Abortion in Italy forty years later (1978-2018)
Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
March 21, 2018
Recently the attention of the media in Italy has been focused on the
fortieth anniversary of Aldo Moro’s kidnapping. On March 16th 1978, in an
ambush on Via Fani in Rome, the Christian Democrat politician was kidnapped and
his bodyguards murdered by the Red Brigade. On May 9th, after a
captivity of 55 days, his body was found riddled with bullets in the boot of a
car in Via Caetani. No-one has yet to recall though, that, during that same
springtime of 1978, the law n.194 on abortion was debated and approved by the
Italian Parliament and that since then, it has been the cause of six million
victims in our country.
In 1991, the Honorary President of the Movement for Life, Francesco
Migliori, revealed that it had been the then Secretary of the Christian
Democratic Party, Aldo Moro, who, “at the National Council in 1975 had said
that - in order not to hinder the encounter
with other parties (i.e. the Socialist and the Communist Parties) these issues
should be left to individual consciences.” So it was precisely Moro’s
intervention that convinced the Christian Democrats not be involved in the
battle against abortion in the 1970s. The Honorable Aldo Moro was the
strategist of the historical compromise with Enrico Berlinguer’s Communist
Party and the agreement anticipated the disengagement of the Christian
Democrats on the matter of abortion.
While Moro was in captivity, on April 15th 1978, the law on
abortion was passed in the Chamber with 308 votes in favour and 275 against “a
tiny majority formed by Communists, Socialists, Liberals, Social-Democrats,
Republicans and Independents of the left, and supported, it is said, by votes
from a group of Christian Democrats, who, in this way, forestalled the
referendum.” (La Repubblica, May 15th 1998). “The numbers of the
final vote – wrote Francesco Damato in Il Giornale of May 10th –
show that the pro-abortionists, even if configuring the greater number on
paper, would have lost the battle if the opposite side had totally remained in
its place.”
Once the text arrived at the Senate, it was approved on May 18th,
with 160 votes in favour and 148 against, out of a total of 308 senators. Once
again, the determinants were the defections in the Christian Democrat Party. On the Gazzetta Ufficiale of May 22nd
1978, the n.194 law authorizing homicide was promulgated and signed by all the
Christian Democrats: the President of the Republic, Giovanni Leone, the
President of the Council, Giulio Andreotti and the ministers: Tina Anselmi,
Francesco Bonifacio, Tommaso Morlino and Filippo Maria Pandolfi - all Christian Democrats.
Andreotti defended himself in a letter to Padre Rotondi, saying his
decision had been a “duty”. A duty perhaps according to the principles of
juridical positivism, but certainly not according to Catholic morality, for
which the only absolute duties we have are those regarding the Divine and
natural law and which, in this specific case, forbids the killing of innocents.
The President of the Council, however, didn’t confine himself to this: his
government officially took on the responsibility for the law before the Constitutional Court of Italy: in fact, at
the audience of December 5th 1979, The Government Legal Services, by
mandate from the government, despite having the possibility of raising
objections, defended the constitutional legitimacy of the law.
At the beginning of June, the President of the Republic, Giovanni Leone,
who hadn’t felt the need to resign when the law had been signed, was then
compelled to, following the controversies on the Lockheed Scandal. After some
weeks, the Socialist, Sandro Pertini was elected to that same office.
Andreotti, on the other hand, had a long political career, blemished however,
by stains, that the absolution of the courts didn’t ever erase. Such as the
accusation of having been the mandant for the homicide of Mino Peccorelli as
well as his collusion with the mafia. We have doubts regarding the veracity of
these accusations, but even if they were true, we are certain that the responsibility
of having signed the abortion law is enormously greater than complicity in
mafia killings. These killings in fact, like the murder of Moro by the Red
Brigade, don’t constitute a negation of the principal of the right to life and
are thus not as grave as the introduction of mass-murder into our juridical
order.
On May 20th 1978, in an editorial, La Civiltà Cattolica wrote:
“Certainly the shocking and terrible events around the Honorable Moro and the brutal
killings of his body-guards, attracted the attention of everyone in such a strong way that other problems were
overshadowed: but if we reflect a little deeper, it is manifest that what
happened in the Senate recently with the definitive approval of the
legalization of abortion is much graver from a general standpoint, than what
happened on March 16th in Via Fani. In that case a horrendous crime
was committed, but the principal of the right to life and liberty was not
damaged, for the fact that that crime was unanimously condemned; on the other
hand, in Parliament, for the first time in the history of our country, the
principle of the right to life was damaged, that is, the foundation upon which
not only society stands, but also the Italian juridical order.” (quaderno 3070,
20 May 1978, p. 313).
La Civiltà Cattolica rightly emphasized how the legalization of homicide
is very much graver than a single homicidal act, such as the murder of Moro and
the slaughter of his bodyguards, but omits that the approval of abortion is
very grave, not so much as it damages the principle of the right to life upon
which the Italian juridical order stands, but most of all because it publically
contradicts the Doctrine of the Church and the natural and Divine law. The
responsibility of the passing of the law on abortion, furthermore, falls not
only on the Christian Democratic Party, but on the Italian clergy who
discouraged opposition to it in Parliament and after the introduction of the law,
sought to block its complete abrogation by means of a referendum.
