The president of the republic on Thursday believed that Catholics are less present in collective decisions in Portugal and that some of them are indifferent to debates on topics such as euthanasia, “a reality that makes magistrates called to arbitrate more thorny”.
Faced with his predecessor, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, and former Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, who have made successive public statements against euthanasia, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa stressed that there are “exceptionally very relevant exceptions” to this indifference that pointed to it.
The head of state spoke at the Catholic University of Portugal, in Lisbon, at the launch of the book “Professor Mário Pinto”, by journalist Joana Reis, published by Universidade Católica Editora, in which he analyzed the evolution of the different Catholic sectors in Portugal.
“The first referendum on voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG) showed how a cultural upheaval was approaching in a society in which the Catholic Church had diminished its influence, especially in sectors of cultural expression, in the media, in youth and in national political decisions , regionally and locally. And the second referendum on the IVG confirmed the lived process”considered.
However, according to the President of the Republic, “in the public powers, in the laws, their creation and application” “the profound change in national life” has become apparent.
“The so-called medically assisted death constitutes the most recent example of this process of civic culture. And it is not even the current absence of moderates in the political decision-making phase – in fact widespread in the democracies that surround us – the great cause of what was lived another: in all quadrants, the lesser presence or relevance of Catholics in collective decisions had become a common feature”claimed Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, a practicing Catholic himself.
In addition, the President of the Republic identified a “indifference of many of them to the most relevant debates, such as those mentioned above”it is “by refusal to deal with the substance and preferring the form or by civil dismissal or by anti-systemic withdrawal”🇧🇷
“Realities that cause judiciaries to be called upon to arbitrate on burning issues in which absence means social irrelevance become more thorny. With exceptions, of course, and highly relevant, but increasingly confined to classical areas of Catholic positioning, not necessarily the most representative in collective decisions or communityhe concluded.
In attendance were, in addition to Cavaco Silva and Passos Coelho, political commentator and former PSD chairman Luís Marques Mendes and Christian Democrats such as José Ribeiro e Castro, chairman of the CDS-PP, and Diogo Feio.
In the rest of his speech, the head of state no longer referred to the issue of the decriminalization of medically assisted death, legislation passed by parliament last week, which is awaiting final formulation and on which he will have to make a decision.
Previously, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa sent a first decree of the Assembly of the Republic on this issue to the Constitutional Court, which declared it unconstitutional due to “insufficient normative density”, and later used the political veto regarding the second version, for containing contradictory expressions.
Source: DN
