Smoke of Satan: Vatican Official Drops the "H" Word on Pro-Life Journalist

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"Do you DENY digging those mass graves yourself, Mr. Gennarini?"

Hate.

All of us have had that word or its variations used against us or have heard or seen it used against our Catholic brothers and sisters.

Hate speech. Hate group. Hate monger. Hate filled. Hater.

Of course, in the contemporary context, 95% its use is unintentionally self-referential. When they describe you as a "hater" because you refuse  to renounce the teachings of Christ and His Church, you're not a hater. But guess what they are.

Indeed, if you want to find people who hate Christ and His Church, look and see who ascribes "hate" to faithful Catholics.

Now, here's the bad news. And apologies if this sort of stunned me. Perhaps many of you have seen so much recently that nothing surprises anymore.

The phenomenon has reached the Vatican.

The President of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (PASS), appointed by Pope Francis in 2014, just publicly dropped the "H" word on a pro-life writer at First Things.

The full saga involves the First Things writer, Stefano Gennarini, the Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS), Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo and Margaret Archer, the president of PASS. It was in the context of initial criticism by Gennarini of the Vatican working closely with "population control" advocates Ban Ki-moon and Jeffrey Sachs.

Lifesite News sums the whole thing up well here. But I wanted to excerpt (with a few annotations) some of the worst parts of the letter written by Ms. Archer. The letter is extremely nasty--completely out of proportion to Mr. Gennarini's initial calm criticisms--and often bizarrely off-subject, as when she accuses Mr. Gennarini of ignoring mass graves in Malaysia.

Keep in mind that this is a Vatican official appointed by the Pope, not some non-Catholic or squishy Catholic academic. And it was posted on an official Vatican website, not Salon or the Huffington Post:

Is your sole concern with human dignity confined to the period between conception and live-birth?...If so, this is a travesty of Catholic Social Teaching. [Gennarini of course never says anything of the kind, but this is a standard move.] 

Why are you so totally uninterested in vicious practices, such as human trafficking that are an offence to the human dignity and right to life that you purport to defend? [Ditto.] 

In the last two weeks of April in question, mass graves were found in Malaysia and Thailand of those killed by their intended traffickers; tens of thousands were set adrift at sea without food or water by those intending to traffic them before they feared for their own lives through the ‘civilized’ solution of a ‘blockade’. Is this of no concern to you? [Ditto again.] 

Of course, your comments imply that you are a climate change denier... [Burn him!] 

Why do you direct a hate message to Bishop Sánchez Sorondo alone? [There's that H-bomb.] Various Cardinals were present at different meetings. Instead, blame me, blame PAS. [Well, yeah, but Sorondo is the Chancellor.] We are respected academics who take full responsibility for our actions and have, according to our Statutes, the duty and privilege of advising the Church on matters of Social Doctrine and its application. I am appointed by the Pope and responsible directly to him. I’m afraid that leaves you and your cohort out in the cold. Moreover, we work pro bono and are therefore are (sic) self-supporting, which makes me wonder which lobbyists meet your salary bill? [You dare to disagree with us? Who's paying you?]  

Why are we not allowed to speak to Jeffrey Sachs or the Secretary General of the UN? [It's a bit more than that.]...Well, that was not the attitude of Pope Francis who invited him to a private Audience, immediately prior to our joint PAS/PASS meeting on 28 April – to discuss climate change and human trafficking. Do you really have a higher moral standard than the Pope? Or is your own minimalistic version of the Creed, consisting of the single item: ‘’We believe in the ethical depravity of abortion’ considered to be an improvement? [Ditto for the third time.] 

It seems as if abject poverty, malnutrition, no schooling, and the prospect of no employment are of little concern to you after (children) have been born. [Well, personally, I also deeply care about employment opportunities for the unborn. But that's just me.]

Who is Margaret Archer? As well as being the President of PASS, she is the Director of the "Centre for Social Ontology" at the University of Warwick.

More on Archer to follow...