LETTER TO U.S. BISHOPS' COMMITTEE FOR PRO-LIFE ACTIVITIES

VATICAN CITY, MAR 3, 1999 (VIS) - Made public today was a letter from Pope John Paul to Cardinal William Henry Keeler, archbishop of Baltimore and chairman of the Bishops' Committee for Pro-Life Activities, on the occasion of the February meeting in Washington, jointly organized by this committee and by the Pontifical Council for the Family. The Pope's letter was dated February 20.

"At the end of the 20th century," the Holy Father affirms, "we are witnessing a strange paradox: the sanctity of life is being denied by an appeal to freedom, democracy, pluralism, even reason and compassion. As the bishops' statement points out, words have become unmoored from their meaning, and we are left with a rhetoric in which the language of life is used to promote the culture of death. Freedom is sundered from truth and democracy from the moral values required for its survival. ... The language of human rights is constantly invoked while the most basic of them - the right to life - is repeatedly disregarded."

"So great is the confusion at times that for many people the difference between good and evil is determined by the opinion of the majority."

"At such a time, Christians must act," stresses the Pope. "This is not easy in a situation where there is at times deliberate falsification of the Church's teaching and scorn for those who promote it. ... Your action needs to be both educational and political. There must be a thorough catechesis on the Gospel of Life ... (which) needs to challenge the prevailing culture at those points where human dignity and rights are threatened."

"This educational effort will increasingly open the way for Catholics to exercise a positive public influence as citizens of their country, without false appeals to the separation of Church and State in a way that consigns the Christian vision of human dignity to the realm of private belief. The choice is favor of life is not a private option but a basic demand of a just and moral society."

JPII-LETTER;LIFE;...;US; KEELER;VIS;19990303;Word: 340;