A Letter to Pope Francis By Alain Besançon, Roger Scruton, et al. Il Foglio February 11, 2014 Your Holiness, We, Catholics as well as nonreligious people, think that, dealing with childhood, the Catholic Church should not be subject to blackmail by the secular world’s rabid vanguards. The same people trying to instil an ideology based on the abortion as a right and on the manipulation of human life since his very beginning are now yelling and shouting the hypocrisy of protecting childhood from their falsely universalized and untruthfully humanitarian stands. Those are the same people predicating antinatalism in preadolescents and adolescents, the same people idolizing contraception, the refusal of paternity and maternity, eugenics. Those are now demanding to dismantle the public and private space of Christian education, with neo-Jacobinian laws and solemn pronouncements. We need to react patiently, tenaciously, wisely. We need spiritual and physical strength. We need to react guided by the union of the interior energy of faith and the rational realism still offered by the best of universal culture. A positive dialogue with non-fanatic lay world and with other religions can prosper on this fertile soil. Humble and well aware, we ask Your Holiness to help us promoting a counter offensive made up of prayers, pastoral actions and ideas. Respectfully yours, Alain Besançon Roger Scruton Nicoletta Tiliacos Giuliano Ferrara Ilaria Occhini Giancarlo Cesana Assuntina Morresi Roberto Volpi Alessandro Gnocchi & Mario Palmaro To sign: appellofrancesco@ilfoglio.it

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