"The teaching of the Church certainly cannot and must not intervene in every novelty of science, but has the task of confirming the great values at stake, and to propose believers and all the men of good will ethic and moral principles and guidance for the new important questions", including the "difficult and complex problems of bioethics". The Pope spoke those words. On receiving in hearing the participants in the plenary session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pope stated that "the new biomedical technologies concern a few qualified physicians and researchers, but not just them. They are spread through the modern means of social communication, generating expectations and questions in wider and wider sectors of society". For the Church, the "fundamental criteria for moral discernment" in this field are two: "unconditioned respect for the human being as a person, from his conception until his natural death, and respect for the originality of conveying human life through the typical acts of spouses". Those criteria were already announced in 1987, in the Instruction "Donum vitae" (Gift of life), after which "lots of people criticized the teaching of the Church, denouncing it as though it was an obstacle for science and the real progress of mankind".” “
