Peace or Life – Benedict XVI Debunks a False Dilemma

Speaking to the Swiss bishops, the pope replies to the main objection directed

ROMA, November 16, 2006 – In the second of his two addresses to the Swiss bishops on their “ad limina” visit, Benedict XVI replied to what is, perhaps, the objection most commonly directed against the pope and the Church hierarchy by progressive Catholic circles.

The objection is that, in the areas of life and the family, the Church’s hierarchy preaches truths defined as non-negotiable, pure, and solid, binding even in political decisions, while in the areas of peace, justice, and the protection of the environment, it waters down “Christian distinctiveness” and makes feeble statements, acquiescing to the temporal powers.

According to the progressive Catholic circles, the priority should be reversed.

For "Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good", are you listening?

....the great themes of peace, non-violence, justice for all, concern for the poor, and respect for creation...[have] become an ethical complex that, precisely as a political force, has great power and constitutes for many the substitute for religion, or its successor.

And these are truly great moral themes, which moreover belong to the tradition of the Church...The other part of morality, which is not rarely viewed in a fairly controversial light by politics, concerns life.

Part of this is the commitment on behalf of life, from conception to death; that is, its defense against abortion, against euthanasia, against manipulation, and against man’s self-conferred authorization to dispose of life.

. . .


In these areas, therefore, our proclamation clashes with a contrary awareness within society, with a sort of antimorality that bases itself upon a conception of freedom as the ability to choose autonomously and without predefined guidelines, as non-discrimination, and therefore as the approval of any sort of possibility, situating itself as ethically correct by its own authority.
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It is only if human life is respected from conception to death that the ethics of peace is also possible and credible; it is only then that non-violence can express itself in every direction; only then that we truly welcome creation, and only then that we can arrive at true justice.

And the following day, to the German bishops...he said: