Letter to President Carrasco 04 2012

Open Letter by Josef Seifert to Mons. Don Ignacio Carrasco May 4 2012
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10.4.2012
Your Excellency, dear President Carrasco:
I am writing you this letter without any intention to offend you in any way, but out of a
profound wish for the PAV to retain and to regain the 100 percent service to Christ and to
the Gospel of Life which I know you desire and which clearly is our mission as PAV
members. And precisely for this reason I am writing this letter with a deep feeling of
sadness and an enormous concern over the great danger I perceive of the PAV losing its full
and pure commitment to the truth and its enthusiastic service to the unreduced magnificent
Church teaching on human life in its whole splendor.
In the Saturday morning session of our 2012 Annual Assembly Meeting of the PAV, I
expressed the opinion that the publically accessible session of the day before had been
possibly the worst day in the history of the PAV. As there was no time to explain this
judgment, you asked me to write you a letter in which I would explain myself. I gladly fulfill
your wish even though the matter saddens me greatly, especially since, after so many years
of knowing you as a person deeply committed to the truth and Church Teaching, I never
would have expected to experience something similar in the PAV under your direction (but
in your absence from the meeting).
As the final morning session was open to all PAV members, who also attended the public
meeting, I wish to send my answer to your question also to all members of the PAV who
have heard my remark and to whom I feel I owe the same explanation that you requested
from me. Moreover, as my remarks refer exclusively to the public conference, I want to
publish this letter, at least its main contents, as an “open letter” also addressed to countless
persons who directly or indirectly, through the press, will get information about this event.
My answer is very simple and can be summarized in 8 reasons for my critical judgment on
this public conference:
1. Neutral scientific discussion of treatments of infertility, which the
PAV ought to treat also and even primarily from an ethical and
magisterial viewpoint: Of the seven conferences this day that dealt
with the ethically speaking highly sensitive issue of treating
infertility (many methods of which stand in direct contrast to the
sublime truth that the Church teaches on these matters) the first
five almost entirely prescinded from any anthropological, ethical,
theological and especially all magisterial explanations of the
Open Letter by Josef Seifert to Mons. Don Ignacio Carrasco May 4 2012
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Catholic moral doctrine on these sensitive issues and just dealt
with such things and methods as the pill, artificial insemination, in
vitro fertilization, etc. from a neutral scientific-descriptive
standpoint. This alone is a great evil for a public Congress
sponsored by PAV, because a neutral scientific description of
methods of infertility treatment has absolutely no place in our
Academy which was explicitly founded to deal with these matters
in the light of anthropological, theological and moral truth. Any
“purely scientific” treatment of them falsifies them by failing to
take into account the most important truths about the questions at
hand.
2. All first five papers (out of 7) in the little they said about ethics stood
in flat contradiction to Church teaching on morals: Still much worse
than this was the fact that each single one of the first five lecturers
did in fact occasionally imply ethical judgments, but all of these
ethical judgments without exception were a direct assault on
Church teaching and on the truth: the contraceptive pill was
praised if taken for a while and introduced as a healthy means for
restricting periods of fertility, which was a direct assault on
Humanae Vitae, Familiaris Consortio and many addresses of
Blessed Pope John Paul II, the founder of our Academy. In vitro
fertilization, associated methods such as ICSI, and artificial
insemination were presented as morally acceptable and as major
achievements and shown graphically in little film-clips of how, for
example, the proud speaker shot isolated and selected sperms into
ova. His obvious ethical condoning of these methods was a direct
assault on Donum Vitae and other ecclesiastical documents, and so
it went on and on.
The whole tenor of these first five lectures of the conference was thus
on the one hand a neutral presentation that has no legitimate place in
our Academy, and on the other hand a propaganda for everything the
Church condemns in this field as intrinsically wrong acts.
3. The Critics of this public Conference and of the cancelled stem cell
Conference were ill treated and offended partly during the
conference, partly in letters: Moreover, cynical mockery was added
to this: instead of offering refunds to participants who had been
gravely misled and wasted their money to attend a Planned
Open Letter by Josef Seifert to Mons. Don Ignacio Carrasco May 4 2012
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Parenthood-like meeting under the auspices of the PAV, these
unhappy participants were brutally told, if they did not like what
they heard, not to return next year. The letter that followed the
Assembly from the Rev Renzo Pegoraro, the Chancellor of PAV
[Prot.N. 5154/12] explaining why a similarly ill designed stem cell
meeting had been cancelled, heaped insults on the pro-life
members ( ALL PAV members are vowed to be unambiguously pro
life) by describing their objections to the Congress as ‘threats’ to
“some higher ranking personalities” who deserved much respect
but who were surely offended as well by being described as if they
were a poor misled and unfoundedly terrorized flock that had felt
threatened by PAV members and other pro-life leaders who had
spoken out against this meeting. In another letter from the
Chancellor [Prot.N. 5148/12] co-signed by Mgr. Suaudeau and
addressed to speakers scheduled to address the Congress, pro-life
critics of it are described as not enjoying “any credit from PAV” or
“from other organisms of the Holy See”. The letter goes on to claim
that there was “no decisive link” between pro-life objections and
the cancellation of the Congress. The truth of the matter surely is
that certain high-ranking personalities were prompted to demand
the cancellation of the stem-cell conference by serious, profound
and intelligent arguments brought forward by some PAV members
and others, arguments that had been simply brushed aside by PAV
officials. The moral questions surrounding the source and methods
of investigating stem-cells, which are the most significant
questions any PAV sponsored Congress should examine, were
dubbed “useless controversies.”
