Rome, Italy, Jan 28, 2021 / 04:41 pm (CNA).- The John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Sciences generated a flurry of controversy in the Italian Catholic blogosphere this week, after its Facebook page defended Joe Biden’s support of legal abortion.
The Pontifical Theological Institute’s Facebook page reposted an article published on Jan. 20 in the Italian edition of the Huffington Post, titled “Joe Biden, a Catholic at the White House among the poisons of the American Church.”
The article emphasized what it calls Joe Biden’s “Social Gospel” and presented a series of declarations by political scientists and theologians to support the theory that Biden’s election is complementary to Pope Francis’ election because both of them give a sort of new breath to Catholic social teaching.
The Facebook post drew significant criticism, which is not uncommon.
Unusual, however, was the response of the Pontifical Theological Institute’s account to some of these critical comments.
Some readers questioned why the Institute was praising Biden, who is a strong supporter of legal abortion, in sharp contrast with Catholic teaching.
In response, the Pontifical Theological Institute profile said that “defending the right to abortion does not mean defending abortion.”
The Institute’s profile added that “above all, if we have to assign Catholicity licenses based on the political positions, very few politicians could describe themselves as Catholic.”
The statement is openly in contrast with the social teaching of the Church, and in particular with John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae.
John Paul II stressed that “to claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others.”
The post generated a lively debate, and the Pontifical Theological Institute eventually removed the post and associated discussion. However, the screenshot of the post has continued to spread and attract widespread attention.
The social media controversy is not the first of its kind.
In June, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, chancellor of the Pontifical Theological Institute and president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, re-tweeted a post by the Institute featuring the poster of the film “Casomai,” by the Italian director Alessandro D’Alatri. The tweet sparked controversy, as the poster features nudity.
The tweet was later removed, although a statement on Archbishop Paglia’s personal webpage defended it, arguing that the nudity on the poster was not erotic.
The statement also clarified that Paglia does not manage or approve tweets before they are published.
“[A]ll the social network accounts linked to Vincenzo Paglia’s name (Facebook, Twitter, Google, Youtube, etc.) concern exclusively institutional activities and are managed by the Press Office of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute,” the statement said.
This arrangement has not changed. Arnaldo Casali, the head of the Pontifical Institute’s press office, controls and produces the social media content of the Institute’s pages. He also manages Archbishop Paglia’s website and Italian-language Twitter account.
Casali became friends with Paglia when the latter was Archbishop of Terni.
According to one of his official bios, Casali, 45, is a professional journalist whose main fields of interest are culture, arts, and religion. He is also the artistic director of the Terni Film Festival. He has no background in Vatican or Catholic issues.
A source within the John Paul II Pontifical Theological Institute, who spoke to CNA on the condition of anonymity, said the recent Facebook post was not part of a plot, but due to ignorance.
“The real issue is that Casali has no knowledge so far of the nature of the Pontifical Theological Institute, nor does he know how its stances can have an impact on the Catholic world, and can also affect Catholic teaching,” the source said.
The Pontifical Theological Institute is still viewed with scrutiny by some following a 2019 controversy surrounding new statutes for the Institute. The new statutes came in response to a 2017 announcement that Pope Francis would legally refound the Institute, and broaden its academic curriculum, from a focus on the theology of marriage and the family to an approach that will also include the study of the family from the perspective of the social sciences.
Students, alumni, and faculty raised concerns about the role of faculty members in the institute’s new governing structure, about the reduction of theology courses and the elimination of some theology disciplines, and about the dismissal of some faculty members.
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Newspeak lives strong at the Vatican it seems. Need to get my translator set up. Driving to force tax payer dollars to fund abortions is not pro-abortion. This one will take me a while to sort out well maybe not. The spirit of Vichy and 1984 continues to gain.
“In response, the Pontifical Theological Institute profile said that defending the right to abortion does not mean defending abortion.” What differentiates a Catholic member of the 1941 Reichstag who assents to the execution of Catholic White Rose members, from a Catholic member of the House or Senate who assents to abortion? What is the essential difference between Adolf Hitler, Josef Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler all Catholics, who repudiated their faith and engineered the murder of 6 million, and Joseph Biden a Catholic who proclaims his allegiance to Catholicism and Pope Francis’ policies, who not only promotes past abortion of 70 million infants, but intends to significantly extend the practice of murder of innocent victims? As a Catholic who claims faithful practice Biden will claim responsibility for a far greater number of murdered innocent victims than those Nazi baptized Catholics. A Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Marriage and Family chaired by Archbishop Paglia insofar as approbation of outcomes, its neglect to condemn Biden and abortion as public policy is essentially the same as the Nazi Reichstag. Is the intent of the mind different in kind from the acts it condones? Can public polity absolve the approbation of what is murder plain and simple? Is civil law superior to divine law? The egregious lie perpetrated by Joe Biden and his collaborators at the Vatican is evident in the facts. An evil that must be called out and challenged by the faithful or risk the peril of judgment.
Thanks for defending the unborn. At The Annunciation, Christ was , according to The Angel Gabriel,fully present in the womb of Our Blessed Mother. Enough said!..all else is a lie and from the devil.
We read under the great luminary Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, chancellor of the Pontifical Theological Institute and president of the Pontifical Academy for Life (woohoo! all genuflect), that Biden “is complementary [!] to Pope Francis’ election because both of them give a sort of new breath to Catholic social teaching.”
Complementary??? This from a man who replaces binary human sexual complementarity with an in-your-face (or whatever) and bigger than life homoerotic mural on his cathedral wall…
“Complementary,” my @$$. Said Paglia’s mural artist Cinalli: “The one thing that they didn’t permit me to insert [in the catch-all mural] was the copulation of two people within this net where everything is permitted.” As for Paglia’s word games…it’s just another day at the orifice.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/leading-vatican-archbishop-featured-in-homoerotic-painting-he-commissioned
Let’s parse this JPII Institute disingenuous pokespeak: “defending the right to abortion does not mean defending abortion.”
With such a strange distorted inversion of linguistic logic, it may then follow that the U.S. Bill of Rights, First Amendment right to free speech may not in fact permit free speech. People may not, in fact, be allowed free speech in the attempt to defend it.
The JPII Institute might as well be closed down. Ever since Gay Porn Paglia took over and expelled all Pro-Life members, it has lost all it’s credibility and legitimacy.
Defending the right to genocide does not endorse genocide.
Defending the right to human trafficking does not endorse human trafficking.
Defending the right to child sexual abuse does not….
🙁
You forget the one most pertinent to the times:
Defending the right to own slaves does not mean defending slavery.
Thanks for defending the unborn. At The Annunciation, Christ was , according to The Angel Gabriel,fully present in the womb of Our Blessed Mother. Enough said!..all else is a lie and from the devil.