Scientific Progress Must Respect Human Dignity

VATICAN CITY, 31 JAN 2008 (VIS) - This morning, Benedict XVI received participants in the plenary session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is being held this week in the Vatican.

The Pope recalled how last year the congregation published "two important documents presenting ... certain clarifications necessary for the correct functioning of ecumenical dialogue, and of dialogue with the religions and cultures of the world".

The first of these documents, "Responses to some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church", confirms that "the one and only Church of Christ has subsistence, permanence and stability in the Catholic Church and, consequently, that the unity, indivisibility and indestructibility of the Church of Christ is not invalidated by separations and divisions among Christians"....

Benedict XVI invited the members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to give particular attention to "the difficult and complex problems of bioethics". In this context, he indicated that the "Church's Magisterium certainly cannot and should not intervene on every scientific innovation. Rather, it has the task of reiterating the great values at stake, and providing the faithful, and all men and women of good will, with ethical-moral principals and guidelines for these new and important questions.

"The two fundamental criteria for moral discernment in this field", he added, "are: unconditional respect for the human being as a person, from conception to natural death; and respect for the origin of the transmission of human life through the acts of the spouses".....