Pro-life on all fronts
The Catholic Church professes an immutable belief in the sanctity of life, a principle that bridges doctrinal, theological and philosophical friction within the Church.
And yet, we face an uphill battle persuading the wider society, even some fellow Catholics, of the virtues of the Church’s teachings on life ethics.
Indeed, often it is a hard sell. Some arguments opposing the Catholic position certainly appear compelling: embryonic stem cell research that can produce astonishing cures (it hasn’t as yet, while adult stem cells, which the Church approves of, have), or euthanasia as an alternative to undignified and agonising suffering (the Church condemns active euthanasia, but allows certain passive forms).
In some instances the dissent comes from those whose pro-life credentials are otherwise impeccable, for example on the question of capital punishment.
While the Catechism of the Catholic Church allows that under extreme circumstances capital punishment may be permissible, in reality the loopholes have all but been closed.
Pope John Paul insists that the Church’s pro-life philosophy, which he outlined comprehensively in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium vitae (The Gospel of Life), is absolute. By the pope’s logic, one cannot be pro-life and support the death penalty at the same time.
The Church rightly emphasises abortion as a substantial area of concern. It is logical that the deliberate killing of the human foetus is irreconcilable with a pro-life philosophy. In the Church’s eyes, abortion is not merely a medical procedure (as the pro-choice lobby would have it), but the killing of a human life.
And yet, it is not easy to refute charges that the question of abortion sometimes overshadows all over issues concerning born life unduly. The scale of injunctions against those who violate the Church’s teachings on the sanctity of life points to a certain preoccupation.
Why should a woman who has had an abortion incur automatic excommunication – regardless of the circumstances surrounding her decision – while those who kill similarly vulnerable born life do not? Why should a woman forced into having an abortion by, say, an abusive husband be automatically excommunicated, but not a mass murderer? And why should Catholic politicians who support pro-abortion legislation risk a ban from receiving Communion, while a genocidal tyrant does not?
Abortion is without a doubt a priority, but it cannot be the sole litmus test on life issues.
The Catechism teaches: “We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of.”
This applies as much to the unborn as it does to the ill or indeed to the criminal.
The extent to which we Catholics maintain a pro-life ethic is not measured by our advocacy for the most vulnerable life – the foetus – but by how we stand up for the most contemptible forms of human life – the rapist and the murderer.
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