Vatican City, Jun 13, 2017 / 02:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On Tuesday the Vatican announced that Carl A. Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, has been appointed by Pope Francis as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
“I am honored to have been appointed to the Pontifical Academy for Life by Pope Francis. The issue of the sanctity of life has been a priority for the Knights of Columbus, and for me personally,” Anderson said in a statement June 13.
Anderson said that in their work they have taken Pope Francis’ words in Laudato si’ and Evangelii gaudium as a guide, that “among the vulnerable for whom the Church wishes to care with particular love and concern are unborn children, the most defenseless and innocent among us.”
“I look forward to working with Pope Francis and the Pontifical Academy for Life in supporting an authentic human ecology and building a culture of life based on a proper understanding of the right to life and the dignity of each person,” he concluded.
The Statues of the Pontifical Academy for Life, revised every five years, were last revised Nov. 5, 2016, leading to the Pope’s usual review and confirmation of current members, as well as new appointments.
As head of the Knights of Columbus, Anderson is the chief executive officer and chairman of the board. He was elected supreme knight in 2000, and earlier served as supreme secretary and state deputy of the District of Columbia.
He was first appointed to the Pontifical Academy for Life in 1998 by St. John Paul II.
The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal order, was founded in New Haven, Conn., in 1882 by Venerable Michael J. McGivney, a parish priest. It has 1.8 million members worldwide who perform volunteer service and advance the order’s key principles of charity, unity, fraternity and patriotism.
The Pontifical Academy for Life is a team of scientists and ethicists representing different branches of biomedical sciences who are appointed by the Holy Father to work with Vatican dicasteries to discuss issues related to science and the protection of the dignity of human life.
In total, Pope Francis has either appointed or confirmed 50 members to the Academy.
Those also from the U.S. are: John M. Haas, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia; Kathleen M. Foley, M.D., attending neurologist in the Pain and Palliative Care Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and professor of neurology, neuroscience, and clinical pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine of Cornell University; Ignatius John Keown, professor of Christian ethics at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.; and Daniel Sulmasy, professor of bioethics at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
Other lay members named to the Academy are: Etsuko Akiba; Niggel Biggar; Francesco D’Agostino; Bruno Dallapiccola; Jokin de Irala Estevez; Mounir Abdel Messih Shehata Farag; Rodrigo Guerre Lopez; Alicja Grzeskowiak; Mohamed Haddad; Kostantinos Kornarakis; Katarina Le Blanc; Alain F. G. Lejeune; Jean-Marie Le Mene; Mónica Lopex Barahona; Ivan Luts; Manfred Lutz; Anne-Marie Pelletier; Adrian Messina; Alejandro César Serani Merlo; Avraham Steinberg; Jaroslav Sturma; William F. Sullivan; Fernando Szlajen; Marie-Jo Thiel; Angelo Vescovi; Alberto Villani; Shinya Yamanaka; and René Zamora Marin.
Clergy named are: Archbishop Anthony Colin Fisher of Sydney (Australia); Fr. Aníbal Gil Lopes; Bishop Daniel Nlandu Mayi of Matadi (Democratic Republic of the Congo); Mons. Luño Ángel Rodriguez; Bishop Noël Simard of Valleyfield (Canada); Mons. Jacques Koudoubi Simpore; Fr. Tomi Thomas; Bishop Alberto German Bochatey, auxiliary bishop of La Plata (Argentina); Fr. Maurizio Chiodi; Archbishop Fernando Natalio Chomali Garib of Concepcion (Chile); Fr. Roberto Colombo; and Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk of Utrecht (Netherlands).
The Pope has also named and confirmed five honorary members of the Academy: Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, archbishop emeritus of Bologna, past president of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family; Bishop lgnacio Carrasco de Paula, president emeritus of the Pontifical Academy for Life (Spain); Birthe Lejeune, vice president of the Jéróme Lejeune Foundation, Paris; widow of the first president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the Servant of God Jérôme Lejeune; Cardinal Elio Sgreccia, president emeritus of the Pontifical Academy for Life; President of the International Federation of Centers and Institutes of Bioethics of the Personalist School, President of the Ut Vitam Habeant Foundation (Vatican City); and Juan de Dios Vial Correa, president emeritus of the Pontifical Academy for Life and rector emeritus of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago de Chile (Chile).
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Carl Anderson is excellent Nigel Biggar pro abortionist Anglican professor is not. The appointment of Biggar who teaches if the fetus hasn’t attained reason say up to 18 weeks it deserves death on demand. It’s the same rational of Peter Singer Chair of the Ethics Center at Princeton who professes that rationale. That of a previous animal rights advocate now advocate for ending life unworthy of life. At the end of 2016, the Pontifical Academy for Life was closed and all its members dismissed. New members include Anderson and Biggar obviously encouraging an open ended discussion forum on the most threatened and vital institution of the Church. The family. Former executive member Cardinal Caffarra appointed by Benedict XVI received a letter from Fatima visionary Sr Lucia dos Santos warning that the Final Battle with Satan will be centered on the family. This coincides with a continued Pontifical pattern of raising issues including those contradictory to standing Catholic Doctrine and leaving them unresolved. Doctrine he calls the Rules of Ideologues. The effect is the detrimental message to the public including clergy, Hierarchy. If the Vatican encourages such discussion, which certainly someone as astute in his ethical position as Nigel Biggar will argue it provides a form of approbation. Biggar will make the rationality argument which stems from Secular Humanists Peter Singer, Paul Kurtz et Al. It flatly discounts Christian Catholic belief that Man is created in God’s image, and that his right to life is not determined by his degree of rational competency. Rather it is determined by God. The Church by choice of this Pontiff is rapidly becoming Anthropocentric.
no mention of the pro-abortionists appointed to the academy? So that now not only is not being Catholic not a disqualification, but even not being pro-life!
The new theological virtues: tolerance, diversity and inclusion.