by Joe Stoutzenberger

In the mid-1970s, the U.S. Catholic bishops proposed that Catholic high schools teach a course on “Respect Life.” I recall receiving materials on various topics that would be included in such a course: war and peace, capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, poverty and hunger, gun violence, and even environmental degradation. The program reflected what Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago would later call “a consistent ethic of life,” or the “seamless garment” approach to affirming the sacredness of life. Some Catholic theologians and philosophers opposed such a broad-based approach to respect for life. They believed that Christianity, and Western civilization itself, were under attack primarily from a few principal problems, specifically abortion, euthanasia, genetic engineering, and acceptance of homosexuality. Linking these issues with capital punishment and world hunger resulted in diverting attention from these pivotal problems. Making abortion and euthanasia illegal should be front and center in the agenda of the Catholic church, not eliminating the death penalty or anti-poverty programs.

A Respect for All Life

Cardinal Bernardin saw things differently. He believed that respect for life had to include respect for all life; otherwise, the term is meaningless. In 1995, Pope John Paul II wrote an encyclical echoing this understanding of respecting life. He contrasted a “culture of death” with a “culture of life.” If all human beings are not valued and cherished as God intended, then society’s entire culture needs to be replaced with a culture of life. A culture of death is not a matter of just one issue. Care for the unborn, what most people associate with the Respect Life movement, cannot be separated from care for human life in all stages and in all circumstances. Dismissing certain people as expendable is an affront to life. To affirm this message, whenever a person was condemned to death in the United States, Pope John Paul would write to the state’s governor pleading for the sentence to be commuted. He reminded us that society cannot call itself respectful of life if there are malnourished children not cared for and immigrants who are mistreated. Violence, in all forms, is a failure of respect for life.

Catholic theologian Thomas Berry uses different terms to describe the transformation that needs to take place to affirm the dignity and preciousness of all life. He calls for a “new story” to replace the “old story.” The new story he describes is actually an ancient, he would say, original story. The old story views individuals as separate from everyone else and human beings as separate and even “above” the rest of creation. The new story is attentive to the life force that emerged from creation and is manifest in the dazzling diversity found among human beings and other life forms. A culture of death, the old story, does not prioritize the preciousness of all life in policies and practices. Underlying causes of violence are left unaddressed. The new story that Thomas Berry advocates for seeks alternatives that support and nourish life. Both the pope and Berry propose that when we truly pay attention, we can’t help but realize the interconnectedness of all life. All life is family and should be treated as such.

All life is awe-inspiring, but its beauty can be lost when a culture of death prevails.

Some years ago, the “Sixty Minutes” TV program brought a woman from Nepal to the United States. She had lived all of her life in a remote village, so the program’s producers took her to a bustling shopping mall filled with high-end stores to see how she would react. She was bored to death with all the fancy clothes and shiny objects until she entered a pet store, where she came to life petting the various animals there. That episode reflects in simple fashion why Thomas Berry sees the life-affirming new story as more fundamental to human experience than a culture that values things over persons, inanimate objects over animated life. All life is awe-inspiring, but its beauty can be lost when a culture of death prevails. In the book of Deuteronomy, God lays out the choice: I set before you life or death…Choose life, so that you and your children may live.