October is Respect Life month. Respect of the Life and Dignity of the Human person is the most basic Catholic Social Teaching and concerned a spectrum of issues as Bishop Mulvey explained us in a recent statement. This was also the topic of Blessed Pope John Paul II encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae (the Gospel of Life) issued in March 1995.
Pro-life is whatever violates the integrity of the human person
by Bishop Wm. Michael Mulvey, Diocese of Corpus Christi
Pro-life concerns include anything that promotes the dignity of men and women created by God in His image. To transgress life, in any form, is to disobey God and to blemish His presence within us. Paragraph 27 of the “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,” propagated by Pope Paul VI in 1965 towards the end of Vatican II, enumerates the many sins that violate the sanctity of life. “Whatever is opposed to life itself,” the Constitution reads, “such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or willful self-destruction…” are pro-life issues.
The Constitution, however, does not stop there in defining violations against human life. It continues; “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 men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons…” The Constitution decries all these “infamies” that “poison” society. Doing “more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonor to the Creator,” the Constitution says.
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