The Church Blesses the Worldwide Moratorium on Abortion
The initiative was born in the secular camp, but the Catholic hierarchy has immediately supported it. The Church's new politics for life and the family has a successful precedent: the 2005 Italian referendum in defense of embryos. A preview of an analysis by Luca Diotallevi
ROMA, January 7, 2008 – The birth of the child Jesus, the feast of the Holy Innocents, the Sunday of the Holy Family, the feast of the Mother of God... In Rome, in Italy, and in Spain the recent Christmas festivities have found an unexpected, spectacular echo not only in the Church but also in society as a whole, even its most secularized sectors.
Family and birth. These are the two words that have resounded the loudest, among both Christians and secularists.
Benedict XVI made the family the focus of his message to the world for the Day of Peace celebrated on January 1, on the family as the "primary agency of peace."
The Catholics of Spain also dedicated a day to the support of the family, with a grandiose Sunday gathering in Madrid on December 30. A similar mass Family Day was held in Italy, in Rome, last May 12. The next appointment will perhaps be in Berlin, in the heart of de-Christianized Europe.
The Madrid gathering was strongly marked by the Church. It unfolded as an immense outdoor liturgy, presided over by bishops and cardinals, and offered for the observation and reflection of all. The central moment was a television linkup with the pope, who at the Angelus, from Rome, spoke directly to the crowd in Spanish.
On May 12, 2007, in Rome, the square outside of Saint John Lateran was also filled mainly with Catholics. But it was not the hierarchy of the Church that called and presided over that Family Day. It was, instead, a citizens' committee headed by Savino Pezzotta, a Catholic, and Eugenia Roccella, a feminist of radical secularist formation. Also speaking from the stage were Giorgio Israel, a Jew, and Souad Sbai, a Muslim. The form of family presented for the attention and care of all was not primarily the one celebrated by the Christian sacrament, but the "natural union between man and woman" inscribed in the civil constitution.
An initiative that goes against the grain even more emerged in Italy, during the recent Christmas festivities: the promotion of a worldwide moratorium on abortion, after the moratorium on the death penalty approved by the United Nations on December 18.
It goes against the grain because it was conceived and launched by a non-Christian intellectual, Giuliano Ferrara, founder and director of the opinion newspaper "il Foglio." And because it was immediately supported by the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, "Avvenire," but also by personalities of other beliefs, including Roger Scruton of England, "the most influential philosopher in the world" according to "The New Yorker."
The chronicle of this moratorium on abortion throws light on the manner in which the Church of Benedict XVI, of his cardinal vicar Camillo Ruini and the Italian bishops' conference, is acting on the political terrain.
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This Church does not demand that only what can be accepted and understood by faith be made law. But it is fighting resolutely in defense of those norms that it knows are written in the hearts of all men.
Respect for the life of every human being, from the very first instant of its conception, is one of these universal norms that the Church views as non-negotiable. The fact that there are non-Catholics standing up in defense of all unborn life is for the Church a happy confirmation of the universality of this commandment.
The Church of Benedict XVI, Ruini, and cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the current president of the Italian bishops' conference, has thus looked very favorably on the fact that a non-Catholic like Ferrara has taken the initiative of launching the moratorium on abortion.
Because in effect, this is what has happened. Ferrara launched his first appeal in favor of the moratorium on abortion on the television program "Otto e mezzo," the same evening as the UN's approval of the moratorium on the death penalty, December 18.
The following day, December 19, this appeal appeared in print in "il Foglio." The afternoon of that same day, "L'Osservatore Romano" published on the front page an interview with cardinal Renato Martino, president of the pontifical council for justice and peace:
"Catholics do not consider the right to life as something that can be negotiated on a case-by-case basis, or partitioned. [...] The clearest example is that of the millions and millions of killings of certainly innocent human beings, unborn babies."
On December 20, "Avvenire," the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, gave its full support to the moratorium on abortion, with a front-page editorial by Marina Corradi and an interview with Ferrara.
On December 21, Ferrara announced that he would be fasting from Christmas Eve to the first day of the new year, in support of public financing for the Life Assistance Centers (CAV's) that help mothers who are tempted to have abortions.
