Assessing and resisting the continued growth of the Culture of Death

Threats to human life are constantly in the news these days. We have wars abroad and shootings in our cities, schools, and shopping malls. Added to that is the ongoing holocaust of abortion and the newer abomination of so-called physician-assisted suicide. The choice between life and death recently appeared on the ballots of some of our states and, unfortunately, death won in the majority.

Pope St. John Paul II’s vision of building a Culture of Life seems more distant now than it was when he first used the term almost 35 years ago. We are no longer only killing babies. Now we are toying with nuclear war while we are killing the elderly, disabled, lonely, mentally ill, and maybe even the homeless and drug addicts.

Where is the fire of hope that Pope St. John Paul II kindled so many years ago?

Abortion

We have a long battle of a much different sort raging here in the United States, and its casualties far exceed those of war. Since 1973, the year of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Decisions, over 66 million babies have died at their mother’s request or by their consent. Worldwide, that number since 1980 is over 1.75 billion! Thankfully, the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v Wade in June 2022, but with all the brouhaha that ensued over abortion access, there were still an estimated 1,037,000 abortions in the U.S. in 2023—the year after the decision was handed down by the court. That’s an increase of 11 percent since 2020.

Overturning Roe was the right thing to do, but it didn’t have the effect of saving babies’ lives as many of us had hoped.

Seventeen states have voted on access to abortion since the Dobbs Decision. Prior to the November 2024 general election, the so-called “right” to abortion prevailed in all seven states where it appeared on a ballot. That tide turned on November 5 in the General Election when protecting babies prevailed in three of the ten states where the “right” to kill them was up for a vote. Those states were Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota, but the margin of victory was far too slim.

Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia

John Paul II often mentioned abortion and euthanasia in the same sentence. He saw it as “one of the more alarming symptoms of the ‘culture of death’, which is advancing above all in prosperous societies, marked by an attitude of excessive preoccupation with efficiency and which sees the growing number of elderly and disabled people as intolerable and too burdensome.” (Evangelium Vitae no. 64) The declaration Dignitas Infinita states that euthanasia is “unique in how it utilizes a mistaken understanding of human dignity to turn the concept of dignity against life itself.” (no. 51) Pope Francis has called it “bad compassion.”

The first time John Paul II used the terms culture of life, and culture of death was in 1991 in his encyclical Centesimus Annus, written to commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of Pope Leo XIII social encyclical Rerum Novarum.

In reflecting on the dangers of consumerism and destruction of the environment, John Paul II reminded us of another “ecology” of even greater importance. He wrote that “too little effort is made to safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic ‘human ecology.’” (No. 38)

The “moral conditions for an authentic human ecology” are hard to find in a culture of death that votes in favor of abortion and authorizes doctors to end people’s lives at their request. A culture of death reveals a culture without hope.

Tragically, in Great Britain, Parliament has recently voted 330 to 275 in favor of legalizing physician-assisted suicide. 76% of the general population and 80% of healthcare workers have indicated that they believe “terminally ill patients should be given the freedom and protection to take the choice,” so the future may already be sealed.

The bishops of England and Wales are calling on Catholics to continue to voice their opposition as the bill moves into committee for more detailed scrutiny. They have repeatedly warned that the “right to die can easily become a duty to die.” We can see how that slippery slope has progressed in other countries that have passed similar legislation, beginning with The Netherlands. It has become the fifth leading cause of death in Canada.

John Paul II, in Centesimus Annus, wrote that we need to “destroy” the social structures that keep us from living in accordance with the truth—things like killing babies in the womb and the sick and elderly—and “replace them with more authentic forms of living in community.” To build forms that “safeguard the moral conditions for an authentic ‘human ecology.’”

But how?

True hope, love, and joy

Voltaire, toward the end of his novel Candide—having been faced with all kinds of horrors—realized the best thing to do was to simply tend one’s own garden. That sounds far too simplistic, but in both gardening and raising children, the young plants we tend to the most grow to be the most productive.

Where is the hope? It is in being attentive to our children, distancing them from the corrupting cultural influences that enter our homes through technology, and nurturing them in faith through good education and prayer. That is the greatest weapon in the battle against the culture of death.

The Lord of Life has already defeated death and those who promote it have already lost. That is our joy, and joy in a family is life-giving. Optimism is also life-giving. It generates hope, from which flows life and love. A culture of death can never survive in the light of that truth.