ROME — Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, said Sunday progressive legislation allowing abortion and euthanasia represents both a loss of faith and a “loss of reason.”
“I am very sorry for the loss of faith in our Europe, in our culture, in our countries, and these anthropological changes that are taking place, losing the identity of the human person,” Cardinal Parolin (pictured) said in an interview with the Spanish Catholic radio network COPE.
“Rather than a loss of faith, I would say that it is a loss of reason,” the cardinal continued. “The pope says it many times and it has made a deep impression on me. He says for example: the issue of abortion is not a religious issue.”
“It is certainly also for us Christians from the beginning, from the earliest Church documents there is a total rejection of abortion but it is an argument from reason,” he added.
Parolin was referring to frequent statements by Pope Francis in which he insists abortion is not a “Catholic” issue but a matter of human rights.
In May 2019, for instance, the pope said the medical profession should be committed to defending the sacred value of human life and reject abortion as incompatible with medical practice.
Unfortunately, in today’s culture, “fear and hostility towards disability often lead to the choice of abortion, treating it as a means of ‘prevention,’” the pope said, and yet human life is always “sacred and inviolable.”
Prenatal diagnosis for selective purposes stems from “an inhuman eugenic mentality, which keeps families from accepting, embracing, and loving their weakest children,” he declared.
“Sometimes we hear: ‘You Catholics do not accept abortion, it is a matter of your faith,’” Francis said. “No: it is a pre-religious problem. Faith is not the issue. It is not unrelated, but it is not the issue: this is a human problem. It is a pre-religious problem.”
“Let’s not blame faith for something that lies outside its domain. It is a human problem,” he said.
“Abortion is never the answer that women and families seek,” he said. In the case of a sick child, “the practical, human and spiritual difficulties are undeniable, but precisely for this reason more incisive pastoral actions are urgent and necessary to support those who receive sick children.”
In his Easter interview, Cardinal Parolin reiterated that in today’s Europe, the chief problem is one of reason, not of faith.
Regarding the loss of faith, however, the answer is witness, he said. “Of course, it must be a ‘global’ witness, so we have to bear witness to our faith, we have to bear witness to our hope, we have to bear witness to our charity.”
“Nowadays, nothing can be imposed but we must offer a coherent and convinced witness of Christian life,” he said.
“Sometimes I am not sure whether I am right or wrong, but it seems to me that the situation we are living can be compared to the first centuries of the Church when the apostles and the first disciples arrived in a society that did not have Christian values,” he said. “But through their witness, the first communities managed to change the mentality and introduce the values of the Gospel in the society of that time.”
“I think we still have to do that today,” he said.
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