[In the following essay, Hehir offers analysis of John Paul's The Gospel of Life encyclical.]

John Paul II's eleventh encyclical, The Gospel of Life (March 25, 1995) is yet another testimony to a central conviction of this papacy, namely, that words and ideas are the crucial determinants of history. The reception accorded the most recent text demonstrates John Paul II's continuing ability to gain a hearing for his ideas, however different they are from prevailing cultural convictions. The New York Times devoted almost a quarter of the front page to a photo and story about the encyclical; Newsweek made it the cover story; European colleagues tell me the coverage there was extensive. All this occurred before the religious community began its detailed analysis in weekly and monthly journals.

The encyclical bears the pope's distinctive style, a biblically based meditation and argument about a broad range of controversial issues. The text exhibits the discursive, sometimes repetitive character of earlier encyclicals. The four chapters logically admit of a different order than one finds in the text. It seems to me that the first chapter, on threats to life, leads directly to chapter 3, a detailed argument about the defense of life in different circumstances. Chapter 2, the positive Christian vision of life, leads directly to chapter 4, building a culture of life.

Embedded in these four long chapters are a variety of arguments. The dominant character of the encyclical is its overarching moral vision. Cast in the cosmic categories of a “culture of death” contending with a “culture of life,” The Gospel of Life seeks to galvanize the witness of the church and to challenge ideas, laws, and policies which threaten human life in different but deadly ways.

The pope's classification of these threats to life can be divided into ancient, modern, and postmodern categories. The ancient threats, well-known, are rooted in the worst instincts of human nature and persist with a virulence which defies any conception that history is a constant march toward improvement. The ancient threats are poverty and hunger, war and genocide. From Central Europe to Sub-Saharan Africa, the ancient scourges—some the product of nature, others the result of human hatred—number their victims today in the millions.

The modern threats are more complex in origin and character. They are often rooted in the best instincts of human nature, in the quest for knowledge, the development of modern science, the expanding reach of technology. The modern threats characteristically are rooted in the qualitatively new power which modern science and technology have placed in human hands.

In the past fifty years, American society has split the atom, cracked the genetic code, and pierced the veil of space. We have also dramatically expanded our capacity for medical intervention in the final stages of life. Each of these developments has produced major advances in human knowledge, in applied technology, and in creating the culture of postindustrial society. Each of them also has demonstrated that technological innovation is not always accompanied by moral wisdom. Churchill's comment that the Balkans produced more history than they could consume finds an analogous application here. Technology—nuclear, genetic, medical—has its own logic, but it does not have its own ethic. From the first encyclical of his pontificate, The Redeemer of Man, John Paul II has focused on the issue of providing moral direction for science and technology as a dominant challenge for church and society. The pope never assumes a position of fundamental opposition to either scientific research or technological change; his concern is to place both within the identifiable limits of the moral universe.

This abiding interest in maintaining traditional restraints in the face of contemporary developments in science, technology, and politics reaches a new level of intensity and detail in The Gospel of Life when the pope turns to the “postmodern” threats to life. These are rooted not in what we can do but in how we think. Peter Steinfels (New York Times, April 1, 1995) accurately identified the principal objective of this encyclical: it is the pope's address to the culture of advanced technological societies. In one sense it is an attempt at dialogue, in the spirit of Vatican II's Gaudium et spes. But the tone is not entirely dialogical; in many passages it is a declaration, a lecture to the culture of societies which John Paul believes have lost their moral moorings. The postmodern threats are the pope's principal concern; they are well represented in two passages of the encyclical: “Choices once unanimously considered criminal and rejected by the common moral sense are gradually becoming socially acceptable. … no less grave and disturbing is the fact that conscience itself, darkened as it were by such widespread conditioning, is finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between good and evil in what concerns the basic value of human life.”

This is the heart of the issue. The fundamental purpose of The Gospel of Life is to project a moral vision and to provide a structure of moral reasoning that will illuminate a direction for personal conscience, professional ethics, and public policy on questions threatening human life in this final decade of a very violent century. Neither the vision (chapter 2) nor the moral argument (chapter 3) breaks new ground; the power and value of the encyclical lie in its synthetic quality, bringing together broad themes and specific conclusions in the style of a Brandeis brief, projecting a definite viewpoint on a multiplicity of issues which are usually treated in isolation in our civil debates.

The pope's opposition to abortion reaffirms what has been said at every level of Catholic teaching; his case against euthanasia and assisted suicide is carefully drawn and summarizes traditional and recent teaching on topics which will be increasingly the focus of the “life debate” in American society. Even the well-publicized section on capital punishment amounts to a change in emphasis; the pope raises substantially the presumption against the state's right to take life in the name of domestic security. It is an important and welcome authoritative statement, but continues a pattern of reasoning used by the American bishops and others for the past fifteen years.

The encyclical combines, therefore, a powerful moral vision, a traditional moral argument, and an urgent call to personal and social conscience. How will it be received? The answer depends on three large arguments which the pope enters and which can only be identified here and must await further commentary. First, an internal issue in Catholic social teaching; John Paul II addresses his case to the church and civil society, but it is a case made almost exclusively in terms of biblical imagery and theological reflection. Unlike John XXIII's moral appeal to civil society in Peace on Earth, John Paul calls upon all to enter the rich symbolic discourse of the Scriptures to find direction for moral choice. There is a tension here between this vision and secular pluralistic culture which the encyclical never acknowledges.

Second, the heart of the pope's appeal to civil society is his discussion of law and morality. His position is a classical statement that civil law and policy must reflect moral law, even if they cannot simply replicate it. But John Paul's vision of how much civil law can do in postindustrial societies is very expansive. In many ways his proposals are exactly what one would expect from a magisterial document. But they do not struggle with the conditions which Catholic politicians, administrators, and professionals face even if they are wholly convinced of the moral vision of The Gospel of Life. We will need to hear from the practitioners on this topic.

Third, John Paul continues in this letter a theme found in Centesimus annus (1991) and Veritatis splendor (1993). He distinguishes the political institutions of democracy from the cultural context of democratic societies. He endorses the first more decisively than any pope in the Catholic tradition. He finds much less to support in the culture. There is much to criticize in the cultural presuppositions of postindustrial society, but the dynamic of politics and culture requires more attention than even this long, welcome encyclical provides.