European Catholics take stock of year’s mixed progress on life issues

When British parliamentarians approved a law to allow physician-assisted suicide on Nov. 29, it followed a year of legislative inroads against Catholic social teaching across Europe.

Yet prominent Catholics insist anti-life trends can still be countered and have urged greater cooperation among church groups internationally.

“The U.K. is an important country, looked to as an example by others, so what happens there has wider implications,” explained Vincenzo Bassi, president of the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe, or FAFCE.

“While our own church leaders are understandably preoccupied with what’s occurring in their own communities, we should also be increasing our joint engagement on life issues across the continent,” he said.

The Italian jurist spoke as British legislators met to scrutinize the “Terminally Ill (End of Life) Bill,” which will make the U.K. Europe’s eighth country to allow “assisted dying.”

Meanwhile, a British church adviser said Catholic leaders had been “deeply disappointed” by the recent parliamentary vote, but were also heartened by the “significant concerns” voiced about the suicide bill.

“Evidence suggests the more you discuss this, the likelier people are to oppose it, so perhaps our lengthy campaigning helped embed these concerns,” Anthony Horan, director of Scotland’s Catholic Parliamentary Office, told OSV News.

“There’s certainly a cultural movement underway against Catholic teaching, which we should try to change by mobilizing people together on a Europe-wide scale,” he said.

Laws on assisted suicide have been actively opposed by the church in Europe — unsuccessfully in the case of traditionally Catholic Spain and Portugal, which legalized the practice in 2021 and 2023 respectively.

On March 4, France’s National Assembly delivered another blow to Catholic values by voting to make the country the world’s first to guarantee a right to abortion in its constitution.

Surveys in England and elsewhere have shown public support for policies that support keeping abortion legal, prompting steps to liberalize abortion by other European Union member-states, although at least a dozen still require mandatory counselling, with Belgium however expected to follow the French constitutional move.

In an April resolution, the European Parliament praised France’s “landmark vote” and demanded that “access to safe and legal abortion” be recognized as a fundamental right in all 27 EU countries.

It also condemned the right of doctors and health care facilities to opt out of abortions, and accused countries “backsliding on abortion rights” of undermining “democracy, European values and fundamental rights.”

“The EU cannot impose on others, inside and outside its borders, ideological positions on the human person, sexuality and gender, marriage and family,” the Brussels-based Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union, or COMECE, responded in a statement, which charged members of European Parliament with failing to respect “different cultures and traditions.”

Encouraged by the European Parliament’s Strasbourg resolution, amendments to a government-backed Criminal Justice Bill in the U.K., were tabled nonetheless in May — they would have decriminalized abortions beyond the present 24-week limit to allow them up to birth.

The country’s Catholic bishops encouraged church members to counter-petition their members of Parliament, while surveys by the Savanta-ComRes polling agency showed minimal public backing for abortion up to birth.

“Abortion has profoundly negative physical, mental and spiritual effects on women and men,” Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, director of the March for Life organization, told OSV News. “All religious leaders should be speaking out on this key Gospel value — the dignity of life, created in God’s image and likeness.”

Although the British amendments lapsed ahead of last July’s parliamentary elections, they’re set to be re-tabled in 2025 with strong backing from the governing Labour Party.

In October, “safe access zones” of 492 feet (150 meters) were imposed around abortion clinics in Britain, making “obstruction” a criminal offense.

In Germany, where abortions are still formally banned, a government-backed bill to decriminalize termination of pregnancy was debated in the Bundestag on Dec. 5, with Social Democratic and Green backing, despite warnings by Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, chairman of the German bishops’ conference, of a “highly problematic constitutional and ethical paradigm shift.”

There are signs of hope, however.

In Poland, a cluster of bills from Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s ruling coalition, overturning October 2020 Constitutional Court restrictions, was voted down by conservative government supporters in July.

“While church leaders everywhere have a duty to support the pro-life position, they’re often not listened to,” said Bassi, the FAFCE president.

“Laypeople should be taking greater responsibility, stressing the importance of family and civil society networks, and showing the beauty of our community experiences in ways which can convince the wider public.”

To add to positive changes, on Dec. 11, Britain indefinitely banned the use of puberty blockers for young people under 18 with gender dysphoria, except in clinical trials, confirming a temporary set of rulings.

In an 11-page “Pastoral Reflection” last April, Catholic bishops in England and Wales rejected “gender theory” and reminded Catholic schools and parishes of their duty to uphold traditional teachings on human sexuality.

In Scotland, however, a new Hate Crime and Public Order Act in April, condemned by the bishops’ conference, made it an imprisonable offense to question a person’s transgender identity or “varied sex characteristics.”

In the wake of June 6-8 elections to the European Parliament, in a joint letter with Protestant and Orthodox leaders, COMECE criticized the exclusion of “any appropriate reference” to Christian values in EU texts, and urged politicians to attach greater importance to the continent’s Christian roots.

When the elections brought a low turnout, combined with a strong showing for nationalist and Eurosceptic parties, the chairman of the Council of Catholic Episcopates of Europe, or CCEE, incorporating 33 bishops’ conferences, Lithuanian Archbishop Gintaras Grušas of Vilnius blamed “overreaching attempts” by EU officials to legislate in areas reserved for individual member-states, and called on newly elected members of the European Parliament to concentrate on “primary values important to everyone.”

“People are clearly dismayed by some decisions coming out of the European Union — they want issues of fundamental rights, human dignity, family, education and peace to be the real focus,” Archbishop Grušas told OSV News.

Whether votes on physician-assisted suicide will satisfy that popular yearning remains to be seen.

Government-backed legislation to allow “aid in dying” lapsed in France when a snap election was called in July by President Emmanuel Macron, but is to be re-tabled in 2025, while parallel laws are under consideration in Finland, Ireland, Norway and Sweden.

In Britain, where Catholic bishops have launched a big-scale campaign to reject the current “assisted dying” bill, Anthony Horan, the Parliamentary Office director, admits anti-life developments have left many Catholics “feeling it’s an uphill battle.”

Yet the voice of the church’s bishops remains supremely important in speaking, Horan thinks, while Catholics everywhere should be “sharing of ideas and best practices” in a continuing effort to bring cultural change.

Vincenzo Bassi agreed.

His federation is to promote cross-border networking on pro-life issues at a major Rome conference in May, which will stress the importance of “community and the common good” as an antidote to current trends.

“We must propose positive models, lobby professionally and invest human and material resources in pro-life causes,” the FAFCE president told OSV News. “We must also cooperate more closely in supporting our priests and bishops, and proposing solutions offered by Catholic social teaching.”

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