St Agnes K Of C Council 14202

 Thoughts from Fr. Bob

Today is Respect Life Sunday, and a good time to reflect on the preciousness of life and how we understand and protect it. Of course, there are many ways to respect and safeguard life. Living in a family that reflects mutual love and respect is primary. While no family is perfect, striving to mirror God’s love to each other is the first and best way to instill and spread a profound respect for life. In our society, not everyone shares our outlook on life issues. It’s important to know what we believe, why we believe it and be faithful to the teaching in our words and actions.Last week at an ecumenical clergy luncheon sponsored by the Diocese’s Respect Life Office,national speaker and author Scott Klusendorf addressed societal trends that contradict Christian understandings. His talk coming soon after the re-introduction of abortions at Planned Parenthood in Naples, abortion was his primary focus, but the issues he addressed have impact on a broad spectrum of life issues.

One issue is whether there are eternal divine truths to which we must hold. As a Catholic, we believe that there are. Klusendorf, a protestant minister, quoted Pope Benedict’s assertion that we are increasingly living under a “dictatorship of relativism.” What does this mean? Basically moral and ethical beliefs are increasingly seen as an individual preference or choice, with each person’s choice being as good as another.

To the extreme, some think what makes us valuable as human beings is our usefulness. Catholics believe that we are made in the image and likeness of God and every human from the unborn to the dying has equal dignity. We treasure every life as sacred from God. In a more utilitarian view of humanity, one can eliminate the unproductive. A society that embraces this view is a society that can kill the unborn, disabled, elderly and terminally ill.

Klusendorf encouraged the clergy present to:

�� Preach a biblical view of human value, that God made us and there’s a way things ought to be.

�� Equip people to engage others on the issue, showing both scientific and philosophical arguments that are compelling.

�� Present a Cross-centered Gospel, reflecting that Jesus bears our sins and that our hope,healing and salvation is in Him.

�� Confront our fears, seeing abortion for what it is, naming the sin and addressing it. In the end, we must affirm that moral truth is real and knowable, that our equality is based on our common human nature, and that human value is not based on self awareness or our usefulness, and that life issues cannot be reduced to a private personal preference. As we have seen in recent weeks in Naples, these really are matters of life and death. On this Respect Life Sunday, may we embrace and live the rich teachings of our Church, truths that reflect the very breath of God!

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