Among the memories I have of that time, there is a meeting we had in
1979 with Monsignor Luigi Maverna, Secretary of the Italian Episcopal
Conference,[CEI] to ask for support, even if tacit and indirect but benevolent,
for the collection of signatures the Catholic Alliance intended to set up for an
abrogative referendum of the recently approved law n.194 on abortion. As a response, the prelate manifested the
complete disinclination both present and future, of the CEI, towards those who
intended to promote a referendum against abortion. To our objections, he
replied “do it by yourselves” shrugging his shoulders.
The reason was clear. The CEI, at that time presided over by Cardinal
Antonio Poma, subtly supported the historical compromise and wanted to avoid “picket
politics” or as is said today “opposing walls”. The referendum was “divisive”
just as the Marchers for Life are today accused of creating an atmosphere of
cultural clashes and the strategy of yesterday till today, follows that of
mediation and compromise. The line of the Italian Episcopal Conference was the
same as the Secretary of State. John
Paul II, despite his categorical opposition to abortion, was unable to change
it.
In the 1980s, thanks to Dr. Wanda
Poltawaska, a close friend of John Paul II, I met the Pope’s Secretary,
Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz several times, who listened attentively and
politely to my pleas in defense of the abrogation of the law 194. John Paul II hadn’t wanted to interfere
however in Italian political affairs and had delegated this task to the
Secretary of State. On the morning of
May 22nd 1980, I met Giovanni Cantoni and Agostino Sanfratello of
the Catholic Alliance and at Monsignor Dziwisz’s introduction, Monsignor
Silvestrini, Secretary to the Council for the Public Affairs of the
Church. Silvestrini had succeeded
Cardinal Agostino Casaroli in 1973 in this position of Secretary to the Council
for Public Affairs for the Church and was Casaroli’s close collaborator. But
above all, he was “a spiritual son” of Monsignor Salvatore Baldassarri, “the
red” Archbishop of Ravenna, dismissed by Paul VI as a result of his
ultra-progressivism.
During the meeting we explained the necessity of an abrogative
referendum sustained by the indispensible cooperation of at least a
proportionate part of the Italian bishops, with the aim of gathering the
500,000 signatures required. Monsignor
Sivestrini, in mellifluous tones, opposed the consideration of the inopportunity
of such an anti-abortion referendum, as it would have caused, according to him,
a damaging pro-abortion “contro-catechesis”, in the sense that, because of the
anti-abortion position of Catholics, the pro-abortionists would have multiplied
their efforts in favor of abortion. But doesn’t the Catholic world – we made
the Monsignor note - suffer increasing
pro-abortion aggression already today? And if defending the truth and doing
good are the occasion for contro-catechesis, should we then abstain in the
proclamation of truth and doing good?
Monsignor Silvestrini noted that a second reason for the inopportunity
was the memory of the still burning defeat of the referendum against
divorce. But wasn’t it true – we
repeated – that that battle had been lost because it hadn’t been adequately and
generously fought? And if the memory was still bitter of that defeat, shouldn’t
the memory of the inertia which had caused it be even more bitter?
Mons. Silvestrini said that “also the party” (he was referring to the
Christian Democrats) would have been adverse to the idea of an anti-abortion
referendum. Why be surprised, we responded, if such a party favoured the law in
parliament and some of its most important exponents signed that law, taking on full moral and political
responsibility for it? Actually we were
talking two different languages and no dialogue was possible. In the end, the
Secretary of State and the Episcopal Conference gave weak approval to the Movement
for Life’s request for the referendum, which accepted therapeutic abortion and
contraception.
In the referendum which took place on May 17th 1981, the law proposed by
the Movement for Life didn’t exceed 32%. Abortion continues with its heavy toll
of victims in Italy, and Monsignor Silvestrini, made a Cardinal in 1988,
maintained his powerful influence during the pontificates of John Paul II and
Benedict XVI, until he became part of the St. Gallen’s “mafia–club”, which
prepared for Cardinal Bergoglio’s election to the Papacy.
The moral decadence in the Church and in Italian society are not
questions only of recent years, but go way back and their remote causes should
be analyzed, if remedies are to be found.
Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana
Recently the attention of the media in Italy has been focused on the
fortieth anniversary of Aldo Moro’s kidnapping. On March 16th 1978, in an
ambush on Via Fani in Rome, the Christian Democrat politician was kidnapped and
his bodyguards murdered by the Red Brigade. On May 9th, after a
captivity of 55 days, his body was found riddled with bullets in the boot of a
car in Via Caetani. No-one has yet to recall though, that, during that same
springtime of 1978, the law n.194 on abortion was debated and approved by the
Italian Parliament and that since then, it has been the cause of six million
victims in our country.
In 1991, the Honorary President of the Movement for Life, Francesco
Migliori, revealed that it had been the then Secretary of the Christian
Democratic Party, Aldo Moro, who, “at the National Council in 1975 had said
that - in order not to hinder the encounter
with other parties (i.e. the Socialist and the Communist Parties) these issues
should be left to individual consciences.” So it was precisely Moro’s
intervention that convinced the Christian Democrats not be involved in the
battle against abortion in the 1970s. The Honorable Aldo Moro was the
strategist of the historical compromise with Enrico Berlinguer’s Communist
Party and the agreement anticipated the disengagement of the Christian
Democrats on the matter of abortion.
While Moro was in captivity, on April 15th 1978, the law on
abortion was passed in the Chamber with 308 votes in favour and 275 against “a
tiny majority formed by Communists, Socialists, Liberals, Social-Democrats,
Republicans and Independents of the left, and supported, it is said, by votes
from a group of Christian Democrats, who, in this way, forestalled the
referendum.” (La Repubblica, May 15th 1998). “The numbers of the
final vote – wrote Francesco Damato in Il Giornale of May 10th –
show that the pro-abortionists, even if configuring the greater number on
paper, would have lost the battle if the opposite side had totally remained in
its place.”
Once the text arrived at the Senate, it was approved on May 18th,
with 160 votes in favour and 148 against, out of a total of 308 senators. Once
again, the determinants were the defections in the Christian Democrat Party. On the Gazzetta Ufficiale of May 22nd
1978, the n.194 law authorizing homicide was promulgated and signed by all the
Christian Democrats: the President of the Republic, Giovanni Leone, the
President of the Council, Giulio Andreotti and the ministers: Tina Anselmi,
Francesco Bonifacio, Tommaso Morlino and Filippo Maria Pandolfi - all Christian Democrats.
Andreotti defended himself in a letter to Padre Rotondi, saying his
decision had been a “duty”. A duty perhaps according to the principles of
juridical positivism, but certainly not according to Catholic morality, for
which the only absolute duties we have are those regarding the Divine and
natural law and which, in this specific case, forbids the killing of innocents.
The President of the Council, however, didn’t confine himself to this: his
government officially took on the responsibility for the law before the Constitutional Court of Italy: in fact, at
the audience of December 5th 1979, The Government Legal Services, by
mandate from the government, despite having the possibility of raising
objections, defended the constitutional legitimacy of the law.
At the beginning of June, the President of the Republic, Giovanni Leone,
who hadn’t felt the need to resign when the law had been signed, was then
compelled to, following the controversies on the Lockheed Scandal. After some
weeks, the Socialist, Sandro Pertini was elected to that same office.
Andreotti, on the other hand, had a long political career, blemished however,
by stains, that the absolution of the courts didn’t ever erase. Such as the
accusation of having been the mandant for the homicide of Mino Peccorelli as
well as his collusion with the mafia. We have doubts regarding the veracity of
these accusations, but even if they were true, we are certain that the responsibility
of having signed the abortion law is enormously greater than complicity in
mafia killings. These killings in fact, like the murder of Moro by the Red
Brigade, don’t constitute a negation of the principal of the right to life and
are thus not as grave as the introduction of mass-murder into our juridical
order.
On May 20th 1978, in an editorial, La Civiltà Cattolica wrote:
“Certainly the shocking and terrible events around the Honorable Moro and the brutal
killings of his body-guards, attracted the attention of everyone in such a strong way that other problems were
overshadowed: but if we reflect a little deeper, it is manifest that what
happened in the Senate recently with the definitive approval of the
legalization of abortion is much graver from a general standpoint, than what
happened on March 16th in Via Fani. In that case a horrendous crime
was committed, but the principal of the right to life and liberty was not
damaged, for the fact that that crime was unanimously condemned; on the other
hand, in Parliament, for the first time in the history of our country, the
principle of the right to life was damaged, that is, the foundation upon which
not only society stands, but also the Italian juridical order.” (quaderno 3070,
20 May 1978, p. 313).
La Civiltà Cattolica rightly emphasized how the legalization of homicide
is very much graver than a single homicidal act, such as the murder of Moro and
the slaughter of his bodyguards, but omits that the approval of abortion is
very grave, not so much as it damages the principle of the right to life upon
which the Italian juridical order stands, but most of all because it publically
contradicts the Doctrine of the Church and the natural and Divine law. The
responsibility of the passing of the law on abortion, furthermore, falls not
only on the Christian Democratic Party, but on the Italian clergy who
discouraged opposition to it in Parliament and after the introduction of the law,
sought to block its complete abrogation by means of a referendum.
