1. –      The evangelisation process assumes the universal declaration of the human rights (ONU, 10th December 1948), The defence of the dignity and the rights of men is a sign of our time (Mt 16,3), discerned by the Church’s mastery like an action of God’s Spirit in our world. It was said by Paul the sixth: “The evangelisation would not be complete if it did not take into account the reciprocal interpellation that in the course of the times is established between the Gospel and the man’s concrete, personal and social life. Due to this the Gospel carries with it an explicit message, adapted to the diverse situations and constantly updated, on the rights and duties of any human person, on the familiar life, on the society communitarian life, on the international life, the peace, the justice, the development” (EN 29). Let us see some of the more important human rights, confirmed by the Church’s mastery.

2. –      The meeting and association right: “Any person has the right to the free meeting and peaceful association. Nobody can be obliged to belong to a particular association” (DDH 20, 12). “The meeting and association right raises from the human beings intrinsic sociability, like the right also to grant to the associations the most convenient structure in order to obtain its objectives and the right to move inside them by the own initiative and responsibility so that the associations can reach the desired purpose” (John the twenty third, PT; cfr. GS 73).

3. –      The politic participation right: “Any person has the right to participate in his country government, directly or by the way or free elected representatives”  (DDH 21.1) “The people’s will is the public power authority basis; this choice will be expressed by means of genuine elections that must take place periodically, by universal and equal suffrage and by a secret vote that guarantees its freedom” (DDH 21,3). “It is in perfect agreement with human nature the fact of constituting politic-judicial structures offering to all the citizens, without any kind of discrimination and with a growing perfection, effective possibilities of a free and active participation in the determination of the juridical fundaments of the politic community, in the government of the public thing, in the determination of the action grounds and the limits of the different institutions and in the election of the rulers.  Thus, all citizens must recall the right and the duty they have to vote in freedom to promote the common welfare” (GS 75; cfr. PT 26).

4. –      The labour participation right: “Any person has the right to found trade unions and to syndicate in his interests defence”(DDH 23,4). “Among the human person fundamental rights the right of the workers to freely found unions to authentically represent the worker and that are able to collaborate in the adequate disposition of the economic life, must be included, as well as the right to freely participate in the association activities without any risk of reprisals” (GS 68).

5. –  The education right: Any person has the right to the education. The education must be free of charge, at least in what concerns to the elemental and fundamental instruction. The elemental instruction shall be compulsory. The technical and professional instruction must be general; the access to higher studies shall be equal opportunity to everybody and conditioned by the respective merits” (DDH 26,1). “It is possible today to liberate to many men of the ignorance misery. So, one of the most adequate duties of our times, above all for the Christians, is to work eagerly so that in the economy as well as in the politics, in the national grounds as well as in the international ones, fundamental rules are in place in order that the right to the culture demanded by the person dignity, without race, sex, nationality, religion or social condition distinction, is acknowledge and effective everywhere” (GS 60)

6. –            Expression and information right: “ Any person has the right to the opinion and expression freedom; this right includes not to be disturbed because of his opinions, to investigate and receive information and opinions and to diffuse them, without any frontiers limitations, by any means of communication” (DDH 19). “Any human being has the natural right to the due respect to his person, to a good reputation, to the freedom to look for the truth and, in the moral order and common welfare limits, to manifest and defend his ideas…. and… to have an objective information of the public events” (PT 12).

7. –      The right to not be subject to torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment: “Nobody will be subject to torture neither to punishment or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” (DDH 5). “Nobody will be submitted neither to slavery nor to servitude; slavery and slaves trade are forbidden in any or its ways” (DDH 4). “Anything attempting against life… ; anything violating  the human person integrity, like, for instance, mutilations, moral or physical tortures, the systematic intents to dominate another’s mind; anything offending the human dignity, like the infrahuman life conditions, the deportations, the slavery, the prostitution, the white women and youngsters trade, or the degrading labour conditions reducing the worker to a mere profit instrument, without a respect to the human person freedom and responsibility; all these practices and any other similar to them are infamous in themselves, they degrade the human civilization, they dishonour more its authors than its victims and are completely against any honour due to the Creator” (GS 27).

8. –      The right to a truly human life: “ Any person has the right to an adequate life level that can ensure him, as well as to his family, the health and welfare, and especially the necessary alimentation, dressing, dwelling, medical assistance and social services; he also has the right to the precise insurance for illness, disablement, widowhood, oldness or other events which cause the loss of their subsistence means due to circumstances out of their will” (DDH 25,1). “ It is, then, necessary to facilitate to the men anything that they need to live a truly human life, like the aliment, the dressing, the dwelling, the right to a free state election and to found a family, to the education, the work, the good fame, the respect, an adequate information, to behave according to the right rule of their conscience, the private life protection and the just freedom in religious matters too” (GS 26).

9. –      The right to the religious freedom: “Any human person has the right to the thinking, conscience and religion freedom; this right includes the freedom to change religion or credence, as well as the freedom to manifest his religion or credence, individually and collectively, in public or privately, by means of the teaching, the practice, the cult and the observance” (DDH 18). “This Vatican Council declares that the person has the right to the religious freedom. This freedom consists in that all men must be immune to particular persons as well as social groups or any human power constraint, and this in such way that in religious matters nobody is obliged neither to behave against his conscience nor is hindered to act according to it, in public as well as in private, alone or associated with others, in the due limits. It also declares that the religious freedom right is founded is the very dignity of the human person” (DH 2).

1. –      For centuries, the Gospel’s social message was going into shadows until it reached its total negation. In the encyclic Quod apostolici numeris (1878), written against the socialism, pope Lyon the thirteenth talks about the private property in the following terms: “While the socialists present the right to the property like a human intervention against the men natural equality, and, looking for the welfare commonality, they consider that the private property should not be supported with a poverty good spirit and that the fundamentals and the rights of the most powerful can be violated with impunity, the Church, much more wisely and usefully, also acknowledges men lack of equality in the welfare possession, due to naturally diverse physical forces and talent aptitudes, and she believes that the property and ownership right is to be intact and inviolable for everybody, a right that comes from the nature itself”. The text lacks of any prophetic spirit and responds to the economical liberalism, to the liberal capitalism of that time and not to a genuine Christian tradition.

2. –      Nevertheless, during the nineteenth century there was social tendencies (in minority) in the catholic environment. For instance, in France, Jean-Marie of Lamennais and Frederic Ozanam denounce the economical liberalism and defend the workers association rights, the primacy of the person, the State intervention and the vital salary, that cannot be left to the pure market game.

3. –      In this context, the Church’s social doctrine emerges with the publication of the Lion de thirteenth encyclic Rerum Novarum (1981), talking about the new social problem. New themes are the capital (new private property way), the work (reduced to a trade, under the offering and demand law) and the conflict between both (the fight of classes). Lion the thirteenth enumerates the mistakes that leads to the proletariat  “undeserved misery” and excludes the socialism like a solution to the “workers problem”, because to “have things privately like our own is a right given to men by nature”. The following points are fundamental: The work, the property right, the principle of collaboration opposed to the fight of classes, the right to professional associations. The State intervention is requested, since “it is a strict duty of the State to duly take care of the workers welfare”. Thus, the “collaboration between classes” is presented like a Christian’s ideal, but not to overcome the large social differences, id est, the ideal of a society without classes.

4. –      Forty years later, Pius the eleventh in his encyclic Quadragesimo anno (1931) offers an overview of the industrial and production society, stresses the need that the capital as well as the work contribute to the production and the economic organization, establishes the conditions for the restoration of the social order, looks for a new view of the problems to confront the big changes caused by the new development of the economy and the socialism, and supports a corporative organization close to the fascist trade union system.

5. –      Pius the eleventh in his message by radio the first of June 1941 assesses that “the natural order coming from God, requires the private property and the free reciprocal goods trade with interchanges and donations too, as well as the public power regulating function upon both institutions”. These ethic and social principles oriented to promote the reconstruction behind the destructive effects of the Second World War are basic: the universal destiny and the welfare use, the rights and duties of the workers and the enterprisers, the State function in the economical activities, the need of the international collaboration to carry out a better justice and to ensure the peace, the restoration of the right like the rule for the relations between the classes and the people, the minimum familiar salary

6. –      The Rights of Man Universal Declaration (UN, 10 – 12- 1948) is an event, which will be sheltered and valued by the Church magistery (above all, by John the twenty third and the second Vatican Council) like a sign of the action of God’s spirit in our time (Mt 16,3). Some of the more important human rights are: the meeting and association, the politic participation, the laboral participation, the expression and information freedom, the education right, not be submitted to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, a truly human life, the religious freedom.

7. –      In his encyclic Mater et magistra (1961) John the twenty third makes a historical and sociological analysis about the modern industrial society and the roll that the prevision and social security systems, the professional capacities and the rights based on the work can have in it, he affirms “the natural character of the property right even in the production goods”, he denounces the existing inequalities not only between the diverse economical sectors but between countries and regions too, as well as the overpopulation and underdevelopment that, due to the lack of understanding and solidarity between the nations, originates insupportable situations, especially in the Third World.

8. –      Before the danger of a nuclear war, the encyclic Pacem in terries (1963) is an urgent call to build the peace based on the respect to the ethic exigencies that must rule the relationship between the men and between the States. In its first part “the men rights” are assumed: to the existence and a worthy life level, to the moral and cultural values, to the religious freedom, to the own state election, to the free association, to the immigration and emigration freedom, to the politic participation.

9. –      Decolonisation process of many countries of the Third World is consolidating more and more, but the politic colonialism in force up to then is followed by other one of an economical character. Especially in Latin America, a conscience before the development unbalance and the injustice situations raises and a liberation ferment bursts in several ways.  The world expects a brand new and hopeful message from the Church. The answer to this expectation is the Constitution Gaudium et spes (1965) delivered by the second Vatican Council.

10. –    The Council proclaims that “any discrimination form of the personal fundamental rights, social as well as cultural, because of the sex, race, colour, social condition, language or religion, must be overcome and suppressed, like against God’s plan” (GS 29); “ to satisfy the justice and equity exigencies it is necessary to produce all possible efforts in order to, always keeping respect to the personal rights and the characteristics of each one of the peoples, force to disappear as soon as possible the enormous economical differences existing today, and that frequently increase, entailed to individual and social discriminations” (GS 66); the development must be to the man’s service, without any type of domination by the main systems, capitalism and socialism socio-economical implications; it is necessary to promote the good of the whole man, “of the integral man”, taking into account his material and spiritual needs (GS 64-65), overcoming in this way, the traditional contraposition between producer and consumer, and the discrimination offending the human dignity. “Human work developed in the production and in the trade or in the services is superior to the rest of the economic life elements, since the only roll of the later is merely instrumental” (GS 67); “the private property right is not incompatible with the existing diverse ways of public property” (GS 71).

