SOCIAL JUSTICE: Respect Life

In October of each year is observed Respect Life Month in Catholic parishes across our great nation. This annual observance provides a special time to focus on the truth and dignity of the human person. 

Past Supreme Lady Geralyn C. Shelvin and I attend the
Youth Rally and Mass for Life at the Verizon Center in 2012

Watching television, listening to the radio, reading the newspaper, and perusing online news magazines will present in a very real way just how much an increasingly secular society is constantly attempting to compete with our holiness. Considering that we live in a largely sophisticated society, sometimes we are left trying to make sense of varying incongruences to the culture of life, such as, law enforcement officers assaulting unarmed civilians, a young man walking into a place of worship to kill people during prayer in South Carolina, a man murdering journalists during a live interview in Virginia, legalized abortion, and capital punishment.

In our culture, human life is repeatedly under assault. From the very moment of conception to natural death, life is threatened because our society has lost the true meaning of humanity, respect and basic human dignity. We must never lose sight of the fact that Christ became flesh so that we may come to know God’s beneficent love (1 John 4:9) and to make us “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Saint John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae explains to us that “it is an absolute imperative to respect, love and promote the life of every brother and sister, in accordance with the requirements of God’s bountiful love in Jesus Christ” (n. 77).

Each of us was made in the image and likeness of God, and so we must affirm the intrinsic value of human life and the dignity of every human being in a way that transforms the culture of secular society. This priority is not limited to any “particular” human life. Rather, the priority is to affirm the dignity of “every” human life because every human life has value. Pope Francis reminds us, “All life has inestimable value even the weakest and most vulnerable, the sick, the old, the unborn and the poor.” Every life should be worth living, no matter the circumstances. 

We must remember that being pro-life encompasses the serious concerns of extensive hunger, poverty, homelessness, violence, euthanasia, capital punishment, and the absence of adequate health care. We cannot support those who promote widespread abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, and the many other ills that destroy the dignity of human life, who at the same time claim that they are personally opposed to the evils they support or endorse. We cannot continue to allow those who claim a belief in “choice” to escape the moral responsibility to “choose life.”

Evangelium Vitae presents unequivocally that we are “to preach the Gospel of life, to celebrate it in the Liturgy and in our whole existence, and to serve it with the various programs and structures which support and promote life” (79). The way we are—supposed to be—in the communion processional during the Holy Eucharist is the way we must be in the world every day. Be encouraged to overtly participate in programs and initiatives that defend the dignity of every human life. May we never forget that Jesus came that we may have life, and have it abundantly (John 10:10). Let us take seriously our moral obligation to defend human life at every stage and every age from conception to natural death.