The Antichristian Phenomenon

News of a few days old, but you know, I hate blogging about the very latest news, since you never know if it’s completely correct until a few days passed and it cooled down a bit.

Vatican cardinal calls on Catholics to stop funding Amnesty

I’ll quote the article in case it goes down sometime … I hate losing good articles.

· Group ‘betrayed mission’ over new abortion policy
· Human rights organisation fears dip in donations

Tom Kington in Rome
Thursday June 14, 2007
The Guardian

A senior Vatican cardinal said yesterday that Catholics should stop donating to human rights group Amnesty International because of its new policy advocating abortion rights for women if they had been raped, were a victim of incest or faced health risks.

Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, accused Amnesty of turning its back on its mission to defend human rights.

“The inevitable consequence of this decision, according to the cardinal, will be the suspension of any financing to Amnesty on the part of Catholic organisations and also individual Catholics,” said a statement from Cardinal Martino’s office yesterday.

“AI has betrayed its mission,” Cardinal Martino told the US National Catholic Register in an interview.

Amnesty changed its neutral stance on abortion in April, but its Italy chairman Paolo Pobbiati insisted its new position had been misinterpreted by the cardinal.

“This has nothing to do with legitimising abortion as part of a campaign for human rights, it is to do with combating violence against women,” he said.

“It was partly inspired by our experience in Africa where soldiers rape women in communities they attack to force them to have their children. We also believe women who have had abortions should benefit from medical care regardless of the reason for the abortion. Moreover we aim to promote education and contraception to reduce abortion rates.”

“AI does not take a position on whether abortion should be legal or whether it is right or wrong,” it added in a statement.

In his interview with the National Catholic Register, Cardinal Martino did not see any grey areas.

“The Church teaches that it is never justifiable to kill an innocent life. Abortion is murder,” he said. “To selectively justify abortion, even in the cases of rape, is to define the innocent child within the womb as an enemy, a ‘thing’ that must be destroyed. How can we say that killing a child in some cases is good and in other cases it is evil?”

In a statement released in Italy, Amnesty stated it did not receive funding from the Vatican or the Catholic church. Amnesty also declines support from governments and political parties. But Mr Pobbiati admitted that the fallout for funding could be serious if individual Catholics heeded Cardinal Martino’s advice.

“This could be a danger to donations and we are extremely upset about these statements,” he said.

Amnesty’s joint campaigning with Catholic organisations could also be complicated by the Vatican’s position, he said.

“We mount joint campaigns with organisations like Caritas and the Community of Sant’Egidio against the death penalty and child soldiers and in favour of arms control. We sincerely hope Catholics will not share Martino’s views on funding.”

A quick rhetorical question. Isn’t Amnesty International that organization which protects (among others) Christians from persecution for their beliefs, in countries like China?

It just goes to show once more: Christians don’t give a damn about the greater good, they don’t give a damn about making the world a better place. All they care about is their dogma and lies. The moment you disagree with them, it doesn’t matter how much good you do, because disagreeing with their dogma seems to already be a deadly sin.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 16th, 2007 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.