Silent holocaust of abortion is not progress, says Spanish bishop

Madrid, Spain, May 24, 2004 / 22:00 pm

Bishop Antonio Reig of Segorbe-Castellón, Spain, says abortion is a “silent holocaust,” and that it cannot be considered “progress,” adding that the state which promotes it is “totalitarian.”

In the diocesan newsletter, Bishop Reig denounced the 77,000 abortions that take place in Spain each year, warning that “the most serious crisis which could happen in Spanish society is to accept this silent holocaust and to affirm it as progress.”

In the newsletter, the bishop mentioned “post-abortion stress syndrome,” which afflicts “the majority of those who have had an abortion” and which leads to “disorders that require psychiatric and spiritual help.”

“To destroy a child in the womb of his mother can be relatively simple, but it is not so easy to get it out of her mind and her heart.  Sometimes, post-abortion stress syndrome is incurable.  There are many cases in which only the Sacrament of Penance and religious therapy can cure the mother,” the bishop said.

Bishop Reig added that if a mother suffers with an abortion, the State actually comes out worse from this “cultural crisis.”  “When a State is accomplice to this despotic freedom, it automatically becomes a totalitarian State,” because abortion “is unjustifiable in every sense.”

On the other hand, Bishop Reig underscored the relationship between chastity and marital fidelity.  He attributed divorce to the lack of “something as forgotten as chastity.” In his judgment, “when there is no chastity, which protects faithful love, the conjugal relationship is resented, and the doors to infidelity and all types of perversion are opened.”

Moreover, the bishop stated that another cause of marital breakups is selfishness, because “with any difficulty separation and divorce are thought to mean more progress and freedom than forgiveness and reconciliation.”  

Lastly, Bishop Reig expressed his disapproval of granting homosexual unions the status of marriage.  “It is not licit to call to diverse realities the same name,” he explained.