Ireland’s Bishops: “Cultivate the precious gift of Life”

“If society accepts that one human being has the right to end the life of another, then it is no longer possible to claim the right to life as a fundamental human right for anybody.”

This is how the Bishop of Elphin, Msgr. Kevin Doran, president of the Episcopal Committee for Bioethics, expresses himself in a pastoral message published a few days ago on the issue of abortion, in view of next summer’s referendum on the subject.

“If we concede any ground on abortion, the very same arguments—he adds—which are now being used to justify abortion will be used to justify ending the lives of frail elderly people and people with significant disability. This is the final frontier. If we cross it, there will be no easy way back.” The Bishop then writes that the removal of Art. 40.3.3—the so-called “pro-life amendment”—from the Constitution would have serious consequences because it would mean eliminating the “reference to the right to life” of mother and child, without replacing it with anything: “it would be like a blank check” in the hands of the government, leaving it entirely free to introduce whatever abortion regime it wants in the future.

A message in defense of life also was also published by the Catholic Primate of all Ireland, Archbishop Eamon Martin, who urged Church members to become “missionaries for the cause of life” in view of the referendum. In his pastoral message, the Archbishop said that Catholics should ignore the “strong pressures to remain silent” and speak to their relatives, friends, colleagues, and public representatives on the importance of “cultivating the precious gift of life from conception to natural death.”