Pro-Lifers: Remember This Phrase from Pope Francis

By amazon Wednesday, September 18, 2019 Comment Edit

Whatever our differences with Catholic social teaching, we should echo his opposition to “throwaway culture.”

Not long ago I was speaking at a conference on the sanctity of human life. My specific topic was the way evangelicals are often tempted to neglect the most vulnerable among us, much like the priest and Levite on the road to Jericho (Luke 10:25–37). The event was in Washington, D.C., and I brought along my teenage daughter for a special trip as a birthday gift. Once the conference was over, I figured we would spend some time walking around the capitol.

In my hurry to keep us to our itinerary, I walked past a homeless veteran near the Washington Monument. But my daughter wouldn’t let me keep going. “Dad,” she said, “this man is made in the image of God. We have to help him.” After hearing my typical excuses (“I don’t have any cash on me,” “We’ll come back to find him later,” and so on), she pulled a 20-dollar bill out of her wallet and approached the homeless man. “Here you go,” she told him. “I want you to know that God loves you.” Her words broke my heart and exposed my own temptation to ignore the vulnerable.

It’s attitudes like this that Catholic theologian and ethicist Charles Camosy most wants to expose and critique with his book, Resisting Throwaway Culture: How a Consistent Life Ethic Can Unite a Fractured People. (He borrows the term “throwaway culture” from a speech by Pope Francis.)

Camosy champions the idea of a “consistent life ethic.” By this, he means that an authentically pro-life witness involves more than opposing abortion. The same values that commit us to protecting the unborn, he argues, should govern our thinking on a range of issues that weigh upon the lives of the most vulnerable—issues ...