The publication of Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) 30 years ago marked a high-water mark of the pontificate of St. John Paul the Great.

Signed on the Solemnity of the Annunciation (March 25, 1995), the 11th of his 14 encyclicals was a publishing sensation. Paperback copies of the text appeared at supermarket checkouts. Newsweek gave it a cover story in which religion editor Kenneth Woodward praised Evangelium Vitae as the “clearest, most impassioned and most commanding encyclical of the pontificate,” John Paul’s “signature statement” in history.

John Paul was riding high in March 1995.

In the summer of 1994, he had waged a high-profile battle against the Clinton administration, successfully opposing the attempt to make abortion a worldwide human right at the U.N. International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. In the fall, he published Crossing the Threshold of Hope, an interview book that became a massive bestseller all over the world, prompting millions of conversations about the fundamental questions of life, presented by a persuasive Christian disciple.

The year closed with John Paul named Time magazine’s Man of the Year for 1994. In January 1995 he went to Manila for the largest World Youth Day ever. Thus, when Evangelium Vitae was issued, John Paul commanded the world’s attention in a singular way.

Synodal for Its Time

Providence was at work in that, for Evangelium Vitae was not rushed out to take advantage of a favorable environment. Although the phrase was not fashionable at the time, the encyclical was very “synodal,” the fruit of a four-year process in which the Holy Father wrote to every bishop in the world, inviting contributions to the text. That consultation followed the process that led to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), the most “synodal” text in the history of the Church, involving six years of worldwide consultations and thousands of concrete suggestions and amendments.

Papal biographer George Weigel considered Evangelium Vitae to be the final panel of an encyclical triptych on the “moral foundations of the free and virtuous society.” They presented a new Christian charter for the world after the Cold War, provided by one of the architects of the defeat of communism.

In Centesimus Annus (1991), John Paul outlined the reason why freedom was the proper arrangement for politics and economics, grounded in a culture that understood the dignity of the human person. In Veritatis Splendor (1993), he argued that skeptical relativism could not provide an adequate foundation, neither for a free society nor to guide individual moral action. Finally, in Evangelium Vitae, the Holy Father directly addressed the attacks on human life prevalent in the democracies.

The triptych, along with the Catechism and Fides et Ratio (1998), made the 1990s the most wide-ranging and comprehensive decade of teaching in the history of the papacy. Evangelium Vitae came at its midpoint.

Doctrinal Affirmations and Applications

John Paul’s encyclical solemnly affirmed Catholic doctrine against murder, abortion and euthanasia. That teaching was not new, but John Paul invoked the fullness of his teaching authority, but without invoking the specific form of an infallible ex cathedra definition. Rather than a narrow doctrinal affirmation, Evangelium Vitae presented a broad vision of human life as always good, a vision rooted in the whole of the biblical witness.

Two specific applications of that doctrine were new.

Regarding capital punishment, the Catholic tradition taught that criminal punishment had two goals — the safety of society and just retribution for the evil done. Capital punishment had both purposes. The Catechism, while presenting that tradition, emphasized the safety of society in its treatment of the death penalty.

In Evangelium Vitae, John Paul did not address the retributive aspect, and narrowed the public safety justification for capital punishment to cases of “absolute necessity,” noting that “such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.” The Catechism was subsequently revised in its official Latin text (1995) to include the teaching of the encyclical.

Weigel noted that Evangelium Vitae reflected “Karol Wojtyła’s experience of, and loathing for, the state’s power of execution.” He had lived his entire adult life under the twin tyrannies of Nazism and communism.

The second significant application in Evangelium Vitae related to conscientious legislators. John Paul wrote that “abortion and euthanasia are crimes which no human law can claim to legitimize.” Political leaders thus have an obligation to oppose such laws.

In the 1970s, when the general trend was that restrictive laws were being “liberalized,” the Holy See had taught that politicians could not vote for laws that permitted abortion or euthanasia. By 1995, permissive laws were the norm in Europe and North America, and so John Paul adjusted the teaching:

When it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects. (73)

The American Context

Pro-life Americans had suffered a grievous legal setback in 1992.

Nearly 20 years after Roe, and with six of the Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican presidents after Roe, there were high hopes that Planned Parenthood vs. Casey would restrict — or perhaps even overturn — the abortion license in Roe. But Casey did the opposite. It reaffirmed the “essential holding” of Roe and further argued that the credibility of the Supreme Court depended upon Americans giving their assent to Roe.

Even more notorious, the three-justice plurality opinion signed by Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy (both appointed by Ronald Reagan) and David Souter (appointed by George H.W. Bush) made a sweeping metaphysical argument in defense of abortion: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

That view, that truth was radically subjective, was refuted tout court by Veritatis Splendor — an even more synodal encyclical than Evangelium Vitae, being the fruit of six years of global consultations. Veritatis Splendor in 1993, along with the triumph of the World Youth Day in Denver, provided fresh energy for the American pro-life movement after the bitter disappointment of Casey.

It would be another three decades before Roe was overturned, only to lead to a slight increase in abortions, a series of referendum defeats for the pro-life position, and the removal by President Donald Trump of the pro-life plank in the Republican platform. With two national pro-choice political parties, pro-life Americans are learning anew the prescient diagnosis of Evangelium Vitae, that the logic of abortion is cultural and philosophical, not primarily legal.

Roe was overturned on constitutional grounds, but the Casey metaphysics is still regnant and likely growing more powerful as the American political landscape is shifting. The proclamation of the Gospel of Life then remains urgent now, 30 years after John Paul sounded his trumpet.