Call To Family Community And Participation

CALL TO FAMILY COMMUNITY AND PARTICIPATION

(“We for our part, love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘My love is fixed on God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. One who has no love for the brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: whoever loves God must also love his brother.” 1 John 4:19-21

The Second Theme of Catholic Social teaching is: “The Call to Family, Community, and Participation.”  Each person is not only sacred but also social. Human dignity is affected by how we structure our society, our economy, our political system, our judicial system. Our society must be structured in a way that allows the each person to grow to his or her potential. This begins with the family. Society must not only safe guard the family unit but also put forth policies that protect and strengthen the family. Each person, regardless of economic status or education  has right to participate in society.

“The family is thus an agent of pastoral activity through its explicit proclamation of the Gospel and its legacy of varied forms of witness, namely solidarity with the poor, openness to a diversity of people, the protection of creation, moral and material solidarity with other families, including those most in need, commitment to the promotion of the common good and the transformation of unjust social structures, beginning in the territory in which the family lives, through the practice of the corporal works of mercy.” (On Love in the Family, Pope Francis)

In other words, our working toward the Common Good motivates our call to community and participation. The Church insists that our faith requires our commitment to building just structures and our focus on the corporal works of mercy; feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, welcoming the stranger. The family unit is the place to begin this novitiate of service when we learn as children that we are called to be people of service, especially to those who do not have enough of the world’s goods to take care of themselves.  “Insofar as it is a ‘small-scale Church,’ the Christian family is called upon, like the ‘large-scale Church,’ to be a sign of unity for the world and in this way to exercise its prophetic role by bearing witness to the Kingdom and peace of Christ, towards which the whole world is journeying. Christian families can do this through their educational activity – that is to say by presenting to their children a model of life based on the values of truth, freedom, justice and love – both through active and responsible involvement in the authentically human growth of society  and its institutions, and by supporting in various ways the associations specifically devoted to international issues.” St. John Paul II Familiaris Consorto.

Life and dignity of the Human Person - part 2

Life and Dignity of the Human Person

“Look on the needs of the saints as your own, be generous in offering hospitality. Bless your persecutors; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Have the same attitude toward all. Put away ambitious thoughts and associate with those who are lowly.  Do not be wise in your own estimation. Never repay injury with injury.” (Romans 12:13-17)

“Human persons are willed by God; they are imprinted with God’s image. Their dignity does not come from the work they do, but from the persons they are.” St. John Paul II On The Hundredth Year, Centesimus annus. #11

We continue with the first theme of Catholic Social Teaching, Life and Dignity of the Human Person. In the first part we talked mostly about human life issues. This section we will talk about what we mean by the dignity of the human person. Each person is made in the image and likeness of God. Each person, therefore, has inherent dignity. This dignity does not depend on ethnicity, religion, or country of origin. Nor is it effected by job, financial status, or position in the community. Workers who labor at minimum wage have the same dignity and are due the same respect as corporate leaders. Nor can they be treated as “mere tools for profit.” Because of the dignity of each person, racism in all its forms must be fought against by all Catholics. People must not be separated into groups because of how they look, how they speak, and where they come from. No one has the right to treat others as inferior to them for any reason.

How we treat one another and how we will be judged by that treatment is summed up in the “Corporal Works of Mercy.” “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me. I was ill and you comforted me, in prison and you visited me.” (Matt. 25:35-36) Thus the Church calls on societies and individuals to see that all have enough to eat, all have decent housing, all have adequate health care. They Church calls on society to treat prisoners with dignity, and to welcome strangers and refugees. How we treat each other, especially the poor, the sick, and the marginalized, is the measurement of the justice of a country and a community.

“All human beings, therefore, are ends to be served by the institutions that make up the economy, not means to be exploited for more narrowly defined goals.  Human personhood must be respected with a reverence that is religious. When we deal with each other, we should do so with a sense of awe that arises in the presence of something holy and sacred. For that is what human beings are.” The United States Catholic Bishops, “Economic Justice for All. #28

Life and Dignity of the Human Person

LIFE AND DIGNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON

“You are holy, for you are God’s temple and God dwells in you.” (1 Corinthians 3:16)

The first theme of Catholic Social Teaching is “Life and Dignity of the Human Person.” This is foundational. Unless we uphold up the life and dignity of the human person, no other aspect of the social teaching of the Church has merit. Human life is sacred and must be held so by all. Because life is sacred all persons must be treated with the dignity they deserve because they are created in the image and likeness of God. (Genesis 1:26-31). As St. John Paul II says in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, THE GOSPLE OF LIFE, “the Second Vatican Council, in a passage which retains all its relevance today, forcefully condemned a number of crimes and attacks against human life…I repeat that condemnation in the name of the whole Church, certain that I am interpreting the genuine sentiment of every upright conscience: ‘Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or willful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practice them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator.’” (Evangelium Vitae #3).

The sacredness of life begins with the right to life which belongs to each person once conceived in the womb. Therefore, abortion, in all its forms, is always wrong and always grave matter. There simply is no justification for taking the innocent life in the womb. Abortion is no more a woman’s right than killing a five-year-old child is a mother or father’s right. Each person has the right to life from conception to natural death. This includes a denunciation of all forms of suicide and euthanasia. One does not have a right to take one’s own life any more than one has a right to take another’s life. That right belongs to God alone. Nor does one have the right to assist in a suicide even in terminally ill persons. One has a right to medications to ease pain but not to medications specifically administered to cause death. There simply is not such thing as a “right to die.” Death is an unavoidable event but it’s time is not to be under the control of any individual or group of individuals. “We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church #2280)

The right to life is also extended to those who may have denied that right to others. The Catechism states; “Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitively taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”  (CCC #2267) Pope Francis has moved Church teaching further along by declaring the death penalty “contrary to the Gospel.” In a speech to cardinals, bishops, priests, nuns, catechists, and ambassadors from many countries on the 25th anniversary of the promulgation of the Catechism Pope Francis stated, “however grave the crime that may be committed, the death penalty is inadmissible because it attacks the inviolability and the dignity of the person.”

To be continued…