"Repeated Defiance of Rome: Cardinal Martini Defies Pope; Sabotages Church’s Teaching on Life"

LifeSiteNews:

ROME, January 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The retired Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, has struck another subversive blow to the clearly defined teachings of the Catholic Church on life, reports Vatican expert Sandro Magister in the Italian journal Chiesa, who says "the real clash is between Martini and the Pope."

Just nine months previously, Martini, a high profile leader in the Catholic Church, exposed his public dissent from the Church’s life teachings on artificial insemination, embryos, abortion, and euthanasia published in the Italian weekly L'espresso in what Magister wrote was a "bombshell manifesto of opposition to the reigning pope."

Back then, Martini contradicted Church teaching on euthanasia saying, "The pursuit of physical human life is not, in itself, the first and absolute principle. Above this stands the principle of human dignity."

In the January 21 Sunday edition front page of Il Sole 24 Ore, the leading economics and finance newspaper in Italy, and one of the most influential in Europe, appears Martini’s elaborated dissent entitled "Welby, Death, and Me." The piece comes in the wake of the death of Piergiorgio Welby last Christmas; a man who became a cause célèbre of the "right-to-die" movement after an Italian doctor removed his ventilator on his request.

...

Although nine months ago leading Church officials had avoided replying in public to Martini’s previous shocking dissent, this time Church officials have been quicker to respond to Martini’s departures, although remain hesitant to enter into an open confrontation by naming him directly.

A decisive response came from Elio Sgreccia, titular bishop of Zama, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and for years the most authoritative representative of the Church’s official positions in the area of bioethics in "Corriere della Sera," the major newspaper of Milan, Martini’s former archdiocese. Citing John Paul II’s encyclical "Evangelium Vitae", Sgreccia wrote that euthanasia is still the same offense against life even when it is "exclusionary," or when it omits "an effective and rightful therapy, the withholding of which intentionally causes death."

Sgreccia also reiterated that the doctor, not the patient, must evaluate the "proportionality" of the medical treatment and must not be "a simple executor of [a patient’s] wishes" and is bound to object conscientiously if a patient groundlessly refuses medical treatment. [full article.]

A more extended explication of the story is given by Sandro Magister here.