Back appointment with the Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae, "in defense of life. Today we continue to reflect on the inviolable value of life and see how the Venerable John Paul II continues to base his speech incident on the biblical Cain, slayer of his brother Abel
THE VOICE OF YOUR BROTHER'S BLOOD CRIES TO ME FROM THE GROUND
" What have you done? " (Gen 4 , 10):
The eclipse of the value of life
10. The Lord said to Cain: "What have you done?" The voice of thy brother's blood is crying to me from the ground! " (Gen. 4, 10). The voice of the blood shed by men continues to cry out, from generation to generation, in different accents and tones, and always new. The Lord's question "What have you done?" which Cain can not escape, is addressed also to the contemporary man to make them realize the extent and gravity of the attacks against life which continue to mark human history; go in search of the multiple causes that generate them and them feed; ponder seriously the consequences which derive from these attacks for the existence of individuals and peoples. Some threats come from nature itself, but are made worse by the culpable indifference and negligence of men who could in some cases remedy them, while others are the result of situations of violence, hatred and conflicting interests that lead people to attack others through murder, war, slaughter and genocide. And how can we forget the violence that makes the lives of millions of human beings, especially children, forced into poverty, malnutrition and hunger because of an unjust distribution of resources between peoples and between social classes? or violence inherent not only in wars, but in the scandalous arms trade, which spawns the many armed conflicts that cause bloodshed in the world? the spreading of death caused by reckless tampering with the ecological balance by the criminal spread of drugs or by the promotion of sexual activity which, besides being morally unacceptable, also involve grave risks to life? It is impossible to fully the wide range of threats to human life, there are many forms, whether explicit or hidden, that they appear today!
11. But we shall concentrate in particular on another kind of attacks, affecting life in the womb and terminals, which present new characteristics with respect to the past and which raise questions of extraordinary seriousness to the fact that they tend to lose, in the collective consciousness, the character of "crime" and paradoxically they assume the "right" to the extent that it demands a genuine legal recognition from the state and make them available through the free services of health professionals. Such attacks strike human life at its greatest frailty, quando è priva di ogni capacità di difesa. Ancora più grave è il fatto che essi, in larga parte, sono consumati proprio all'interno e ad opera di quella famiglia che costitutivamente è invece chiamata ad essere "santuario della vita". Come s'è potuta determinare una simile situazione? Occorre prendere in considerazione molteplici fattori. Sullo sfondo c'è una profonda crisi della cultura, che ingenera scetticismo sui fondamenti stessi del sapere e dell'etica e rende sempre più difficile cogliere con chiarezza il senso dell'uomo, dei suoi diritti e dei suoi doveri. A ciò si aggiungono le più diverse difficoltà esistenziali e relazionali, aggravate dalla realtà di una società complessa, in cui le persone, couples, families are often left alone with their problems. There are situations of acute poverty, anxiety or frustration in which the struggle to make the pain of unbearable, the violence, especially against women, make the choice to defend and promote life so demanding as sometimes to heroism. All this explains, at least in part, as the value of life can today undergo a kind of "eclipse", even though conscience does not cease to point to it as sacred and inviolable value, as evidenced by the fact that there is a tendency to disguise certain crimes against life early or final stages by using innocuous medical, which distract attention from the fact that the right is at stake the existence of an actual human person.
12. In fact, many serious if today's social problems can somehow explain the climate of widespread moral uncertainty and sometimes mitigate the subjective responsibility of individuals, is no less true that we are faced with a wider reality, which can be regarded as a veritable structure of sin, which is characterized by the emergence of a culture which denies solidarity and in many cases that is configured as a true "culture of death." This culture is actively fostered by powerful cultural trends, economic and political, as bearers of a conception of society with efficiency. Looking at the situation from this point of view, one can, in a sense, talk about a war of the powerful against the weak: a life which would require greater acceptance, love and care is considered useless, or held to be an intolerable burden, and is therefore rejected in many ways. Who, with his illness, with his handicap or, more simply, with his very presence calls into question the well-being or lifestyle of those who are more favored, tends to be seen as an enemy to be resisted or delete. It is so unleashes a species of "conspiracy against life". It involves not only individuals in their personal relationships, family or group, but goes far beyond, of damaging and distorting, at the international level, relations between peoples and states.
13. To facilitate the spread of abortion, have invested and continue to invest enormous sums of money to the development of pharmaceutical preparations, which make it possible to kill the fetus in the womb, without the need for medical assistance. Scientific research itself on this point, it seems almost exclusively preoccupied with developing products that are more simple and effective in life and at the same time are capable of removing abortion from any kind of control and social responsibility. It is frequently asserted that contraception, if made safe and accessible to all, is the most effective remedy against abortion. The Catholic Church is then accused of actually promoting abortion because she obstinately continues to teach the moral unlawfulness of contraception. The objection, on closer inspection, is clearly unfounded. It may be, in fact, that many people use contraception with a view to excluding the subsequent temptation of abortion. But the negative values \u200b\u200binherent in the "contraceptive mentality" - very different from responsible parenthood, lived in respect of the full truth of the conjugal act - are such that they in fact strengthen this temptation when possible conception of a unwanted life. In fact, the pro-abortion culture is especially strong precisely where that reject the Church's teaching on contraception. Of course, contraception and abortion, the moral point of view, are specifically different evils: the former contradicts the truth of the sexual act as the proper expression of conjugal love, while the latter destroys the life of a human being, the former is opposed the virtue of chastity in marriage, the latter is opposed to the virtue of justice and directly violates the divine commandment "Thou shalt not kill." But despite their differences of nature and moral weight, they are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree. It is true that there are cases where contraception and even abortion are practiced under the pressure of life difficulties, which however, may not exempt from the effort to comply fully But God's law in many other cases, such practices are rooted in a hedonistic mentality and deresponsabilizzante towards sexuality and assume that a selfish concept of freedom in procreation sees an obstacle to the unfolding of his personality. The life which could result from a sexual encounter thus becomes an enemy to be avoided and abortion becomes the only possible decisive response to failed contraception. The close connection which exists, in mentality, between the practice of contraception and that abortion is becoming increasingly obvious, as demonstrated in an alarming way by the development of chemical products, intrauterine devices and vaccines che, distribuiti con la stessa facilità dei contraccettivi, agiscono in realtà come abortivi nei primissimi stadi di sviluppo della vita del nuovo essere umano.
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