Pontifical Academy for Life Archives

Head of Vatican’s Academy of Life: Dialogue is love, not compromise

In an interview, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia explains the Vatican’s Academy for Life’s new strategy and vision and the important role non-Catholic members could play in promoting them. The archbishop wants the academy to aim to be missionary in outlook, seeking to tackle what he calls “the great frontiers of life” in collaboration with believers of other churches and faiths as well as non-believers.

Doctors, courts not the enemy in the Charlie Gard case

Austen Ivereigh worries some of the arguments about the tragic situation of baby Charlie Gard have framed the issue as a case of euthanasia, or an illicit case of state interference in parental autonomy. He says the purpose of not treating a person in these cases is not to kill them, but to let them die naturally, with a minimum of further suffering when that suffering is of no obvious medical benefit.

Pope Francis backs parents in UK’s Charlie Gard drama

Vatican

July 2, 2017

From the beginning, the case of 10-month-old Charlie Gard in the UK, whose parents have been denied permission by a court to pursue experimental treatment for mitochondrial disease in the U.S. has stirred wide debate and alarm. Pope Francis waded directly into the discussion on Sunday, expressing hope that the parents’ desires to ‘care for their own child to the end’ will be respected.

Why the Pontifical Academy for Life must be unapologetically pro-life
- Commentary
- June 26, 2017
Whatever the admirable intentions of the leadership of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the real-world effect of appointing a pro-choice member is the same as if they had appointed a pro-slavery advocate: The appearance in the public eye that the Church does not take its teaching against abortion as seriously as it once did. This has a direct impact upon pro-life advocates on the ground, who stand exposed to the accusation of being “more Catholic” than the Vatican.
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Academy for Life no longer an ‘enclave of the ideologically pure’
- Commentary
- June 20, 2017
Some pro-lifers are upset over the appointment of the Rev. Nigel Biggar, an Anglican clergyman and moral theologian, to the Pontifical Academy of Life. He is Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Christchurch College, Oxford, and director of the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life. He was recommended by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who was asked to send a representative. He is also a sign that Pope Francis wants the Academy to better engage with the world.
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Vatican defends membership for theologian over abortion flap
- Associated Press, Vatican
- June 19, 2017
In an interview with Italy’s La Stampa, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia reaffirmed the Vatican’s unwavering opposition to abortion. He said Nigel Biggar, a new member of Pontifical Academy for Life, had been personally recommended by the archbishop of Canterbury, had never written about the issue of when life begins and wouldn’t engage in abortion debates as a member.
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