11. –    With the encyclic Populorum progressio (1967) Paul the sixth proposes a new development comprehension: Man integral development and a joint humanity development. The development is “the progress of less human life conditions to more human life conditions”, in the purely temporal aspects, as well as in the true values without which a true society development is not possible. Paul the sixth says, after a reference to the first letter of Saint John (3,17): “It is known the firmness with which the Fathers of the Church have set which must be the attitude of those that have some possessions with respect to those that are in need: it is not a part of your goods – says Saint Ambrosias – what you deliver to the poor; what you give them is a part of his own goods. Because what has been given for everybody use, you have appropriated it. The earth has been given for everybody and not only for the rich people”. The Pope says too: “The private property does not constitute an unconditional or absolute right for anybody. There is no reason to reserve for the exclusive use things or goods that overcome the own needs, when others lack what is needed for them” (PP 23; see GS 69).

12. –    Eighty years after the Rerum novarum, Paul the sixth publishes the Octogesima adveniens (1971). It is necessary a thought for the comprehension of the existence politic dimension and of the Christian compromise, stimulating at the same time the critical feeling in relation to the existing ideologies. 

13. –    John Paul the second publishes the encyclic Laborem exercens in 1981. The main key of the entire social affair is found in the human work (LE 3). A deep revision of the work direction is required, which includes a more equitable distribution not only of the rents and the welfare, but of the work itself too, in order to get work for everybody. The priority of the work over the capital, what has a key importance in any system, capitalist or socialist (LE 15). Marx himself could assert this principle. Nevertheless, when the time of the truth comes, (for instance, talking about the Latin America situation), John Paul the second is more conservative than Paul the sixth.

14. –    In the encyclic Sollicitudo rei socialis (1987), John Paul the second updates and deepens the development notion.  He regrets the Third World failed development, and talks about the sense, the conditions and the exigencies of a worthy man development. Between the failed development causes the following are indicated: the persistent, and, very often increased, difference between North and South, the opposition between the eastern and western blocks with the consequent weaponry race, the weapons trade and diverse obstacles of political character that intercross with the cooperation and solidarity between nations decisions. The moral character of the true development is attached to the human rights (also of religious freedom).

15. –    One hundred years after the Rerum novarum, John Paul the second publishes the encyclic Centesimus annus (1991).  He sees in the events that happened in 1989 in central and eastern Europe the historic process culmination started by the Rerum novarum. The real socialism has incurred in a “fundamental mistake of anthropological character”: the forgetfulness of the human person transcendence (CA 13). Like a positive result, he indicates the legitimation of “an authentic theology of the integral human liberation” (CA 26). The key question is: is it possible to say that after the communism downfall, the capitalism is the winner system?. Obviously, the answer is complex (CA 42). The Church does not have models to propose: “she recognizes the positivism of the trade and the enterprise, but at the same time she indicates that both must be oriented to the common welfare” (CA43), “the social doctrine has, in itself, the value of an evangelisation instrument” (CA 54).

16. –    It has been commented that the encyclic CA practically ignores what the theology of the liberation has contributed to the Church. Its democracy concept has been discussed: An authentic democracy would only be possible “on the human person right conception basis” (CA 46). It has been criticized its blessing without any shame of the polish model (now destroyed), as well as its oblique and partial vision of the fall down of the communist block: “almost everywhere…. through the peaceful fight, that uses only the truth and justice weapons” (CA 43).

17. –    Christianism cannot deliver a political, syndicalist, economical, ect… model. What it must make easy is the sincere conversion to the social great values. The fundamental Christian values that incise into the social order are the fraternity, the goods sharing (Acts 2,44. 4,32), the love to the neighbour (1 Jn 4,20), the faith with works (James 2,14-26), the compromise with justice (Rom 13,10), the work with social service spirit (Acts 20, 33-35), the greed’s liberation with binding obligation with the solidarity to get enough goods for everybody (1 Tim 6, 6-10). The christianism needs to liberate the great Churches of their historic sin: to proclaim a Gospel, which is good news for the poor, and – nevertheless – to be with the rich.

18. –    It is affirmed in Saint James letter that, according to the Gospel, the humble status is exaltation and the rich status humiliation: Let the poor man boast, because he has been uplifted, and let the rich one boast when he is humbled, because he will pass away like the flower of the field (James 1, 9-10). Because the poor are the subject of election on the part of God: Look, brothers, did notGod choose the poor of this world to receive the riches of faith and to inherit the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him? (James 2,5).

19. –    The great Christian principle is neither the fight of classes nor the collaboration between classes. The Christian principle is the love to the neighbour, enemies included, and the pledge for justice, because love doesn’t make injustice: “What is against christianism is the resistance, on the part of the privileged classes, to the establishment of a society without discriminations, of a society without classes” (J.Mª Diez Alegría)

            *          Dialogue over the social doctrine:

·        it is a reaction of philosophical and ethical nature

·        it is a return to the Gospel, good news for the poor

·        it slowly identifies the critics to the capitalist system

·        it decreases the importance of the private property

·        it increases the priority of the workers rights

·        it lessens the opposition before the socialism

·        it is an evangelisation instrument

·        it is unreal before the capitalist world

·        it denounces the fight of classes

·        it promotes the collaboration between classes

·        it leads to overcome the large social differences

·        it improves the consciousness upon the historic sin of the great Christian Churches: to be with the rich

1. –      The Gospel is good news for the poor (Mt 11, 5; Lk 4,18) and, at the same time, bad news for the rich (Lk 6,24; James 5,1-6). When the rich youngster ignores the Gospel’s call, Jesus comments: How hard is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God! Even the disciples were shocked at these words and they ask: Who, then can be saved? Jesus tells them: For humans it is impossible, but not for God, because all things are possible with God. (Mk 10, 17 – 27). Some questions: was the rich youngster requested to do more than other people (sell what you have and give the money to the poor)? Or is it that he was in a special situation (he possessed many goods)?

2. –      Jesus´ message is in the prophet’s line, defenders of the poor. The poor put out alive and universal needs like the bread, the health, the work, the housing, the education, the justice, the freedom. The prophets denounce the trespass against the neighbour, inspired in the eagerness for money: the scandalous differences between rich and poor, the oppression over the feeble, the rapacity of the powerful, the unscrupulous creditors´ tyranny, the merchants´ frauds, the judges´ venality, the priests´ and prophets´ greediness. A society like this cannot last (Is 3,15; 5,8; Am 2, 6-8; 8, 4-6; Ne 5, 1-5; Mic 3,11; Jer 7,9). On his part, John the Baptist does not demand special ascetic practices: he calls for conversion to those who consider themselves all life believers (Lk 3,8). It is necessary to share, to avoid the abuses, do not take advantage of power (Lk 3,10-14).

3. –      The Gospel assumes the Decalogue, but it goes further: you not only will not steal (Dt 5,19) nor will covet the goods of your neighbour (5,21), but you will share your goods. Property is not an unconditional and absolute right for anybody. We can see it in the crafty steward’s parable (Lk 16, 1-15). But, is it true that we have some money that is unjust? The parable presents two key figures: the master and the steward. How do I place myself before the money: like master or like steward?

4. –      In the parable, the steward is reported to the master for a fraudulent service: the steward dissipates his goods. Dismissal is imminent. The steward considers the situation: What am I to do now that my master dismisses me?. So he started to diminish the debts to his master’s debtors. You owe one hundred jars of oil? Write fifty. You owe one hundred bushels of wheat? Write eighty. This done, the master commended the dishonest steward for his astuteness. He could have dismissed him immediately, but he didn’t. The master commended the steward, who even made a good transaction (1 Tim 6,6; 1Co 3,19), a good investment for the future.

5. –            World’s judgment and Gospel’s judgment are here confronted. If, before the money, I place myself like master, then, when I give something, I give what is mine. But, if I place myself like administrator, when I give something, I give what is not mine. So says the Lord: Use filthy money to make friends for yourselves, so that when it fails, these people may welcome you into the eternal homes (Lk 16,9). It is similar to that other passage that says: Get yourselves purses that do not wear out, and make safe investments with God (Lk 12,33). It is an invitation to share the goods, to give (with good management) what overflows the own need (see 1 Tim 6,8; Lev 25,23).

6. –      The Gospel presents us an option: You cannot give yourself both to God and Money (Lk 16, 13). Money is a false and unjust god, an implacable master: it chokes the Word (Mt 13,22), it forces to forget God’s sovereignty (Lk 12, 15,21), prevents the Gospel’s way to the best prepared hearts (Mt 19, 21- 22), it opens social abysms between rich and poor (Lk 16, 19 – 31). The Gospel invites us to give clear signals that our god is not the money (see Mt 6, 24). An opposed attitude is also given, that of the Pharisees, money’s friends: hearing these things, they ridicule Jesus.

7. –      Jesus does not demand, like in Qumran monastery, the delivery of property to the community. It imposes to everybody the renounce neither to goods nor their collectivisation. There are some people that give everything (Mk 10,28) and receive much more (10,30), Zaccheus revise his situation and he gives half of them (Lk 19,8), other one helps with loans (6,34 –35), there are women who follow Jesus and support Him with their own funds (Lk 8,3), and other one makes with Him an, apparently useless, waste  (Mk 14,3 – 9). Nothing is here legally ruled. That is why it needs neither exceptions nor law privileges.

8. –      In the first Christian community no one claimed any of their possessions like his own (Acts 4,32). Their possessions were their own but, in effect, it was like if they weren’t. The first Christians lived together and shared all their belongings; they would sell their property and all they had and they distribute the proceeds to others according to their need (Acts 2, 44 – 45). Human relationship, falsified and reduced to master and slave relationship because of the possession substance, is converted, through the sharing, into fraternity relationship. Hearts communion is an effective possessions sharing.

9. –      Paul’s communities do not present signs as spectacular as those of the first Christian community, the Jerusalem community. But, same spirit is present: there will be no needy person between you (2 Co 8,14; Acts 4,34). With this spirit he organizes a collection for the brothers in Jerusalem, who are in a bad situation. The collection must follow these principles: let each one give what he decided upon personally and not reluctantly as if obliged (2 Co 9,7; see 1 Tim 6,18). Paul calls attention upon some abuses that take place in the Thessalonica community: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat (2 Thes 3,10).

