On Moral Hierarchies: Rhetoric, Moral Inversion, and State-Sanctioned Killing

Canada is considering expanding MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) to include those whose only illness is a mental illness for a period of one year.

From Crisis

By Dom Perriello, BS

We invert the moral hierarchy when political rhetoric commands sustained moral scrutiny while the legalization of acts involving the deliberate taking of human life is barely brought up.

Our Catholic moral tradition has always recognized a hierarchy of moral gravity. Not all wrongs are the same. We know this instinctively. Some are the result of human weakness and flawed speech; others are embedded in law and social structures. The latter serves to shape the moral landscape of entire societies. When those distinctions collapse, confusion takes root. This tradition has never treated moral failures as equal in gravity.

For example, intemperate speech is morally wrong. We, as Catholics, are not free to excuse cruelty, mockery, or uncharitable rhetoric simply because it comes from a political figure we champion. Failures of speech harm us and undermine our witness.

However, we invert the moral hierarchy when political rhetoric commands sustained moral scrutiny while the legalization of acts involving the deliberate taking of human life is barely brought up. A quick glance through most publications and social media supports this observed disproportion.

Moral Hierarchy Is Not Moral Relativism

There is either an ordered truth or there is no truth. For us, morality is not subjective or up for personal interpretation. We have always sought to distinguish between personal moral faults and intrinsically evil acts in our laws and social structures. This distinction is not partisan; it reflects moral realism.

Uncharitable speech is ordinarily a personal moral fault which is often considered venial in nature. It is usually reparable and does not redefine moral norms or enlist institutions in wrongdoing. By contrast, physician-assisted suicide is an intrinsic evil and is being backed by government. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable” (2277).

St. John Paul II warned in Evangelium Vitae that laws permitting euthanasia are “radically opposed not only to the good of the individual but also to the common good.” The state has a duty to protect every human life, and that duty is undermined by those laws.

According to St. Augustine, when love itself becomes disordered, it allows for moral disorder. So, when lesser evils are brought to the forefront and consistently overshadow greater evils, moral focus loses its proper place and proportion. As a result, political and cultural life also suffer from that distortion.

New York and the Gravity of Legalized Killing

In New York, the legislature has passed legislation legalizing physician-assisted suicide, and Governor Kathy Hochul signed it into law. The law has been enacted but not yet taken effect; state officials are preparing the regulatory framework for its implementation. Whatever prudential debates surround political rhetoric, this development represents a far more consequential moral rupture.

What makes this so striking is that it is unfolding in a state with one of the largest Catholic populations in the country; nearly one-third of New Yorkers identify as Catholic. That fact alone should give us pause. When a law permitting the deliberate taking of life advances in such a place, our moral priorities become all the more consequential. Did people simply assume that such a measure would be safely opposed? Or did we witness the result of a gradual inversion of our moral order? We must not lose sight of the distinction between lesser moral failings and grave injustices.

When the state authorizes physicians to prescribe death, the law ceases to protect life universally. It introduces conditions under which killing is framed as compassionate or dignified. Authority now defines the criteria rather than the inherent dignity of human life. This means life will be granted to some and withdrawn from others.

St. Thomas Aquinas recognized the moral importance of preserving life centuries ago. Law and medicine should therefore be ordered for the protection and preservation of life, not for its deliberate termination.

We were warned by St. John Paul II that when legal systems begin to authorize the deliberate taking of life, society risks sliding toward what he described as a “culture of death.” The value of human life becomes conditional and subject to calculation rather than protected as an inviolable good (Evangelium Vitae). Medicine itself is altered by this shift. Physicians are no longer ordered exclusively toward healing and care but are enlisted to determine when life is no longer worth sustaining. Evangelium Vitae also makes clear that this is not progress. It’s a corruption of both law and medical ethics.

In every jurisdiction where assisted suicide has been legalized, safeguards weaken, eligibility expands, and cultural expectations change. What begins as an option gradually becomes a pressure, particularly for the elderly and the disabled. We have seen this logic appear in many forms throughout history: once the universality of life’s protection is abandoned, killing is inevitably rebranded as duty, mercy, or necessity.

The language changes, but the moral structure does not.

What Scandal Actually Means

In Catholic moral theology, scandal does not mean outrage or offense; it means actions and even omissions that lead others into moral error. It’s formed from what is said but also from what is emphasized or downplayed. When lesser faults dominate moral attention while greater evils recede into the background, we are subtly taught what matters most—and what does not.

The scandal here is not that intemperate speech is criticized. As stated, that correction is entirely proper. It’s the misordering of moral hierarchy. Rhetorical excess receives sustained focus while laws authorizing the deliberate taking of life, in this example, are treated as peripheral or assumed to be safely opposed.

This kind of reversal points to a moral inversion in which minor faults eclipse serious injustices. Over time, this erodes the clarity necessary for a society to defend innocent life. The Church’s moral voice is not limited to correcting personal temptation; it must also confront the structural evil that reshapes conscience over time. When that confrontation is muted or displaced, normalization follows.

Catholic Witness and Moral Clarity

Catholic publications rightly address a wide range of moral issues. That is not in question. But not every wrong warrants equal emphasis. Prudence includes ordering attention according to moral gravity and social consequence. All of us share responsibility for how moral priorities are formed and communicated.

When rhetoric eclipses law and commentary displaces confrontation with serious injustice, the Church’s public witness loses its prophetic clarity. Yes, intemperate speech is morally wrong. But in what moral universe does our moral reasoning place the rhetoric of a public figure over the legalization of intentional killing or other significant injustices?

Losing sight of this distinction reflects a failure of moral formation at a time when clarity, especially from Catholic voices, is urgently needed.