March 25, 2025, the Solemnity of the Annunciation, marks the 30th anniversary of St. Pope John Paul II’s great encyclical Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life).
This prophetic work, one of several encyclicals that focus on the key theme of anthropology, has lost none of its intellectual vigor or deep wisdom. The Pope sought to blunt the rapid growth of the abortion culture that obscures the truth about the sanctity of human life and the dignity of all human beings. It is a culture hostile to God and the order of creation because it presumes that a baby in the womb is a mere possession that can be disposed of for pragmatic reasons.
But abortion is only one atrocity that constitutes the malignant “culture of death,” which is shaped by a dehumanizing indifference to the weak and the vulnerable in the name of choice or personal autonomy. Accordingly, the Pope also highlighted society’s perverse tendency to embrace euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.
In response to society’s wayward path the Pope offered this synthesis of faith and reason to defend a simple moral principle: we “can never justify the deliberate killing of an innocent human being” either as an end or as a means to some other end (58). The absolute inviolability of innocent human life is a moral truth that is taught in Sacred Scripture, consistently upheld in the Church’s tradition, and frequently reaffirmed by the Magisterium.
The Pope also used this occasion to reassert the Church’s teaching on contraception, reminding readers that abortion and contraception are the fruit of the same poisonous tree. Both are typically rooted in a hedonistic mentality that refuses to accept responsibility for sexual behavior. Procreation is regarded as a hindrance to “personal fulfillment,” and new life becomes an enemy to be avoided at all costs. As a result, abortion becomes the “decisive response to failed contraception” (13).
When this encyclical first appeared in 1995 at the height of John Paul II’s papacy, it was greeted with widespread praise and approbation in most Catholic circles. However, progressive moral theologians with a penchant for proportionalism were still reeling from Veritatis Splendor, and so they were less than enthusiastic with the Pope’s moral absolutism. The secular media, of course, was apathetic, skeptical, and even sometimes disdainful. According to one New York Times columnist, the Pope’s “moral certitude spooks the baptized and unbaptized alike, for it seems to deny the moral ambiguity that is inherent in a pluralistic society, the conflicting ideas of right and wrong that come from so many voices.”
However, the absolute prohibitions against certain evil acts, based on God’s commandments and the natural law, constitute the backbone of morality. Softening their moral force only opens the door to subjectivism. If these exceptionless principles are reduced to general “guidelines” or “exhortations” that warrant exceptions all the time, we inevitably end up with a form of situation ethics. The moral terrain now becomes fraught with uncertainty and ambiguity, as moral clarity is displaced by moral chaos.
Arguably, the most provocative part of this encyclical is its opening chapters that present the causal factors behind the explosive rise of the culture of death, this callous indifference to human life.
According to John Paul II, at the heart of this tragedy is a dogmatic secularism, “the eclipse of the sense of God and of man” (21). In an aggressive secular society, many of those who profess belief in God are practical atheists because they live “as if God did not exist” (22). The Italian philosopher, Augusto Del Noce (1910-1989), referred to this mentality as “irreligion,” characterized by a complete disinterest in the question of theism and a “relativism so absolute that all ideas are viewed as relative to the psychological and social situation of those who affirm them.”
According to Del Noce, with irreligion also comes “the bourgeois spirit.” One’s moral choices are now determined by the category of utility: nothing is sacred and everything becomes desecrated. Thus, the loss of any intimation of the provident Creator’s wise design allows many people to reduce human life to a biological phenomenon that can become the object of moral calculus. John Paul II explained that when we lose sight of the mystery of God, we also lose sight of the ineffable mystery and dignity of our own being. Thanks to our “metaphysical ignorance,” we forget that life is more than a biological reality. It is a gift of the Creator who infuses the spiritual soul at the moment of conception. And, without faith, we ignore the transcendent truth that every human being is made in the image of God.
Stripped of the light of faith and any sapiential dimension, moral reasoning is based on pragmatic empiricism rather than respect for natural laws anchored in the foundation of our immutable human nature. The sanctity of human life is no longer an absolute moral value since people assume for themselves the power to create and affirm their personal values. They craft their own moral universe in which God is denied His rightful dominion over life.
