A LAY INITIATIVE FORMED TO DEFEND

CATHOLIC TEACHING ON THE FAMILY

Any discussion on the environment must stem from understanding that the family is the key to sustainable development

We continue to publish the addresses given at the Rome Life Forum and at the seminar for pro-life leaders preceding it in Rome on 8th and 9th May and offer a presentation by Maria Madise entitled “Are the strong winds blowing from the United Nations changing the climate in the Vatican?”.

Maria Madise is the International, UN and Research Officer of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. She is also the coordinator of Voice of the Family, an international coalition of major pro-life and pro-family organizations, formed to offer their expertise and resources before, during and after the Synod on the Family in 2014-2015.

In her address Maria Madise explains why the recent symposium held at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences called “Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity. The Moral Dimensions of Climate Change and Sustainable Development” is of major concern for life and family advocates. The workshop featuring two of the world’s leading promoters of the population control agenda – Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General, and Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute – took place in the end of April.

“Who are the people advising the guardians of the Church’s teaching, whose job it is to guide and protect the faithful in the loving truth of Christ?” asked Madise and added that “it is a schizophrenic situation, where collaboration is pursued between those who see life as gift from God and those who see it as a burden on the planet.”

While discussing the proposed aim of the participants in the Vatican symposium to “raise awareness and build a consensus that the values of sustainable development cohere with values of the leading religious traditions, with a special focus on the most vulnerable”, Maria Madise explained:

Pro-life and pro-family advocates, who lobby at the UN, know all too well how environmental issues have become an umbrella to cover a wide spectrum of attacks on human life and the family. These attacks pose an immediate threat to the lives of the most vulnerable – the unborn, the disabled and the elderly – as well as grave violations of parental rights as the primary educators of their children.

Noting that the agenda of the meeting expressed a desire “to help build a global movement across all religions for sustainable development and climate change throughout 2015 and beyond”, she continued:

It is even more troubling that this timetable exactly coincides with the negotiations of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the UN, which include these very attacks on the most vulnerable members of the world’s population. The SDG negotiations that will culminate in June and July will determine the direction and financial aid for the third world countries for the next 15 years. By the time of these negotiations we should have a papal encyclical on – environmentalism.

She added:

These meetings that are happening in the shadow of the family synod, aim to bring the language of the papal documents in line with the UN directives.

The final document of SDGs at the UN is going to be signed in September. Pope Frances is going to address the UN General Assembly in September on – environmentalism. Very sadly, it is all too obvious that his address could be seen as providing acceptance or validation by the Catholic Church of the global population-control agenda.

Maria Madise concluded:

Without prejudice to the validity or otherwise of the many theories about climate change, they should not be exploited to bring into question or deny the inviolability and the sanctity of each and every human life, unborn or born, healthy or sick any more than they can justify the rethinking of marriage, the family and parents’ rights.

She ended her presentation with a call to “face this turbulence prayerfully and courageously and to insist with all the means at our disposal that any discussion on the environment must stem from understanding that the family, defined correctly, is the key to sustainable development, particularly at this time when the Synod on the Family has been called by Pope Francis to consider problems facing the family.”

The full text of her presentation is available here.

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