are divided. Many Catholic Congressmen oppose abortion personally but want no constitutional amendment to control it. But for John Paul, activism is essential on human rights. "If a person's right to life is violated at the moment in which he is first conceived in his mother's womb," he has said, "an indirect blow is struck also at the whole of the moral order." He urged the cheering crowd in Washington to "demand that society give all life its protection...