10. –    An old text, Bernabe´s letter, probably written in Alexandria during the first half of the second century, takes us to the origins of the Christian conscience: “You will communicate with your neighbour in everything and you will not say that something is of your property; because if you share what is incorruptible, will not be even more reasonable in the incorruptible matters?” (19,8). The Didache, a catechetical teaching probably written in Syria in the same years, says the same thing. It is important to share, but also to discern: “Let your charity sweat in your hands until you know to whom you are giving” (Didache 1,6).

11. –    Saint John Chrisostomus, named Constantinople’s bishop the year 397 and ceased in 404, affirms the following: “To prevent the participation of the poor in our own goods is to steal them and to take out his life. What we posses is not of our own, but it belongs to them” (Laz 1,6). The second Vatican Council says that in order to satisfy the exigencies of justice it is necessary to eliminate the large social differences (GS 66) and to respect the fundamental personal rights (GS 26 y 76).

12. –    For centuries, the Gospel’s social message got into the shadows to even reach a total negation of it. In a lamentable situation like this Church’s social doctrine blossoms with the Lyon’s the thirteenth encyclic Rerum novarum (1891). New matters are the capital (the new private property form), the work (reduced to a trade, under the offering and demand law), the conflict between both. But it is a reaction of a philosophic and ethic model, more than a coming back to the Gospel. The critic to the capitalist system is certainly intensified little by little, the value of the private property is, theoretically, placed in relative terms, the workers rights priority is emphasized, the confrontation before the socialism is (under difficulties and resistances) attenuated. Nevertheless, the Church’s social doctrine is unreal before the capitalist world. The Gospel’s social message positions itself in favour of the poor, but the large christian Churches are unable to assume it vitally. Because of this: “they are structurally rich and powerful and they are compromised with the interests of the rich, which, in effect, are  (in a more or less adequate way, but certainly meaningful) their own interests” (Diez Alegria).

* Dialogue: Over all that looks to us most important

1.-    The homosexual relationship is a complex problem related not only to the common ethic, but to the Gospel too. To begin with, several questions arise: is there a related common ethic? Which position does the Gospel adopt? Which is the relationship between the common ethic and the Gospel? In our plural society, the homosexual relationship originates very diverse reactions: it is an aberration, it is a pride, it is something against nature, it is a deviation, it is an option, it is an illness, it is not an illness, it must be punished, it must be tolerated, it is a healing matter, it is a matter of conversion, it must be accepted by the Christian community, it must be rejected.

2.-    Let us see some history data. In the imperial Rome, the homosexual are a minority, but the society is tolerant. Permanent and exclusive homosexual relations take place. The beginning of legal actions against the homosexual behaviour may be dated in the third century A.D., in which laws regulating the different aspects of the homosexual relations, such us youngster violations or marriages between persons of the same sex, are approved. The homosexual acts that are not covered by related particular laws continue to be legal up to the sixth century, in which, by first time, the roman civil law forbids any type of homosexual relationship.

3.- Lamentably, in the so called Christian societies the homosexual person has been prosecuted, executed and (even short time ago) jailed. So it is, until a relatively short time ago, in most of the European nations, the homosexuality was considered like a social danger and was punished like a crime. Masculine homosexuality was more prosecuted than the feminine one. Nevertheless, during the twentieth century a progressive better knowledge of the phenomenon and a better comprehension has taken place. In our laical, pluralist, democratic and tolerant society, the homosexual person is not legally discriminated because of his sexual orientation.

4.-    A population minority is homosexual. Nevertheless, there are a much larger number of persons who, in some moments of their life, find out homosexual type tendencies or behaviour. It may be also a distinction between primary homosexuality (irreversible) and bisexuality. The term bisexuality indicates a sexual ambivalent structure, with both homosexual and heterosexual tendencies. The prevalence can change along the diverse life periods, reaching even the fixation of one or the other sexuality way. There is a distinction between persistent and transitory homosexuality. For instance, during the adolescence without any later endurance, or diffused between young and old people who live for years in an enclosed environment in which they only contact with persons of the same sex.

5.-    In 1968, the Psychiatric American Association considered the homosexuality like a personality deviation. Nevertheless, the pressure of diverse professionals and, upon all, of several North American homosexual collectives, got, not without controversy, that in 1980 that concept were abandoned, reserving the egodistonic homosexual category to diagnose those persons whose sexual orientation produced a deep and marked discomfort to them. In 1987 one step forward was taken when the mentioned term was eliminated even like a diagnostic possibility. The single mention upon the matter that appears in the books is the inclusion, between the instances of sexual disorder not specified, of the “remarkable and persistent discomfort upon the own sexual orientation”, although without specificating if this discomfort is due to the hetero, homo or bisexual orientation.

6.-    The New York University Psychiatry teacher Luis Rojas, writes the following: “The exact cause of the homosexuality is not known. Nevertheless, everyday the scientific studies assert the notion that it is due to an innate variation of the biologic and psychological mechanisms modulating the romantic attraction between adults, and so it is out of the control of the individuals. Concretely, it looks like the sexual orientation begins its configuration during the gestation, by means of the sexual hormones, androgens and estrogens. Something that we know for sure is that homosexuality is not an illness, it is not contagious, it is not a vice, it is neither some antisocial tendencies consequence, nor the inept parents sequel or due to a traumatic infancy” (El País, 18-10-2003)

7.-    Let us see what says the moralist Bernard Häring in the Moral Theology Dictionary (1973): “Since we come out from a health and normality global perspective concept, we feel directed to sustain that the homosexual fixation must be considered like an abnormal situation that is necessary to cure in the best way we are able. The homosexuality, and any other sexual aberration, which avoids the person to get its plenitude in the marriage love or in a balanced bachelor life, constitutes a grave drawback and an obstacle for the normal development and merriness. The single fact that some homosexual is willing to continue as such, is not a proof that, in his case, it is not possible to talk about an illness, since there are many sick people who does not want to be cured”

8.-    The Congregation for the Faith Doctrine in its Pronouncement upon certain matters related to the sexual ethic (1975) affirms the following: “In the pastoral grounds it is necessary to treat these homosexuals with understanding and to animate them with the hope of overgrowing their personal difficulties and their incapacity to integrate themselves in the society. Their guiltiness should be prudently treated. But it is not possible to apply any pastoral method that could morally justify such acts on the basis that they could agree with these persons condition” (n.8).

9.-    The Catholic Church Catechism exposes this matter as follows: “The homosexuality designs the relationship between men or women feeling a sexual attraction, exclusive or predominant, towards persons of the same sex. It presents very diverse forms through centuries and cultures. Its psychic origin stays, in many aspects, unexplained. Taking the Scriptures, which present the homosexuality acts like grave depravations, like a base, Church’s Tradition has always declared that these acts are disordered in themselves” (n. 2357)

10.- Well, and what does the Bible say?. In the Old Testament appears the Sodom’s sin, but it is a particular fault, the homosexual violation that the city inhabitants commit against Lot’s guests (Gn 19,4-5). The homosexual relation is a case of porneia illegal union forbidden in the Leviticus:  Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination (Lev 18,22); it is punished with the death (20,13). Of course, such barbarity does not appear in the Gospel. The Gospel calls for conversion, respecting the freedom. In the Gospel this matter is not directly treated. Nevertheless, several passages refer in a global form to cases of porneia or illegal unions forbidden by Law (Mt 19,9; 5,32; Acts 15, 20.29).

11.- In Corinth’s port corruption ambient, Saint Paul denounces the attitude of those who say “anything is licit for me”: Do not deceive yourselves! Those who have unlawful sexual relations, or worship idols, or who are adulterers, homosexual of any kind, or thieves, exploiters, drunkards, gossips or embezzlers will not inherit the kingdom of Heaven (1 Co 6, 9-10; 1 Tim 1,10). And in the roman society pluralist ambient, Saint Paul denounces the deviation of a world that breaks away of the true God and that not only practices but also exalts the homosexuality: “Because of this God gave them up to their inner cravings; they did shameful things and dishonoured their bodies. They exchanged God´s truth for a lie; they honoured and worshiped created things instead or the Creator… because of that, God gave them up shameful passions: their women, exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. Similarly, the men, giving up the natural sexual relations with women were lustful of each other, men with men, bringing upon themselves the punishment they deserve for their wickedness (Rom 1,24 – 27).

12.- The sexuality is one of the factors marking the human personality; it constitutes the persons like men and like women, decisively influencing their individual development and their social insertion. Like the Scripture says, male and female He created them (Gn 1,27). In the Bible, the sexual difference between man and woman appears entailed to two main options. In first place, the mutual help, established to redeem human solitude: It is not good for the man to be alone. I will give him a helper (Gn 2,18). In second place, the fecundity, in order to life transmission: Be fruitful and increase in number (1, 28).

13.- In the Gospel, Jesus directs to the original God’s project: Man has now to leave father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one body (Mt 19,5). Jesus eliminates the concessions made by Moses: Whoever divorces his wife, unless it be for infidelity, and marries another, commits adultery (Mt 19,9; see Mt 5,32 and Lk 16,18). The expression illegal union (pomeia in greek) is referred to the unions forbidden in the Law, one of them the homosexual union (Lev 18,20). The disciples perfectly perceive Jesus position and they assume it like something that is above them. (Mt 19,10). Jesus tells them that to understand this is a God’s present (19.11). And there are more difficult things; there are those who in the name of the Gospel renounce to the conjugal life (19,12).

14.- According to the original God’s project, the homosexuality constitutes a deviation, a deep disorder of the sexual orientation, as far as it is directed to persons of the same sex. Its origin remains obscure. Several factors can concur: a lack of a normal sexual evolution, delay in the evolutional development of the personality, physical, psychic, familiar, educational, social or acquired uses conditionings. The homosexual person cannot be legally discriminated. In moral valuation, it is also taken into account the type of conditioning: there are those who are born in that manner, but there are also those who made themselves. Or those who are made like that. The homosexual person must be accepted with understanding and supported in the hope of overcoming his difficulties. Their personal responsibility must be judged with prudence.

·        Dialog over the homosexual relationship

–         It is an aberration/it is a pride

–         It is against nature/ it is natural

–         According to God’s project, it is a deviation/it is an option

–         It may be cured/ it can not be cured

–         It must be punished/ it must be tolerated

–         It must be accepted in the Christian community/it must be rejected

–         There are those who are born in that manner/ those who made themselves and those who are made like this

–         It is a matter of cure/ it is a matter of conversion

–         The homosexual person must not be legally discriminated

–         The homosexual person must be accepted with understanding

–         Their personal responsibility must be judged with prudence.
 

