Reprinted from The Catholic Radical, newsletter of the SS. Francis & Therese Catholic Worker, Worcester, MA, December 1998/January 1999.


"War is peace." The author George Orwell stated that moral relativism is the great evil of our age, because it would allow people to commit all sorts of evil in the guise of lofty goals such as compassion and progress. This was also one of the primary conclusions of a workshop I recently attended on the many forms of "Deathmaking." The presenters used the term to describe the broad taking of human life in modem society. The workshop traced support for deathmaking. including abortion and euthanasia, to various incoherent stances to defend the taking of human life.

According to the presenters, much of the thinking that has led to the devaluing of human life can be traced to the enlightenment notion of "progress." This notion holds that humanity is on an evolutionary progression to perfectibility. In the field of science and genetics in particular, this has had disastrous implications.

Charles Darwin in Origin of the Species argued that it was perfectly natural for humanity to evolve towards a physically and intellectually superior being. Therefore, the social Darwinists thought that traits such as low intelligence and physical disabilities resulted from bad genes and breeding and that it was necessary to eliminate them. The mentally retarded and disabled were seen as devolving.

During the Nazi era, proponents of Germany's euthanasia program adopted some of the eugenicists' thinking. The early Nazi eugenic laws were enacted in 1933, including sterilization for people with hereditary disorders. By 1939, euthanasia killings began. In all. at least 300,000 handicapped and mentally retarded people were killed. Some of the methods and locations of the euthanasia program were used in the killing of the Jews. For instance, Zyklon B, the gas used in the ovens of the concentration camps, was first used in the gassing of the handicapped. Similarly, the six designated institutions where handicapped people were killed were later places where Jews and prisoners of war were also killed.

The presenters of the "Deathmaking" workshop argued that a similar holocaust is happening today. Life is valued today to the extent that it models the dominant culture: wealth, health, beauty, youth, mobility and empowerment to name a few. In a variety of ways, the elderly, the sick, the unborn, the poor and other devalued groups are being "made dead." The medical industry, in abandoning the notion of an intrinsic value of human life as is enshrined in the traditional Hippocratic Oath (which prohibits both abortion and euthanasia), has promoted valuing a person on the basis of "quality of life." Without demonstrating the exact formula for determining a person's quality of life here, variables that would be considered are a person's ability, degree of suffering, and cost of care and burden to others. Because there is no clear, inviolable sanctity of life, all sorts of dubious factors are considered, such as financial profit and a person's social status. Such a quantifiable standard, as opposed to a value for the sacred, knows no bounds and is subject to abuse.

When one considers that this devaluing of the sanctity of human life has led to 40 million abortions a year, or to a bloody century of 150 million killed in Increasingly destructive warfare, or a greater acceptance of euthanasia, not only for the suffering sick but simply because they are depressed over their devalued status, it all seems overwhelming. Yet, when a doctor communicates (explicitly or implicitly) that a child with Downs Syndrome is hopeless or a "wasted life," one shouldn't feed into the gloomy forecast. Who is to say how valuable or how long any person's life will be? At one time I was common for mothers with HIV to be advised to abort their HIV new- Now, It is corroborated that with a regimen of AZT provided to the pregnant mother and infant after birth, nearly all of the infants throw off HIV all together. Sister Marie at Life House in Worcester who serves people with ADS reminds her clients that they aren't necessarily at death's door. People with very low T-Cell counts are now living many productive years.

When someone expresses that a sick or elderly person is "already dead" or "brain dead," the presenters suggest that we Infuse their surroundings with action that communicates they're alive. When a person is quantifiably or socially demeaned, whether they be poor, unborn, sick, elderly or handicapped, we should confront the marginalization by showing compassion for the suffering and being with it in the long term.

The "Deathmaking'" workshop presented two ground rules when protecting the sanctity of life.

The first is that all forms of deathmaking are interconnected or to put it simply, "violence begets violence. For example, a recent study, "The Effects of War On Non-combatants concluded that while the Vietnam War raged, the domestic murder rate in the U.S. went up 40%. Furthermore, if a society looks to use abortion and euthanasia in specific circumstances, as in Germany's euthanasia program, this will eventually escalate to killing on a wider and more massive scale.

The second ground rule is that the means must be consistent with the ends. Our life-affirming actions do have validity. If nothing but to testify to the presence of God. It is apparent that in an atmosphere of moral relativism on the sanctity of life, all sorts of violence and oppression are justified under the guise of compassion and justice. Thus, abortion is "reproductive freedom. " World War I was "the war to end all wars." Similarly, violence is concealed by the language of medicine. Indiscriminate bombing is a "surgical strike. " Genocide is "ethnic cleansing."

We must reiterate in clear terms the absolute sanctity of human life without exception. Father Dan Berrigan, at his trial for burning draft files during the Vietnam War, stated that "The great sinfulness of modern war is that it renders concrete things abstract ... " He went on to state part of his reason for burning the files: "I was trying to be concrete about death because death is a concrete fact as I have throughout my life tried to be concrete about the existence of God Who is not an abstraction but is someone before me for Whom I am responsible. " Thus, in this season of Advent we do well to recognize and, indeed, celebrate the presence of God in humanity and the absolute implications that go with that.