Evangelium Vitae

Background and Occasion

At an extraordinary consistory in April 1991, the cardinals asked John Paul II to restate the Church’s teaching on the value of human life in the face of new threats. The Pope wrote to every bishop in the world asking for their views, and the encyclical, published on the solemnity of the Annunciation in 1995, presents itself as the fruit of that consultation.

The threats it addresses were not only individual acts but social trends: the spread of legal abortion, the growing campaign for euthanasia and assisted suicide, embryo research and new reproductive technologies, and population policies imposed on poor countries. What was new, the Pope says, was that crimes against life were coming to be claimed as rights, and that the state was being asked to authorise and even provide them.

Structure

The encyclical has four chapters, each with a Scriptural title: “The voice of your brother’s blood cries to me from the ground” (present threats to life); “I came that they may have life” (the Christian message about life); “You shall not kill” (God’s holy law); and “You did it to me” (towards a new culture of life).

Central Teaching

The culture of death

The first chapter takes the story of Cain and Abel as its starting point. It describes a culture of death: a social climate in which a person’s worth is measured by efficiency and usefulness, in which the weak are seen as a burden, and in which freedom is detached from truth. At the root lies the eclipse of the sense of God, which leads to the eclipse of the sense of man.

The Gospel of life

The second chapter shows that the value of human life is a central theme of revelation. Life is a gift from God, entrusted to human beings, who are made in his image. Its full meaning is shown in Christ, who gave his life on the Cross so that we might have eternal life. Human life is therefore sacred from its beginning, because it involves the creative action of God and is ordered to communion with him.

The three solemn confirmations

The third chapter contains the encyclical’s most authoritative passages. Three times John Paul II uses a formula of unusual solemnity: by the authority Christ conferred on Peter and his successors, and in communion with the bishops of the Catholic Church. In substance:

• The killing of the innocent (EV 57). He confirms that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral. The doctrine is based on the natural law and the written Word of God, transmitted by Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium.
• Abortion (EV 62). He declares that direct abortion, willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.
• Euthanasia (EV 65). He confirms that euthanasia, in the strict sense of an action or omission that of itself and by intention causes death in order to eliminate suffering, is a grave violation of the law of God.

The encyclical distinguishes euthanasia from the legitimate refusal of disproportionate treatment (“aggressive medical treatment”) and from the use of painkillers that may shorten life as a foreseen but unintended effect. It also treats suicide and assisted suicide, and laws permitting abortion or euthanasia, which it says have no binding force and must be opposed by conscientious objection (EV 73).

The death penalty

The same chapter addresses capital punishment. The Pope teaches that punishment should not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society, and he adds that, given improvements in penal systems, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent (EV 56). The Catechism was revised accordingly in 1997, and in 2018 Pope Francis revised it again to say that the death penalty is inadmissible (CCC 2267).

A culture of life

The final chapter calls the whole Church to serve life: through proclamation, celebration and practical care for mothers, children, the sick, the disabled and the dying. It gives special roles to the family, to medical professionals, to politicians, and to women. It closes with a prayer to Mary.

Theological Significance

Evangelium Vitae is one of the most authoritative moral documents of the modern papacy. The three confirmations were deliberately framed to correspond to Lumen Gentium 25: the Pope did not issue new definitions, but confirmed as Peter’s successor that these teachings are already taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium of the bishops. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith later cited these teachings among its examples of doctrines taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium (Doctrinal Commentary on Ad Tuendam Fidem, 1998).

The encyclical’s moral method follows Veritatis Splendor (1993), published two years earlier: there are acts that are intrinsically evil, always and everywhere, whatever the intention or circumstances. Its anthropology follows Redemptor Hominis and Gaudium et Spes: the person is willed by God for his own sake and called to communion with him.

For readers of this site, the encyclical belongs with the moral theology tract and with the bioethical documents that developed its teaching, the instructions Donum Vitae (1987) and Dignitas Personae (2008).