Lima, Peru, Oct 13, 2009 / 17:28 pm
The Archbishop of Lima, Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, encouraged a greater defense of the right to life amidst threats such as abortion, which he said is not a “Catholic or a non-Catholic issue.” The Peruvian cardinal also denounced the manipulation of statistics in order to promote the practice.
During his Saturday radio program, the cardinal said, “The cultural world today is without direction, it doesn’t know whether it will legalize abortion, drugs and other things that go against humanity itself; that is, there is a lack of respect for God.”
“For this reason, the Church must help this and future generations to return to the respect of the creature for the Creator,” he said.
Cardinal Cipriani recalled the words of Benedict XVI, who said that “charity or love that is empty of truth becomes a sentimentalism in which we arbitrarily insert contents. For this reason, today we are being filled with massive sentimentalism, in order to sneak in abortion.”
Referring to the current debate in the Peruvian Congress about abortion and euthanasia, the cardinal said he hopes lawmakers will correct their mistakes and address the issue not as a Catholic or non-Catholic one but as a question of human life.
He went onto denounce the misuse of statistics and those who advocate for abortion by saying, “more than half of all marriages end in divorce, that there are thousands of clandestine abortions and thousands of children roaming the streets.”
“I think all of this is a lie, that is, there is a statistic that’s supposed to make us think that marriage is useless, that children are a problem, that all women are unfaithful, and that men are shameless,” the cardinal stressed.