By Monica Showalter
Back in 1994, Pope John Paul II created the Pontifical Academy for Life for the defense and promotion of life at all its stages, in a “consistent life ethic.”
According to Wikipedia, the academy is a think tank of sorts, “an academic honorary society established by or under the direction of the Holy See.” The Vatican has a bunch of these, on various academic topics, some very cool ones, such as art. Most have been around for centuries, but this one is a new one, founded by John Paul II himself, in response to what he saw was a perceived need to defend human life, which is under attack in the West.
According to Wikipedia, the academy is:
…dedicated to “study, information and formation on the principal problems of biomedicine and of law, relative to the promotion and defense of life, above all in the direct relation that they have with Christian morality and the directives of the Church’s Magisterium.”
Though the Academy is considered an autonomous entity, it is linked to the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers and various other dicasteries of the Roman Curia.
The Academy members are named by the pope. They are selected to represent different branches of biomedical sciences and ethics which are closely linked with problems concerning the promotion and defense of life. There are also ad honorem members and corresponding members who work in the Academy’s institutes and centers of study.
The Academy is responsible for the development and promotion of many of the Catholic teachings on questions of medical ethics including procreation, IVF, gene therapy, euthanasia and abortion.
So it doesn’t sound very good to hear that this John Paul II-founded academy is now becoming a hotbed of pro-abortion academics, such as are found in any run-of-the-mill university institution in the Western world.
Here are a pair of them that have been making headlines lately, according to Catholic News Agency:
Roberto Dell’Oro, a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has criticized the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade’s strong protections for legalized abortion.
Dell’Oro is a moral theology professor and holds the O’Malley Chair in Bioethics at Loyola Marymount University, a Jesuit institution. He contends that the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abortion case violates norms of democratic personal freedom and respect for women’s basic autonomy in a way that verges on the “totalitarian.”
There’s also her:
Last week an economist who is an outspoken advocate for abortion rights, Mariana Mazzucato, was appointed to the pontifical academy.
Most of these people have lots of fancy accolades and awards for their roles in secular academic institutions for promoting those institutions’ values. Some of them put out pro-Joe Biden tweets, and this nonsense has been going on for years, actually. Now the Vatican is “borrowing” them for its own academy, which was founded to be something different by a man who’s since been made a saint in part for his unyielding defense of life, and now the place looks like any old leftwing institution you can find anywhere. More disturbingly, these guys are, according to Wikipedia, citing Church documents, are “responsible for the development and promotion of many of the Catholic teachings on questions of medical ethics including procreation, IVF, gene therapy, euthanasia and abortion.”
So instead of the pope, we have these guys who are supposed to be our teachers and developers of Church doctrine. Any questions as to why there’s so much drivel coming out these days from the Vatican? It’s not Catholics making Catholic policy anymore, it’s secular atheists and other characters who have a thing against traditional Catholicism, and Pope Francis goes right ahead appointing them to the academy to set Church doctrine, telling us all what we are supposed to “think.”
What on earth is this nonsense? For most Catholics, if we wanted to go to the Church of Princeton or Harvard or the University of Ilinois, or Podunk U, we’d beeline to those places direct — we wouldn’t wait for the Vatican to recyle them.
It’s sad stuff because this institute was supposed to be special, a reaction to all the academic lunacy and junk thought going on in the world. Instead of striking out on its own and doing something different, the academy opts to blend in with the other academies just like them. How … generic.
The bad thing about this is that these pro-choice “scholars” draw headlines. Someone at the John Paul II think tank likes abortion? For the press, that’s man bites dog, so get it in the headlines. In a hellish sort of way, the academy is a platform of sorts for getting the Planned Parenthood party line broadcast out there. They wouldn’t be paid much attention otherwise.
The Vatican has defended these unsuitable appointments as being all about “debate and dialogue.”
But when one end of the ideological spectrum gets headlines for its opposition to the original mission of the academy and the other doesn’t, then something about that idea doesn’t compute
It’s sad stuff to see an institute founded by John Paul II becoming a megaphone for leftist pro-abortion activists. But that’s what we have now with Pope Francis around appointing people whose views are at odds with Church teachings. What he is trying to accomplish is anyone’s guess, but it’s obvious he’s failing miserably as the institute is rapidly becoming a “zombie” of its original mission, as if it died and was taken over by some kind of nightmare spirit. The old adage, by John O’Sullivan, that “Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing,” seems to have been superceded by leftwingery infiltrating even institutions that are supposed to be right-wing these days.