The doctrine of the "sanctity of life" in catholicism: a sociological analysis on the forms of intervention in and on "life"

Abstract

The Catholic discourse on bioethics is analysed as a public rhetoric aiming to confirm the symbolic hegemony of the Church over the Italian society. After showing that the argument “unavailability of life” is a continuation of the “unavailability of the seed” which founded the traditional sexual morality, the article investigates the reasons of its success in Italy and argues that it can be found both in the use of the doctrine of “natural law” which – invoking at the same time a supernatural and an empiric reality – allows the Church to transfer its authority from the religious into the political sphere; and in the prevalent habitus that pushes Italians to attribute to the Vatican Hierarchy the monopole of religious truth. In the analysis, sociological categories of “reification” and “naturalization” are used to describe the effort of the Church to link its moral values to biological laws and, by that, make them appear valid for believers and unbelievers.