Defining the Culture of Death

From Bishop Vasa’s latest column.

…In using the Holy Father’s term of the "culture of death" I do not restrict my understanding to the abortion and euthanasia issues though these are certainly the most distressing. The culture of death is a culture of sterility either contraceptive or surgical or abortive. The culture of death is one which elevates utility above humanity. A culture of death is one which pits economic profitability against quality patient care. A culture of death is one which operates out of a principle that the health of many justifies the direct and intentional destruction of a few. A culture of death is one which looks almost exclusively at outcomes with less and less regard for the legitimacy of the means. A culture of death is one which sees sexual union as casual, necessary, and free of gender related considerations and insists upon sex education (now sometimes known as diversity training) for even the youngest of our school age children.

A culture of death is one which is more and more separated from values and principles rooted in the teachings of the Lord of all life and from the teachings of that Church which holds and promotes those values and principles.

…There may be a naive belief in the minds and hearts of many Catholics that the Church and Her "old tired ethics" is standing in the way of genuine medical and scientific progress. Pope John Paul II was very strong in advocating that faith and reason are neither competitive nor contradictory. Pope Benedict XVI was taken to task for his address at Regensburg, in part, because of his insistence on the existence of a God who was rational and not capriciously irrational. I was taught in medical ethics that "Good morality is good medicine." I have never had occasion to cast doubt on the veracity of this aphorism. The Church and Her teachings do not stand in the way of genuine medical and scientific progress; She stands in the way of medical and scientific progress which has lost its moorings and which fails to respect the dignity of the very persons whom it purports to serve.