Pope Benedict on the laws of life

The Vatican is preparing two new documents for release to a culture badly in need of good teaching on bioethics and natural law.

Unborn life and the natural law: these are the themes of two new documents being prepared by the Vatican congregation for the doctrine of the faith. They were announced in the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, “Avvenire,” in an interview with the secretary of the congregation, archbishop Angelo Amato.

The first of the two new documents, the one on unborn life, will follow in the footsteps of the instruction “Donum Vitae,” published in 1987 by the then-prefect of the congregation, cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Amato says the new document isn’t intended to replace Ratzinger’s earlier piece on the subject…

but to confront the various questions of bioethics and biotechnology that are posed today, and that were still unthinkable back then. Donum Vitae still retains all of its value, and in certain regards it is prophetic. The problem is that, in spite of the fact that it has been around for twenty years, it is still scarcely known.

That’s both the trouble with Ratzinger’s work and the beauty of it, that such a gold mine of clear teaching is out there already and is being rediscovered. The document on bioethics will apply his writing and thought to complicated issues of the modern culture.

But the second new document, the one on natural law, will be the very first of its kind. On a number of occasions Benedict XVI has indicated as the foundation of shared existence among all men the moral principles inscribed upon the heart of every man, and “spoken in an unmistakable way by the quiet but clear voice of conscience.” But even as prefect of the congregation of the doctrine of the faith, he never dedicated a specific document to this.

Amato explains:

“A Catholic, for example, cannot consent to legislation that introduces marriage between two persons of the same sex; this is contrary to biblical revelation and to the natural law itself. […] The pope often cites natural law in his catecheses. Our congregation is preparing something on this topic, and to that end has already consulted all of the Catholic universities. Everyone’s responses are very encouraging, even those from the professors considered the most ‘difficult’. The natural law is very important, in part because it alone provides the foundation for productive interreligious dialogue.”

Good thing this is coming to light again. Catholic politicians in the U.S. and other countries who cite ‘conscience’ as their guideline need to know what makes it informed.