What progress has been made over these last thirty years since the appearance of Evangelium Vitae?
Regrettably, the culture of death remains entrenched in the United States despite the overturning of Roe v. Wade. New technologies like the abortion pill now make the practice of abortion far more accessible. Some states have rushed to enshrine liberal abortion laws and any challenge to those laws is immediately dismissed as a subversive threat to “reproductive freedom.” Many people, with their reason hopelessly darkened, continue to zealously defend abortion as the optimal solution for unwanted children.
In the Catholic Church, recent trends are also not so salutary. For example, under the guidance of Pope Francis, Archbishop Paglia has reconstructed the Pontifical Academy for Life. This Academy was founded by Pope St. John Paul II to promote and preserve Catholic teachings on the dignity of human life. But in 2016 Pope Francis modified the Academy’s mandate and broadened its mission to focus on a “human ecology,” that “recovers the original balance of Creation between the human person and the entire universe.”
Pope Francis eliminated the requirement that members must be committed to the defense of human life in conformity with Catholic doctrine. He has also appointed to the Academy several individuals who are ambivalent about abortion. The appointments of Mariana Mazzucato and Roberto Dell’Oro were particularly controversial because both of them have made public statements supporting legalized abortion.
The Academy for Life also now seems to be the source of heterodoxy. In 2022, the Academy published the Theological Ethics of Life based on a seminar it sponsored during the Fall of 2021. In the introduction, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia claimed that this book intended to “introduce a paradigm shift,” that seemed to signal a movement away from moral absolutes. This book directly challenges Church teaching on several key issues, such as its prohibition of contraception. According to Theological Ethics, for two spouses, generally open to life, but not ready for children at a particular point in time, “the wise choice will be implemented by appropriately evaluating all the possible techniques in reference to their specific situation and obviously excluding abortive ones.”
And Paglia himself has also equivocated on the issue of physician-assisted suicide. “Personally, I would not practice suicide assistance,” he said, “but I understand that legal mediation may be the greatest good concretely possible under the conditions we find ourselves in.” This compromising mentality is quite at odds with the principled reasoning of Evangelium Vitae. Bishop Robert Barron and others have expressed concern that these and other statements coming from the Academy may indicate a steady drift toward the menace of proportionalism.
But John Paul II’s encyclical should serve as a constant reminder that there is no room for ambiguity, equivocation, or proportionate reasoning when it comes to the defense of human life and the need to treat all human beings, including those yet to be born, as persons entitled to basic rights and justice. Therefore, in this age of liquid modernity we must bear in mind that “beneath all changes there are many realities which do not change and which have their ultimate foundation in Christ, who is the same yesterday and today” (Gaudium et Spes, 10). Those realities with their foundation in Christ include the sanctity of human life along with the procreative purpose of marriage.
What’s necessary is the humble submission to the truth of creation and the natural order, even in the midst of an eclipse of the sacred. Only in this way can we do justice toward each other and the Creator.
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Spinello asks, and answers: “What progress has been made over these last thirty years since the appearance of Evangelium Vitae?”
As for future “progress,” the waiting world takes note of the post-synodal Study Group #9 on “hot-button” issues, charged with developing a potpourri of ““theological criteria and synodal methodologies for shared discernment of controversial doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues.”
I meditated, “discerned” on that one, and solved it. While “discerning,” I knocked over the bible on my night table, and there it was. Just happened to open to the Sermon on the Mount.
You have to be a backwardist to be a forwardist.
Reading “Evangelium Vitae” was as instrumental to my reversion to Catholicism as my reading of Franz Werfel’s “The Song of Bernadette” and a dream I had of that saint shortly afterwards. I also recall, after reading the encyclical, a newspaper account of a priest criticizing the pope’s “simplistic” division between “a culture of life” and “a culture of death.” The criticism was made by a Jesuit. (Why am I tempted to append a cynical “natch!” to the end of the previous sentence?)
