Richard Doerflinger
By Richard Doerflinger • Catholic News Service • Posted April 30, 2021
Most people have heard of the slippery slope. After making what seems a limited exception to a moral principle, we may find over time that it logically becomes far broader than we had in mind.
In his 1995 encyclical “Evangelium Vitae” (“The Gospel of Life”), St. John Paul II recounted how this can create a “culture of death” undermining the very idea that human life deserves respect.
On the issue of physician-assisted suicide, something even more troubling may be at work: The goal that proponents always supported is becoming clearer only gradually to the rest of us.