In effect, during the following days the Lombardy Region and the municipal government of Milan supplied 700,000 euro to the CAV at Mangiagalli, the Milanese clinic that performs the greatest number of abortions. Last year at this clinic, the CAV was responsible for 833 births, by helping mothers in difficulty. In total, it is calculated that all of the CAV's operating in Italy have saved about 85,000 babies from abortion from 1975 until today.
Meanwhile, pages and pages of "il Foglio" have been filled with letters in support of the moratorium. A growing, unstoppable torrent of letters. Some are simple expressions of agreement, but most of them include sophisticated reflection, stories, experiences of fathers and mothers, painful accounts, and enthusiastic endorsements. Hundreds, thousands of letters in which the absolute protagonist was the tiny little being formed from conception – welcomed, loved, exalted. It is difficult to imagine a Christmas celebrated with music more appropriate than this concert of letters.
Most of the letter writers are ordinary people. Many are Catholics, but they do not belong to the élite of the associations that come running as soon as there is an appeal to be endorsed. The few organizational names that appear here and there are those of the CAV's, or of the Family Forum, or of Science & Life: the associations directly involved in this arena. It seems that most of the writers are "Sunday" Catholics, those who go to Mass but are otherwise invisible. Or they are the audience of the popular Radio Maria. But there are also a number of others who are not Catholics. It is an Italy that is hardly present in the major media, but that the moratorium on abortion has unexpectedly brought to light. It is an Italy that may practice its faith very little, but in which the Catholic imprint is deep and difficult to remove. even among the non-baptized.
But what does the moratorium on abortion propose in practical terms? Ferrara dreams of "five million pilgrims of life and love, all in Rome next summer." To ask for two things from governments all over the world: first, to "suspend every policy that provides an incentive for the practice of eugenics"; second, to "write into the universal declaration of human rights the right to be born." With a manifesto prepared by personalities of various perspectives, like Didier Sicard of France, Italy's Carlo Casini, Roger Scruton, from England, the American bioethicist Leon Kass, and the new U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Mary Ann Glendon, "naturally excluding any form of blame, and far more any legal persecution of women who may decide to have an abortion" as permitted by the laws in effect in the various countries.
On the evening of December 31, interviewed on a widely popular television news program, cardinal Ruini summarized the Church's position as follows:
"I believe that after the good result obtained in regard to the death penalty, it is very logical to recall the topic of abortion and ask for a moratorium, at least to stimulate and awaken the consciences of all, to help people to realize that the baby in the mother's womb is truly a human being, and that its suppression is inevitably the suppression of a human being.
"In the second place, it may be hoped that this moratorium will also provide a stimulus for Italy, at least for the complete application of the law on abortion, which claims to be a law intended for the defense of life, and then to apply this law in those areas that can truly be in defense of life, and perhaps, thirty years after the passage of this law, to update it in keeping with the scientific progress that, for example, has made great steps forward in regard to the survival of premature babies. It becomes truly inadmissible to proceed with abortion at a point where the fetus could survive outside of the womb."
"L'Osservatore Romano" gave emphasis to these words from Ruini, and cardinal Bagnasco restated the same concepts in the most widely circulated secular Italian newspaper, "Corriere della Sera," on January 4.
And these words were followed with actions. During the same days, five hospitals in Milan were given new "guidelines" for the application of the national law on abortion, prohibiting abortion after the twenty-first week following conception (the previous limit was at the twenty-fourth week) and prohibiting selective abortion in a twin pregnancy in absence of real physical or psychological difficulties on the part of the pregnant woman. These "guidelines" will soon be adopted by the entire Lombardy region.
This last is another sign that the appeal for a moratorium on abortion falls on more fertile soil today than in the past. Secular thought is no longer so unified in denying human dignity to the fetus and giving significance only to the woman's self-determination. And the Church is no longer so timid and directionless as it was in Italy after the catastrophic defeat of 1981, when a Catholic-sponsored referendum for the repeal of the law on abortion obtained just 18 percent of the vote.
The Italian Church is today, instead, fresh from a victory in another referendum in defense of the life of the embryo, held on June 12, 2005. It is a referendum whose success – according to a very recent study – was noticeably influenced by the Catholic self-identification of the Italian people.
Reviewing this study is of great interest for understanding better the Church's current modes of operating in Italian society: a society that – unique in the world, in these terms – keeps alive the characteristics of a mass Catholicism in a context of advanced modernization.