1.- For centuries, the Christians extract a negative valuation of the sexuality from the old greek philosophy  and from manichean positions, reaching aberrant extremes and accomplishing what is denounced in the Gospel: They lay heavy burdens on the shoulders of the people (Mt 23,4). But the opposite extreme also appears. There are a lot of people saying: Anything is licit for me. To this, Saint Paul answers: But not everything is to my profit (1Co 6,12). God’s project about the sexuality and the marriage is a call to fidelity, from the deepest, from the heart.

2.- The sexuality is one of the factors that forms human personality; it constitutes people like men and women, influencing decisively their individual evolution and their social insertion. Like the Scripture says, male and female he created them (Gn1,27). The Bible does not place the goodness of husband and wife sexual relationship in doubt. The book of Proverbs says: May you find joy in the wife of your youth (Pro 5,18; see Ct 4,1; GS 49). Before the Corinthians illusory continence desires, Saint Paul recalls them the sexual relationship duty: Let the husband fulfil his duty of husband and likewise the wife. (1 Co 7,3).

3.- In the Bible, the sexual difference between man and woman appears entailed to two fundamental functions. In first place, the mutual help, directed to redeem the human solitude: It is not good for the man to be alone; I will give him a helper who will be like him. (Gn 2,18). In second place, the fecundity, directed to the life transmission: Be fruitful and increase in number (1,28).

4.- God’s plan, thought to make husband and wife one flesh (Gn 2,24), is a love’s  mystery that should not be betrayed. The Decalogue says: Do not commit adultery (Dt 5, 18; Ex 20,14; see Mal 2,14,15). Besides, the Scripture reflects the worries of a father with his daughter (Sir 42,9-11) and invites the man to go away from fornication (Sir 41,17) and from prostitution (Pro 23,27; Sir 9,3-6), reserving his love for his woman of his youth (Pro 5,15-19), or, in its case, to go to encounter the perfect woman (Pro 31,10; Sir 26,2-4; 36,21-27). In the biblical world the brides or spouses  (from the Latin sponsos, from spondere, to promise solemnly) belong the one to the other (Dt 22,23; Mt 1,18). The courtship is valuated like mutual knowledge, discernment and engagement consent maturity period.

5.-   The Roman Catechism (c. XVI) comments that, with adultery prohibition, God forbids any dishonest and impure sin. Saint Ambrose and Saint Agustin explicitly affirm it. And it is also confirmed in the Scripture with absolute evidence; it is established in many of its passages that God punishes, besides the adultery, other kinds of dishonest sins. In the Genesis, for instance, the sentence of Judah against her daughter in law is narrated; the Deuteronomy forbids the female Israelites to become prostitutes; his father warns Tobias to stay out of any fornication, and the Sirach says: Be ashamed of licentiousness… of gazing at another’s man wife.

6.- The sin affects, already in the Old Testament, not only to the fact of the adultery, but to the desire too. The desire broods the sin. In this manner, surrendering to his desire, David gets Bathsheba, Uriah´s wife (2S11, 2 and following). And two old men want Susana till becoming mad (Dn 13,9). The Decalogue forbids the guilty desire: Do not desire the wife of your neighbor (Dt 5,21)

7.- In the Gospel, Jesus sends us to the original God’s project: Man has now to leave father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one body  (Mt 19,5). And, abolishing Moses concessions, he teaches: Whoever divorces his wife, unless it be for infidelity, and marries another, commits adultery. (Mt 19,9; see Mt 5,32 and Lk 16, 18). The expression illegal union (in greek porneia) refers to the unions forbidden by Law (see Lev 18-19 and Acts 15,22-29). In the encounter with the Samaritan, Jesus refers her to her true husband: You have five husbands and the one you have now is not your husband. (Jn 4,18). The disciples perfectly perceive Gospel’s position and live it like something that overcomes them (Mt 19,10). Jesus tells them that to understand this is a God’s present  (19,11). And there are more difficult things; there are some who, in the name of the Gospel, renounce to the conjugal life (19,12). According to God’s project, sexual relationship is integrated in a love’s context, a love that is an everlasting compromise and that manifests itself in the marriage consent (see GS 48).

8.- The marriage evangelic defense does not limit itself to denounce the adultery, but it reaches its deepest root: fidelity is a heart’s business. The heart is the root to be healed (Mt 15, 19- 20). It is the heart, the whole man, the one that manifests itself in everyone of its visages: You have heard that it was said: Do not commit adultery. But I tell you this: anyone who looks at a woman with the intention of possessing her has in fact already committed adultery with her in his heart (Mt 5, 27-28). Love is the fidelity fountain and the summary of the whole Law (Rom 13,9). Heart’s fidelity also evangelizes.

9.- According to the original God’s project, the homosexuality constitutes a deviation, a deep disturbance of sexual orientation, as far as it is directed to the same sex (Rom 1, 26-27). Its origin remains obscure. Diverse factors may take place: a lack of normal sexual evolution, a delay in the evolutionary development of the personality, physical, psychic, familiar, educational or social conditionants, acquired habits. The homosexual person should not be legally discriminated. In the moral evaluation, type of conditioning is taken into account: there are some who are born like that, but there also others that make themselves so. Or they are made so. The homosexual person must be accepted with comprehension and supported with the hope of the overcoming of his difficulties. His personal responsibility must be prudently judged.

10.- In the corrupted ambient of Corinth’s port, Saint Paul denounces all the kinds of evil (1Co 6,9-10). He besides advises: Avoid unlawful sex entirely (6,18; see 1Thes 4,3-5; Eph 5,5). This precept (in negative) facilitates the accomplishment (in positive) of God’s will. Avoiding fornication (Tb 4,12) facilitates to Tobit the meeting with Sarah (7,11; 8,9), a love that apparently could have been born in casual circumstances, but in which the believer recognizes God’s intervention: This is God’s doing (Gn 24,50; Ps 127). The way was unknown and dangerous (Tb 5,2; 6, 3.14).

11.-  Human sexuality reaches its deepest sense when it is integrated in the faith experience context, when God’s will glitters across the body, that is, across the human life in everyone of its dimensions. Your bodies are members of Christ and one spirit with Him (1Co 6, 15.19). So that, Saint Paul says, make your body serve the glory of God (6, 20).

Dialogue: Do we understand Jesus words? Diverse applications 

1. –      The Italian female Eluana Englar, 38 years old, dies after being disconnected from the probe that had maintained her vegetative life for 17 years. Before the accident that left her prostrated, Eluana had not written a vital testament, but she had manifested her will. “In the family, the three of us had left our position clear. We had talked many times about it”, “we do not need to listen litanies neither cultural, nor religious or political”, says his father. In 2008 the Court of Milan allowed the interruption of the watering and the artificial feeding. The office of the public prosecutor argued that the irreversibility of the persistent vegetative situation had not been proved with enough objectivity. The Supreme Court settled the question, protecting the family’s request.

2. – Thirty years ago a group of the science and the culture personalities wrote a Manifesto on euthanasia: “It is immoral, they said, to tolerate or to impose the suffering. We believe in the value and the dignity of the individual. This implies to treat him with respect and to give him freedom in order to be able to decide reasonably about his own fate”, “it is necessary to provide the means to die sweetly, easily to those who undergo an incurable illness or irremediable injuries and have reached the last stage. It is cruel to demand that a person be maintained alive against his will”, “all individual has the right to live with dignity and to die with dignity” (The Humanist, July 1974).

3. –   Euthanasia fact and name are strange to the biblical world. When the newly born Cristianisme reaches the Greco-Roman world, it confronts the problem of a practice that is defended in the ancient philosophy. The term euthanasia has in the ancient times an etymological sense of good death or death in peace, with no pain, even with lucidity. Philosophers like Plato or Aristotle, allow the practice of a willingly induced death in the case of sick people considered like unrecoverable. The stoics consider suicide like a consequent alternative to an excessively grievous and senseless existence.

4. –            According to Plato (about 427  – 347), model society should be formed by sane people: “That who is not able to live developing his own missions should not be receiving any care, since he is useless for himself as much as for the society” (Republic, 407). Aristotle (384 – 322) writes about infanticide: “as far as the exposure and nursing of the children, it should be disposed that anyone defective should not be nursed, but no one should be exposed because of delivering too many children, in the case that the rules imposed by the habits forbid to exceed certain limits; in effect, procreation must be constrained, but if someone continue their sexual relations further than the established time and conceive children, abortion must take place before the awareness and the life is produced in the embryo,  since the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the abortion will be defined by the awareness and the life” (Politics, 1335).

5. –      One of the most representative authors of the stoicism, Seneca, writes in his letters: “ the wise man will apart himself from life due to very well founded reasons: to save the patria or the friends, but also when he is burdened with too cruel pains, in case of mutilations or a incurable sickness”, “he will not be put to death, if the case is a sickness that may be cured and does not hurt the soul; we will not kill anyone because of the pains, but only when the pain prevents anything he lives for”; “I prefer to kill myself to feel how I progressively lose my strength and become dead being alive”. On his part, the physicians must deliver remedies to the sick, but to those who cannot extend their life, “they will facilitate a tolerable death”.

6. –      Roman historian Suetonius affirms that emperor Augustus was abettor of the euthanasia: “as soon as Caesar Augustus heard that someone had died quickly and without any pain, he asked the euthanasia, using this word, for himself and for his family”. (The life of twenty Caesars, L, II) “It is clear that the text is referred to the persons who cannot be cured and that, due to this, have entered the hopeless phase. Such is the reason for the roll of illnesses elaborated by Pliny, in which the doctors may accelerate death. In the classic literature, euthanasia and ouster are correlative terms”, “it is understandable that when the European culture wanted to approach the classicism ideals, the relationship between medical ouster and euthanasia always appear. Such thing happens, for instance, in the Renaissance”, comments Diego Gracia, Medicine History teacher in the Madrid Complutense University. See Javier Gafo (ed.), The euthanasia and the art of dying, UPCM, Madrid, 1990, 13, 32.

7. –      We find this text during the Renaissance in the Englishman Thomas Moro (1478-1535) Utopia: “If the illness not only is incurable but also a torment and a continuous martyrdom, then the priests and authorities say to such person that he is a burden for the rest and unbearable for himself… and he should not doubt to join death, since life is a torment for him”. And the Englishman too, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) affirms: “I estimate that the medical profession duty is not only to restore health, but also to diminish the sickness pains and torments; and not only when such pain mitigation, like that of any other pathologic symptom, helps and drives to the recuperation, but also when, being nonexistent any recuperation hope, helps to leave life more easily and equitable. Since it is not a small happiness the one which moved Caesar Augustus to ask for the euthanasia; it is similar to the one seen in the death of Antoninus Pius, who it looked that he did not died but he fell in a deep and pleasant sleep… But in our times, doctors assume like a scruples and religion case to be near the patient when he is dying. But, in my opinion… They should acquire the skills and to pay attention to the way by which the dying could abandon life more easily and silently. I call to these the investigation upon the external euthanasia or the body easy death (to distinguish from the euthanasia that looks for the soul preparation)”. (Science advance, IV, 2).

8. –            According to Professor Diego Gracia, “it does not look a risk to say that the doctors have traditionally practiced the passive euthanasia (oustering their patients when they see the process like incurable) and even the active euthanasia, in those cases in which the sickness characteristics (process incurability, possible contagion, very tragic and painful end) made it advisable. The typical example of the last case is the hydrophobia, which met the three characteristics. In these cases medicine treaties advised the practice of the so-called loose bleeding, which ended with the patient pains and with his life at the same time. This explains that in 1810 a law was promulgated in France, saying this: To strangle, asphyxiate, bleed to death or to kill by any other method to those suffering rabies, hydrophobia or any other illness causing spasms, convulsions, agitation and dangerous madness is forbidden under death penalty”. In some South American countries the practice known like to dispain has existed, strangling applied to illnesses with a terrible end.

9. –    The christianism adopts a position against the euthanasia. It sticks to the Decalogue commandment saying: You shall not kill (Ex 20.13). Life is a gift received from God. No one may dispose of it. Only God is the master of life and death: God holds the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind (Job 12, 10). Yahweh is Lord of life and death (1S 2,6; Dt 32, 39). Nevertheless, there are situations that can overcome people. Because of this the believer prays: Give me neither poverty nor riches; Give me as much food as I need lest, satisfied, I deny you and say: Who is Yahweh? (Pro 30, 8-9). The Bible does not judge Saul’s death, who, wounded in the war against the philistines, asks his squire to kill him to avoid falling in enemy hands; the squire does not want to do it, so Saul drew his own sword and fell upon it. (1S 31, 4-5). Other suicide cases: Samson (Jdg 16, 28-31), Eleazar (1Mc 6, 43-47), Razis (2 Mc 14, 37-46), Judas (Mt 27,5). Although in many cases takes place, the Christian is not obliged to accept the pain only because of the pain. It is bad to be sick and this is the reason why Jesus goes by healing (Acts 10, 18).

10. –    One of the first Christian writers, Lactancius, says about those who today we call terminals: “they are useless for men, but useful for God, who keeps their life, gives them the spirit and gives them the health”. When the christianism expands through Europe, suicide and euthanasia practices are relegated.

11. –    During the XVI century the theologians begun asking themselves: In which cases wouldn’t be suicide to allow the own death? In which cases wouldn’t be an assassination to allow the death of others?. Francisco de Victoria, in his theologian relessons (1557), says that if a person is so sick and depressed that to eat could become an enormous burden, this person does not sin if he does not eat. About the medicines it says: “since rare times is certain the curative effect, it is not compulsory to use them, although it is very sick”. Victoria’s followers develop the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary measures. The later are optional

12. –    In 1826, one of the fathers of the modern ethics, Karl Friedrich Marx, defends in the Gotinga University a doctoral thesis about the medical euthanasia, in which he shows the need to teach the doctors how to take care technically and humanly of the sick that are in the terminal phase of their life. The doctors must learn the science of the euthanasia, since they cannot give their patients the athanasia, id est, the immortality.

13. –    In 1895, German jurist Adolph Jost publishes a book, titled The right to die, in which he defends that control over the death of the individual should rest, in the last stage, into the social organism, the State. In 1920 the philosopher and jurist Karl Binding and the doctor-psychiatrist Alfred Hoche publish a book on the permission to destroy lives lacking any vital value. Like lives lacking any vital value the authors understand not only those of the terminal sick individuals, but also those of most part of the mental sick individuals, psychical handicapped and the deformed and retarded children. To destroy life with no vital value, they say “in a healer treatment” and an “hygienic work”.

14. – In the XX century the practice of the euthanasia was dramatically the focus of attention as a consequence of its legal acceptance by the Third Reich. Nazi doctors undertook the extermination of 200.000 psychiatric and chronic patients, and actively collaborated in the most ample program of social extermination we have news of.  

15. –    In our times, more than in others, patient’s will is taken into account in the practice of the euthanasia. In Spain the Law of Patient Autonomy Regulation (14-11-2002) acknowledges the rights of the patents and their guardians to request the interruption of a medical treatment. Any person has the right to accept or reject the medical treatment proposed.

16. – The direct euthanasia is punished in almost all the legislations. In the Spanish Criminal Code (article 183) the euthanasia under request is punished with a minor penalty, between 18 months and 3 years in prison. The suicide is not penalized, but it is punished the collaboration with it with a prison penalty from 2 to 5 years. At present, legislation revision for certain circumstances is under deliberation.

17. –    Other views product of our times are: life expectative has increased due to the advances of the medicine; years have been added to life, although not life to the years: “Life prolongation provokes many people to die out of life and out of the society, when they have already been fully segregated long time before” (A. Tornos).

18. –    At the same time, the process of pain control, acute or chronic, has suffered a spectacular progress. “Most of the problems associated with acute pain can be adequately controlled with medicines, inhalator anaesthetics, nerves blockade or other treatment”, “persistent pain is one of the malign progressive illness most feared aspects”, “therapeutic modalities and the medicines we presently count on, are effective to alleviate most of these sick people pain”; nevertheless, “some sick, with severe and untreatable pain, are desperate to the point of committing suicide”. (J.L. Madrid).

19. –    The II Vatican Council denounces euthanasia with all that attempts against human life: “any kind of homicides, genocides, abortion, euthanasia and even the deliberated suicide”, “any of these practices and other similar are infamous in themselves, they degrade human civilization, dishonour more to their authors than to their victims, and are totally against the honour due to the Creator” (GS 27)

20. – The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in its Declaration about the euthanasia (1980), affirms: “Today it is very important to protect, in the moment of the death, the human person dignity and the Christian conception of life against some kind of technicality undergoing the risk to become abusive”. It is accepted “the right to die with all serenity, with human and Christian dignity”, which does not include “the right to obtain the death oneself or from others in the desired way. The Declaration distinguishes among proportioned or disproportioned means. To evaluate the quality of proportionate or not of a therapeutic mean it is necessary to consider “the type of therapy, the difficulty and risk degree that it takes with it, the expenditures needed and the possibilities of application, with the results that can be expected, taking into account the sick person condition and his physical and moral strength”. To avoid a costly or risky therapy “is not equivalent to suicide”. Before the imminence of an unavoidable death  in spite of the means used, it is licit in conscience to take the decision to renounce to some treatments that would only give a precarious and painful existence extension, without interrupting, nevertheless, the usual cures due to the sick in similar circumstances” 

21. –    The Catholic Church Catechism (1992) presents the euthanasia as follows: “Those which life is diminished or debilitated have the right to a special respect. The sick or diminished people must be taken care of, so that they can reach a life as normal as possible” (n. 2276). “Being any the motives and the means, the direct euthanasia puts an end to the life of diminished, sick or moribund persons. It is morally unacceptable. Therefore, an action or omission that, in itself or in the intention, provokes the death in order to eliminate the pain, constitutes an homicide gravely against the dignity of the human person and to the respect of the living God, his Creator. The judgement mistake in which in good faith some may have fallen does not change the nature of this homicide act that must be always rejected and excluded”. (n. 2277)

22. –    “The interruption of grievous, dangerous, extraordinary or disproportionate medical treatments may be legitimate. To interrupt these treatments is to reject the therapeutic cruelty. With this, to provoke death is not intended; it is accepted not to be able to prevent it. The decisions must be taken by the patient, if he has competence and capacity for it or by those who have the legal rights, in other case, respecting always the patient reasonable will and his legitimate interests” (n. 2278), “although death is considered imminent, ordinary care due to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted. The use of analgesics to alleviate the moribund suffering, the risk of decreasing his days included, may morally conform human dignity if death is not intended, neither as an end nor as a mean, but only foresee and tolerated as unavoidable. The palliative cares constitute a privileged way of impartial charity. Due to this they must be encouraged” (n.2279)

23. – Let us go back to Eluana. His father has been called “assassin”.  There was a lack of comprehension and respect. We should remember what the theologian Francisco de Victoria said: “If a person is so ill and depressed that to eat could become a heavy load, this person does not sin if he does not eat”. Eluana situation could not be foreseen in the XVI century. The medicine has created “situations that do not exist in nature”, pleads the father. Tackling this subject, we read the psalm assigned to this day, which says: “They all look to you for their food in due time. You give it to them, and they gather it up” (Ps 104). It also says: “You take away their breath and they return to dust”, “when you send forth your spirit, they are created, and the face of the earth is renewed”

24. – “The heart of the ethical and moral discussion is to discern what we consider an ordinary mean in the care of a patient in a final state”, “when nutrition by enteral or parenteral tract is prescribed, the period of time that this mean will be needed is taken into account, as well as the fact that it is a measure to bear the sickness and to favour the recuperation, but it is not a curative treatment in itself. When this mean is installed we do not think that it can condemn a person to live in vegetative conditions for indefinite time. To give up eating in the process of an irreversible sickness is a natural part of the evolution. When a patient goes into coma this situation may revert or, as it happens in many instances, extend in the time without any hope of recuperation. But then, who decides that a measure initially ordinary has become, with any previous notice, in a extraordinary measure?”, “I cannot defend the administration of means provoking death, I did not study medicine for it, but I shall defend the proportionality of the medical activities allowing a worthy life and not a vegetative life” (Mar).

*  Dialogue on diverse positions:

–         life is a person property

–         life is a God’s gift, who says: You shall not kill

–         there are situations that can overflow the person

–         therapeutically cruelty is rejected

–         proportionate means are used

–         any person has the right to accept of to reject the proposed treatment

–         the decision must be taken by the patient or by those who have the legal rights

–         palliative care must be encouraged

–         the euthanasia must be penalized/ must not be penalized

–         the euthanasia must be legalized / must not be legalized

1. –      The abortion has always existed, although not with the easiness and diffusion it has now. In ancient Rome, roman historian Tacitus was astonished to observe that Jewish and Christian women didn’t want to practice abortion. The problem is strongly present at this moment. A deep fight is taking place between the respect to human life from its beginning, and the freedom to abort. The conflict even goes to the language level, and, in this sense, the abortion appears like voluntary gestation interruption or like elimination of a human being in his existence initial phase. It represents a complex problem. It carries biological, juridical and theological data with it

2. –      Let us see the biological data. At the beginning of human life different phases are observed. In first place, the ovum fecundation by the spermatozoon (Oskar Hetwing, 1875), that takes place in the fallopian tubes and constitute the new biological reality, other than the mother. This initial cell, called zygote, contains in itself the genetic code, and the determination of all the hereditary biological and psychic process. It is also called germen, pre-embryo or pre-implanted embryo. In itself, embryo means germen.

