The Pontifical Academy of Life said Friday that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade “challenges the whole world.”
“The court’s opinion shows how the issue of abortion continues to arouse heated debate. The fact that a large country with a long democratic tradition has changed its position on this issue also challenges the whole world,” the Vatican academy wrote in a statement on June 24.
“The protection and defense of human life is not an issue that can remain confined to the exercise of individual rights, but instead is a matter of broad social significance. After 50 years, it is important to reopen a non-ideological debate on the place that the protection of life has in a civil society to ask ourselves what kind of coexistence and society we want to build,” it said.
The academy’s statement was the first official reaction to the court’s decision issued by an entity linked to the Roman Curia. Pope Francis has condemned abortion using strong language, referring to it as “murder” and on multiple occasions comparing the act of killing an unborn child to hiring a “hitman” to solve a problem.
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the president of the academy, said: “In the face of Western society that is losing its passion for life, this act is a powerful invitation to reflect together on the serious and urgent issue of human generativity and the conditions that make it possible.”
Regarding the United States Supreme Court decision that modified the 1973 legal position Roe v. Wade on the issue of abortion, the Pontifical Academy for Life presents the following statement. pic.twitter.com/VJW6sCE053
— Pontifical Academy Life (@PontAcadLife) June 24, 2022
The Pontifical Academy of Life also urged the importance of assisting mothers carry on with a difficult pregnancy, as well as “ensuring adequate sexual education, guaranteeing health care accessible to all and preparing legislative measures to protect the family and motherhood.”
St. John Paul II founded the Pontifical Academy of Life in 1994 to have the specific task of studying and providing formation on issues in biomedicine and the law regarding the promotion and defense of life.
Venerable Jérôme Lejeune, the French geneticist who discovered the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome, served as the pontifical academy’s first president.
The Pontifical Academy of Life wrote that it joined the U.S. bishops in calling for “healing wounds and repairing social divisions.”
“It is a time for reasoned reflection and civil dialogue, and for coming together to build a society and economy that supports marriages and families, and where every woman has the support and resources she needs to bring her child into this world in love,” the academy said.
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Cardinal Peter Turkson, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, speaks at a press conference on “Risks and Opportunities of AI for Children: A Common Commitment for Safeguarding Children” o… […]
The trailer of the upcoming Russell Crowe movie “The Pope’s Exorcist” indicates that the film might not do justice to the Italian exorcist Father Gabriel Amorth or the rite of exorcism as practiced in the Catholic Church, according to an exorcist organization Amorth himself helped to found.
The International Association of Exorcists on March 7 voiced concern that the film seems to fall under the category of “splatter cinema,” which it calls a “sub-genre of horror.”
The Vatican, the statement said, is filmed with a high-contrast “chiaroscuro” effect seen in film noir.
This gives the film a “‘Da Vinci Code’ effect to instill in the public the usual doubt: Who is the real enemy? The devil or ecclesiastical ‘power’?” the exorcists’ association said.
While special effects are “inevitable” in every film about demonic possession, “everything is exaggerated, with striking physical and verbal manifestations, typical of horror films,” the group said.
“This way of narrating Don Amorth’s experience as an exorcist, in addition to being contrary to historical reality, distorts and falsifies what is truly lived and experienced during the exorcism of truly possessed people,” said the association, which claims more than 800 exorcist members and more than 120 auxiliary members worldwide.
“In addition, it is offensive with regard to the state of suffering in which those who are victims of an extraordinary action of the devil find themselves,” the group’s statement added. The statement responded to the release of the movie trailer and promised a more in-depth response to the film’s April 14 theatrical release.
Father Gabriele Amorth, chief exorcist of Rome, speaks to CNA on May 22, 2013. Steven Driscoll/CNA
Amorth, who died at age 91 in 2016, said he performed an estimated 100,000 exorcisms during his life. He was perhaps the world’s best-known exorcist and the author of many books, including “An Exorcist Tells His Story,” reportedly an inspiration for the upcoming movie.
Several of Amorth’s books are carried by the U.S. publisher Sophia Institute Press. The publisher’s newly released book “The Pope’s Exorcist: 101 Questions About Fr. Gabriele Amorth” is an interview in which the priest addresses many topics ranging from prayer to pop music.
Michael Lichens, editor and spokesperson at Sophia Institute Press, voiced some agreement with the exorcist group.
“The International Association of Exorcists is right to be concerned and I’m thankful for their words,” Lichens told CNA. “My hope is that audiences will remember that Father Amorth is a real person with a great legacy and perhaps a few moviegoers will look up an interview or pick up his books.”