4. Insulting remarks not only about PAV members but also about the
central issues of Church documents: The phrase “useless
controversies” extended the insult heaped on some distinguished
PAV-members to such Church documents as Donum Vitae that was
composed under the present Pope while he was Prefect of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and which was implicitly
called “useless”, because it is precisely entirely dedicated to such
questions as those that were dubbed in semi-public PAV-letters
“useless.” To describe – in the name of the Pontifical Academy for
Life – the key concerns and issues of a series of significant Church
documents as “useless controversies” was an unbelievably
Open Letter by Josef Seifert to Mons. Don Ignacio Carrasco May 4 2012
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dreadful thing, unthinkable under the Presidency of The Venerable
Jerome Lejeune, of Prof. Juan de Dios Vial Correa, or of Mons.
Sgreccia, and even under your immediate predecessor. No such
proposition has ever been previously uttered by an official of the
Academy and, associated as it is with the recent Assembly
conference, it confirms my judgment that it was the worst day in
our history.
5. The low scientific level of six out of seven papers read in the public
conference: As a minor reason for my finding the public conference
the worst in the history of the PAV (in which we have lived through
some other phases of deep crisis), I might add that also the purely
neutral scientific content and level of these presentations was bad:
not a word on all the studies on the negative side-effects of the pill;
not a word on its potentially abortifacient effects; not a word on all
the research done on their causing at times lasting infertility; not a
word on the negative psychological aspects, etc., etc. These
presentations had more the character of a cheap “infertilitytreatment technology” session and of pseudo-scientific propaganda
against Church teaching, without a trace of a serious, balanced
scientific spirit. This added to the main scandal of the meeting
which consisted in promoting uncritically what the Church teaches
to be intrinsically bad.
The excellent paper of Professor Hilgers, which was the only one
that dealt with a principal concern of so many recent Church
documents in the right spirit of respect and truth, was so unrelated
to the rest of the session that any dialogue on these important
issues was lacking. Indeed, he was made to appear an isolated
figure, having to defend himself against critical objections from one
of the chairpersons of the session at which he spoke.
6. Unscientific and Unhelpful “Discussions”: This devastating
impression and effect was heightened by the entirely unscientific
way in which the so-called “discussions” are being conducted in
open meetings of the Academy (this is an evil dating back several
years but taking on new dimensions of harmfulness in a
Conference with 6/7th of bad speakers: a genuine discussion
requires an oral dialogue of the sort I could participate in several
times in the Pontifical Academy of Science, especially if such a
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momentous challenge to Church teaching was presented by the
speakers. The questions, half of which were not even read, were so
abbreviated by the chairpersons that they gave the impression that
the bad speakers were being addressed as if they were authorities
on what falls within the competence of PAV and so were enabled to
repeat their errors another time around. As if this were not already
sufficiently intolerable, some kind of censorship distinguished
“nice” from “negative” questions, and many of these “unacceptable
questions” were sifted out entirely, others freely rendered in very
different words that misrepresented them or even made them
seem derisory. In this way the discussion was also made to be a
pitiful spectacle.
7. An academic and doctrinal failure of the only speaker asked to
address the ethics of fertility treatment: Moreover, the only person
(another scandal of the organization of the conference) invited to
address directly the ethical aspects of infertility treatment, while
she was no doubt well-intentioned, was academically and as an
ethicist below the level of the Academy. Instead of throwing the
desired ethical light on what her predecessors had said, and in
spite of repeatedly stressing that she was a simple and obedient
sheep of the flock of the Church, explicitly repeated some of the
bioethical errors which the first five speakers had peremptorily
advanced. What was additionally scandalous about this misguided
presentation was that it was featured on the program as coauthored by the Chancellor of the PAV, the Rev Renzo Pegoraro.
8. The knowledge of truth and the Image of the PAV have suffered an
Immense Harm from This Conference, and Its Effects on the World
Will Be Disastrous: To present such a conference, over which
Planned Parenthood would have rejoiced and the angels in heaven
must have wept, to an audience many of whom came from far away
to hear the Church’s position on these matters, as our constitution
explicitly prescribes, is in my opinion a profoundly sad and even
scandalous thing. Many of the outside visitors to whom I spoke
were deeply disappointed and shocked, and felt deserted by our
PAV that should have given them guidance. The journalists who
will report on this conference or a PAV publication of these papers,
which I hope will never occur, will spread the exact opposite of the
Open Letter by Josef Seifert to Mons. Don Ignacio Carrasco May 4 2012
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Church’s teaching as something promoted by our Academy. The
outside image of the Academy and of the Church was gravely hurt
and harmed by this event.
I am not alone with my feeling of profound shock over the public
conference and some of the official PAV communications, and can
understand those members (most of whom never before criticized the
PAV and are very soft-spoken) who told me that the only choice that
remains for the Directory Board of the PAV after this public conference
is to resign.
I hope I have explained sufficiently in this letter the reasons for my judgment. I believe that
you and whoever else organized this session and invited these speakers, owe a profound
written apology for this event to all participants as well as to all members of the PAV, who
must have felt ashamed by this and whose image will be tainted by this conference being
attributed to the PAV.
I can only hope and pray that many members and outside guests (and I) will never again
have to sit through such a tormentingly bad session of the PAV and that never again will the
effect of a PAV conference be so radically turned into the opposite of its desperately needed
mission: taking on, in an almost diabolical way, the traits of a “Pontifical anti-Life Academy”.
In deep pain, but in the hope that some of the harm can be undone,
Sincerely Yours in Christ,
Professor Dr. Dr. habil. Dr. h.c. Josef Seifert, Founding Rector and President of the Senate of
the The International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein, ordinary
member of the PAV.
P.S.: Knowing well that my concerns are shared by many other PAV members, I herewith
encourage all my fellow members in the Academy to let you know to which extent they
agree with the contents of this letter. J. S.