Spanish Cardinal: Greater Access to Abortion Builds "the Common Evil

Posted by Marilynn Hughes Feb 26, 2009

Rome, Italy, Feb 25, 2009 (Catholic News Agency).- The president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, said this week a proposed reform of the abortion laws in Spain "attacks society itself" and goes "against the common good."

In an interview with Europa Press, the cardinal said the Church would always oppose any law that legalizes or decriminalizes abortion because it is nothing other than the "killing of a human being," regardless of when it takes place during pregnancy.

"The state has the obligation to preserve life. This is the vision that prevailed 15 or 20 years ago, while today the governments have become victims of ideology and of a misunderstood vision of freedom" that leads us "to chose what destroys us" and ends up simply becoming "license," Cardinal Lozano said.

He connected the tendency to expand abortion with the "sexual revolution" and the "trivialization of sex," which in addition to separating "procreation from the sexual act," turns sex into a "passing hobby whose ‘bad consequences’ must be avoided."

"Sexuality is the maximum expression of love between two persons of the opposite sex and that maximum expression means total and absolute donation of one person to another; one person to another forever. And that is called marriage, which in turn, is the origin of the family," he explained.

"For this reason to play around with sexuality is to play around with the source of life, and to therefore destroy the family, which the source of society, and in the end, to destroy society as well," Cardinal Lozano continued. "A law such as this one attacks society itself" and is contrary to what should be "the first priority of any government, which is to build the common good." In this case, he noted, what is being built is "the common evil."

Cardinal Lozano said the Vatican is "concerned that any nation would promote these kinds of policies," and in this case it is even more concerned about the example Spain would set for the 22 nations of Latin America and the Caribbean, and Italy, because of their cultural connections to Spain.