archives

On the Road to Peace by John Dear S.J.	Tuesday, August 26, 2008
	Vol. 2, No. 51

[Note: More excerpts from my autobiography, A Persistent Peace, just published by Loyola Press. Here, I tell about my 1985 experience in El Salvador. It was at the height of the U.S.-backed war there. Archbishop Oscar Romero and four church women had been assassinated already. I went to work with Jesuit Refugee Service.]

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The highlight of our first week was our visit to the Jesuit University of Central America, a graceful campus of palm trees, preened lawns, stucco buildings crowned with red-tile roofs, vast clusters of flowers -- a plot of Southern California dropped from heaven. There we met the renowned philosopher and theologian Fr. Ignacio Ellacuria, the university president.

Remarks of Archbishop Wuerl of Washington DC:
“The current teaching of the Catholic Church on human life and abortion is the same teaching as it was 2,000 years ago,” Wuerl noted. “From the beginning, the Catholic Church has respected the dignity of all human life from the moment of conception to natural death.”

Wuerl cited a passage from the church’s catechism that condemns abortion as “gravely contrary to moral law.”