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Gay unions, abortion slammed
24/04/2007 09:14 - (SA)
Vatican City - The Vatican's second-highest ranking doctrinal official on Monday forcefully branded homosexual marriage an evil and denounced abortion and euthanasia as forms of "terrorism with a human face".
The attack by Archbishop Angelo Amato, secretary of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was the latest in a
string of speeches made by either Pope Benedict or other Vatican
officials as Italy considers giving more rights to gays.
In an address to chaplains, Amato said newspapers and
television bulletins often seemed like "a perverse film about
evil".
He denounced "evils that remain almost invisible" because
the media presented them as "expression of human progress".
He listed these as abortion clinics, which he called
"slaughterhouses of human beings", euthanasia, and "parliaments
of so-called civilised nations where laws contrary to the nature
of the human being are being promulgated, such as the approval
of marriage between people of the same sex ..."
Partnership law
Amato spoke at a time when the Vatican and Italy's powerful
Roman Catholic Church are at loggerheads over plans for a highly
controversial law that would give unmarried heterosexual and
homosexual couples some form of legal recognition.
The Church and Catholic politicians, even some in Prime
Minister Romano Prodi's centre-left coalition, see the proposed
law as a Trojan Horse and say it could lead to gay marriages.
Amato, who is said to be very close to Pope Benedict,
criticised the media's coverage of ethical issues.
After denouncing "abominable terrorism" such as that carried
out by suicide bombers, he condemned what he called "terrorism
with a human face", and accused the media of manipulating
language "to hide the tragic reality of the facts".
"For example, abortion is called 'voluntary interruption of
pregnancy' and not the killing of a defenceless human being, an
abortion clinic is given a harmless, even attractive, name:
'centre for reproductive health' and euthanasia is blandly
called 'death with dignity'," he said in his address.
Gay rights group have criticised the Pope and Catholic
Church officials in the past over such comments, accusing them
of interfering in Italy's domestic affairs.
Groups opposed to gay marriage and recognition of unmarried
couples are planning a national rally in Rome next month.
Italy's Roman Catholic Church, set up on diocesan and parish
levels, has the organisational machinery to mobilise hundreds of
thousands of people. A huge turnout, which is expected, could be
a major embarrassment for Prodi's government.
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