Former President of the Republic of Italy and current senator Francesco Cossiga has written an open letter in the Italian newspaper Il Tempo to Archbishop Fisichella, President of the Potifical Academy for Life, regarding his recent intervention in the L’Osservatore Romano regarding the recent declared excommunications in Brazil.  Below is my own translation of Senator Cossiga’s letter.

A Church of “we’ll see if maybe” against that of “yes” and “no.”

Dear Monsignor and friend!  I have read with much attention, as a believer of the Church and as a friend, your intervention with regard to the painful case of the excommunication of the two doctors that helped a girl have an abortion, a nine-year old girl who had in her womb two little creatures, the wicked fruit of a series of rapes by her stepfather.  You have wished to join the chorus of condemnations pronounced upon the poor bishop of Recife from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, beginning with the federal president of Brazil, President Lula, a great populist leader formed in the school of Liberation Theology.  Among the proponents of this theology was Dom Helder Camara, [former] bishop of Recife, great Christian utopianist, who did much good for the lower classes of South America, but who is also responsible, along with many others, for the great confusion that reigns in that continent, not only at the theological level, but also among simple faithful, regarding the nature and mission of the Church in the world, bringing many Catholics to respond with violence to the violence of the ruling classes and dictatorships, and objectively contributing to that spiral of violence that still lays waste to that suffering continent between dictatorships and terrorism, even “Christian” terrorism.

Certainly, I am not a theologian, but I do know enough Canon Law to make me aware that the bishop of Recife did not “hurl” the excommunication at anyone, but that he limited himself, as was his duty as bishop and ordinary of the Diocese of Recife, to making known to his priests that the two doctors became guilty of a delict provided for by the penal laws of the Church, i.e., procured abortion, for which there is provided latae sententiae excommunication, a penalty which is incurred automatically solely for the fact of having committed a criminal deed.  Certainly, it is striking that the notorious stepfather did not incur an equal excommunication, since it is not provided for.  You concentrate on the fact that the girl was in great danger for her life: may I remind you that if the girl was in grave danger for her life for causes other than her pregnancy, through the moral doctrine of “double effect,” those necessary treatments that might cause an abortion could have been prepared, even if certitude were had about this effect.  But on the other hand, a “procured abortion” would be a different matter.  I understand the human drama; but is it not also a great drama that a woman, for example, a mother of six children who by her death could find themselves in a very sad condition morally and materially—that she might have her own life “threatened” by a new pregnancy and that she might save herself with a “therapeutic abortion”?

And yet I do not believe that You would justify the doctor who through “Christian pity” would procure an abortion, even if requested by her!  And to take it to another level: is it not a great pain that is suffered by two Christians in being denied the Eucharist because, after an unhappy marriage experience, they have been divorced and remarried in only a civil ceremony?  And why not speak then of the pain of Beppino Englaro [translator's note: the father of Eluana] and of many parents who see their little children lying in pain and perhaps without any hope, and who decide to give them a free pass to a “pleasant death”?  And I could go on… In just the past few days, I heard a pastoral letter on the specificity of Christian charity, which is a different thing from “human pity.”

I do not believe that by presenting the Holy Church no longer as the Church of “yes, yes” and “no, no,” but of “perhaps,” and of “we’ll see if maybe…”; as the Church of peace alone, and not also that of “war” for truth and justification—I do not think that any more faithful will be acquired for the Church, nor will those who are still a part of her be preserved…  I thank God for not having given me any theological knowledge, and thus for making me reason with the Ten Commandments and the laws of reason, and beyond this, only with the propositions of the Catholic Catechism and—why not?—even the Catechism of St. Pius X (I’m not a LeFebvrite!), without having to or being able to have recourse to complex theological arguments.

With cordial friendship,

Your most affectionate,

Francesco Cossiga

16/03/2009