Among the memories I have of that time, there is a meeting we had in
1979 with Monsignor Luigi Maverna, Secretary of the Italian Episcopal
Conference,[CEI] to ask for support, even if tacit and indirect but benevolent,
for the collection of signatures the Catholic Alliance intended to set up for an
abrogative referendum of the recently approved law n.194 on abortion. As a response, the prelate manifested the
complete disinclination both present and future, of the CEI, towards those who
intended to promote a referendum against abortion. To our objections, he
replied “do it by yourselves” shrugging his shoulders.
The reason was clear. The CEI, at that time presided over by Cardinal
Antonio Poma, subtly supported the historical compromise and wanted to avoid “picket
politics” or as is said today “opposing walls”. The referendum was “divisive”
just as the Marchers for Life are today accused of creating an atmosphere of
cultural clashes and the strategy of yesterday till today, follows that of
mediation and compromise. The line of the Italian Episcopal Conference was the
same as the Secretary of State. John
Paul II, despite his categorical opposition to abortion, was unable to change
it.
In the 1980s, thanks to Dr. Wanda
Poltawaska, a close friend of John Paul II, I met the Pope’s Secretary,
Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz several times, who listened attentively and
politely to my pleas in defense of the abrogation of the law 194. John Paul II hadn’t wanted to interfere
however in Italian political affairs and had delegated this task to the
Secretary of State. On the morning of
May 22nd 1980, I met Giovanni Cantoni and Agostino Sanfratello of
the Catholic Alliance and at Monsignor Dziwisz’s introduction, Monsignor
Silvestrini, Secretary to the Council for the Public Affairs of the
Church. Silvestrini had succeeded
Cardinal Agostino Casaroli in 1973 in this position of Secretary to the Council
for Public Affairs for the Church and was Casaroli’s close collaborator. But
above all, he was “a spiritual son” of Monsignor Salvatore Baldassarri, “the
red” Archbishop of Ravenna, dismissed by Paul VI as a result of his
ultra-progressivism.
During the meeting we explained the necessity of an abrogative
referendum sustained by the indispensible cooperation of at least a
proportionate part of the Italian bishops, with the aim of gathering the
500,000 signatures required. Monsignor
Sivestrini, in mellifluous tones, opposed the consideration of the inopportunity
of such an anti-abortion referendum, as it would have caused, according to him,
a damaging pro-abortion “contro-catechesis”, in the sense that, because of the
anti-abortion position of Catholics, the pro-abortionists would have multiplied
their efforts in favor of abortion. But doesn’t the Catholic world – we made
the Monsignor note - suffer increasing
pro-abortion aggression already today? And if defending the truth and doing
good are the occasion for contro-catechesis, should we then abstain in the
proclamation of truth and doing good?
Monsignor Silvestrini noted that a second reason for the inopportunity
was the memory of the still burning defeat of the referendum against
divorce. But wasn’t it true – we
repeated – that that battle had been lost because it hadn’t been adequately and
generously fought? And if the memory was still bitter of that defeat, shouldn’t
the memory of the inertia which had caused it be even more bitter?
Mons. Silvestrini said that “also the party” (he was referring to the
Christian Democrats) would have been adverse to the idea of an anti-abortion
referendum. Why be surprised, we responded, if such a party favoured the law in
parliament and some of its most important exponents signed that law, taking on full moral and political
responsibility for it? Actually we were
talking two different languages and no dialogue was possible. In the end, the
Secretary of State and the Episcopal Conference gave weak approval to the Movement
for Life’s request for the referendum, which accepted therapeutic abortion and
contraception.
In the referendum which took place on May 17th 1981, the law proposed by
the Movement for Life didn’t exceed 32%. Abortion continues with its heavy toll
of victims in Italy, and Monsignor Silvestrini, made a Cardinal in 1988,
maintained his powerful influence during the pontificates of John Paul II and
Benedict XVI, until he became part of the St. Gallen’s “mafia–club”, which
prepared for Cardinal Bergoglio’s election to the Papacy.
The moral decadence in the Church and in Italian society are not
questions only of recent years, but go way back and their remote causes should
be analyzed, if remedies are to be found.
Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana
