Respect for Life Sunday is set for Oct. 1

Sept. 28, 2006

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

Scripture tells us: "God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them (Gen 1:27). God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good (Gen 1:31)."

We know and believe that the Good News of Jesus Christ is truly the Gospel of Life. "I came so that they might have life, and have it to the full" (Jn 10:10). Jesus is talking about life for both the body and the soul, both natural and supernatural life. When we follow the Gospel, when we love God and neighbor as Jesus taught us and obey His commandments, we can live fully in this world and prepare ourselves to live with complete fullness in the eternal presence of God in Heaven.

Love one another

But we must obey what God commands us; and the heart of the Gospel is Jesus's command to "Love one another, as I have loved you" (Jn 13:34). The only way to follow Christ is to love and respect every single person. We may not choose to love some and not others; we may not choose to call some human and some less than human. We must love each and every one of God's children, for God made them and they are "very good."

There are many forces in the world today that try to tell us that only some people are worth loving. Economically, for example, we value those who are "more productive" and "more efficient" above those who are less so. And we esteem those who display their wealth and power rather more than those who display their poverty. Psychologically, we attribute happiness to those who seem successful, and expect those who struggle to be unhappy. Politically, we refuse the same rights to our enemies that we claim for ourselves, and we choose our own self-interest above the common good.

We must not accept the world's way of thinking! How can we draw a line between a moral and an immoral choice if our only values are material and soul-denying? For example, if a worker is too "unproductive" to work, what right do they have to eat? By this logic, they have none. Or if someone disagrees with us on some fundamental issue, what right do they have to participate in the political process? By this logic, they have none.

This is why, by both reason and faith, our Catholic faith teaches us to value people because of who they are, that is, children of God, and not because of what they can do. The unproductive worker has the right to eat because they are human, in the image of God; the dissenter has the right to political action, because they are human, in the image of God. "Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me" (Mt 25:45).

According to reason, in what the Catholic tradition refers to as "natural law" (that is, the basic, universal moral law shared by every human culture), we recognize that simply being human entitles one immediately to certain social rights and duties (see Gaudium et Spes #25). For example, every human has the right to work, to a family, to pursue happiness, to possess property, to freedom of religion, and so on. One of the purposes of the state is to guarantee these individual rights, and to balance the competing rights of individuals in consistent and fair ways. Our own United States has enshrined this idea boldly in its foundational documents: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..."

But the limitation on this civil protection of natural law is that only those who are recognized by the state as human are protected (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1902, 1907). The legality of slavery, for example, rested on the idea that Africans were not human in the same sense that Europeans were. The legality of denying the vote to women rested on the idea that women were not human in the same sense that men were. Just so today, the legality of, for example, abortion rests on the premise that the unborn are not human in the same sense that the born are.

Image and likeness of God

When a state usurps for itself the power to define who is human and who is not, or who has value and dignity, and who does not, no person of conscience can be silent. Our proper response of faith to any definition of what is human that contradicts the revealed, Scriptural truth that all humans are made in the "image and likeness of God" must be to proclaim that truth fearlessly and constantly. We should repeat again and again the constant teaching of the Church: "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 practise them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator" (Gaudium et Spes #27; Evangelium Vitae #3).

By faith and according to revelation, we believe that every human is a unique creature of God, with unique gifts and a unique vocation in the world. We believe that every human is loved by God individually, continuously, with the eternal unchanging love of God who creates and sustains every creature. We believe that every human being shares the universal vocation to respond to God's love, which culminates in eternal beatitude in Heaven. And we therefore believe that every life, from conception to natural death, is infinitely precious (CCC 2258 ff).

The intrinsic value Catholics, and indeed all faithful followers of Abraham's God, assign to every human life mirrors the infinite value with which God loves every life he creates in his own "image and likeness" (CCC 1700 ff). That "image and likeness," now perfected and renewed by Jesus Christ, is fundamental to our human condition; and it shines in us regardless of our age, capacity, or achievements.

Respect for Life Sunday

As a community of faith, we must insist absolutely that every human be accorded the respect and protection due to all God's children. The unborn, the comatose, the disabled, the elderly, the imprisoned, the destitute, the homeless, the immigrant: each is loved infinitely by God, and each is worthy of respect and protection by society. To deny this is to deny God.

As a community of faith, we dedicate the first Sunday in October each year as "Respect for Life Sunday." We do this to remind ourselves of the undeniable value of every human life, created by God with the purpose of eternal beatitude. We do this to remind ourselves of all those in our midst whose life our society does not respect, and whom we must learn to respect fully so that we can teach the world Christ's ways.

In the Gospel reading from Mark (Mk 9:38-48) this Oct. 1, we will listen to our Lord warn us against following the ways of the world too closely. "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off! It is better to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna." Christ is not, of course, telling us to mutilate ourselves; one's hand is never the cause of sin, though it may be the means. It is our will that causes us to sin: or to be exact, it is the deformation of our will by habitual attachment to things that are not God. This is what we must cut off in order to follow Christ. We must learn to love God "with your whole heart, and your whole mind, and your whole soul; and to love your neighbor as yourself" (Mt 22:37-9). When our every action flows from that love of God and neighbor, then we will act righteously, according to both the natural law and the perfecting law of Christ.

My dear brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ, present in the Eucharist and in every sacrament, transforms our minds and hearts through our faithful participation in the actions of the Church. We cannot transform the world into the Kingdom of God without first being willing to let God transform us into mirrors of the Son. I implore you all to be faithful imitators of Christ and the saints, begging God continually for the grace to love God and our neighbor with a pure, selfless love, and for the grace to bear that love into the world like a torch, setting all ablaze. Just as Jesus stood up on the Cross for your life and for mine, so let us now stand up for Him in our neighbor, to teach the world the infinite love of our Heavenly Father for all His creation.

Your devoted brother in Christ,

Most Reverend R. Walker Nickless, D.D.
Bishop of Sioux City