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What Can I Do to Build a Culture of Life?
The defense of human life and dignity is not a narrow cause, but a way of life and a framework for action. Decisions about candidates and choices about public policies require clear commitment to moral principles, careful discernment and prudential judgements based on the values of our faith.
-- US Conference of Catholic Bishops: "A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility".SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT & WORLD PEACE
Our nation and the world face grave choices about war and peace, about pursuing justice and security. People of good will may differ on how to apply just war norms in particular cases, especially when events are moving rapidly and the facts are not altogether clear. These are not only military and political choices, but also moral ones because they involve matters of life and death. Traditional Christian teaching offers ethical principles and moral criteria that should guide these critical choices.
JUST CAUSE. The Catechism of the Catholic Church limits just cause to cases in which "the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations [is] lasting, grave and certain." (#2309)
PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS AND PROPORTIONALITY. The use of force must have "serious prospects for success" and "must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated" (Catechism, #2309).
There are no easy answers. Ultimately, our elected leaders are responsible for decisions about national security, but we hope that our moral concerns and questions will be considered seriously by our leaders and all citizens. We invite others, particularly Catholic lay people -- who have the principal responsibility to transform the social order in light of the Gospel -- to continue to discern how best to live out their vocation to be "witnesses and agents of peace and justice" (Catechism, #2442).As Jesus said, "Blessed are the peacemakers" (Mt. 5).
We pray for all those most likely to be affected by the conflict of war, especially the innocent suffering citizens and the men and women who serve in our armed forces. We support those who risk their lives in the service of our nation. We also support those who seek to exercise their right to conscientious objection and selective conscientious objection.-- US Conference of Catholic BishopsCRIMINAL DETERRENCE, JUSTICE, SAFETY & RETRIBUTION
Our involvement with the issues of our time can lead us into study, analysis and opinions...all of which are important. But a danger for those involved in the struggles of people who are suffering is forgetting that is it precisely people who suffer. We can easily treat the injustices of our world like issues, forgetting that crimes are an injustice only because they are done to people.
In Christ, we are not free to direct revenge or hate toward anyone. This includes those guilty of criminal wrongdoing.
"Defense of the common good requires that the unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. If non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity with the dignity of the human person." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2266, 2267)
"The nature and extent of punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of excuting the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: In other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare if practically nonexistant." (Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II)
Knowing that every person is made in God's beautiful and holy image, how can we presume to cut short another's life before God has given every opportunity for conversion.
Help assist in the essential spiritual work of mercy by ministering to the spiritual needs of male and female inmates at the Pasco County Detention Center (8 miles north of SR 54 on US 41) on Monday evenings from 7-9 p.m. These weekly sessions consist of a prayer service, Bible study and/or Communion service, and round table discussions of spiritual topics. For more information contact Kevin or Paula O'Keefe at 929-0018.
MORALITY IN MEDIAIn March 2002, and again in March 2004, national opinion polls conducted by Wirthlin Worldwide for Morality in Media found that more than 80 percent of Americans want the Federal laws against Internet obscenity vigorously enforced.
Morality in Media is also urging its members and others concerned about the floodtide of obscenity pouring into our nation's communities and homes, especially through the Internet, to write to the two leading candidates for the White House and ask them to make a public, unequivocal statement in favor of vigorous enforcement of Federal obscenity law.
As the Supreme Court wrote in its 1973 obscenity case, "[T]o equate the free and robust exchange of ideas and political debate with commercial exploitation of obscene material demeans the grand conception of the First Amendment and its high purposes in the historic struggle for freedom. It is a 'misuse of the great guarantees of free speech'"
Undoubtedly, there many (particularly among our nation's "secular elite") who no longer understand the difference between freedom and license, but at MIM we think the large majority of Americans would prefer to live and raise children in a safe and decent society-than one shaped by those who crassly profit from the exploitation and degradation of hardcore sex.