In March of 2007, the Pope listened to a man who represented a peace group about conscientious objection to war. In september of 2007 the Vatican is considering applying this objection to birth control. An objector was made a saint. Obama was not yet President.
“The Catholic Peace Fellowship believes the beatification and canonization of Jagerstatter would send a strong signal to Catholics everywhere on the issue of conscientious objection.”
Will this moral objection to contraceptives affect Catholics serving in the Armed Forces where President Obama is the Commander in Chief? Will Catholics refuse to serve, and go AWOL because the Federal Government can’t tell them what to do if it is against their religion?
I think it is time to hold a Senate investigation into what the Vatican is up to, because it looks to me they believe they have found a political NUTCRACKER that is a threat to the security of our Nation. We can’t allow those who own dual-citizenship to choose what military orders they will follow. and orders they will not. It appears this holy war on contraception was kept secret, waiting for the right moment, such as the Santorum surge and the fact Obama is looking like a winner, again! This is outside interference from a foreign religious government that is trying to undermine the will of thousands of Democrats.
“During the meeting, Mgr Sgreccia and the director of Vatican Press Bureau, Fr Federico Lombardi, denied press reports according to which the Vatican would be making a statement on the use of artificial contraceptives.
Father Lombardi explained that such rumours might have started when Mgr Angelo Amato, secretary of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, mentioned that background research was being conducted to update the Instruction Donum Vitae. However, said Father Lombardi, the review process on the matter does not appear to be over.”
Jon Presco
Conscientious objection means assuming responsibility for the weakest, says Mgr Sgreccia
The goal is to give voice to those who have neither electoral weight nor economic power, but have the same dignity as each one of us. Today’s “ideologically tolerant” society cannot endure absolute truths. Reports that a Vatican statement on artificial contraceptives is imminent have been denied.
Vatican City (AsiaNews) – Conscientious objection stems from the conviction that it is necessary to avoid evil; it is not a flight from reality but helpful witness vis-à-vis situations featuring the frailty of human life. The question of personal conscience with respect to moral issues and the law in the health care field, a field open to controversy and conflict, is at the centre of an international congress entitled Christian Conscience in Support of the Right to Life, presented today in the Vatican by the Pontifical Academy for Life.
Conscientious objection, said Mgr Elio Sgreccia, president of the Pontifical Council for Life, “is not the only premise informing Christian conscience in the health care field. Indeed, Christian conscience requires a positive witness in the service, love, veneration, as someone wrote, of every brother’s life.”
Mgr Sgreccia further noted that today’s society is strongly inclined to the homogenisation of behaviours to the extent that people’s conscience can be exchanged. Given life’s fragility at a certain age or in certain situations, we “must respond to the call to awareness and responsibility that stem from our conscience which seeks inner coherence and valid support for life when it is under threat. It is our opinion that in a society that truly wants to remain democratic, one’s conscience must be able to express itself for those who have no voice or cannot speak for themselves. Christians must aim at giving voice to those who have neither electoral weight nor economic power, but have the same dignity as each one of us.”
What is more, throughout history from Socrates to Thomas More, said Mgr Jean Laffitte, vice president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and professor of anthropology and of conjugal spirituality, “men and women have born witness—in critical moments of their life when they faced religiously or morally relevant personal choices—and found themselves called upon to disobey the law. Acts of disobedience to man-made laws must be based on one’s moral conscience in which other laws come into play, immutable and unwritten one, laws of a religious or moral nature.”
This said, in the course of time, the concept of tolerance has evolved and become “ideological.” At a social level, an ideologically tolerant society has been created. In such a society, ideological tolerance has always been “linked to an individualistic concept of moral conscience. . . . And the norms received from moral authority, from social tradition and from the teaching of the religious authorities will, at best, be considered as interesting guidelines or stimulating opinions upon which to reflect, but in no case will such norms involve the individual as a moral subject.”
Yet in practice, society finds itself “always on more theoretically tolerant positions, positions surely disturbing from the point of view of the consensual balance it claims to maintain. This way it imposes a single way of thinking that can generate a form of ideological and social totalitarianism. The only way to escape from this totalitarian hold, the only truly realistic response at a philosophical and legal level is the positive assertion of the dignity of man, of every man, as a truth valid for everyone. This makes a true debate possible because one’s interlocutor is in all cases considered worthy, i.e. someone who is a respected bearer of the freedom to which he is entitled. This attitude is truly tolerant but does not fall within the purview of ideological tolerance.”
During the meeting, Mgr Sgreccia and the director of Vatican Press Bureau, Fr Federico Lombardi, denied press reports according to which the Vatican would be making a statement on the use of artificial contraceptives.
Father Lombardi explained that such rumours might have started when Mgr Angelo Amato, secretary of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, mentioned that background research was being conducted to update the Instruction Donum Vitae. However, said Father Lombardi, the review process on the matter does not appear to be over.
