Vatican official condemns “self-genocide” of human race

Abuja, Nigeria, Jan 25, 2007 / 09:59 am

The president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Bishop Elio Sgreccia, denounced this week the different attacks on human life in all its stages, saying mankind is “marching towards a self-genocide of the human race.”

“The weakness of the Christian community and the strength of secular society could spell disaster,” Bishop Sgreccia warned, and he urged all European citizens to work at reversing the trend.  “Up to now the culture of death has been accepted and this path leads to self-destruction.”

He also noted the “widespread mentality that trusts in bio-technological power.”  Such powers, Sgreccia said aim “to change the order of the human species” and to create “men in the image and likeness of other men who have power.”  

Society is embracing this mentality and, “it now defends the selecting of children so that each one is perfect, without defect, and the eliminating of those that do not fulfill these conditions,” he explained during a meeting with local journalists at the University of Saint Paul.

Bishop Sgreccia called this nothing more than “a craving for power” that stems from “a false perception of the origins of man,” since “no human being can state that he was born of his own choice, nor that he made himself.”

“This is the great lie upon which some seek to build this bio-technological omnipotence that aims to transform the very structure of human nature and in this way liberate it from all cultural precedent,” he stressed.

Regarding euthanasia, Bishop Sgreccia warned that “due to the profound secularization” man no longer has “the spiritual energy to confront suffering,” and he has lost “the sense of the transcendent.”

The bishop also recalled the case of Terri Schiavo, emphasizing that the notion of “extraordinary treatment” for patients should never include the fundamental needs of food, hydration and hygiene.