Gianna Beretta Molla (1922-1962)
Posted on 05/18/2004 6:14:45 AM PDT by NYer
Monday May 17, 2004
ROME, May 17, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In 1990, in Vancouver, a pro-life woman bought a house next to the local abortion mill and named it Gianna House. There she protested the killing going on next door and reached out to mothers in need. Cecelia von Dehn named her ministry to mothers after Gianna Beretta Molla, an Italian laywoman, a doctor and mother who sacrificed her own life to save that of her unborn child. This Sunday, Pope John Paul II canonized Gianna along with five other people.
Gianna Molla was already the mother of three children. While she was pregnant with a fourth, a daughter, doctors discovered a large ovarian cyst and recommended abortion in order to save her life, which she categorically refused. A week after the baby girl was born, on April 28, 1962, Gianna died of ovarian cancer.
This past Sunday Gianna's husband, now 91, and all four of her children, attended the canonization Mass in Rome. The daughter for whom she gave her life, Gianna Emanuela, is a doctor specializing in geriatric medicine.
Gianna Molla has become an icon for the pro-life movement and as such she and the decision to canonize her have come under attack in the media. A CTV.ca story suggests the Roman Catholic Church values the life of unborn children more than the well being of women and quoted well-known abortion and anti-Catholic activist, Joanna Manning, "What this is saying to women that you must carry a child through at any cost. And you will be supremely rewarded if you die by giving birth." The Globe and Mail ran an editorial on May 12, with the subtitle using one of the common euphemisms for abortion, calling St. Gianna a "mother who died rather than end her pregnancy."
However, Fr. Thomas Rosica, who met the Molla family, said in a Globe editorial said there was more to the story than "anti-abortion," and denied that the canonization was merely a political ploy for Catholic opposition to abortion. He said, "The church doesn't beatify or canonize people and use them as arrows or weapons to attack others for error and sin." He also emphasized that Dr. Molla would have been a candidate for sainthood even if she didn't die after refusing to submit to an abortion
St. Gianna he said is a true model for the modern world in her love for her family and in her faith. Fr. Rosica writes, "many in the medical profession have little concern for the dignity and sacredness of every human life; when suffering is seen as a nuisance without any redemptive meaning; when goodness, joy, simplicity and beauty are suspect; Gianna Beretta Molla shows this world, gripped by a culture of death, an alternative gospel way of compelling beauty."
St. Gianna is the first lay woman canonized who was a wife and mother and whose husband was still alive at the time of her death. Many married women have been canonized but they were all widows. Jose, Cardinal Saraiva Martins, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints, said of her, "She lived her marriage and maternity with joy, generosity and absolute fidelity to her mission,"
Father Rosica's Salt and Light TV has made a biographical documentary of St. Gianna.
Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
The secular media will never get it.
"We are being called to heroism by our choice of life on a daily basis."
So now the media gets to decide who is canonized and who isn't? Imagine the uproar if we were to complain about the "canonization" of Martin Luther King by the media.
My neighbor, who was 29, found out she had breast cancer when she was 4 months pregnant. She refused treatment because it would harm her child and didn't start chemo until the day her daughter was born. She died exactly one year later, which was one year ago today.
My deepest and sincerest sympathies for your loss. I will remember her and her child in my prayers. It precisely because of these brave women who place their children's welfare before their own, that Gianna Molla's road to sainthood was accelerated.
May you draw comfort from knowing that your friend is in the warm embrace of our Lord.
Must totally love your sub-title! Definitely agree!
**My neighbor, who was 29, found out she had breast cancer when she was 4 months pregnant. She refused treatment because it would harm her child and didn't start chemo until the day her daughter was born. She died exactly one year later, which was one year ago today.**
This lady sounds like another saint!
In addition to sympathy, don't you feel a heart-bursting sense of PRIDE, of JOY, that some people still have convictions, and will live, or die, by those convictions?
"Greater love hath no man than this..."
Lord God. These women. Their souls must glow like stars.
What love. What courage. May they always be remembered.
Lord. The scale of this... compare the sacrifice, the unselfish love of these women for their children, with the self centered narcississm of the pro-death crowd.
Beautiful. Amazing. Divine.
This woman was indeed a personal of great moral courage and saintly character.
While I applaude her courage and conviction, and while I oppose abortion as murder, if faced with the decision to choose between my wife and an unborn child, I would unhesitatingly choose my wife.
Abortion is indefensible except to save the life of the mother, in case of rape or incest, or to prevent a monstrous birth which would lead a life of constant pain or die shortly after term anyway.
The above exceptions are rare and the overwhelming majority of abortions performed in the U.S. are to prevent the consequences of an immoral act, to prevent "inconvenience" to the parents or parent, or for other totally trivial and inexcusable reasons.
Abortion is the fruit, for the most part, of rampant immorality and a lifetsyle which views sex as a form of indoor athletics instead of a very special intimate act between two people, a man and a woman, joined in marriage.
It is the bitter fruit of the "Playboy Philosophy".
What interests me is that the sainthood process took so quickly. She died 42 years ago. A movement to canonize her was only of recent vintage.
I am aware of the process--none of this is discussed in the article. Won't go into it, but the beatification/canonization of this woman is very unusual, and I doubt JP II would go along with something "political" in the open sense.
There is a story here, but it isn't whas one assumes.
Thinking about this is giving me chills. It's so heartening to know that there are such great people.
Except for the life of the mother, I disagree. In the latter cases, you are placing some other principle above the right to life, which is the primary right.
That's why the life-of-the-mother case is the only legitimate exception, because you're trading life for life.
It takes tremendous faith and enormous strength of character to make and accept such a selfless decision. I wish you could have seen (can't find a picture on the web) the image of her daughter, Gianna, assisting her father as he went up to receive the pope's blessing. St. Gianna's son is a priest; he concelebrated the mass with the Holy Father.
Not everyone is called to this level of spirituality. In the case of this family, it reflects their deep devotion and total commitment to life.
Lets say you are driving down the street, and my father's elderly mother is slowly ambling across. My father sees that you aren't watching where you are going and don't see his mother, and so are bound to hit her at a high rate of speed with your car and kill her.
It would seem you support his right to "choose" to shoot you or not in order to save the life of his mother.
What is legitimate about that?
This case is simply refusing to handle the risks that come with living as a woman by commiting murder. If a woman cannot handle the thought that she might run some infinitessimally small risk of dying by becoming pregnant, let her remain chaste.
Life is dangerous. Some things more than others. Avoiding danger does not justify murder.
What are you saying? That some people are called to murder? That refraining from murdering your unborn child is "heroic"?
St. Gianna did nothing more than what was expected of her and of every Catholic mother facing the same situation.
Hermann, you may have won at Teutoberger Wald, but that analogy doesn't hold water.
Would YOU choose to save the life of an unborn child over that of your own wife??
To argue that kind of position is like saying the Second Amendment gives me the right to build a nuclear bomb ni my backyard.
Yes. So would my wife. I would give my own life for my children if need be too.
To argue that kind of position is like saying the Second Amendment gives me the right to build a nuclear bomb ni my backyard.
I believe you do have this right. However, you would need a letter of marque and reprisal from the US Congress to actually deploy and use such a devise for purposes of warfare. There are obviously no currently known peaceful uses of atomic weaponry, although some have been suggested for large-scale excavating.
I'm thinking of cases like ectopic pregnancies, where removing the fetus to save the live of the mother kills the fetus. It's the principle of double-effect.
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