3. –      Juan Ramón Lacadena, a Genetics teacher in the Madrid’s Complutense University Faculty of Biology comments as follows: “The fecunded egg initiates its way towards the uterus, dividing itself in this way, reaching the uterus at the third or fourth day. It is to say, it is in a week from the fecundation when the embryo, already like blastoderm, starts to stick in the uterus walls, taking another week to end its fixation (nesting)”. (Faith and biology, PPC, Madrid, 2001,72).

4. –      The zygote is characterized by the all powerfulness, id est, by the possibility of subdividing itself into autonomous parts, with the same genetic code, like it happens in the case of monozygotic twins. The zygote goes from the form known like morula (16 cells forming a compact group) to the form known like blastula or blastocyst, connected embryonary cells that, through proliferation, grow to form the different organs. Growth in volume begins. The Greek word blastós means germen, outbreak, stem, son.

5. –            Fourteen days after fecundation the implantation or nesting in the uterus wall phase ends, required condition for the following feeding and development. It is also called the embryo phase. It goes from the third to the fourth week. At the beginning of this phase appears the shape known like gastrula (from the fifteenth to the eighteenth week) being different the three primitive germinal layers (ectoderm, mesoderm, endoderm) of those from which the diverse tissues and organs will derive. Between the seventh and eighth week, the skull, eyes outline, arms, legs and feet fingers, ears, can be identified.

6. –      Growing and matureness take place during the fetus phase. It goes from the eighth week to the end of the gestation. The fetus is the conception fruit from the end of the embryo period to the birth. Between these phases a series of vital process take place, determined by that genetic code constituted in the fecundation.

7. –      Some juridical data. In the ancient society, in Greece and in Rome, the abortion and the infanticide are generally allowed and socially accepted. This acceptance is based in the absolute authority of the father upon their children. Nevertheless, exceptions exist. The Hippocratic Oath includes an abortion rejection. The Cornelia Lex (about 85 B.C.) takes into account the penalties to those working with poison, including the abortive substances. Septimius Severo (193-211) sees the abortion like “an extraordinary crime” and the woman who aborts in condemned to the exile. Historian Flavius Joseph says that, in the Jewish world, “the law directs to educate every child, and forbids the woman to practice abortion; a woman guilty of that crime is an infanticide because she destroys a soul and decreases the race” (Contra Apion, II, 202)

8. –      In general, in the Christian society abortion is considered an assassinate and it is punished like a crime. Up to the tenth century, the penitence applied is limited to ten years, although the penitential books change. That of Theodore, Canterbury’s archbishop (668-690), says that before the 40 days of development, penitence will be one year or even less; after this time, penitence will increase to three years. The Irish codes (about 675) distinguish between the baby’s material fluid destruction (three years and a half penitence) and the flesh and spirit destruction (seven years and a half in bread and water, in continence). Distinction between the “formed fetus” and the “unformed fetus” is used. At the beginning of the tenth century, some canonical collections circulate collecting private type materials. The abbot Reginus of Prüm (about 900) includes a precept called si aliquis (if someone, from the initial words) that considers homicides to all those who wanted to do something against generation or conception. Reginus also includes a precept graduating the penitence, following if the fetus is more or less of 40 days old and if it is “animated” or not. Gracian´s decree (about 1140), that would have a great posterior influence, excludes that the abortion of a non-animated fetus (not formed) is considered like an assassination. The same will say Thomas of Aquinas, considering that animation (rational soul infusion) does not take place in the moment of conception, but later on. Nevertheless, Saint Thomas of Aquinas teaches that abortion is a grave sin, against natural law. (In IV Sent, dist. 31)

9. –      Civil code follows the steps of the canonical code. During the fourth century, in the Visigoth world, that who delivers an abortive product is punished to death. The woman is lashed, if she is a slave, and degraded, if she is noble. During the seventh century, the Chindasvinto´s code punish to death, or at least to blindness, to whom provokes abortion, or to the husband, if he orders or allows it. In France, during the Bourbons period, doctors, surgeons and obstetrics who provoked abortion, were condemned to the gallows.  In 1791, with the rationalism and the revolution, the penalty is reduced to 20 years in prison. The 1810 Napoleon’s code punishes abortion with an “unlimited time” in prison. In Austria, under emperor Joseph the second, death penalty is eliminated in 1787 and the same happens in other western European countries. (See G. Grisez, The abortion, Ed. Sígueme, Salamanca, 1972, 285-408).

10. –    In the modern society large changes come out. Soviet Union legalizes abortion in 1920. Legalization pretends: to eliminate illegal abortion, to improve people’s life level, to promote woman emancipation. Later restrictions (1936, 1944, 1955) pretend to favour population increase and fight abortion like burgess conscience residuals. In the rest of countries, says the soviet Encyclopaedia, the rich people aborts because of selfishness and the poor people due to their misery. During the thirties several Scandinavian countries assume abortion legalization, and Japan in 1948. From the sixties on, in the western countries abortion goes through a legalization process – with more or less restrictions depending on the countries. A massive reaction against legal punishment raises and a growing diffusion of the abortion is produced. Existing risks disappear, antidemographic mentality gains positions, freedom is exalted before the respect to a life in its beginning, human life is not considered in the initial phase, no desired or malformed children are avoided, secularisation process advances and the society gets itself free from the confessional tutelage.

11. – At present, the so named Law of Terms intends to change Spain‘s present law and to accommodate it to the European Union countries existing legislation. “Almost all of them have a law of terms combined with indications. Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Bulgaria, France, Norway and Finland, among others, show a term of free decision until 12 weeks of pregnancy. This term in increased until 18 weeks in Sweden. In Holland it reaches the 24 weeks, but in spite of this, statistical data show that this is one of the countries with lees abortions”, says Bibiana Aido, Equality Minister. “We do not want, she adds, a more permissive legislation, but safer. What we intend by changing the law is to end the juridical insecurity in the voluntary pregnancy interruption; an insecurity that, above all, affects the women, but also to the health professionals who draft the previous reports or practice the interruptions”. According to the available data, in 2007 112.138 abortions have taken place in Spain. It has accurately been said: “Our society in some moment will be ashamed of the abortions it provokes”

12. –    Some theological data. The Bible scarcely talks about abortion, since it is not practiced by the Jewish society. An abortion caused by a strike delivered to a pregnant woman is punished with a fine, according to what is imposed by the husband and through arbitration. (Ex 21,22). Life is a God’s gift (Ps 127), lord of life and death (Dt 32,39). The parents participate in God´s creative work. The mother of the Maccabees brothers says: I wonder how you were born of me; it was not I who gave you breath an life, nor I who ordered the matter of your body.(2 Mc 7,22). And the sick Job: You wrapped me up in skin and flesh, knit me together with bones and sinews (Jb 10,11). An psalm 139: You deeply knew my soul and even my bones were known to you when I was formed in secret, fashioned in the depths of the earth. (Ps 139, 15).

13. – Prophets Jeremy and Isaiah, like Paul, feel themselves called by God from their mother womb (Jr1, 5; Is 49, 5; Ga 1, 15). They really recognize that their first relation came from God to them. In the name of God, Jeremy carries out the symbolic action of breaking a china jar in the Topheth valley, where children sacrifices are made. That is what I will do to this people and this city (Jr 19, 11). In the Gospel, when Elizabeth listens Mary’s greeting and the baby leapt in her womb (Lk 1, 41), it is experienced like a signal given by the child.

14. –    From the beginning, the Christians defend human life in its mother’s womb. Talking about the two ways frame (life-death, light-obscurity) we find the following precept in the Didaje and in the so-called Barnabas´ letter: “You shall not kill the son in his mother womb” (II,2; XIX,5). In the letter to Diogneto it is affirmed that the Christians “breed children, but they do not throw away foetus” (V.6) Athenagoras, a Christian philosopher from Athens, about 177 writes: “We affirm that those who practice the abortion commit homicide”, “what the woman carries in her womb is a living being” (Petition in favour of the Christians, 35). At the end of the second century, Clement of Alexandria affirms that the Christians “we do not kill with perverse instruments what the Providence has established for the human race” (Pedagogue, II.10,83 foll.) And the same Tertulian (about 155-220): “For us, since adultery is forbidden, is not even licit to finish up the foetus inside the uterus” (Apology, IX,8)

15. –    In the councils of Elvira (about 305) and Ancira (about 314) those practicing abortion are excommunicated. In the Eastern Church, Basil writes in the year 374 a letter as follows: “That who purposely destroys a foetus fall in the penalty foreseen for the homicide. We do not ask ourselves if the foetus is formed or not” (Letter 138). In the western church, Agustin criticizes those abandoning the children born against their will and adds: “This libidinous cruelty, or, if we want, cruel libido, reaches a point in which they employ sterilizing drugs and, if these are inefficacious, they kill the foetus in the mother’s womb and throw it away”. (De nuptiis et concupiscentiis I,15,15).

16. –    About the human soul origin (if it is transmitted by generation or if it is immediately created by a new God’s blowing) Agustin manifests his doubts and prefers “not to affirm what he cannot understand within the human reason nor to demonstrate with the divine authority” and he counsels “to imitate the Maccabees´ mother, who, even knowing that she had bred from her husband, and that the Supreme Creator had formed them in body and soul, nevertheless, she tells them: I don´t  know how you appeared in my womb”(From the soul and its origin, I, 13,16 and 15,25).

17. –    When does the human life begin? When initiated human life is already a human being?. As far as the first question is concerned, the teacher Lacadena says: “no scientific would doubt to answer that in the moment of the fecundation; id est, when from two different realities – the ovule and the spermatozoid – a new reality comes out – the zygote – with a potentiality of its own and a genetic autonomy, since, although he depends on his mother to subsist, his development takes place mainly according to his own genetic program. Since this genetic program is specifically human and not that of a mouse or a carrot, the new life is, evidently, human”. And about the second question “the range of opinions is ample and curious: from those considering that human life is a human being from the very moment of the conception, to those who base their opinion in relational criteria like being accepted by their parents, being recognized by the society, be intentionally procreated, be intended to live, ect. In the biological context in which we move, such relational criteria cannot be taken into account”, “from the genetic point of view, there is not to day a doubtless scientific answer

18. –    Two hypotheses exist in the Christian tradition. The successive animation, also called delayed, is defended by Thomas of Aquinas (1225-1274), who follows it from Aristotle (384-322): each shape requires a matter apt to receive it. The human soul (shape of the body) would be infused after the initial matter development: “rational soul is created by God when human generation is completed”, “this soul is sensitive and vegetative at the same time, corrupting in themselves the previous forms”, “the man engenders what is similar to him as far as due to the virtue of his seminal substance the matter for the reception of the rational soul is prepared” (Suma theological, I, c. 118, a.2). Aristotle places the initiation of the human being 40 days for men and 80 for the females after fecundation. Immediate animation was defended by some of the fathers or the Church  (Gregory of Niza, Basil, Tertulian) and it became common doctrine because it is presented, in case of doubt, like the surest position. When human life is at the stake, she must receive the benefit of doubt.

19. –    Most recent Church’s teaching is unanimous: “Human life must be taken like sacred, since from its beginning it presupposes Creator’s action” (John the XXIII, Mater et magistra. 1961), “life must be protected with most care from the conception; te abortion like the infanticide are abominable crimes” (Vatican II, GS 51), “that who procures abortion, if it takes place, will be excommunicated” (CIC, c. 1398), “human life must be respected and protected in an absolute way from the moment of conception” (Catholic Church Catechism, p. 2270), “a human being who initiates life is what is eliminated (with the abortion)”, “fecundation initiates human life adventure” (John Paul the II, EV 58).

20. –    It is not the same to deliver a moral judgement over the abortion than to deliver it over its unpenalization or legalization. Besides, “legalization it is not the same that unpenalization. Legalized behaviour becomes a right; that who desires to carry it out, may count on the State protection. On its side, unpenalization does not mean that the behaviour is not legal, nor that the State should protect it”, says Jose-Roman Flecha, a teacher on moral theology in the Salamanca Pontificious University (Fountain of life, Ed. Sigueme, Salamanca, 1999,194). The Christian must act according to his conscience, but taking into account that the laws are for all citizens. Civil law is not decreed to oblige citizens to accomplish the Christian moral precepts, but to regulate common living together. In the present situation, it is necessary to recall the fact the right to conscience objection that any health professional may formulate.

21. –    It is also necessary to recall: the Church establishes a new relationship with the world, when she leaves the old identification between Cristianisme and society, she comes out of the situation of Christianity, opts to live like a community in the middle of the society, respects the autonomy of the temporal questions, acknowledges the legitimate social pluralism, renounces to impose the Gospel by force, offers it in the weakness of the freedom. We take into account Jesus attitude, who does not yield to the pressure to ask the penalization for the woman who commits adultery (or abortion), but who calls her to conversion: Neither do I condemn you; go away and don’t do it again (Jn 8,11).

* Dialogue on diverse positions:

–         First phase is considered human life (or not)

–         It is only a cellular life, biological material

–         It is a human life in his way

–         When human life is at the stake, benefit of doubt is due

–         The abortion like the infanticide are abominable crimes

–         Abortion penalization is requested

–         Unpenalization is accepted

–         Christian society has imposed brutal and criminal penalizations

–          Unpenalization and legalization is mixed

–          Conscience objection of the health professionals is respected

–         Legalization is accepted

–         Legalization is denounced

–         Abortion is denounced

–         A call to conversion is delivered

–          Our society will be in due time ashamed of the abortion it provokes

–         Present problems: day’s after pill, DIU, assisted reproduction, frozen embryos, embryo’s therapeutic cloning, investigation with embryonaire mother cells

1. –      Living God, acting in History, gives us a commandment that defends the life of everyone of the human beings: Do not kill (Dt 5,17). Human life belongs to God and God protects it. In our times, the second Vatican Council denounces the offences against human life: “homicides of any kind, genocides, abortion, euthanasia and even the deliberate suicide; anything violating the human person integrity, like, for instance, the mutilations, moral or physical tortures, systematic attempts to dominate another’s mind; anything offending human dignity, like infrahuman life conditions, arbitrary detentions, deportations, slavery, prostitution, white females and youngsters commerce; or degrading working conditions”

2. –      The Gospel assumes the fifth commandment, but it goes further: You have heard that it was said to our people in the past: do not commit murder; anyone who does kill will have to face trial. But now I tell you: whoever gets angry with his brother will have to face trial.  Whoever insults his brother deserves to be brought before the council; whoever humiliates his brother deserves to be thrown into the fire of hell. So, if you are about to offer your gift at the altar and you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar, go at once and make peace with your brother, and then come back and offer your gift to God. (Mt 5,21-24).

3. –      Jesus of Nazareth requests his disciples a justice superior to that of the scribes and Pharisees. This justice essentially consists in the love and that love reaches the enemy: You have heard that it was said: Love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But this I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in Heaven. For he makes his sun rise on both the wicked and the good, and he gives rain to both the just and the unjust. If you love those who love you, what is special about that? Do not even tax collector do as much? And if you are friendly with only with your friends, what is so exceptional about that? Do not even the pagans do as much? (5,43-47)

4. –      But, is it possible such a love? Is it possible a feeling of love towards the enemies? Who are the enemies? The enemy may be personal, familiar, at the working place, national, political or religious. Because of the Gospel, he can be very near: Your enemies will be members of your family (Mt 10,36).

5. –      In everyday life, it looks normal this way of reacting: Since you did it me, I will do it to you. You will pay for this. But the Gospel overcomes the division between friends and enemies, demolishes the enmity wall (Eph 2,14). In some way, there are not enemies in the disciple acting way. At the last term, Jesus defeated the death through his own death. Jesus never destroys, he does not wound, never kills. He heals, regenerates, creates.

6. –      Love to the enemy is a Christian distinctive sign. Saint Paul says to the Romans: Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not wish evil on anyone. Do not return evil for evil, but try to earn the appreciation of others. Do your best to live in peace with everybody. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but let God be the one who punishes. Id est, leave the judgment to God: Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him to drink; by doing this you will heap burning coals upon his head. Do not let evil defeat you, but conquer evil with goodness. (Rom 12, 14-21).

7. –      The evil looses its power if it finds a patient love. Then, the strike looses itself in the emptiness, violence is nullified, because it does not find opposition. Violence circle is broken. Some real life examples show what is meant: If someone slaps you on your right cheek, turn and offer him the other; if someone sues your in court for your shirt, let him have your coat as well; if someone forces you to go one mile, go two miles with him. Give when asked and do not turn your back on anyone who wants to borrow from you. (Mt 5,39-42) Then, should we forget any precaution or prudence?. Should we become the toys of another’s caprices?. It is not so. It is said not to take reprisals against the enemy. We shall try to avoid returning evil for evil, defeating the evil with the goodness.

8. –      Own right defence is not hindered; the advice is to look for an agreement instead of entering in a suit (Mt 5,25). Legitimate defence is not condemned (Peter carries a sword), although Jesus renounces to it (Jn 18,11). Injustice denounce is not impeded; Herod is called “fox” (Lk 13,12). The response for own defence is normal; Jesus interpellates the one who strikes him: If I have spoken wrongly, point it out; but if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me? (Jn 18, 23). It is intended the justice manifested like children of the father who is in heaven. Only so we are able to say the prayer of the disciples: Forgive our trespasses, like we forgive those who trespass against us.

9. –      While in many nations death penalty is disappearing, the Catholic Church Catechism admits it, “if it were the only way to efficaciously defend human lives from the unjust aggressor” (n. 2226). Nevertheless, God assumes the protection of man’s life and prohibits the homicide, although it were that of Cain (Gn 4,15). And Jesus of Nazareth, condemned to death by the establishment, does not come to legitimate this established order. He comes to say: You not only will not kill, but you will love your enemy. In the Declaration of Stockholm (11- 12 – 1977) the International Amnesty Conference denounces the death penalty like “definitive punishment, cruel, inhuman and degrading, that violates the right to life”. The day 25 – 4 – 1995 Spain becomes the number 55 country derogating death capital. Like it is known, electric chair continues in action in the United States, with a heavy weight in itself.

10. –    That who loves his enemy wants to make him his friend. God has preceded us in this attitude: From enemies, we have become at peace with God (Rom 5,10). The supreme Christian’s rule in his relationship with others is the love: Love is patient, kind, without envy. It is not boastful or arrogant. It is not ill-mannered nor does it seek its own interest. Love overcomes anger and forgets offences. It does not take delight in wrong, but rejoices in truth, Love excuses everything, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1Co 13, 4-7).

11. –    That who loves, has gone from death to life. That who does not love, stays in the death. Says Saint John: We love our brothers and sisters and with this we know that we have passed from death to life. He who does not love remains in death. He who hates his brother is a murderer, and, as you know, eternal life does not remain in the murderer. This is how we have known what love is: he gave his life for us. We, too, ought to give our life for our brothers. (1Jn3, 14-16). Love to the enemy impossible for men, is possible for God. Love comes from God (1Jn 4,7). In effect, how could we be merciful like our celestial father, if the Lord does not teach us, if he does not pour his holy spirit over our hearts? (Rom 5,5).

* Dialogue: on different ways of loving the enemy.

1.- The Scripture says that to honour your father and mother is a commandment that drives towards happiness and life: Honour your father and your mother…. And you will live long and it will be well with you in the land which Yahweh, your God, gives you. (Dt 5,16). Love to parents is the base of the children’s home: A father’s blessing secures the future of a family, but a mother’s curse destroys it at its roots… My son , take care of your father in his old age; do not cause him sorrow as long as he lives. Even if he has lost his mind, have patience; do not be disrespectful to him while you are in full health. (Sir 3, 9.13).

2.- Jesus requests the accomplishment of the fourth commandment, that it was being forgotten at his time. Some Pharisees and Scribes, who came from Jerusalem, accuse Jesus saying that his disciples break the law, since they do not wash their hands before eating. He answers them: And you, why do you break God’s command for the sake of your traditions? For God commanded: Do your duty to your father and your mother, and: whoever curses his father or his mother is to be put to death. But you say that anyone may say to his father or mother: `I cannot help you for I have reserved all I possess for the Temple´. . And so you have nullified the command of God for the sake of your traditions. Hypocrites!. As far as the precept to wash the hands before eating is concerned, Jesus says that it is a merely human tradition: What enters into the mouth does not make a person unclean, but what comes out of the heart (Mt 15,11.18).

3.- But the Gospel does not defend a sickly paternalism, suffocating the child’s life and growth and impeding him to slowly conquer hid adultness, his freedom and independence. When Jesus, twelve years old, abandons his parents to appear three days later in the temple, sitting among the doctors, his mother tells him: Son, why have you done this to us? Don’t you realize that your father and I have been full of sorrow while searching for you? (Lk 2,48). Jesus gives an answer that they do not understand: Why were you looking for me? Do you not know that I must be in my Father’s house? (2,49).

