Two significant anniversaries arrived for both the Catholic Church and the world over the past few weeks.
April second marked the 20th anniversary of the death of the now sainted Pope John Paul II. That date marked the end of the pontificate of the Polish pope whose long reign began with universal surprise on 16 October, 1978 after the short term of the smiling Italian, Pope John Paul I.
St John Paul II’s impact on the church remains monumental. Whether it was his global pilgrimages, his profound teachings, his fresh initiatives or his urgent sense of his own mission towards the second millennium since Christ’s birth—his influence transformed the lives of many of the faithful.
Over the last months, the secular and religious media has unwittingly but fittingly kept a visual reminder of St John Paul II’s witness to human dignity in the face of debility and illness.
During Pope Francis’ long hospitalisation and illness, images of the striking statue of St John Paul II which stands outside the Gemelli Hospital have been shown again and again.
The “Be Not Afraid” figure by the Tuscan sculptor Stefano Pierotti captures memorably the elderly former pope, bent and suffering with his Parkinson’s disease forging strongly ahead with his crozier as if against a powerful wind.
The second notable and related anniversary, marked on this year’s Solemnity of the Annunciation, is 30 years since the promulgation of the former pope’s landmark document, the encyclical letter, The Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae).
The encyclical is vast in scope and size and an undaunted statement about the inviolability of human life and dignity, much like the “Be Not Afraid” statue.
It covers four major chapters, 105 paragraphs and over 45,000 words. The document breaks new ground by being a papal one-stop “bioethical” teaching document drawing together biblical narrative and sources, Catholic moral theology and John Paul II’s original synthesis of social teaching and his sense of the providential interplay of grace, revelation and human decisions in culture.
It offers a unique “theo-dramatic” reading of fraught personal and social issues and is a showcase of the church’s response to the value and the threats to human life. In the church’s eyes these include not only intentional killing and murder, but slavery, violence, war, deportation and prostitution. (EV no. 3)
The document is one of John Paul II’s major teaching documents and yet it is designed for all readers of “good will” who care about human dignity and its centrality in defending the common good—over and above any particular political system.
In a timely reminder, given the forthcoming Federal elections, John Paul II writes that democracy, while important, cannot stand without its foundation in the sanctity of life:
“Democracy cannot be idolized to the point of making it a substitute for morality or a panacea for immorality” (EV no. 70)
In this one document, the then-pope draws together Vatican II’s declaration against “Whatever is opposed to human life itself…” (Gaudium et Spes no. 27), his own forthright apostleship on the “value of human life” which marked his whole pontificate, the defence of reason and conscience and the 1991 written consultancy with each cardinal and bishop in the church.
What John Paul II lays out in The Gospel of Life is a wide setting for the church’s long held and often misunderstood “anti-euthanasia” or “anti-abortion” teachings but he aims to re-teach the reasons and sources for these convictions. He wants us to understand more than a single “pro-life” slogan.
The encyclical begins with a reflection on the biblical insights in the Book of Genesis, into the “loss of the sense of God” and its corollary “eclipse” of the value of human life and the rejection of objective moral truth. This the explores in the contemporary climate of “moral uncertainty.” He points to the tragedy of modern cultures in which much genuine social progress exists in a contradiction. Many of the post-secular assumptions, policies and practices pose “greater risks” to the value of human life than in apparently darker and more deprived eras of human history.
The then-pope explores the further damage caused to the personal and communal lives of people who “live as if God does not exist” either as the Creator or the origin of all goodness and meaning.
It leads to a “practical materialism” which breeds a utilitarian attitude to ourselves and others. Suffering and unexpected limitation is seen as always simply “meaningless” and even the human body and human sexuality lose all “properly personal reality.” Other people, and even our own bodies, become tools for our “self-assertion” and our short-term needs and desires.
This gives rise, John Paul II observes, to random lethal actions against certain people or classes of people and also attitudes and mind-sets which become widespread and even fiercely defended and promoted by the very laws of various countries which are designed to promote “the common good.” These mentalities become embedded in societies as “structures of sin.” (EV no 24).
This last and surprising notion of “sinful” processes, mentalities and assumptions was introduced by John Paul II in his earlier writings and leads him to conclude that:
“This reality is characterised by the emergence of a culture which denies solidarity and in many cases takes the form of a veritable “culture of death.” (EV no. 12)
Light, Love and Hope
It is important to note that despite these critical and it must be said prescient observations of contemporary society, John Paul II’ s encyclical is not a reactionary or simply negative litany of human failure. The tragedy is interwoven by two major chapters which are expositions of Christian faith, hope and love.
Chapter II explains that this is because God the loving creator never gives up on the gift of human life since he sends not only the light of the “natural” moral sense and the Ten Commandments but “the very person of Jesus” himself (EV no. 29).
The author then explains with moving power that Christ, in his words, healing actions and his gift of himself, is “the Gospel of Life.” This Gospel, he writes, takes into itself “everything that human experience and reason tells us about the value of human life, accepting it, purifying it, exalting it and bringing it to fulfillment” (EV no. 30).
Chapter III of the encyclical ties together the theological and social reflections of the first two chapters and expands upon the nature of moral norms themselves. John Paul II here situates the moral teaching inherited and developed by the church in both the natural and revealed wisdom of the Old and New Covenants. This chapter is itself a masterly re-presentation of the fact that the Decalogue is a gift of fidelity and love from God rather than an outdated and arbitrary “rule book.”
John Paul II deftly overcomes any temptations to dualism and or anti-creational attitudes to the world and explains the meaning of stewardship of human beings on earth. He writes: “With regard to things, but even more with regard to life, man is not the absolute master and final judge- but …. he is the “minister of God’s plan.” (EV no. 52)
Called to be real agents of the Culture of Life
In October of the year of the encyclical’s release, a young Australian bioethics’ scholar completing his doctorate at Oxford University became a leading voice promoting John Paul II’s “culture of life.” Then Fr Anthony Fisher OP, now Archbishop Anthony Fisher of Sydney, wrote a “Guided Tour of Evangelium Vitae” which was published in The Australasian Catholic Record (Vol 72:4, October 1995).
In this commentary, Anthony Fisher writes:
“Another particular merit of The Gospel of Life is that its final chapter offers a range of positive strategies for building up the sense of justice and solidarity, ‘an authentic civilization of truth and love’.”
It is this final chapter that has inspired so many Christians and others to become or continue to be involved as life affirming witnesses to the practical, joyful and creative work of “building up a culture of life.”
Here we find the seeds for such consecrated communities as the Sisters of Life, or those dedicated to the hope-giving palliative care professions or to those who volunteer in pregnancy support services and post-abortion healing or to become the fearless consciences for a just legal and political system. There is an inspiring section here on the role of faithful families in promoting life.
In this Jubilee Year of Hope and during this anniversary, the encyclical on The Gospel of Life serves as a great stirrer of Christian conscience and spiritual depth.
Perhaps it can be part of our reading in these last days of Lent and into Holy Week?
As John Paul II writes: “With humility and gratitude we know that we are the people of life and for life, and this is how we present ourselves to everyone” (EV no. 78).
Anna Krohn is the Executive Director of The Thomas More Centre and the Convenor of the Anima Women’s Network.
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