Is the death of a pre-born human in the womb really a private matter? Who is not horrified by the evil of genocide? How can a terrorist bombing of a marketplace ever be justified?

“We must begin with a commitment never to intentionally kill,” says Living the Gospel of Life “or collude in the killing, of any innocent human life, no matter how broken, unformed, disabled or desperate that life may seem.”From both divine revelation and natural law, we know that there is something special about human life. We are made in the image of God. Protection of human life and dignity is a natural instinct of all people and stands at the core of Catholic social teaching. The life and dignity of the human person is foundational to Catholic social teaching precisely because without it, no other rights have meaning.

While the preeminent debate about life has focused on abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, Catholic social teaching extols us to work against all intrinsically evil acts. An intrinsically evil act is one that it is always wrong.

The U. S. Bishops’ document, Forming Conscience for Faithful Citizenship, includes abortion, human cloning, destructive research on embryos, genocide, torture, racism, and targeting of non-combatants as intrinsically evil. The Bishops did not intend the list to be exhaustive. With the pace of change in the modern world, they reasoned that any list could be out-of-date very soon. We are called as Catholics to oppose all intrinsically evil acts, everywhere and all the time.

St. Francis de Sales Respect Life Committee supports the 40 Days for Life, Crossroads, the annual walk across America, the Pregnancy Counselling Center and the annual Mass for the Unborn in our Cathedral every January.