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Human Life |
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While all God’s creation is good, human life has a special dignity and sanctity. For this reason one should never intentionally destroy human life, but should protect and enhance it at every stage and in every condition. The special status of human life is based on two truths. First, human beings are set apart from the rest of creation because they are specially created in the image and likeness of God. The Book of Genesis says this directly (Gn 1:26-27) and also expresses it symbolically in its account of man’s creation. God brought forth all the rest of creation by a simple word, but fashioned man with his own hands and “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Gn 2:7). Human nature is blessed with free will, so that we can receive God’s love and choose to love God and others in return. Second, human beings have an eternal destiny, because all are called to eternal life with Christ. By assuming our human nature, Christ has united himself with every human person (cf. Vatican Council II, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes, 22), so that “rejection of human life, in whatever form that rejection takes, is really a rejection of Christ” (Pope John Paul II, encyclical The Gospel of Life, Evangelium Vitae, 104 [1995]). Because the horizon of human life transcends this earthly existence, disrespect toward human life here and now has eternal significance. To say human life has dignity means it has intrinsic, and not only instrumental, value: “Man is the only creature on earth that God has wanted for its own sake” (Gaudium et Spes, 24). Human life is good in and of itself, and not only good for other purposes. To say human life has sanctity is to emphasize that each human being has been specially willed into existence by God to enjoy a loving relationship with him, and therefore should be treated with reverence. St. Paul says we should treat the human body as “a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19). To mistreat bodily life on the pretext of serving some higher purpose is a kind of desecration. Respect and reverence for human beings demand unconditional respect for human life, because life is our first and most basic gift from a loving God and the condition for enjoying his other gifts. As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said in its 1980 Declaration on Euthanasia: “Human life is the basis of all goods, and is the necessary source and condition of every human activity and of all society” (I). We cannot pursue other human goods or achieve worthwhile goals if we are not first assured of our very existence. The Right to Life • From the foregoing it is clear that when we speak of human rights that demand respect from individuals and society, we must speak first of the right to life. The 1974 Declaration on Procured Abortion of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says: “The first right of the human person is his life. He has other goods and some are more precious, but this one is fundamental – the condition of all the others. Hence it must be protected above all others. . . . It is not recognition by another that constitutes this right. This right is antecedent to its recognition; it demands recognition and it is strictly unjust to refuse it” (11). Because this right is inherent in simply being a member of the human family, it must belong equally to every human being. Thus: “Any discrimination based on the various stages of life is no more justified than any other discrimination. The right to life remains complete in an old person, even one greatly weakened; it is not lost by one who is incurably sick. The right to life is no less to be respected in the small infant just born than in the mature person. In reality, respect for human life is called for from the time that the process of generation begins” (Declaration on Procured Abortion, 12). This right does not belong more to some than to others. “As far as the right to life is concerned, every innocent human being is absolutely equal to all others” (Evangelium Vitae, 57). Human beings are not equal in their strength or their ability to defend and advance their own right to life. But this only means that the strong, and society as a whole, have an obligation to protect and assist the weak and helpless in defending their right to life (cf. CCC 1935-1937). Human life is therefore also a social good; its protection is a basic purpose for which societies and legal systems are established. “When the Church declares that unconditional respect for the right to life of every innocent person – from conception to natural death – is one of the pillars on which every civil society stands, she wants simply to promote a human state. A state which recognizes the defense of the fundamental rights of the human person, especially of the weakest, as its primary duty” (Evangelium Vitae, 101). Negative and Positive Precepts • The sanctity of life has both negative and positive implications for human action. Negatively, we must not attack or demean human life. First and foremost is the divine commandment against homicide: “You shall not kill” (Ex 20:13; Dt 5:17). This command forbids the directly intended taking of one’s own life or anyone else’s, regardless of the stage or condition of his or her life. As the Second