Pope John-Paul II warned of a developing ‘culture of death’ in his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae.[4] In it, he analyses how the contemporary, Western world has come to affirm abortion, suicide, and euthanasia. We might note the difference between Roman culture and this contemporary culture. Suicide considered a courageous act by one who did what was expected and necessary did not involve a dignifying of assisted suicide, which would lessen the heroism of the suicide. In contemporary culture, suicide is by and large a tragedy, but assisted suicide is a noble act done to alleviate suffering.
John-Paul II’s encyclical states that a culture of death 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 (12).
The encyclical warns that, alongside the development of technology that attacks human dignity, a new cultural climate is developing and taking hold, which gives crimes against life a new and-if possible-even more sinister character, giving rise to further grave concern: broad sectors of public opinion justify certain crimes against life in the name of the rights of individual freedom, and on this basis they claim not only exemption from punishment but even authorization by the State, so that these things can be done with total freedom and indeed with the free assistance of health-care systems (4).[5]
This would apply to government-approved and enabling of assisted suicide, which has only increased in the West since the encyclical was written decades ago. Thus, threats which are no less serious hang over the incurably ill and the dying. In a social and cultural context which makes it more difficult to face and accept suffering, the temptation becomes all the greater to resolve the problem of suffering by eliminating it at the root, by hastening death so that it occurs at the moment considered most suitable (15).
The culture of death understands prolonged suffering of the sick, their anguish, discomfort, and desperation as just cause to end life. The individual is overwhelmed by his own frailty, while the family is moved by compassion to end suffering. These views, combined with those of the death culture that all suffering is evil and that costs should not be laid upon society as a whole to care for those who are not self-sufficient, the ‘right’ decision becomes assisted suicide. This culture sees individuals and society as controlling life and death for ‘malformed babies, the severely handicapped, the disabled, the elderly, … and the terminally ill (15). It also insidiously interprets its ‘crimes against life as legitimate expressions of individual freedom, to be acknowledged and protected as actual rights’ (18). Thus, the ‘right to life’ is undermined by this ‘right to choose’ notion of autonomy (freedom and self-sufficiency), which results in the rejection of the ‘weak and needy, or elderly, or those who have just been conceived’ (18). Wealthier countries, with diminishing birth rates, impose on underdeveloped countries prohibitions against procreation if they are to receive aid (18). This autonomous notion of freedom is heard in Cain’s question to God after slaying his brother, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ (Genesis 4.9) (19). It is made even worse in a culture that denies truth and views good and evil as subjective opinions or selfish interests (19). The autonomy of individuals from each other becomes an anti-social society:
The State is no longer the “common home” where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenceless members, from the unborn child to the elderly, in the name of a public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part’ (20).
This form of freedom becomes an exercise of power over the weaker in society: To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom … (20).
Beyond discussion of the meaning of freedom, the culture of death is characterised by a loss of any sense of God and consequently of what might be held true of man’s dignity and life (21). Man and the life he has are mere ‘things’. The life man possesses as a thing he controls, and it is not revered as a gift from God or sacred trust (22). A materialistic culture harms ‘women, children, the sick or suffering, and the elderly’, and
the criterion of personal dignity-which demands respect, generosity and service-is replaced by the criterion of efficiency, functionality and usefulness: others are considered not for what they “are”, but for what they “have, do and produce” (23). Christians, on the other hand, affirm the dignity of every human being.
See further Church Statements on Suicide and Euthanasia here