Political Series Show 2 "Without Life, We Have Nothing Else!"

In any election season, we have to confront a multitude of issues, and listen to the competing claims of candidates and their positions on those issues.

Yet if a candidate supported terrorism, you wouldn’t even ask his position on other issues. As Pope John Paul II wrote in Christifideles Laici, the defense of human rights is false and illusory if the right to life is not defended.

Others at the Vatican recently echoed that same message in interviews with us.

Bishop Elio Sgreccia, Vice-President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said,

"Without respect for life, without respect for the family, society simply does not exist…all [other] rights presuppose the right to life. If the right to life is not defended, the defense of all these other rights is useless. It becomes a lie, because it would mean that the defense to the right to work, to society, etc. applies only to some, and not to all."

Cardinal Renato Martino, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, likewise points out,

"The Holy Father speaks of the protection of life as the fundamental realization and respect for human rights. Without that realization, without that respect for the right to life, no other discussion of human rights can continue; it must be based upon the foundation of human dignity and the right to life."

Archbishop John Foley, President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications at the Vatican, said the following:

"Generally, law is needed to protect the weakest members of society because strong members of society, the rich, the powerful, the strong can usually take care of themselves but the weakest members of society need the protections of society itself and the help of society itself. That is why we need laws to protect the weak against violence form outside. The weakest members of society are the unborn. They have no other spokespersons except, you might say, society itself. So we must defend the rights of the innocent unborn.

"If we don't have life we don't have anything."

Priests for Life recently also interviewed representatives of the United States Bishops’ Conference and asked whether, in the view of the bishops, it was true to say that abortion is the number one most urgent moral issue.

Cathleen Cleaver Ruse, Director of Planning and Information for the Pro-life Secretariat of the US Bishops’ Conference, responded, "Sure, that's absolutely true. The church has taught on this issue of abortion and its immorality since the Apostolic Age. It's one of our longest standing moral public policy issues and it is not like any other issue really. It is, some might say, it's non-negotiable. There are no instances where it is morally licit or justifiable. That sets is apart from other issues like capital punishment, like just war theory and many other social issues that are very, very important but don't have that kind of no exceptions policy. So, the way the Church looks at abortion - abortion is one of those fundamental issues. If that right is taken away, if the very right to life is taken away then no other right matters. You don't have the ability to hold another right or to have another right taken away. So, while health care, the right to a good education, housing all of these issues are very, very important, they are meaningless if the right to life is not first protected."

"If social issues are like a house then the foundation is the right to life. An abortion takes away or rips out the foundation. The many other social issues can be considered the walls of that house but they can't be built unless there's a foundation."

Richard Doerflinger, Deputy Director of the Pro-life Secretariat of the US Bishops’ Conference, echoed the same theme:

"What the Church has said is that because it is the first gift from a loving God and the condition for all other human goods, all our other rights - life itself has to be a top priority it is the most basic gift and if we lose the right to live we lose everything else. Now within the whole network of issues about life, the first priority has to be the right of each individual at every stage simply to exist at all. To be inviolable. To be free from direct attacks. So the church has said that issues that involve direct attacks on innocent human life - and in our society today, obviously abortion which takes over a million lives in the United States every year - issues like euthanasia for the terminally ill are primary. They are the most basic threats to human life because they are direct attacks on life because they attack innocent life that's not doing anybody else harm or attacking anybody else and because they are attacking life at its most vulnerable and defenseless - the very stages where children and the elderly should be able to expect the respect and protection of their families because it is where they are weakest and most vulnerable.

"What the Bishop's said in their 1998 document Living the Gospel of Life, was that this whole edifice of human goods and ways of enhancing human life are like a house but the other issues that enhance the quality of life for everyone are like the walls of the house and protecting the inviolability of life itself from attack is like the foundation. You cannot have a house anymore if you don't have a foundation. It's meaningless to say we are going to enhance all these qualities of human life and say that human life itself has no inherent worth. Those have to primary. Everything else grows from that. We promote a consistent ethic of life and at the same time there are priorities, some things are more fundamental than others."

We also had the pleasure of interviewing Fr. John Raphael, a leader in the Black community on pro-life issues. He said, "We vote first and foremost for life. All of these other concerns that we may have - and they are many debates that can be had across the political spectrum on different issues. But there is no debate concerning the fundamental right to life. We've got to vote that way. Parties come and go. 150 years ago the Democratic Party was a party of in favor of slavery. Abolitionists were Republican. A hundred years from now who knows what either party will stand for then if we're all here but today, yesterday, and tomorrow the right to life, the dignity of every human being, every human person remains the same - unchanged. So African Americans and all Catholics - there are many Catholics who are waffling in this area - all believers, all Catholics have to have this as a primary goal and responsibility."

In summary, not all issues are equal. Properly understood, and as articulated even by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, the 'consistent ethic of life' recognizes this.

There are some big differences, in particular, between abortion on the one hand, and war and capital punishment on the other. Some do not see the differences, but they can be summarized as follows:

1. The fundamental principle is that we never target the innocent. War and capital punishment are never justified if they do, whereas abortion does so by definition.
2. War and capital punishment, when justified, are, in their essence, the defense of life; abortion is in its essence the destruction of life.
3. War and capital punishment, when justified, are carried out by the authority of the state restraining those guilty of doing harm; abortion is always carried out by the authority of an individual destroying one innocent of doing any harm.

 

Archbishop John Foley, President of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications at the Vatican, echoed this theme: "In reflecting some years ago on what was called a "consistent ethic of life," I thought that there were a number of distinctions to be made. First of all, we can never do something which is intrinsically evil and it is intrinsically evil to take innocent human life. We should also avoid of course all types of violence but sometimes it's necessary to defend our lives and for a nation to defend itself. So there is such a thing as a just or legitimate war but it always should be the very last resort and it should always be with proportional means and declared of course by competent authority.

Also in regard to punishment. I think that capital punishment in the Untied States is very, very exaggerated and I personally am against capital punishment. If it is absolutely necessary as a last resort to protect society itself then it to would be permissible under extraordinary circumstances."

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