THE WAR ON CONSCIENCE:

Exposing the Language of the Culture of Death | An Interview with William Brennan, author of John Paul II: Confronting the Language Empowering the Culture of Death (Ignatius Insight, July 10, 2009)

Ignatius Insight: How did Pope John Paul II define the culture of death?

Dr. Brennan: He defined the culture of death as a lethal mentality possessing an unlimited capacity for engulfing a wide range of victims and employed an inclusive perspective for highlighting "whatever is opposed to life itself," such as genocide, abortion, euthanasia, suicide, experimental exploitation of human beings, slavery, torture, mutilation rituals, and a host of other infamies. An ominous feature of this increasingly monolithic mindset, the pope revealed, is "a war of the powerful against the weak: a life which requires greater acceptance, love and care is considered useless, or held to be an intolerable burden, and is therefore rejected in one way or another." He called this phenomenon "a truly alarming spectacle, if we consider not only how extensively attacks are spreading but also their unheard-of numerical proportion, and the fact that they receive widespread legal approval and the involvement of certain sectors of health-care personnel."

Besides the numerous forms of devastation brought about by the death culture, John Paul singled out another casualty—the demise of conscience itself. Through the manipulation of language, the forces of death have proven extraordinarily successful in numbing the moral sensitivities of many to the horrors actually taking place. This process leads to an "extremely dangerous crisis of the moral sense" in which conscience is rendered increasingly indifferent, blind, and impotent in the face of the evils being perpetrated.