France, Italy

France: Cardinal Ricard on defending the embryoThe examination of the controversial bill on bioethics began at the French National Assembly on Tuesday 8 February. According to Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, Archbishop of Bordeaux, “it is shot through by an internal contradiction”. After the statement addressed by French bishops to deputies (see SIR Europe no. 4/2011), Cardinal Ricard has now returned to the fray and in his editorial in the newspaper “L’Aquitaine”, published on the website www.eglisecatholique.fr on 4 February, he focuses in particular on the articles of the draft legislation regarding research on the human embryo. The bill, he points out, “on the one hand maintains the prohibition of research on the human embryo and on human embryonic stem cells”, a provision “consistent with the sum of our legal corpus on the protection of human life”; but, on the other, “establishes an exemption in favour of scientific research” because, according to the bill, in certain conditions, “embryos surplus to requirement may be used and destroyed”. In 2004, on the occasion of the first re-examination of the legislation on bioethics, the law had established an exemption “for a limited period of five years, hoping that soon it would no longer be necessary”. Instead, “the current bill – says the cardinal – makes this exemption permanent. But in this case it is hard to see why ethics should abdicate its responsibility or yield to the supposed progress of scientific progress, which does not authorise everything. It does not authorise for example the commercialization of the human body. Nor does this prohibition admit exemptions”. The bill, the cardinal continues, “lays down as a condition for the use of the embryo for scientific research the impossibility of conducting such research without recourse to embryonic stem cells or embryos”. “But do not the scientific discoveries on adult stem cells – asks the Archbishop of Bordeaux – open the way to an alternative method?”. After dismissing as spurious the supposed distinctions between “pre-embryo” and “human embryo”, and between “frozen embryos that are used for a project of parents and those extraneous to such a project”, Cardinal Ricard expresses the hope that the examination of the provision would not lead to a “frontal opposition between science and ethics”, and recalls the Report of the “États généraux de la bioéthique”, according to which citizens “expect the State to be able to defend everyone, in particular the most vulnerable, against mercantile attitudes, experiments and practices that betray the principle of the integrity of the human body”. He then draws the conclusion: “Only by protecting unconditionally the vulnerable being par excellence , the human embryo, would the civil law fully respond to this expectation”. Italy: the response to anxietiesJust a few days after the end of the permanent Council of the Italian Bishops’ Conference (CEI), held in Ancona from 24 to 27 January, the “message of invitation to the XXV National Eucharistic Congress” (Ancona, 3-11 September) has now been issued. The message, published on 7 February, underlines the “centrality of the Eucharist” understood “as ‘culmination towards which the Church’s action is aimed and, at the same time, the source from whence all its virtue flows'”. The central part of the message is dedicated to the theological and pastoral contents on which the faithful are called to concentrate their attention, in this preparatory phase of the Congress: “Helping to perceive in Jesus, Word and bread for our daily life, the response to the anxieties of contemporary man, who often finds himself faced by difficult choices, within a multiplicity of messages: that’s the objective placed at the heart of the preparatory process leading to the Eucharistic Congress”, say the bishops. The message then recalls “the relation between liturgy and beauty of the mystery celebrated”. The bishops emphasize that “from the unity of Word of God and Eucharist is born a contemplative attitude, able to give ‘eucharistic form’ to the contents of our daily life”. After recalling that “Christians are recognized and appreciated as men and women of charity, experts in humanity, champions of social solidarity, even those who do not frequent the life of the Christian community”, the Italian bishops indicate a link between the eucharistic congress and the pastoral decade of the CEI on education 2010-2020: “Pastoral action must concur to arousing in the conscience of believers the unity of the experiences of daily life, often fragmented and dispersed, with a view to reconstructing the identity of the person. For pastoral action – continues the message – is realized not just with strategies of individual and social well-being, but with paths of good life that are able to establish a fruitful alliance between family, ecclesial community and society, by promoting among the laity the emergence of new educators open to the vocational dimension of life”.