Abstract
To the Editor:
We live in a culture where every fourth American (65 million – CDC statistics) now has an incurable sexually transmitted disease. Twenty million of these have the human papillomavirus (HPV), a cause of cervical cancer in women. Nearly one million people have the AIDS virus that is literally killing us. Children born outside marriage have risen from one of twenty to more than one of four since 1960. More than one of every four children that implant in the womb are surgically aborted. Many more are destroyed by abortive drugs that prevent their implantation. Truly, we have become worse as a culture than Sodom and Gomorrah. The cause is that we have lost respect for sexuality.
Yet sexuality is the way human life begins and therefore needs to be respected profoundly. You have enormous influence on the culture. Your talents need to turn from diminishing this Holy gift to one that gives it due respect. In so doing your influence would lead our culture to one respectful of children, health and of life itself. The following is from Pope John Paul II's encyclical The Gospel of Life, describing the value of life, a major basis for our respect of sexuality.
#56 “Nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, an old person, or one suffering from an incurable disease. Furthermore, no one is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either himself or herself or another person entrusted to his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly. Nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action. 52
As far as the right to life is concerned, every innocent human being is absolutely equal to all others. This equality is the basis of all authentic social relationships which, to be truly such, can only be founded on truth and justice, recognizing and protecting every man and woman as a person and not as an object to be used. Before the moral norm which prohibits the direct taking of the life of an innocent human being “there are no privileges or exceptions for anyone. It makes no difference whether one is the master of the world or the ‘poorest of poor’ on the face of the earth. Before the demands of morality we are all absolutely equal.” 53