nt of our ethics of life.
Bernardin looks again to Catholic doctrine from the Second Vatican Council which acknowledged that contemporary man has thought more and more about the sense of the dignity of the human person, and in the U.S. this is found in the civil rights movement and in our public debate over foreign policy toward different totalitarian regimes. Bernardin is in effect seeking greater consistency by reshaping the ethic of life:
A consistent ethic of life is based on the need to ensure that the sacredness of human life, which is the ultimate source of human dignity, will be defended and fostered from womb to tomb, from the genetic laboratory to the cancer ward, from the ghetto to the prison (Bernardin 61).
Bernardin now finds capital punishment to be a case of meeting violence with violence, of killing someone who has killed and so extending a certain lack of respect for life. The state may claim to be affirming life by taking a life, but this is a contradiction that Bernardin no longer accepts as valid. Capital punishment has become an occasion for celebrating the death of another human being, and Bernardin sees this as saying something bad about our system and our ethical standards:
We desperately need an attitude or atmosphere in society which will sustain a consistent defense and promotion of life. Where human life is considered "cheap" and easily "wasted," eventually nothing is held as sacred and all lives are in jeopardy (Bernardin 65).
A consistent ethic of life is what Bernardin calls a seamless garment, where the essence of the system is applied evenly to all issues of life and death. This is what makes the system consistent, and Bernardin means here that we consider the importance and supremacy of life from the womb to the tomb, from conception to death. This would preclude
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