Evangelium vitae — revisited

Question: I was quoting the sensitive passage from the encyclical Evangelium Vitae n. 99 addressed to women who have had abortions. Someone told me that had been corrected or changed. Is that so?

Answer: I think your critic is correct and this came to me as a surprise until I checked the official Latin text of the encyclical published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis (cf. AAS 87 [1995] p. 515).

The passage in question reads, in part, “. . . The wound in your heart may not have healed. Certainly what happened was and remains terribly wrong. But do not give into discouragement and do not lose hope. Try rather to understand what happened and face it honestly. If you have not already done so, give yourselves over with humility and trust to repentance. The Father of mercies is ready to give you His forgiveness and His peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. You will come to understand that nothing is definitively lost and you will also be able to ask forgiveness from your child, who is now living with the Lord. With friendly and expert help and advice of other people, and as a result of your own painful experience, you can be among the most eloquent defenders of everyone’s right to life. . . . (EV, n. 99).

I take that translation from my paperback Random House edition (1995) with the publisher’s note that it is “the official English translation provided by the Vatican.” My own check of other translations (Spanish, French and Italian) read the same way. However, the official Latin text of the encyclical, published in the Acta, does not read that way at all. I refer only to the underlined sentence above.

When Evangelium Vitae was published (3/25/95), I asked two respected dogmatic theologians whether or not EV, n. 99 was saying something the Church had not said or taught before. I was told by both of these men whom I respect — no, there was nothing new there. In fact, I did a prior Q/A column on aspects of EV (cf. HPR v. 97, #7 [April, 1997] pp. 69-70).

Here, I must correct what I cited there. In the above citation, the first six sentences are exactly the same through: “. . . the Father of mercies is ready to give you His forgiveness and His peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.” The next sentence in Latin says: Infantum autem vestrum potestis Eidem Patri Eiusque misericordiae cum spe committere” (AAS 87 [1995] p. 515). And then continues: “With the friendly and expert help and advice of other people, etc. . . .”

My translation of that Latin would be: “Moreover, you are able to entrust with hope your infant to the same Father and His mercy.” It would then read “. . . the Father of mercies is ready to give you His forgiveness and His peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Moreover, you are able to entrust with hope your infant to the same Father and His mercy. With the friendly and expert help and advice of other people, etc.

Thus, the entire sentence: “You will come to understand that nothing is definitively lost . . . now living in the Lord” does not appear at all in the Latin text; not in that place nor anywhere else in EV, n. 99. Therefore, I take it that the deletion in the official Latin text is a correction, or at least a revision, because only the Latin text published in the Acta is official.

Indeed, as the official Latin text of the encyclical now reads it is in more complete accord with the teaching of the Catechism: “As regards children who have died without baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them” (Mk. 10:14) allows us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church’s call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism” (CCC, #1261).

Same-sex Unions and Adoptions

Question: The traffic in same-sex marriage and adoption seems to be picking up. Is there a formal statement of the Church against this?

Answer: Yes, to both. The traffic is picking up and there is formal teaching against it. The legal traffic on this wrong way street increases: at home, the State of Vermont legalized same-sex unions (4/00); abroad, the Netherlands legalized same-sex marriage and adoption (4/01).

The European movement seems to flow from the prior unhelpful decision of the European Parliament back in 1994 (cf. Q/A in HPR [5/96] pp. 66-8), and, of course, here at home, the elite media saw fit to award a Pulitzer Prize for “Editorial Writing” to David Moats of The Rutland Herald for his series of editorials on civil unions for same-sex marriages (NYTimes 4/l7/01] p. B-8).

Nonetheless, the Pontifical Council for the Family in Rome issued a formal document: “Family, Marriage and ‘De Facto’ Unions” on July 26, 2000 (for text, cf. Origins 30:30 [1/11/01] 473-488).

Number 23 of that document is entitled “Making homosexual relations equivalent to marriage is much more grave.” This document is clearly written with extensive footnotes from papal teaching and that of the episcopal conferences of France and Spain.

It deserves and rewards careful reading: “(23) The truth about conjugal love also makes it possible to understand the serious social consequences of the institutionalization of homosexual relations: ‘We can also see how incongruous is the demand to grant “marital” status to unions between persons of the same sex. It is opposed, first of all, by the objective impossibility of making the partnership fruitful through the transmission of life according to the plan inscribed by God in the very structure of the human being. Another obstacle is the absence of the conditions for that interpersonal complementarity between male and female willed by the Creator at both the physical-biological and the eminently psychological levels.” Marriage cannot be reduced to a condition similar to that of a homosexual relationship: this is contrary to common sense. In the case of homosexual relations, which demand to be considered de facto unions, the moral and juridical consequences take on special relevance. ‘Lastly, “de facto unions” between homosexuals are a deplorable distortion of what should be a communion of love and life between a man and a woman in a reciprocal gift open to life.’ However, the presumption to make these unions equivalent to “legal marriage,” as some recent initiatives attempt to do, is even more serious. Furthermore, the attempts to legalize the adoption of children by homosexual couples adds an element of great danger to all the previous ones. “The bond between two men or two women cannot constitute a real family and much less can the right be attributed to that union to adopt children without a family.” To recall the social transcendence of the truth about conjugal love and consequently the grave error of recognizing or even making homosexual relations equivalent to marriage does not presume to discriminate against these persons in any way. It is the common good of society which requires the laws to recognize, favor and protect the marital union as the basis of the family which would be damaged in this way.” (Family, Marriage and ‘De Facto’ Unions [7/26/00] n. 23, cf. Origins 30 [1/11/01] p. 481).

Please address questions to Msgr. Wm. B. Smith, St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, Yonkers, NY 10704. 

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