How Would the Culture of Death and the Culture of Life Respond to Coronavirus?

Exactly 25 years ago today, on the Feast of the Annunciation, Pope John Paul II released Evangelium Vitae, his encyclical on the Gospel of life. Why does he decide to talk about the Gospel of Life on the Annunciation? As he explains, “The one who accepted ‘Life’ in the name of all and for the sake of all was Mary, the Virgin Mother; she is thus most closely and personally associated with the Gospel of life.” In her Annunciation, Mary says yes to life. In the encyclical, JPII contrasts what he calls the “culture of death” and the “culture of life,” and this distinction is as relevant now as ever.

I. What Does the Culture of Death Look Like?

When I think of the “culture of death,” I normally think about abortion and euthanasia, and it’s true that the pope spends a fair amount of time in the encyclical explaining what’s wrong with those ideas. But in fact, the culture of death is much bigger (or perhaps deeper) than this. JPII looks at the toxic mentality that gives rise to so many ugly policies in the first place:

This culture is actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency. Looking at the situation from this point of view, it is possible to speak in a certain sense of a war of the powerful against the weak: a life which would require greater acceptance, love and care is considered useless, or held to be an intolerable burden, and is therefore rejected in one way or another. A person who, because of illness, handicap or, more simply, just by existing, compromises the well-being or life-style of those who are more favoured tends to be looked upon as an enemy to be resisted or eliminated. In this way a kind of “conspiracy against life” is unleashed. This conspiracy involves not only individuals in their personal, family or group relationships, but goes far beyond, to the point of damaging and distorting, at the international level, relations between peoples and States. 

In other words, it’s not about a single bad policy or a bad handful of policies, but about an entire worldview and an entire culture that prioritizes efficiency over human life.

Understood in this way, the “culture of death” isn’t something we find only on the political left. After all, in the encyclical itself, JPII warns against “the spreading of death caused by reckless tampering with the world’s ecological balance,” something that I at least rarely associate with the “culture of death” as I’ve heard the term used these days. But I think it’s worth given JPII’s words some more thought (and taking them to prayer) as we have some pretty weighty conversations these days. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said on Monday that:

No one reached out to me and said, “As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that America loves for its children and grandchildren?” And if that is the exchange, I’m all in.

What’s not being asked here is whether it’s morally objectionable for someone to ask Patrick to sacrifice his life for the sake of the economy (or whether it’s immoral for him to implicitly volunteer the rest of his generation). But First Things’ Rusty Reno goes further:

There is a demonic side to the sentimentalism of saving lives at any cost. Satan rules a kingdom in which the ultimate power of death is announced morning, noon, and night. But Satan cannot rule directly. God alone has the power of life and death, and thus Satan can only rule indirectly. He must rely on our fear of death. [….]

Fear of death and causing death is pervasive—stoked by a materialistic view of survival at any price and unchecked by Christian leaders who in all likelihood secretly accept the materialist assumptions of our age. As long as we allow fear to reign, it will cause nearly all believers to fail to do as Christ commands in Matthew 25. It already is.

Credit where it’s due: some people are overreacting, and some of that overreaction might be due to a spiritual problem (they aren’t living right and are rightly afraid of death). But as far as I can tell, absolutely nobody takes the position that we need to do absolutely everything to stop absolutely every death. Anyone holding that position would have to (for starters) oppose the automobile and the peanut. And the Catholic Church is very clear that we’re not called to that impossible standard. For instance, in the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, we find:

While every person is obliged to use ordinary means to preserve his or her health, no person should be obliged to submit to a health care procedure that the person has judged, with a free and informed conscience, not to provide a reasonable hope of benefit without imposing excessive risks and burdens on the patient or excessive expense to family or community.

In other words, if you’re sick, and the only treatment is so costly that it’ll bankrupt your family, it’s morally acceptable for you to decline treatment. That’s not a violation of your duty to use “ordinary means” to take care of your health. Reno is right that there’s always an element of triage, of determining where and how to allocate economic and medical resources.

So I don’t think Reno and Patrick’s numerous Christian critics are upset because they hold to the demonic straw-man that Reno attacks, but because they rightly reject any view that at least seems to say that the elderly should die that the Dow might live. Reno tries to confront this objection by saying:

A number of my friends disagree with me. They support the current measures, insisting that Christians must defend life. But the pro-life cause concerns the battle against killing, not an ill-conceived crusade against human finitude and the dolorous reality of death.

Here, Reno is just wrong. The pro-life battle isn’t, except in its most minimalist forms, simply a battle against killing.

II. What Does the Culture of Life Look Like?

There are two major ways in which an embrace of a “culture of life” is so much more than simply being against killing. As JPII says, our “no” to abortion, euthanasia, and all of the other assaults on human life

makes clear the absolute limit beneath which free individuals cannot lower themselves. At the same time they indicate the minimum which they must respect and from which they must start out in order to say “yes” over and over again, a “yes” which will gradually embrace the entire horizon of the good

The culture of life, in other words, isn’t merely a rejection of the culture of death. Rather, it consists of a positive vision:

The Gospel of life is for the whole of human society. To be actively pro-life is to contribute to the renewal of society through the promotion of the common good. It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all the other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop. A society lacks solid foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized. Only respect for life can be the foundation and guarantee of the most precious and essential goods of society, such as democracy and peace.

So anything contrary to human life or dignity is contrary to the culture of life, whether or not it rises to the level of directly killing another person.

But JPII actually goes further than this. As believers, we affirm all of the above, but even this isn’t enough. Instead, he says that the culture of life “consists in the proclamation of the very person of Jesus.” After all, Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” He came not only that we should have life, but that we should have it abundantly.

If you want to know the value of a human life, you can only know it fully by looking at Jesus Christ. Jesus came for each and every one of us… if you were the only person on earth, He would have still come, just to save you. He views you as worth coming down to earth for, as worth suffering for and being crucified for, and dying for on the Cross. What’s more, He wants to share heavenly glory with you forever, and even share His divine nature with you. What’s more, this is true of your neighbor, as well, even the one you find most difficult to love. Everything we say or do should be this realization, rather than on making a god of efficiency or power. As C.S. Lewis put it:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

In other words, the culture of life for which the pro-life movement is striving isn’t just an end to intentional killing, but the creation of a culture built on the idea of human dignity, and that reflects the idea that every citizen (even the “inconvenient” members, like the unborn, the sick, the aged, etc.) are willed by God and loved by him. There’s nothing “demonic” about this.