Vatican Council observed, however, human life is attacked or demeaned in many other ways as well: “The varieties of crime are numerous: all offenses against life itself, such as murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and willful suicide; all violations of the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture, undue psychological pressures; all offenses against human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children, degrading working conditions where men are treated as mere tools for profit rather than free and responsible persons: all these and the like are criminal: they poison civilization; and they debase the perpetrators more than the victims and militate against the honor of the Creator” (Gaudium et Spes, 27). In recent decades, the Church has warned against the devaluing of human life reflected in policies favoring capital punishment, and has urged governments wherever possible to limit themselves to “bloodless means” for defending the innocent against aggressors (CCC 2267; Evangelium Vitae, 56). The Church also has spoken against the misuse of modern technology to attack life or to treat human beings as mere objects, whether that technology lies in the realm of nuclear or biological warfare, genetic experimentation, or reproductive medicine. These negative precepts against destroying or demeaning life establish “the absolute limit beneath which free individuals cannot lower themselves” if they are to respect life; but such precepts also free us to say yes to life in every sphere of human activity (Evangelium Vitae, 75). There is a positive obligation “to promote life actively, and to develop particular ways of thinking and acting which serve life” (Evangelium Vitae, 76). In this regard, Pope John XXIII listed among basic human rights “the right to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means which are necessary and suitable for the proper development of life. These means are primarily food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, and finally the necessary social services” (encyclical Peace on Earth, Pacem in Terris, 11 [1963]). The principle of the dignity of life therefore grounds a program of active concern for the conditions of human life, beginning with people who are most disadvantaged: “As you did it to one of these the least of my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40). Since each person has a right to necessities of life such as food, shelter, and basic health care, those with abundant means have a responsibility to share their abundance with those who need help to survive and lead lives of dignity. While there may be legitimate differences of opinion as to how best to serve these needs in a given society, deliberate failure to help provide basic assistance shows a morally culpable indifference to human life. “Feed the man dying of hunger,” said one medieval maxim, “for if you do not feed him you have killed him.”
A Consistent Ethic • Some recent Church documents, especially those issued by the Catholic bishops of the United States, seek to unite these negative and positive precepts in what is called a consistent ethic of life. Such an ethic does not equate all norms on respect for life or assert that all are of equal gravity; still less does it insist that each individual devote equal time to all arenas in which human life is threatened. But it does highlight the way in which respect for life undergirds a wide variety of obligations to our fellow human beings. It emphasizes, for example, that even in meeting the positive obligation to defend innocent life from attack, we must not directly intend to destroy the life of the attacker but must only do what is necessary to defend life. To Catholics who may be tempted to accept only part of the Church’s witness to life – for example, its rejection of abortion or its concern for the poor – this ethic suggests that consistency demands respect for both concerns. A consistent commitment to human life appreciates the need for both the negative and positive precepts discussed above. A commitment to negative norms against taking life, divorced from an active commitment to promote and enhance God’s gift of life, can become legalistic and hardhearted; a charitable impulse to serve the needy, divorced from the norms that forbid us to destroy life to serve our goals, becomes an abomination. Negative precepts, such as the norm against direct killing of the innocent, are absolute in a way that does not apply to positive precepts. Such negative precepts define certain acts that are incompatible with God’s law by their very nature, so that we could never turn them into ways of serving God’s plan for human fulfillment. These norms apply always and everywhere, “semper et pro semper,” establishing a basic minimum by which to judge our respect for life. The positive precept to promote and enhance human life is also universal, but is not absolute in quite the same way because it is open-ended: There is no “maximum” to our positive love of God and neighbor (cf. Pope John Paul II, encyclical The Splendor of Truth, Veritatis Splendor, 52 [1993]). Moreover, what will best promote and enhance life in a given case may depend on circumstances, and in doing so one must not violate other people’s rights or other moral norms. In particular, the positive obligation to protect and preserve life should not be pursued to