Not only theologically but also pastorally was Gozo Bishop Mario Grech most correct in what he said on in vitro fertilisation (IVF) in his homily on the occasion of the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows (April 1). The adverse criticism subsequently levelled at him (April 2) merely sadly indicates how far astray from the Church’s teachings some of our Christians have gone.
The Church is a society. Like other societies, she has its rules. When members are unwilling to abide by them, the only way open to them is to say “goodbye”. And the Church will absolutely not stop them! But, if they want to continue with membership, their behaviour should be that of adhering faithfully to those same rules. It is absolutely not correct to say that “Catholics could opt to follow” their Church’s teachings.
Reference has been made to the behaviour of some “politicians from both sides of the House” who “have rejected the Gozo Bishop appeal against artificial fertilisation”. I am sure these same politicians agree with me if I remark that theology is not their “field”. Only a few months ago, we have had some of them heretically opposing the Church’s teachings on the indissolubility of marriage. Yes, the indissolubility of marriage was by the Church solemnly defined as a “dogma”!
Now the IVF. And next what?
I remember when Pope Benedict XVI, speaking on May 21, 2010 to the Pontifical Council for the Laity, said that the contribution of Catholics in the political arena could be “decisive only if the intelligence of faith becomes intelligence of reality, the key to judgement and transformation”. And he continued to note that “there is need for authentically Christian politicians, but even more for lay faithful who are witnesses to Christ and the Gospel in the civil and political community”.
Pope Benedict then insisted that Catholic political leaders were to participate in political life “in a way that is always coherent with the teaching of the Church”. On that same occasion, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, then Rector of the Pontifical Lateran University and unofficial chaplain to Italy’s Parliament, noted that there is “an urgent need to begin preparing a new generation of Catholic politicians”.
Archbishop Fisichella was then also president of the Pontifical Academy for Life. He manifested his fear that politics “will become an occupation like so many others that lack any sort of idealism” going even so far as to assert that a Christian politician could “fall prey to easy compromise and would no longer be able to have an authentic passion for the truth”.
That was an occasion when Pope Benedict showed himself worried about the question of gender and life issues. Not less than Archbishop Fisichella, the Pope was worried about the behaviour of some Christian politicians who would fall prey to “easy compromise and would no longer be able to have an authentic passion for the truth”. In an allusion to gender and life issues, the Pope pointed out that “defending the truth about the human person was an especially important task for today’s politicians”. He added that “the social question has become, at the same time, an anthropological question”, so that the Church should help prepare Catholics for “social and political commitment” based not on “ideologies and political commitment but on the desire to serve humanity and the common good in the light of the Gospel”.
A point which struck me very much in Bishop Grech’s homily was that when he noted that “it hurts when politicians take up front seats in liturgical celebrations but are ethically absent when they take up their seats in Parliament”. Happily, I say that this is a point on which I also have had occasion to comment. Yes, it hurts, and very much, when politicians go against the Church’s teachings and then present themselves to receive Holy Communion.
I am most sorry that I have had to be so clear. But my Maltese brothers and sisters will easily undestand a priest’s feelings when he reflects on such scenes of aberrations against the Church’s teachings!