VATICAN LETTER Mar-23-2007 (1,060 words) Backgrounder. xxxi
‘Great support and open ears’: U.S. peace activists visit Vatican
By John Thavis
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — On the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq, three U.S. Catholic peace activists paid a discreet but significant visit to the Vatican.
The officers of the Indiana-based Catholic Peace Fellowship were in Rome in mid-March to promote the issue of conscientious objection to war.
They didn’t know what kind of reception they’d get from Vatican experts, but after a week of talks and meetings, they left feeling like they’d received a sympathetic hearing.
“It’s been a miraculous trip,” said Joshua Casteel. “We’ve received great support and open ears here. It’s encouraging to see that we are part of a tradition that’s very sensitive to peace issues.”
Casteel, who works as conscientious objector liaison for the fellowship, served in an Army intelligence unit in Iraq in 2004 and was an interrogator at the Abu Ghraib prison. After concluding that systematic torture was being used against mostly innocent people and that his own participation in the war was compromising his Christian witness, Casteel applied for and received conscientious objector status and left the Army.
When Casteel met Pope Benedict XVI briefly March 14, he told the pope that his writings and teachings had helped him find a path to nonviolence. The pope listened carefully, then thanked Casteel and told him he would pray for him.
Deacon Tom Cornell, Catholic Peace Fellowship co-founder, and Michael Griffin, the organization’s director of education, arranged the trip to Rome to promote more visible backing of conscientious objection by the church hierarchy.
“Part of our mission is to help Catholics see that conscientious objection is part of Catholic tradition,” Griffin said.
Griffin and his colleagues said it was disappointing that Catholic leaders have not highlighted the option of conscientious objection, despite the fact that more than 25 percent of today’s U.S. armed forces are Catholic.
The group was heartened last fall when Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the new Vatican secretary of state, gave his inaugural address to the diplomatic corps and specifically included conscientious objection as one of the “paths to peace” supported by the Vatican.
The three activists dropped off a thank-you letter for Cardinal Bertone in a meeting with a Secretariat of State official, who expressed interest in their campaign. The official made it clear, however, that while the Vatican might address conscientious objection in a general way at the diplomatic level, it’s primarily up to local or national bishops to deal with it as a pastoral issue.
Another request raised by Deacon Cornell, Griffin and Casteel was that the Vatican take a new look at the language of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on war and conscientious objection.
The catechism notes that public authorities should provide for alternative service for those who refuse to bear arms for reasons of conscience. But it says the main responsibility for evaluating the conditions of a just war “belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.”
Griffin said that wording seems to imply that public authorities will be deciding a war’s morality. It gives too little weight to an individual’s responsibility to evaluate the legitimacy of war in his or her own conscience, he said.
The delegation discussed this with U.S. Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, who heads a Vatican office that deals with matters of conscience. They also talked about “selective conscientious objection,” which the fellowship considers crucial for Catholics.
At present, the United States grants conscientious objector status only to someone who refuses to participate in any war. But selective conscientious objection, in which a soldier judges the morality of a particular war, is actually a better application of the “discernment of conscience” required of Catholics, Griffin said.
The group also met with members of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the papal preacher. In general, Griffin said, they found the Vatican highly sympathetic to the call of conscience in matters of war, but wary about church leaders telling Catholics not to participate in a war.
The issue of civil disobedience by those who cannot in conscience follow orders of government or military leaders at times sparked lively debate, Griffin said.
“But there was clarity, especially at the Secretariat of State, that one must never do what one believes to be wrong, even if such action is legal or ordered by military superiors,” Griffin said.
Coincidentally, during their stay in Rome the Vatican issued a strong statement supporting conscientious objectors — but the reference was to pro-life issues like abortion, not serving in war. The Vatican said Catholic health care professionals have an obligation to refuse to participate “in any medical intervention or research that foresees the destruction of human life.”
Deacon Cornell said his organization supports that position.
“We promote a seamless garment kind of ethic” that opposes abortion, war and a wide spectrum of other attacks on human life and justice, he said.
Deacon Cornell first came to Rome in the 1960s with Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. It was the time of the Vietnam War, and U.S. Catholics were in the front lines of the anti-war movement.
That is not as true today, Deacon Cornell said, probably because of the shifting demographics of the Catholic population.
One way the universal church teaches is by selecting models of sainthood. With that in mind, the peace fellowship delegation paid a call on the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, to inquire about progress in the cause of Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian Catholic farmer who was executed as a conscientious objector to service in the army of Adolf Hitler.
Jagerstatter had a wife and three daughters, and many, including a priest and a bishop, advised him to think of his family and forget about resisting the military machine. He was also told he should follow the legitimate political authorities who had responsibility for such decisions. But Jagerstatter refused to serve, and after a military trial in 1943 he paid the price: He was beheaded. Before being executed, he wrote: “I am convinced that it is best that I speak the truth, even if it costs me my life.”
The Catholic Peace Fellowship believes the beatification and canonization of Jagerstatter would send a strong signal to Catholics everywhere on the issue of conscientious objection.
Rosamond Press 
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