Vatican City, Nov 2, 2017 / 07:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A former member of the Pontifical Academy for Life has launched an independent organization he claims will work to “unfold the splendor of truth about life and family.”
Josef Seifert, president of the new lay-run John Paul II Academy for Human Life and Family, announced the academy Oct. 18 in Rome at a conference on the topic of Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical “Humanae Vitae.”
“The academy’s aim is to clarify, to teach and to spread that part of the truth about man and about God that serves human life and the natural family, and, through serving these, serves and glorifies God,” said Seifert.
Seifert, a philosophy professor from Austria, has taught at the University of Dallas. He was founding rector of the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein. Until recently, he had served as Dietrich von Hildebrand Chair for Realist Phenomenology at the International Academy of Philosophy-Instituto de Filosofía Edith Stein.
He has said he was forced to retire for asking whether parts of Pope Francis’ 2016 post-synodal exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” led to the conclusion that there are no intrinsically wrong acts. He had previously been suspended from teaching seminarians, following the publication of a different essay criticizing the exhortation.
According to Seifert, the new organization aims to serve the same goals as the original Pontifical Academy for Life, founded in 1994 by St. John Paul II. This academy will be “a lay non-governmental organization that will remain independent of civil and religious organizations.”
The Pontifical Academy for Life is a team of scientists and ethicists representing different branches of biomedical sciences who are appointed by the Holy Father to work with Vatican dicasteries to discuss issues related to science and the protection of the dignity of human life. Under Pope Francis, its new statutes explicitly advocate care for the human person “at different stages of life” as well as an authentic “human ecology” that aims to restore balance in creation “between the human person and the entire universe.”
The American members of this academy appointed or confirmed by Pope Francis include Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus; John M. Haas, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia; and Kathleen M. Foley, M.D., attending neurologist in the Pain and Palliative Care Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and professor of neurology, neuroscience, and clinical pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine of Cornell University.
In Nov. 2016, Pope Francis promulgated new statutes for the Pontifical Academy for Life, withdrawing the lifetime appointments of 139 members, including Seifert. While 28 members were reappointed in June 2017, Seifert was not among them.
The academy’s new statutes explicitly allow non-Catholics to be appointed to the pontifical academy, and establish that new members would no longer be required to sign a statement promising to defend life according to Catholic teaching.
Some new appointees were criticized for apparent disagreement with Catholic teaching on questions like euthanasia.
Seifert said his new lay academy includes several former members of the pontifical academy. Most of these were lifetime members. The members of the new lay academy are “deeply committed” to the original pontifical academy and its goals as envisioned by St. John Paul II, he said. Their Catholic members are, in his words, “fully faithful to the authentic Magisterium and perennial doctrine of the Catholic Church,” while open to the truths of human reason. Membership in this lay academy is also open to non-Catholics.
The independent academy will also consider medical, social and health developments; “anti-life and gender ideology”; topics like “brain death”; and the ethics of death and transplant medicine.
In his remarks introducing the new lay academy, Seifert was critical of a “new emphasis on subjective conscience that would justify committing adultery, homosexual relations or even abortion subjectively.” He opposed the claim that God would want people to commit acts like adultery “because leaving our new partner might lead us to greater sins and cause greater evils.”
He emphasized the importance of John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio, encyclical Veritatis Splendor, and Blessed Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae to the new academy.
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A welcome testament to the faith by Pope Francis. Perhaps he doesn’t hold to enforcing doctrine on abortion and the Eucharist as a matter of pastoral preference. Although therein is the exact line of demarcation to permitting misunderstanding of Church policy and abuse of the sacraments, and restoring the practice of the faith as a good shepherd.
Tying more knots is not undoing knots. If the first knots are bad the new knots add badness. Calling it undoing of knots is even worse; and misleading.
Using the name of the BVM deflecting attention from the new knots and the other knots not untied, is a bad thing too, piling on badness and injury.
If you admit you do not know enough about the juridical aspects, it doesn’t follow that allowing communion is “not political” or “not political consequences”.
Even if you knew the juridical issues down pat, giving communion also has “political consequences” and can unfold into “political” arranging and lunging.
If during the 20th Century a same type of casuistry admitted homosexuality to the extent we have witnessed, then: What do you think you are doing now?
In this Reuters posting, sourced from LIFESITE, there is a 3-minute video with some of the discussion directly coming from the Holy Father.
‘ In a 90-minute conversation on Saturday afternoon, conducted in Italian, with no aides present, the 85-year-old pontiff also repeated his condemnation of abortion following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month.
…..
Francis used a cane as he walked into a reception room on the ground floor of the Santa Marta guest house where he has lived since his election in 2013, eschewing the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace used by his predecessors.
The room has a copy of one of Francis’ favourite paintings: “Mary, Untier of Knots”, created around 1700 by the German Joachim Schmidtner.
Asked how he was, the pope joked: “I’m still alive!” ‘
https://www.reuters.com/world/exclusive-pope-francis-denies-he-is-planning-resign-soon-2022-07-04/
We read: “Pope Francis told Reuters: ‘When the Church loses its pastoral nature, when a bishop loses his pastoral nature, it causes a political problem. That’s all I can say.’”
The false dichotomy regarding what is truly “pastoral”? The Laity, then, must turn to others who do have more to say…Surely, there’s more to say on what is actually the cause of the “political problem” and, within the Church, on the significant details of the sacramental life?
“A separation, or even an opposition, is thus established in some cases between the teaching of the precept, which is valid and general, and the norm of the individual conscience, which would in fact make the final decision [not moral judgment] about what is good and what is evil. On this basis, an attempt is made to legitimize so-called ‘pastoral’ solutions contrary to the teaching of the Magisterium, and to justify a ‘creative’ hermeneutic according to which the moral conscience is in no way obliged, in every case, by a particular negative precept [thou shalt not]” (Pope St. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, n. 56).
Does he reflect well on the church? Is he a man of constant prayer and devotion to the duties of a servant of Christ?
James 1:6-8 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
We must examine our ways constantly, our enemy is strong, yet Christ is stronger.
Then, by the Pope’s own reasoning, he has been a pastoral failure himself. He has not led Biden and Pelosi back to the Church relative to their unrelenting support and advancement of abortion on demand while claiming it is in accord with Catholic doctrine.
A feckless and increasingly ignored papacy.
I’ll go with Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture, July 4.
From what I have read, the pope believes pro-abortion catholic politicians should be led through a dialogue with compassion and tenderness to see the error of their ways. Is this any way to treat Nancy Pelosi? What prominent politician has ever changed to pro-life from pro-choice because of a pastoral dialogue with his bishop? Politicians understand clearly the Church’s teaching; they just want to win elections and get money, power and votes any way they can.
Abp Cordileone has spent years talking with or trying to talk with Speaker Pelosi. In recent months (or longer), she’s not responded to his requests for conversation. So, he followed the path encouraged by Pope Francis. There simply comes a time when a line must be drawn. Endless talk leads to no action, which only perpetuates the problems.
From womb to tomb – life is sacred and a precious gift. Long live life.