Very well said! Pope John Paul II’s supposedly “simplistic” reference to a culture of life and a culture of death has its origins in First-Century Apostolic teachings, most notably in a document known as “the Didache” (the Teachings).
The very first chapter of the Didache places before the new Christian an immediate (and very important) choice between “the Way of Life” and “the Way of Death”:
“There are two ways, one of life and one of death, but a great difference between the two ways. The way of life, then, is this: First, you shall love God who made you; second, love your neighbor as yourself, and do not do to another what you would not want done to you. And of these sayings the teaching is this: Bless those who curse you, and pray for your enemies, and fast for those who persecute you. For what reward is there for loving those who love you? Do not the Gentiles do the same? But love those who hate you, and you shall not have an enemy. Abstain from fleshly and worldly lusts. If someone strikes your right cheek, turn to him the other also, and you shall be perfect. If someone impresses you for one mile, go with him two. If someone takes your cloak, give him also your coat.” Immediately one sees, in the above-quoted passage, a paraphrase of parts of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.
But the Didache goes on in in its very next chapter to expound on its way of life teaching, and adds (inter alia): “thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born.” See https://glanier.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/abortion-in-the-scrolls-and-the-didache/#:~:text=One%20notable%20feature%20of%20the%20Didache%20is%20that,ἐν%20φθορᾷ%20%5Bsee%20note%202%5D%2C%20οὐδὲ%20γεννηθὲν%20ἀποκτενεῖς
Thank you for reminding us that there is no room for ambiguity, equivocation, or proportionate reasoning when it comes to the defense of human life and the need to treat all human beings. Nor is there room for ambiguity, equivocation, or proportionate reasoning when it comes to the defense of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, the Sacrament of Penance.
No amount of Synodaling can change or dismiss Sacred Scripture, Tradition and previous faithful pontificates.
Happy Lent!
Archbishop Paglia’s response to assisted suicide, “but I understand that legal mediation may be the greatest good concretely possible under the conditions we find ourselves in”, is the depreciation of the greater moral good to the utilitarian practical good.
Is not this concrete, ‘practical’ mindset replacing the more committed, often difficult spiritual response within the entire spectrum of morality from end of life care to abortion and homosexuality? As in Ch 8 Amoris Laetitia, the nemesis of Evangelium Vitae, the missing factor is grace, and with the gift of grace given to all who seek God’s will with faith is the will to make the effort. The cross and the struggle to fight in its shadow [from Therese de Lisieux] is the revealed, and exclusive path to salvation.
Spinello’s pointed study of our present deleterious moral trend is highlighted with the continued calibre of appointments to policy making, “The appointments of Mariana Mazzucato and Roberto Dell’Oro” in effect advocates by their support of legalized abortion. Paglia’s cherished gift to His Holiness of a naked Christ carrying a naked Judas strikes the mind like a bolt out of Hell. There was dark cause [see Larry Chapp blog] for this pontificate’s demolition of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Rome.
The hermeneutical challenges posed by Amoris Laetitia are significant.
In this document, Pope Francis does not directly answer the pressing question of whether Holy Communion may be given to divorced and remarried individuals. Instead, he responds with a conditional “it could be in certain cases” (note 351). This formulation does not establish an imperative norm but rather suggests a possibility. A genuine norm is expressed in the imperative, not the conditional.
Predictably, modernists have interpreted the text in their favor, yet the Pope’s words remain as they stand.
It is important to clarify that the question of whether a Pope can allow Communion for divorced and remarried individuals is not a doctrinal issue—touching on the essence of marriage or the internal conditions for receiving Communion—but a pastoral one, in which a Pope may alter what a predecessor has established.
Note 351 undeniably marks a shift. However, it does not constitute a binding norm contrary to Saint John Paul II’s teaching in Familiaris Consortio (n. 84), but rather a statement of the possibility of a different norm. A mere possibility carries no binding force—only a formally promulgated law does, which Pope Francis does not enact. Thus, those seeking clarity and certainty need only adhere to Saint John Paul II’s norm, which remains fully formal and binding.
