Pope Francis Quotes
We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. When we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time. The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.]
Jorge Mario Bergoglio. This quotation was reprinted in religious and secular organs of almost all religions as the message was universal and could apply also to non-Roman Catholic Churches and non-Christian religions. The Pope in this statement did not change church doctrine one bit. It urged a major change in tactics, context, emphasis and style. Extreme fundamentalists within the Roman Catholic church and without, however, saw the statement as a softening of the moral position of the church regarding these controversial areas. Most however welcomed his quotation as long overdue and a stylistic throwback to a different time where people were less educated and less informed by media.
Francis, Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, Interview with Antonio Spadaro, America Magazine, August 2013
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Jorge Mario Bergoglio
Anti-Abortion Organization
when the encyclical Casti Connubii was promulgated This was written before he was elected Pope. At the time there was some movement within the Catholic Church towards the possible liberalization of the traditional prohibition against birth control of any kind. At the time Montini was in the minority on the Commission, and after he assumed the Papacy, he became a majority of one.
At the time, condoms and other forms of contraceptives were illegal to buy, sell, possess or own. As late as 1963 a Connecticut druggist was sentenced to jail for filling a doctor’s prescription for condoms and selling them to a married couple even thought the woman might die if she again became pregnant. The Supreme Court (Griswald v. Connecticut) established that a woman had a right to control her own reproductive cycle and the government had no business interfering with a privacy right possessed by a couple. Roe v. Wade established the right to an abortion. The same moral compunctions used with abortion were, and still are used by some to oppose any form of artificial birth control. They argued: preventing a life was as serious a moral failure as taking one. Many Catholics, many evangelical and fundamentalist protestants, and some orthodox Muslims are today morally opposed to birth control and believe that the government should ban birth control as it once was in the United States.
Condoms and other birth control usage had been forbidden by the Catholic Church. However, most American Catholics utilized artificial birth control devices anyway. However, the official church positions inhibited and influenced politicians throughout the nations. Even as late as 1963 selling birth control devices was illegal in parts of America. A pharmacist was sentenced to jail for filling a prescription for a condom for a couple where the woman could not bear a child safely as the result of a physical condition. The Supreme Court reversed the conviction.
It is this proclamation and others like it that caused many of the American Founding Fathers to include the doctrine of separation of church and state. In this case, and many others, the government actually proscribed and controlled the prayers and the liturgy. See {617532} where the government proscribes the proportion of revenues that must be spent on the poor.
The Prime Minister’s wife, a Roman Catholic, like most Roman Catholics in Europe and America practice contraception despite the fact that the Catholic Church still maintains that artificial means of birth control is a sin. Rarely are such personal matters discussed with the media in Great Britain which respects the personal privacy of public figures more so than the United States. However, Mrs. Blair and her husband have been particularly open throughout their public career.
The official position of the church was against the child molestation and rape by pedophile priests as it was against artificial contraception. Harris based his conclusion on the effort the church leaders and priests were making for each of the two issues. While the Pope condemned in no uncertain terms the pedophilia of the priests, the sermons and the literature of the church dealt with contraception much more frequently. At the time, the church was still covering up the sex scandal and some church officials were still in denial as to the extent. When the Pope was a cardinal, he also contributed to the cover-up, claiming to be hamstrung by the limitations of cannon law with regard to defrocking perverted priests.
This quotation is often used by those who support the right to abortion to argue that the moral argument against abortion is exactly the same against contraception. And that if the state can interfere with the right to an abortion, then the state can equally interfere with the fight to family planning by means of contraception, and indeed such was the law until 1963. It is true that before that and since the Roman Catholic Church has argued that both abortion and contraception should be unlawful. Abortion opponents attempt to separate the two as only a small majority of Americans favor the right to an abortion while an overwhelmingly large proportion support the right to use contraception. Abortion opponents, generally avoid the contraceptive issue and try to isolate the abortion question.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio
Pope Francis is the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State. Francis is the first pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first pope from outside Europe since Gregory III, a Syrian who reigned in the 8th century.