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The study will appear in the next issue of "Polis," the scholarly journal of the Istituto Cattaneo in Bologna. The author is Luca Diotallevi, professor of the sociology of religion at Roma Tre university and author of studies of the Italian religious "anomaly" that have been published, among other places, in the United States.
The referendum of June 12, 2005 was promoted in Italy by secular groups and parties in order to remove important points from law 40 of 2004 on assisted procreation, in practice to liberalize the selection, use, and elimination of artificially produced embryos.
To defeat the referendum, the Catholic hierarchy asked the faithful and all citizens not to go vote. And in effect, this is what happened. 74.1 percent of voters abstained. The "yes" votes reached only 22 percent, and did not attain a majority even in the most secular and leftist Italian provinces.
To evaluate the influence of the religious factor on this result, Diotallevi cross-referenced four pieces of data: the "yes" votes for the referendum, Catholic self-identification, civic consciousness, and social modernization.
As the main measure of Catholic self-identification, Diotallevi took the names of the participants in the "eight per thousand" in favor of the Church. In Italy, taxpaying citizens are able to indicate each year, in their income statements, who should receive eight thousandths of the tax revenue claimed by the state: if this should be given to the state, or to the Catholic Church, or to the Jewish community, or to the Protestant Churches, etcetera. Almost all of the selections go to the Catholic Church, in growing numbers that have recently reached 90 percent.
For the level of civic consciousness and social modernization, Diotallevi again took as his measure qualitative data, which he specifies in his study. The fact is that one thing above all emerges from all the data: the extremely strong inverse correlation between Catholic self-identification expressed by the participants in the eight per thousand, and the "yes" votes for the referendum.
In the provinces with the lowest numbers of tax contributions for the Catholic Church – Bologna, Livorno, Florence, Ravenna, Siena, Reggio Emilia... – the "yes" votes for the referendum showed higher percentages, at around 40 percent.
The opposite took place in the provinces with almost total participation in the eight per thousand for the Church. Here the "yes" votes were very few, at 10 percent or even less.
These last provinces are in the south, and are also the least "civic" and modernized. But be careful: for most of the Italian provinces, in particular those of Lombardy and Veneto, high levels of Catholic self-identification do not at all coincide with backwardness, but with highly advanced levels of social modernization and civic sensibility.
In other words, the religious element in Italy does not appear as a relic of the past, destined to disappear with the advance of modernization, but remains alive in a context of strong modernity. And moreover –Diotallevi maintains in the last part of his study – it, too, is modernizing itself.
Catholic self-identification, he writes, would not have been enough by itself to produce the result of the 2005 referendum. It had to be activated. And this is what the Church's hierarchy did, with cardinal Ruini in the lead, with maneuvers that were absolutely novel in respect to the past. For example: by opting for abstention instead of for "no" votes; setting the strategy in advance instead of waiting for Catholic organizations to align themselves in ragtag order; favoring alliance with secular personalities in harmony with the Church on the defense of unborn life.
Even before this, when the law on assisted procreation that would later become the object of the referendum was still being developed, the Church hierarchy had taken another unprecedented step: through the Family Forum, it had lobbied parliament, successfully here as well, in support of a text that did not at all coincide with the moral doctrine of the Church, but which it held to be acceptable as a "lesser evil."
So then, the Italian Church won the 2005 referendum in defense of the embryo, thanks to a campaign that was also an impressive mass education effort on questions relating to unborn human life. An effective campaign. From advance surveys, the result emerged that the "yes" vote remained blocked, while the numbers grew of those who opted for "strategic" abstention suggested by the Church: in the last month, this went from 17 to 25 percent of the electorate.
Diotallevi concludes his study in "Polis":
"The reality has emerged of an ecclesiastical politics aware of and expert in the values and functioning of the political, cultural, and communicative mechanisms proper to a society of advanced modernization and mature democracy. [...] Success depended on having emphasized the role that could be played by religious self-identification – a dimension of religiosity that is very different from participation – with which the ecclesiastical authorities demonstrated not to have lost familiarity. In order to call this forward they did not limit themselves to rhetorical appeals, but prepared the most favorable conditions."
The moratorium on abortion is the new great stage of this modernization of the Church's politics in defense of life and the family.
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