the point where it interferes with man’s spiritual good. Earthly life is the first and most basic human good, but it is not the highest such good – eternal life in God is (cf. Evangelium Vitae, 2). Therefore, seriously ill persons are not obliged to submit to life-sustaining treatment that would impose needless suffering on them and interfere with their peace of mind and spiritual well-being. And the Church has always honored martyrs who remained faithful to the Gospel, although it would mean losing their lives (cf. Evangelium Vitae, 47). Their faithful witness, despite threats of death, is radically different from suicide, which involves the directly intended destruction of life. One does not show disrespect to earthly life by recognizing that faithfulness to God’s word is even more important. Albeit in a less dramatic way than martyrs, all Christians are called to fulfill their lives by dying to themselves, forgetting their selfish interests, and serving the needs of others. “Life finds its center, its meaning and its fulfillment when it is given up” (Evangelium Vitae, 51). Modern Debates • The major modern objections to the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of life are of three kinds. The most radical objection is the claim that human life should be subordinated to the dictates of individual human choice. This claim is sometimes put in theological terms: If life is a gift from God, we should be allowed to do what we deem best with that gift or even return it to the giver. This argument forgets that earthly life is the condition for our making free choices about other human goods, so that a free choice to destroy life undermines the good of freedom as well. Earthly life is very different from any ordinary gift we could possess, manipulate, or give away; this life is our own bodily reality as human persons. It is absurd to speak of ourselves as owners of this gift, as if we could somehow separate ourselves from it and declare ourselves its masters. Rather, the gift of life is the gift of ourselves – a gift over which we are called to exercise careful stewardship, not absolute dominion. Such mastery or dominion belongs only to God (cf. 1 Sm 2:6; 2 Kgs 5:7). A second objection rests on a dualistic idea of the human person that denies inherent value to the human body, arguing that only the mind, spirit, or will has such value. In this view, people’s bodily lives need not always be respected or even protected from direct attack, especially when their higher mental or spiritual activity is undeveloped, diminished, or lost. This approach poses a serious threat to the lives of some of the most helpless human beings – the unborn, the mentally retarded or senile, the comatose, and the dying. Its theological error lies in denying the radical unity of the human person, composed of both body and soul. This unity is such that the body shares in the dignity of the image of God, and the soul can be considered the very “form” of the body (CCC 364-365). In the Christian view, bodily life and health should not be promoted at all costs, to the detriment of moral and spiritual goods; but life and health should always be inviolable from direct attack, and always have inherent value as the life and health of a human person. Bodily life must never be dismissed as simply “a complex of organs, functions and energies to be used according to the sole criteria of pleasure and efficiency” (Evangelium Vitae, 23). A third objection concedes that the sanctity of life is a noble religious ideal, but denies that it can have meaning or real impact in a secular, pluralistic society. This approach dismisses efforts to protect innocent life in law and culture as mere impositions of denominational belief. The Church forcefully rejects this claim. The inherent goodness of human life and its importance as the condition for enjoying all other human goods and human rights are truths of natural law that can be grasped by all people of good will (cf. Evangelium Vitae, 101). The need to protect the lives of all human beings can also be appreciated by reflecting on historical situations in which some category or group of human persons was denied a right to life. Such exclusions of some humans from society’s protection have inevitably been condemned by history as shameful and unjust. In insisting on the defense of all human life from conception to natural death, the Church seeks to promote not so much a more “Christian” society as a society more truly human (cf. CCC 2273). To be sure, the sanctity of life is also of great significance in Catholic doctrine. What Pope John Paul II calls “the Gospel of life” affirms natural law principles on the dignity of life, while transcending them in a vision of humanity’s special role in God’s redemptive plan. There is here an important link between the Church’s teaching on matters of faith, on creation and the Incarnation, and her teaching on morals. The Holy Father has therefore called the Gospel of life “an integral part of that Gospel which is Jesus Christ himself” (Evangelium Vitae, 78). See: Abortion; Absolute Moral Norms; Body and Soul; Capital Punishment; Deterrence; Euthanasia; Genetic Experimentation; Health Care; Homicide; Human Experimentation; Human Person; Moral Principles, Christian; Natural Law; Reproductive Technologies; Social Doctrine; Suicide; War.
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