|
|
|
|
The Story of HopePope John Paul II’s The Gospel of Life (1995) boldly defends the sacredness of human life. This prophetic encyclical appeared in the final years of the twentieth century, an age unmatched by crimes and attacks on human life. In an introductory section, the Holy Father observes that “this proclamation is especially pressing because of the extraordinary increase and gravity of threats to life of individuals and peoples, especially where life is weak and defenseless.” The historic scourges of “poverty, hunger, endemic diseases, violence and war” are now accompanied by new threats of alarming and massive proportions. (n.3) This “signature” encyclical of Pope John Paul II emphatically identifies abortion and euthanasia with the struggle between the “culture of life” and the “culture of death.” It locates these major moral issues within a framework of all threats to human life, including poverty, malnutrition, hunger, and social injustice. The Holy Father’s condemnation echoes forcefully the seminal passage from section 27 of the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution. “Whatever is opposed to life itself … whatever violates the integrity of the human person … whatever insults human dignity …” The Gospel of Life also notes signs of hope in movements dedicated to heightening social awareness in defense of life. The encyclical numbers “a new sensitivity” in opposition to war and “growing public opposition to the death penalty” among the newly emerging signs of hope. (n.27) With regard to the death penalty, Pope John Paul II judges that modern societies have effective means to suppress crime and to protect society without definitively eliminating the chance for criminals to reform. (n.27) Accordingly, Pope John Paul II formulated an exceptionally restrictive position on the ethics of capital punishment. (n.56) His stance urges society not to resort to the “extreme of executing the offender except in the case of absolute necessity.” The text interprets “absolute necessity” as meaning situations “when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society.” In modern developed nations, the Holy Father judges that such cases are “rare, if not practically nonexistent.” (n.56) This position taken in The Gospel of Life was incorporated into the revised edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.(CCC n.2267) The revised edition, the definitive Latin text, reflects a significant modification of church teaching on the morality of capital punishment. Pope John Paul II’s convictions on this issue are clearly not a matter of abstract theological reasoning. His gesture of forgiveness and pardon towards his assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca, was a living out gospel values and more compelling than the logic of discursive thinking. Values lived out and embodied in witness illumine the meaning of arguments stemming from the logic of principles. Witness moves the logic from the “head” to the “heart.” In a symposium on The Gospel of Life held at Georgetown University in November 1995, George Weigel commented that Pope John Paul II has asked nations “to consider whether there are not ways to address the gross and violent violation of rights and of the social order without resort to the juridical use of lethal force.” Weigel views the Holy Father as enlarging the boundaries of the issue because of the imperative to confront false humanisms and the “coarsening of public moral sensibility.” Weigel, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, reads behind the text of the encyclical by sensing the impact of the personal life experience of the Holy Father. The Pope had experienced the herding of political prisoners and Jews to the death camps and the use of lethal force by the Communist regime in Poland. The modern free society must be built on a cultural-moral foundation. The death penalty writes a script of hopelessness into the national story and perpetuates the cycle of violence. Execution as an unjustified act of collective self-defense impoverishes a society’s moral imagination in creating a more just and humane human ecology. In facing the almost apocalyptic struggle “between good and evil, death and life, the ‘culture of death’ and the ‘culture of life’,” The Gospel of Life summons Catholics to recognize “the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life.” (n.28) The title of George Weigel’s monumental biography of Pope John Paul II is an apt summary of his ministry -- Witness to Hope.
|
|
Catholic Conference of Kentucky 1042 Burlington Lane Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
502-875-4345
Last modified: April, 2008 |
502-875-2841 Fax