ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

DAVID BRIGGS

Pope John Paul II is drawing a sharp line separating the Catholic Church from modern morality, claiming in a new encyclical that certain acts are always evil and endanger the salvation of the church’s 900 million followers.

In the 59 million-member church in the United States, some Roman Catholics are concerned the encyclical limiting dissent in areas of sexual morality and other church teachings may have a ‘‘chilling effect’‘ on theologians. Others call it a bold challenge to keep the church’s moral standards high.

‘‘If abortion, euthanasia, artificial contraception and homosexual activity are intrinsically evil, then they are always and everywhere wrong, independent of the judgment of the individual,’‘ said Bishop John J. Myers of the Diocese of Peoria, Ill.

Six years in development, the 179-page encyclical scheduled to be formally released Tuesday is a powerful theological treatise expressing John Paul’s concerns over moral relativism in the church and society.

Nations lacking transcendent values can easily be manipulated, the pope says in his 10th encyclical. ‘‘As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism,’‘ according to the encyclical entitled ‘‘Veritatis Splendor’‘ (The Splendor of Truth).

But it is to internal dissent and the ‘‘genuine crisis’‘ in moral teaching that the pope devotes much of his attention in the document written to the bishops of the world. Most encyclicals, which are papal teachings, are addressed to all Catholics.

The pope discusses mortal sin in one section of the document, and throughout the encyclical refers to the dangers of individuals separating themselves from the promise of salvation by committing evil acts in opposition to God’s law.

There is no direct list of mortal sins, but the encyclical condemns acts ‘‘hostile to life itself,’‘ including genocide, abortion and euthanasia and acts that offend human dignity such as slavery and prostitution and trafficking in women and children.

Among the scattered references to sexual sins, contraceptive practices are specifically labeled an intrinsically evil act.

Bishop Donald Trautman of the Diocese of Erie, Pa., said the encyclical will put the issue of mortal sins back on ‘‘center stage.’‘

‘‘There are moral absolutes in the Roman Catholic faith tradition,’‘ he said. ‘‘For many in the American culture, moral absolutes are countercultural.’‘

Lisa Cahill, a theology professor at Boston College, said some of the encyclical’s goals seemed to be contradictory.

She applauded the encyclical’s desire to counteract the tendency in Western culture to address issues such as abortion, surrogate motherhood and euthanasia purely in terms of individual freedom out fo fear ‘‘we can’t come to any more substantive agreement on the common good.’‘

But she also is concerned that in the end the search for objective values would always be defined by the church hierarchy, an approach that would be rejected in public policy debates.

Lawrence Cunningham, chairman of the theology department at Notre Dame University, said some moral theologians also are concerned the document will have a ‘‘chilling effect’‘ on theological inquiry on controversial issues.

‘‘It seems to be so cut and dried from the point of the encyclical,’‘ he said.

For conservative groups, the encyclical is a godsend.

‘‘It very much vindicates those people that have been defending the church’s controversial norms,’‘ said James Sullivan, vice president of Catholics United for the Faith.

George Weigel, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, said no one is being ‘‘read out’‘ of the Catholic Church by the document.

‘‘It’s a bold challenge to some dominant currents of thought in the American academy that has worked its way into the culture: namely that you really can’t know the right thing to do,’‘ he said.

How will the average Catholic react?

‘‘I suspect the pews are going to split. Some are going to say, ‘Thank God, it’s about time,’ ‘’ said the Rev. James L. Connor, director of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. ‘‘You’re going to find people on the other side saying, ‘Oh God, he’s closing down all kinds of progressive’‘ developments.

But neither side will be right, Connor said. What he thinks the pope is really doing is discussing an issue on the cutting edge of the church and American culture: how to balance human responsibility and freedom.