When the sense of God is lost, “enclosed in the narrow horizon of his physical nature, man is somehow reduced to being ‘a thing,’ and no longer grasps the transcendent character of his existence as man. He no longer considers life as a splendid gift of God, something ‘sacred’ entrusted to this responsibility, thus also to his loving care and ‘veneration.’ Life itself becomes a mere ‘thing,’ which man claims as his exclusive property, completely subject to his control and manipulation.
“In relation to life at birth and death, man is no longer capable of posing the question of the truest meaning of his own existence, nor can he assimilate with genuine freedom these crucial moments of his own history. He is concerned only with ‘doing,’ and using all kinds of technology, he busies himself with programming, controlling, and dominating birth and death. Birth and death, instead of being primary experiences demanding to be lived, become things to be merely ‘possessed’ or ‘rejected'” (John Paul II, 1995, Evangelium Vitae, 22).