It is also worth noting the distinct perspectives of Saint John Paul II and Pope Francis that underpin their differing approaches. Pope Wojtyła’s reasoning is based on the external, objective, and juridical reality of the couple’s status—i.e., their public irregularity and apparent disregard for the rule of marital fidelity. From this, he concludes that such couples are in a state of mortal sin and therefore unable to receive Communion.
Pope Francis, by contrast, evaluates the couple’s spiritual condition from a different angle. He suggests that, despite their irregular status, some couples may still be in a state of grace. In note 301, he writes: “It is no longer possible to say that all those who find themselves in some so-called ‘irregular’ situation live in a state of mortal sin, deprived of sanctifying grace.”
John Paul II deduces the state of sin from the objective fact of an irregular situation—two adulterers remain two adulterers. Francis, however, allows for the possibility that, despite this irregularity, they may still be in grace. His language reflects this shift: he places the term irregular in quotation marks, while John Paul II takes the external situation as sufficient proof of moral disorder.
The pastoral consequences follow logically: for John Paul II, all those in an irregular situation are excluded from Communion; for Francis, it would be necessary to distinguish between those who remain in grace and those who do not. But how? Who makes this judgment—the confessor? The couple itself? Can we dispense with a universal norm and instead rely on an arduous case-by-case discernment?
The Church’s legal norms exist precisely because we cannot infallibly judge whether a person is in God’s grace, though we may presume it. There is neither lack of mercy nor pharisaism in the Church’s discipline, which, by forbidding certain practices, safeguards the external order of the community without encroaching on the internal order of souls before God. Rather, it presupposes, protects, and upholds it.
If I may express a preference, I find Saint John Paul II’s position more coherent than that of Amoris Laetitia, which merely suggests a possibility rather than articulating a clear directive.
Ultimately, however, Christian marriage is called to be a sign of the union of Christ and the Church, as prefigured in salvation history—most perfectly in the Holy Spouses, Mary and Joseph.
Yes Paolo. If one were intentioned to incrementally dissolve Church doctrine without appearing to assume responsibility it would be precisely by means of undetermined suggestion.
Have you ever met a man who left his wife and children and took up with another woman, whom you know well enough to listen to through many conversations, who wasn’t telling himself a Mount Everest pile of lies?
I can leave my car in a no-parking zone to help an injured person on the road. But in such complex, diversified, often intricate, obscure and indecipherable situations, such as those of irregular couples, perhaps with their own children or those of the previous spouse, with doubts as to whether the previous marriage was valid or not, where lies easily mix with sincerity, appearances hide reality, where ignorance of the law and the dynamics of passions come into play, with different economic-work-health situations case by case, with a previous history to be investigated and clarified, isn’t there a risk of overlooking some circumstance and finding oneself in a quagmire from which one cannot get out? Except by making drastic or peremptory, simplistic and forced falsely reassuring judgments?
I have thought about the deliberate desecration, or more benignly stated, reconstruction of the Pontifical Academy for Life. was an action that revealed the true intentions of those involved.
It would be different if gospel of Jesus Christ painted the world in shades of grey. The Savior had a clear distinction between right and wrong regarding the sanctity of all life. To the leaders of the Church who oppose Tradition and the clear teachings of the Church, I would say Amen to their priesthood. They have strayed from the path and now follow the ways of man. Their actions should be expunged and the path set right again in the Church as soon as feasible.
Francis/Bergoglio, interview in August 2013 (just 4 months after being elected in March 2013):
“We CANNOT insist only on issues related to ABORTION, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is NOT possible. I HAVE NOT SPOKEN MUCH about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, BUT it is NOT NECESSARY to TALK about these issues ALL THE TIME.”
A CATHOLIC DIRGE
What use are truths upon a shelf,
Though pure, infallible, and bright,
If “pastoral charity” itself
Should cast them fading into night?
If washed away, their strength besmirched,
No voice to guard, no hand to clutch,
Then lifeblood of the Church is searched
In vain—it does not matter much.