Bishop Elio Sgreccia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, recently told a group of journalists meeting at the University of Saint Paul in Abuja, Nigeria, that the world is “marching toward a self-genocide of the human race” with their irresponsible use of biotechnologies and general acceptance of the culture of death.
He continued by telling the group that biotechnologies were nothing more than a “craving for power,” attempting “to change the order of the human species” and to play God by making “men in the image and likeness of other men who have power.”
Bishop Sgreccia cited the cause of this problem as the “weakness of the Christian community and the strength of secular society” for the promotion of the culture of death. Society, he said, “now defends the selecting of children so that each one is perfect, without defect, and the eliminating of those that do not fulfill these conditions.”
He went on, saying that the biotechnological “quest for omnipotence…aims to transform the very structure of human nature and in this way liberate it from all cultural precedent.”
Bishop Sgreccia has written much on the subject of bioethics and is currently considered the Vatican’s resident expert on the subject. He has denounced biotechnology repeatedly in the past, specifically in the keynote address at a meeting on bioethics conducted by the Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines in Mandaluyong City in January. There he cautioned against the tendency of using prenatal diagnostic tools to destroy imperfect children, keeping only the “perfect.” One such practice is the endorsement of U.S. doctors advising mandatory genetic screening for Downs syndrome for all pregnant women earlier this year.
Bishops and clergy at the meeting in the Philippines were also warned to beware of “death laws” that are invading countries worldwide. These include, said Conference Chairman Bishop Angel Lagdameo, “euthanasia, divorce, abortion, total depopulation and the homosexual agenda.”
See the Source: Hilary White, “Vatican Bishop: Humanity Heading for Self-Genocide,” 26 January 2007, LifeSiteNews.com, http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007jan/07012607.html