4.- It is the awakening of his vocation, but also, according to the growing psychology, the process of a child that begins to leave his mother’s skirts. As the time goes by, the male and female personality formation takes different ways: female’s identity comes forth from an identification process with the mother. On the contrary, males, since they are defined like men, separate the mothers from themselves. Mother’s intimacy and proximity is looked at like a kind of menacing regression. The psychology also identifies the processes of leaving father and mother, which are fought in deep tension and stubborn struggle.

5.- The Catholic Church Catechism comments the fourth commandment as follows: “it is expressly addressed to the children in their relationship with their parents”, but also with their family, their teachers, their employers, their chiefs and those who administer or govern the country (2199). So, deeper that its original meaning, the fourth commandment is used in support of the social order established.

6.- The Catechism smoothes quite a bit the tension introduced in the family and in the society by the Gospel. Besides, it looks like it does not appreciate the novelty that, at that respect, carries in itself the community of disciples. Nevertheless, it says the following: “The familiar ties, although very important in themselves, are not an absolute. At the same time that the child grows towards human and spiritual maturity and autonomy, the singular vocation coming from God also affirms with more clarity and strength. The parents must respect this call and favour the answer of their children following it”. “The first vocation of the Christian is to follow Jesus” (2232), “to belong to God’s family (2233).

7.- In the Gospel line, family is not the first. Jesus places the disciples community above the family. One day his mother and his brothers arrived. They let him know: Listen, your mother, your brothers and your sisters are outside looking for you. Jesus answers: Who are my mother and my brothers? And looking around at those who sat there he said: Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is brother and sister and mother to me. (Mc 3,33-35). In another occasion, while Jesus was teaching, a woman raised her voice and said: Blessed is the one who bore you and nursed you!. But he replied: Surely blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it as well (Lk 11, 27- 28). The Gospel introduces tension and, at the same time, carries a novelty in itself. So that, you not only shall honour your father and your mother, but those who listen the word of God will be your family.

8.- In Jesus mission, Mary almost disappear. Saint Mathews and Saint Luke smooth tensions between mother and son and, also, with the family. At the end, they perceive that Mary has accepted the Word since the beginning. Saint Mark is more critical. He says that the relatives go to look for him because they think that he is out of his mind (Mk 3, 21). And Saint John adds: Even his brothers do not believe in him (Jn 7,5). The family does not understand Jesus mission. More over, its position is near that of the scribes, who affirm: He is under the power of Beelzebul (Mk3,22).

9.- Jesus call places the disciple confronting radical options: above any wealth, above the family, above oneself. The conversion to the Gospel includes a permanent fight and a continuous freedom exercise. If you come to me, without giving up your love for your father and mother, your spouse and children, your brothers and sisters, and indeed yourself, you cannot be my disciple (Lk 14,26; see Mt 10,37). Jesus is the dissension cause and signal of contradiction. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father and daughter; a daughter in law against her mother in law. Your enemies will be the members of your family. (Mt11, 34-36). Jesus disciple leaves his own father (Mk 1,20), he leaves everything, but he receives one hundred times for one: houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and lands, and persecutions as well (Mk 10,30). The disciple does not call father to anyone on earth, because only one is our father (Mt 23,9) and all of us are brothers. 

10.- In front of Jesus Christ, those who knew Jesus (in general) stood at a distance (Lk 23,49; see Ps 38,12 and 31,12). But Mary appears with the loved disciple standing near the cross (Jn 19,25-26). Afterwards, she does not appear in any resurrection experience. Perhaps the pain caused by Jesus death made to her difficult to see the resurrection signals. Mary is near the cross with the mother’s pain, so unique (Lam 1,12) as the sword that pierces her soul (Lk 2, 35). Jesus invites Mary to live a new motherhood in the loved disciple community, to advance a step in the faith, to be mother in another way, in a new, not biological, relationship: Woman, this is your son (Jn 19,26), a son who will not be born from the womb, but from the heart. Finally, Jesus mother and his brothers appear praying with the disciples (Acts 1,14).

*Dialogue: Who are my mother and my brothers?

1. –      The 11th of September attempts and the war of the United States against Afghanistan make necessary to think over what is done in the name of God. “Let God continue blessing America” said president Bush the day he ordered the initiation of the bombing. On his part, Osama Bin Laden affirmed that same day in a video: “All powerful God has stricken America”.

2. –      The United States, with the support of so called free countries (although under this denomination fit dictatorships and feudal regimes), has began the bombing against Afghanistan, where it is said that there are terrorists bases installed with the approbation of the taliban government. Some talk of “a just war” and others of “holy war”. So, a question rises: Is it a religious war? And also: Is God’s name taken in vain?.

3. –      A 90% of North Americans support the war and the 67% do it, although innocent lives are lost. The Episcopal Conference of the United States supports the war, respecting “the sane moral principles”. The Vatican talks of “legitimate defence”. The humanitarian organizations warn that massive Afghani population exodus may end in thousands of dead

4. –      The Islamic Conference, that represents 56 countries and some 1.200 millions of Muslims, has pronounced itself against the 11th of September crimes, that “contradict the teachings of all religions and the moral and human values” and has requested contention in the military response, that should avoid, at any price, the death of innocent civilians.

5. –      Doctor Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, leader of the Muslim parliament in London, does not see a religious war:  “And the wars fought by the United States in the eighties in Latin America, where practically there are no Muslims?” “Or what the North Americans made in Africa, where two millions of Congolese have dead, most of them due to the support of the United States for decades to Mobutu, or in Angola, where they backed Savimbi, in a never ending war?” Says the muslim doctor: “I condemn the 11th  of September atrocities. But I also am in general against the policy of the United States in the Middle East, that has contributed heavily to the present dangerous situation, and against the North America actuation in Afghanistan. Anyway, Bin Laden puts out three matters that worry the Muslims: the injustice towards the Palestinians, the sanctions against Iraq and the American occupation of the Arabic peninsula. Besides “they imposed us rulers who have reduced the people to the most abject ignorance and poverty”

6. –      Francisco Frutos, Communist Party general secretary, affirms the following: “If the 11th of September attempt was a cruelty, a double cruelty may be to have initiated a war, that, as usual, is paid by the innocents”. In the meanwhile, “in the Middle West, the Israeli technichal-millitary state disobeys in a systematic and coarse way ONU resolutions and ignores Oslo Agreements for pacification and coexistence. A people is aggressed and driven to desperation”

7. –      Living together is a big European challenge. There are fifteen million of Muslims in Europe. The process is irreversible: we go towards a cultural pluralism after the affirmation of a political pluralism. Sheltered by a political and religious freedom that perhaps is inexistent is their countries of origin, arriving Muslims cannot ignore the values of the sheltering country: “The citizenship values, human rights, sex equality, religious freedom and respect to the lawful State” (H. Tertsch). At the same time, the Europeans cannot forget the respect to the difference.

8. –      In this historic moment that we are living, we ask ourselves what is the meaning of the Decalogue’s second commandment: Do not take the name of Yahweh, your God, in vain (Dt 5,11). The original context makes reference to the judicial process. We cannot be unjust with anybody in any court and less in the name of God.

9. –      According to the Catholic Church Catechism, the false oath and the blasphemy are two grave ways of taking God’s name in vain. The blasphemy consists in saying words against God, and also to “resort to the name of God to justify criminal practices, to reduce peoples to servitude, to torture or to put to death” (2148, 2152). Nevertheless, says the Catechism, Jesus words are not opposite to the oath “when this is made for a grave and just cause (for instance, before the tribunal)” (2154).

10. –    Really, Jesus position is this: You have also heard that people were told in the past: Do not break your oath; an oath sworn to the Lord must be kept. But I tell you this: do not take an oath for any promise… Say yes when you mean yes and say no when you mean no: anything else you say comes from the devil (Mt 5, 33-37). Jesus words invite us to practice the fraternal sincerity, nothing more. So, you not only will not swear in vain, but you will do it in any way.

11. –    In other aspects, the violent zealots do not find support in Jesus words, but critical words: they deliver their fellows to be decapitated by the Romans, like it happened to those galilees (Lk 13,3); they are thieves and assaulters, who steal, kill and destroy (Jn 10,1-21). Jesus denounces that the temple is stained: Zeal for your House devours me (Jn 2,17), and he even announces its destruction: Not one stone will be left upon another (Mk 13,2). His adversaries deform his words, and accuse him to have said: I will destroy this Sanctuary (Mk 14,58). Jesus is a sword sentry who is coming. (Ez 33,1- 6). Besides, he denounces the social injustice, one of the zealots worries: But unhappy you who have wealth (Lk 6,24). But Jesus does not impose himself by the strength, he calls to conversion. The High Priests and the Pharisees decide to denounce him: If we allow him to follow on like this, the Romans will come and they will destroy our Holy Place and our nation (Jn 11,40). Pilate condemns him like a political rebel, like a zealot, to the roman death penalty: the crucifixion (Mk 15,25,26).

12. –    Saint Paul denounces the several hypocrisy ways (personal, institutional) that generate atheism: If you say that one must not steal, why do you steal?. You say one must not commit adultery, yet you commit it!. You say you hate idols, but you steal in their temples!… In fact, like the Scriptures say: the other nations despise the name of God because of you (Rm 2, 21-24).

13. –    The last Council results should be this: “defenceless delivery of the Church to the world” (Von Balthasar), same than Christ, ramparts and bastions abandon, no more chariots in Ephraim, no more horses in Jerusalem, the warrior’s bow shall be broken, peace announcement to the nations (Zec 9,9-10). And this, without new triumphal second intentions, once the old one became unviable. Without thinking that, once retired the Crusade battle horses, belonging to the Saint Inquisition or the Vatican State, it would be possible to come into a renewed Jerusalem (humbly, on a donkey) immersed in new belligerence, indirect ways of alliance with the powers, implicit pacts.

14. –    The Synod of Bishops, meeting in Rome from the 30th of September to the 27th of October to talk about: “The bishop, Jesus Gospel’s server for the world’s hope”, goes by with more pain than glory, “between the lack of interest and tedium”, while “the Pope, when talking about the war, transfers the voice to the State Secretary” (1). In his final document, the Synod condemns “in an absolute way” the 11th September attempts and the terrorism in general, because “it cannot be justified in any way”, but it does not condemn the United States war against Afghanistan. In this sense, the Synod became mute and a question is raised:  have they a pact with the empire?

*Dialogue: Is God’s name be taken in vain? 

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(1) See Vida Nueva, 20 y 27-10-2001.