This weekend, besides being “Super Bowl Sunday,” is also the official “kick-off” weekend for the 2012 Annual Bishop’s Appeal.  It begins the opportunity to pledge our special support of our Bishop in his efforts to promote the work of charity throughout our five-county diocese. In sponsoring a number of institutions and programs that help those in greatest need, we foster a sense of “ownership” of these organizations and programs and help them carry out the work of God through us. How can you help?  By making the pledge that best indicates your desire to assist Bishop Barbarito in reaching our diocesan goal, as well as once again making our parish goal ($199,000). Encourage your little ones to help, too.

Our young people will also be showing their concern for the homeless of our region by holding out their soup pots for your generous donation that will support the “Family Promise” program that’s HQ’d on our campus. Several of them will also spend a day in makeshift cardboard shelters, trying to fathom, if only for a day, what it might be like to be homeless and dependent upon others for food and shelter.

Thank you for the efforts you made last week to show your continued support of our Catholic school. The Knights of Columbus gave a generous gift of $1,000, the result of several fund-raising efforts on their part, including last week’s fun-filled “Knight at the Races,” Pancake Breakfasts, Fish Frys and 50-50s. Our observance of Catholic Schools Week, with its theme of “faith, academics and service,” is highlighted by the Spaghetti Dinner fund-raiser that brings us together as a family, enjoying food and fun together. Thank you to Mrs. Delgado, the staff and all the parents who worked so hard to make all these great things happen for our kids. Our students are God’s special people and are certainly worth it! Now let’s keep the momentum going with the upcoming $100 raffle ticket sales. It helps keep our school going.

This week, I want to share some further thoughts on the theme of the dignity of human life that we’ve been promoting in these past few bulletin letters. Admittedly not mine, these thoughts come from the new President of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Catholic Bishops. I found them to be “right-on.” In a recent address at Fordham University, Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan of New York said that “Natural law is a concept of objective truth, not religious preference; and reliance on natural law and human rights will move the culture and its laws in the direction of authentic respect for human life.” The most effective way, according to him, to engage in conversations about human life with people who disagree with the Church's position is to "untether" discussions of natural law "from what might be thought of as unique Catholic confessionalism," and reference the writings of non-Catholic authors. After all, it's not really a ‘Catholic’ thing; it's a natural thing; it's a human thing!

"Our society has caricatured natural law as some medieval tool the Church is using to justify its own unique and antiquated system of teaching. Of course, the opposite is true," he said. "Natural law theory is not uniquely Catholic; it's human! Some of the greatest exponents of the natural law, like Aristotle and Cicero, never heard of the Catholic Church. These things we teach are not true because they happen to be taught by the Church. We teach them because they happen to be true.” This pre-dates the Church.

Blessed John Paul II's encyclical "Evangelium Vitae," described the culture of death as one that denies the basic solidarity inherent in the human person, and is obsessed with efficiency and convenience, waging a war of the powerful against the weak. The Cardinal asks, "Can sustained human rights, girded by law, survive in such a culture? The pragmatic, utilitarian world view depends upon sand to construct a system of laws protecting human rights, particularly, human life itself, since everything is constantly being re-negotiated, based on drifting dunes of utility, convenience, privacy, and self-interest."

An important proposition of the Gospel of Life is "that the dignity of the human person and respect for inviolable human rights are not just based on divine revelation, but on an objective moral law which, as the 'natural law' written in the human heart, is the obligatory point of reference for civil law itself.”

A strange feature of modern political and legal theory is that only neutral, utilitarian principles can provide a basis for public policy discussions and law; so, appeals to transcendent values, such as religion, cannot legitimately be presented. “The Gospel of Life proposes an alternative vision of law and culture, one that provides an antidote to the pragmatic nihilism that produces a culture of death. It seeks to recapture the essential relationship between the civil law and the moral law, and to foster a culture in which all human life is valued and authentic human development is possible. The Gospel of Life calls us specifically to offer a clear, faith-based view of humanity as a basis for human law. Christians propose that truth can only be known and freedom truly exercised by recognizing that they are a gift from God."

Dolan continued, "A reliance on the natural law and human rights will enable us to move the culture, and thus our laws, in the direction of authentic respect for human life. It will be a gradual, incremental process ... and require compromise and acceptance of intermediary steps."

He described pragmatism, utilitarianism and consumerism as a trinity of related culprits that chisel away at the culture of life and "seem to be ascendant in culture and normative in making laws." From this point of view, "A baby is useless and impractical from a raw, pragmatic, utilitarian or consumerist view" and is seen by some in the culture of death "as a commodity, an accessory.  We have babies, if at all, to satisfy our desires, not to sacrifice for theirs; to fulfill our needs, not to invite us to spend the rest of our lives fulfilling their needs; to reward us, not because we want to give to them."

"To this culture of death, the Church boldly and joyfully promotes the culture of life," he said. “People can promote the culture of life by living, speaking and teaching the truth in love. Usually, we will attract more people by the compelling nature of our love and, in the end that will be what most hypnotizes and magnetizes people."

Very Rev. Canon Tom