37 Pro-life and Pro-family Organizations Pledge Fidelity to Teaching of the Church

The signatories came from organizations across the globe: France, the UK, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Romania, Canada, the USA, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. From France, among others, François Legrier, president of Mouvement catholique des familles [Catholic family movement], Philippe Piloquet, president of SOS tout-petits [Little ones’ SOS], Yves Tillard, president of Action familiale et scolaire [Action for families and schools].

As its authors emphasize, this pledge of fidelity identifies with the position of the Filial Appeal to Pope Francis launched in September 2015 and signed by 900,000 people, followed by a Declaration of Fidelity to the Unchangeable Doctrine of the Church on Marriage in 2016, by the five Dubia addressed to the Pope by four cardinals on September 19, 2016, by the Correctio filialis of September 23, 2017, and by the support for the Correctio filialis offered by 250 theologians on November 4. None of these steps have to date received any response from Pope Francis.

Pledge of fidelity to the authentic teaching of the Church

The number of innocent children killed by abortion during the last century is greater than that of all the human beings who have died in all the wars in recorded history. The last fifty years have witnessed a continual escalation in attacks on the structure of the family as designed and willed by God, which provides the best environment for human flourishing, and, especially, for the education and formation of children. Divorce, contraception, acceptance of homosexual acts and unions, and the spread of “gender ideology” have all done immeasurable damage to the family, and its most vulnerable members.

Over the last fifty years the pro-life and pro-family movement has grown in both size and scope in order to confront these grave evils, which threaten both the temporal and eternal good of mankind. Our movement comprises men and women of good will from a wide variety of religious backgrounds. We are brought together in our defense of the family, and of the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters, through obedience to the natural law, which is written on all our hearts (cf. Rm 2:15). However, throughout this last half century the pro-life and pro-family movement has relied in a particular way on the immutable teaching of the Catholic Church, which affirms the moral law with the greatest clarity.

It is therefore with great sorrow that during recent years we have witnessed doctrinal and moral clarity, on issues relating to the protection of human life and the family, increasingly being replaced by ambiguity, and even by doctrines directly contrary to the teaching of Christ and the precepts of the natural law.

A Filial Appeal, delivered to Pope Francis in September 2015, was signed by around 900,000 people from all over the world and a “Declaration of fidelity to the unchangeable teaching of the Church on matrimony” was presented in 2016. On 19 September 2016 four cardinals submitted five dubia to Pope Francis, and to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, asking for the clarification of certain points of doctrine in the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia. In June 2017, the cardinals made public their request for an audience, which had been presented to the Pope by Cardinal Carlo Caffarra on 25 April 2017, but which, like the dubia, had received no response. On 23 September 2017 a Correctio filialis de haeresibus propagatis was issued by 62 Catholic theologians and academics “on account of the propagation of heresies effected by the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia and by other words, deeds and omissions” of Pope Francis. By 4 November 2017, 250 theologians, priests, professors and scholars of all nationalities had pledged their support to the Correctio. The disorder within the Church is increasing, as witnessed by a letter recently sent to Pope Francis by a prominent theologian, which, the author stated, was prompted by “turmoil within the Church today, a chaos and an uncertainty that I felt Pope Francis had himself caused.”

As Catholic pro-life and pro-family leaders, we are obliged to highlight numerous additional statements and actions, which have had a particularly damaging impact on our work for the protection of unborn children and the family in recent years. Representative examples include:

• statements and actions which contradict the Church’s teaching on the intrinsic evil of contraceptive acts
• statements and actions which contradict the Church’s teaching on the nature of marriage and the intrinsic evil of sexual acts outside the union of marriage;
• the approval of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which effectively call for member states to achieve universal access to abortion, contraception and sex education by 2030;
• the approach adopted towards sex education, particularly in chapter 7 of Amoris Laetitia and in The Meeting Point programme produced by the Pontifical Council for the Family.

As leaders within the pro-life and pro-family movement, or leaders of lay movements concerned with the defence and diffusion of Catholic moral and social teaching, we have witnessed first-hand the harm and confusion caused by such teaching and actions. In order to fulfil our responsibilities to those whom we have pledged to protect, in particular unborn children and those made especially vulnerable by the breakdown of the family, we must provide clarity on our position on these issues. We must also provide leadership to those within our movement who look to us for guidance and advice.

For this reason, we wish to make clear our unchanging adherence to the fundamental moral positions outlined below:

• there exist certain acts which are intrinsically evil and which it is always forbidden to commit;
• the direct killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral; consequently, abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide are intrinsically evil acts;
• marriage is the exclusive and indissoluble union of one man and one woman; all sexual acts outside of marriage, including in all forms of non-marital union, are intrinsically evil and gravely injurious to individuals and to society;
• adultery is a grave sin, and those who live in adultery cannot be admitted to the sacraments of Penance and Holy Communion, until such time as they repent and amend their lives;
• parents are the primary educators of their children, and the provision of sex education must be undertaken by parents or, in certain circumstances, “in educational centres chosen and controlled by them;”
• the separation of the procreative and unitive ends of the sexual act by contraceptive methods is intrinsically evil and has devastating consequences for the family, for society and for the Church;
• methods of artificial reproduction are gravely immoral as they separate procreation from the sexual act and, in the great majority of cases, lead directly to the destruction of human life in its earliest stages;
• there are only two sexes, male and female, each of which possesses the complementary characteristics and differences that are proper to them;
• homosexual acts are intrinsically evil, and no form of union between persons of the same sex can be approved in any way.

As Catholic pro-life and pro-family leaders we must remain faithful to Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who has entrusted the deposit of faith to his Church. We “are obliged to yield to God the revealer full submission of intellect and will by faith.” We fully assent to all those things “which are contained in the word of God as found in Scripture and Tradition, and which are proposed by the Church as matters to be believed as divinely revealed, whether by her solemn judgment or in her ordinary and universal magisterium.”

We pledge our full obedience to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the legitimate exercise of its authority. However, nothing will ever persuade us, or compel us, to abandon or contradict any article of the Catholic faith or any truth definitively established. If there is any conflict between the words and acts of any member of the hierarchy, even the pope, and the doctrine that the Church has always taught, we will remain faithful to the perennial teaching of the Church. If we were to depart from the Catholic faith, we would depart from Jesus Christ, to Whom we wish to be united for all eternity.

We, the undersigned, pledge that we will continue to teach and propagate the above moral principles, and every other authentic teaching of the Catholic Church, and will never, for any reason, depart from them.