“This was a man who included St. Padre Pio and Blessed Giacomo Alberione as mentors, as well as Servant of God Candido Amantini, who was his teacher for the ministry of exorcism,” he said. “Father Amorth fought as a partisan as a young man and grew to fight greater evil as an exorcist. His life is an inspiration and I know that his work and words will still reach many.”
Amorth was born in Modena, Italy, on May 1, 1925. In wartime Italy, he was a soldier with the underground anti-fascist partisans. He was ordained a priest in 1951. He did not become an exorcist until 1986, when Cardinal Ugo Poletti, the vicar general of the Diocese of Rome, named him the diocesan exorcist.
The priest was frequently in the news for his comments on the subject of demonic forces. In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph in 2000, he said: “I speak with the devil every day. I talk to him in Latin. He answers in Italian. I have been wrestling with him, day in, day out, for 14 years.”
The movie “The Pope’s Exorcist” claims to be “inspired by the actual files of the Vatican’s chief exorcist.” The Sony Pictures movie stars the New Zealand-born actor Russell Crowe as Amorth. Crowe’s character wears a gray beard and speaks English with a noticeable accent.
“The majority of cases do not require an exorcism,” the Amorth character says in the movie’s first trailer. A cardinal explains that Crowe’s character recommends 98% of people who seek an exorcism to doctors and psychiatrists instead.
“The other 2%… I call it… evil,” Crowe adds.
The plot appears to concern Amorth’s encounter with a particular demon. Crowe’s character suggests the Church “has fought this demon before” but covered it up.
“We need to find out why,” he says.
The trailer shows short dramatic scenes of exorcism, including a confrontation between Amorth and a girl apparently suffering demonic possession.
The International Association of Exorcists said such a representation makes exorcism become “a spectacle aimed at inspiring strong and unhealthy emotions, thanks to a gloomy scenography, with sound effects such as to inspire only anxiety, restlessness, and fear in the viewer.”
“The end result is to instill the conviction that exorcism is an abnormal, monstrous, and frightening phenomenon, whose only protagonist is the devil, whose violent reactions can be faced with great difficulty,” said the exorcist group. “This is the exact opposite of what occurs in the context of exorcism celebrated in the Catholic Church in obedience to the directives imparted by it.”
CNA sought comment from Sony Pictures and “The Pope’s Exorcist” executive producer Father Edward Siebert, SJ, but did not receive a response by publication.
Amorth co-founded the International Association of Exorcists with Father René Laurentin in 1994. In 2014 the Catholic Church recognized the group as a Private Association of the Faithful.
The association trains exorcists and promotes their incorporation into local communities and normal pastoral care. It also aims to promote “correct knowledge” about exorcism ministry and collaboration with medical and psychiatric experts who have competence in spirituality.
Exorcism is considered a sacramental, not a sacrament, of the Church. It is a liturgical rite that only a priest can perform.
Hollywood made the topic a focus most famously in the 1973 movie “The Exorcist,” based on the novel by William Peter Blatty.
“Most movies about Catholicism and spiritual warfare sensationalize,” Lichens of Sophia Institute Press told CNA. “Sensationalism and terror sell tickets. As a fan of horror movies, I can understand and even appreciate that. As a Catholic who has studied Father Amorth, though, I think such sensationalism distorts the important work of exorcism.”
“On the other hand, ‘The Exorcist’ made the wider public more curious about this overlooked ministry. That is a good thing that came out, despite other reservations and concerns,” he continued. “Still, I would love it if a screenwriter and director spoke to exorcists and tried to show the often-quotidian parts of the ministry.”
An unhealthy curiosity can be a problem, Lichens said.
“When I work as a spokesperson for Amorth’s books, I am always concerned about inspiring curiosity about the demonic,” he told CNA. “As Christians, we know we have nothing to fear from the demonic but curiosity might lead some to want to seek out the supernatural or the demonic. Father Amorth has dozens of stories of people who found themselves afflicted after party game seances.”
Lichens encouraged those who are curious to read more of Amorth’s writings, some of which are excerpted on the Catholic Exchange website. Sophia Institute Press has published “Diary of an American Exorcist” by Monsignor Stephen Rosetti and “The Exorcism Files” by the American lay Catholic Adam Blai.
“First and foremost, Father Amorth was involved in a healing ministry,” Lichens said. “Like other exorcists, his work often involved doctors in physical and mental health because the goal is to bring healing and hope to the potentially afflicted.”
“Those of us who read Amorth might have been excited to read firsthand accounts of spiritual warfare, but readers quickly see a man whose heart was always full of love for those who sought his help,” he added.
