
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 18, 1993                   TAG: 9311240262
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

A LESSON LACKING IN HUMANITY

POPE JOHN Paul II came to America and said a lot of things Americans don't like to hear. That's just fine. As head of the Roman Catholic Church, it's his job to articulate the rules of morality his church expects its followers to embrace.

He knows what he believes, he lives by what he believes, and he demands that those who would follow him accept his beliefs. Nothing wrong with that. He doesn't look at the latest poll results or listen to the ramblings of the discontented on radio call-in shows to calibrate his message to shifts in public opinion. There is an integrity about that; it gives his pronouncements moral weight. Yet it is this very moral weight that makes his complete and firm opposition to any kind of artificial birth control so appallingly inhumane and Jirresponsible. We can understand the church's opposition to abortion. It is based on deeply held beliefs on when a human life is created, and veneration for the soul that, according to church doctrine, exists at the instant of conception.

See microfilm for the rest of the editorial.

by CNB