Note that the same day the interview was released, Pope Francis uttered these awe-inspiring words: ” Every unborn child, though condemned to be aborted, has the face of Jesus Christ, has the face of the Lord . . .”
Isn’t it perhaps relevant that the Pope in that America magazine interview was using words appropriate to reach out to fellow Jesuits, who are often quite liberal? My hope is that this fact explains some of his seemingly astonishing ignorance of the real Catholic world (e.g. suggesting that our homilies are in danger of being “obsessed” with contraception) and his apparently closed-minded and uncollaborative attitude toward significant portions of the faithful (e.g. saying that he had been “reprimanded” by some pro-lifers, rather than saying more neutrally”criticized” by them, and saying he had never been a “rightwinger,” which is the language of the left)
Richard Stith
Richard Stith is a research professor at Valparaiso University in Indiana. Having received both his law degree and a doctorate in ethics from Yale University, he taught legal philosophy and comparative law at Valpo Law for 41 years. From Harvard and from the University of California, Berkeley, he holds degrees in political theory. He was for a year director of the Program in Biomedical Ethics at St. Louis University School of Medicine. He served for many years on the Advisory Council of the National Lawyers Association and on the Board of Editors of the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE LAW and has taught and published on comparative law and legal philosophy in Spain, India, China, Ukraine, Chile and Mexico. In 2001, he became the first U.S. professor to be designated by the European Commission as teacher of a Jean Monnet Module (on the law of the European Union) and shortly thereafter was named the first Swygert Research Fellow in recognition of his scholarship. He is a consultant on the Academic Council for the doctoral program in law at the Universidad de Los Andes in Chile, where he has directed doctoral seminars. Professor Stith has served as a member of the national boards of University Faculty for Life and of the Consistent Life Network. He has been a speaker at national, state, and international right-to-life gatherings and has presented pro-life testimony by invitation before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution and to state and foreign legislative committees. Among his significant publications: “The Priority of Respect: How Our Common Humanity Can Ground Our Individual Dignity,” International Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2004): 165. Other works can be found at http://works.bepress.com/richard_stith/ Email: [email protected]
