Madrid, Spain, Mar 19, 2009 / 21:23 pm
Bishop Francisco Cerro of Coria-Caceres in Spain, said this week in an article that “protecting life, which is the Gospel of life and the commitment of the Church, is without a doubt the best news in this time of general crisis.” He also clarified that the Church “is not against anyone, she is against everything that, under the guise of progress, goes against human life.”
In his article the bishop called arguments used to defend abortion, terrorism and war “terrible,” because they are based on the premise that “anything that is a threat must be destroyed.”
“The unborn child is a threat, he needs to be eliminated. The elderly man is a threat, he needs to be eliminated. This person, this group is a threat, they need to be destroyed even with bombs or terrorist attacks. And the day other persons or other groups become bothersome, what will happen? We may be destroying a society and who knows how far it will go,” the bishop asserted.
Recalling that the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights was celebrated last November, the bishop insisted that the rights of man are rooted in the dignity of every human being, which for Christians springs from man being made in the image and likeness of God.
“The right to life, from conception to natural death, is the first right announced by the Pope (John Paul II in the encyclical Centessimus Annus), and is the condition for every other right. But the repeated solemn proclamations of the rights of man are contradicted by a harsh reality: abortion, wars and violence of all kind; genocide and mass deportations, new forms of slavery and trafficking in human beings, famine, child soldiers,” the bishop said.