So what are we supposed to believe? That Scripture, the Fathers, the Doctors, the Roman Catechism, and centuries of Catholic rulers all endorsed something intrinsically contrary to the dignity of man until Francis, of all people, corrected the moral theology of Christendom?
There are phrases that once sounded Catholic because they were Catholic. “From conception to natural death” used to mean something precise. It meant the innocent child in the womb cannot be murdered. It meant the elderly, the sick, and the disabled cannot be disposed of by euthanasia. It meant human life is not clay in the hands of doctors, judges, bureaucrats, or activists who dress killing in the sterile language of compassion.
Now the phrase is being stretched until it snaps.
On the April 23 return flight to Rome, Leo XIV was asked about executions in Iran. A Catholic answer could have condemned unjust executions, political murder, show trials, torture, and tyranny. It could have denounced the killing of dissidents while preserving the perennial Catholic distinction between murder and just punishment. Instead, Leo made the leap. “I condemn the taking of people’s lives. I condemn capital punishment,” he said, before adding that life should be respected “from conception to natural death.”
At first, one might have tried to excuse this as one more loose airplane answer, the sort of rolling papal press-room fog Catholics have been asked to breathe since Francis turned return flights into theological improv. But Leo removed that excuse the next day.
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