The International Association of Exorcists, for its part, praised the 2016 documentary “Deliver Us,” saying this shows “what exorcism really is in the Catholic Church and “the authentic traits of a Catholic exorcist.” It shows exorcism as “a most joyful event,” in their view, because through experiencing “the presence and action of Christ the Lord and of the Communion of the Saints,” those who are “tormented by the extraordinary action of the devil gradually find liberation and peace.”
Rome Newsroom, Feb 24, 2022 / 07:30 am (CNA).
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5 Comments
A rather muted and technical response…almost apologetic.
Not surprised that Paglia, who painted a blasphemous pornogrsphic mural in his cathedral, seems less than enthusiastic about this monumental court decision.
A welcome response from the Pontifical Academy for Life, couched in diplomatic somewhat open ended terms [in agreement with Ramjet]. However, at least it’s positive in suggesting a worldwide reevaluation of universal promotion of abortion.
The Academy must now be proactive to be both effective and convincing. An important opportunity that deserves positive Church engagement in favor of life.
Additionally, “The Academy said it is a question of developing political choices that promote conditions of existence in favor of life without falling into a priori ideological positions” (E Pentin in NCReg). Pentin then apparently picking up on the Vatican-Francis codeword “ideological” requested further comment, “The Register has asked the Holy See Press Office and American Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life for comment, but they have not yet responded” (Ibid).
When doctrinal orthodoxy is thought ideological it requires a bit of time to finagle an inveigled response.
Referring to ideologies, the key sentence in Paglia’s letter reads: “After 50 years it is important to reopen a non-ideological debate on the place that the protection of life has in civil society to ask ourselves what kind of coexistence and society we want to build.”
A close look finds this sentence to be both edifying, in that it transcends ideologies, and problematic in that it doesn’t…
Does the wording imply that defenders of human life, too, have been witnessing on an ideological level now to be set aside?
Does the wording imply a further bifurcation between human society and strategic retreat to a modernist and “civil” variant detached from morality?
Does the wording imply a too-much globalized world with a middling and ambulatory kind of “coexistence”—viz, a presumed fraternity subject to the potentially too-pragmatic “principles” of Evangelii Gaudium, that: “realities are more important than ideas,” “time is greater than space,” “unity prevails over conflict,” and “the whole is greater than the part”? (The receding goal posts of a “moveable feast”)?
And does the premise that society is something that we “build,” and not—first—something that we “discover” as already given, permanent and universal; as already existing within ourselves as the baked-in natural law which to be preserved (not violated)?
The letter is necessarily short, but what might we find written between the lines? Like Paglia’s infamous and homoerotic cathedral mural, is the handwriting on the wall?
A rather muted and technical response…almost apologetic.
Not surprised that Paglia, who painted a blasphemous pornogrsphic mural in his cathedral, seems less than enthusiastic about this monumental court decision.
A welcome response from the Pontifical Academy for Life, couched in diplomatic somewhat open ended terms [in agreement with Ramjet]. However, at least it’s positive in suggesting a worldwide reevaluation of universal promotion of abortion.
The Academy must now be proactive to be both effective and convincing. An important opportunity that deserves positive Church engagement in favor of life.
Additionally, “The Academy said it is a question of developing political choices that promote conditions of existence in favor of life without falling into a priori ideological positions” (E Pentin in NCReg). Pentin then apparently picking up on the Vatican-Francis codeword “ideological” requested further comment, “The Register has asked the Holy See Press Office and American Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life for comment, but they have not yet responded” (Ibid).
When doctrinal orthodoxy is thought ideological it requires a bit of time to finagle an inveigled response.
Referring to ideologies, the key sentence in Paglia’s letter reads: “After 50 years it is important to reopen a non-ideological debate on the place that the protection of life has in civil society to ask ourselves what kind of coexistence and society we want to build.”
A close look finds this sentence to be both edifying, in that it transcends ideologies, and problematic in that it doesn’t…
Does the wording imply that defenders of human life, too, have been witnessing on an ideological level now to be set aside?
Does the wording imply a further bifurcation between human society and strategic retreat to a modernist and “civil” variant detached from morality?
Does the wording imply a too-much globalized world with a middling and ambulatory kind of “coexistence”—viz, a presumed fraternity subject to the potentially too-pragmatic “principles” of Evangelii Gaudium, that: “realities are more important than ideas,” “time is greater than space,” “unity prevails over conflict,” and “the whole is greater than the part”? (The receding goal posts of a “moveable feast”)?
And does the premise that society is something that we “build,” and not—first—something that we “discover” as already given, permanent and universal; as already existing within ourselves as the baked-in natural law which to be preserved (not violated)?
The letter is necessarily short, but what might we find written between the lines? Like Paglia’s infamous and homoerotic cathedral mural, is the handwriting on the wall?