The introduction of human rights language into the social mission of the Catholic Church evident in Pope John XXIII’s encyclical Pacem in terris (1963) is often seen as a delayed response to the modern world. From this perspective, Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Freedom rode on the back of America’s centuries-old first freedom. Even the magna carta of the modern social encyclicals, Pope Leo...
Human Dignity vs. the Throwaway Culture
Human dignity is innate by virtue of each human person being made in the image of God. It is independent of a person’s role in society, talents and weaknesses, and demographic profile. Each person is entirely unique and irreplaceable. The persecuted, the degraded, the humiliated person has dignity. No one can strip a person of his or her dignity, even if the...
It happened on November 6, 2013. At the end of his weekly general audience with approximately 50,000 attendees, Pope Francis caught sight of a man in his fifties. He was sitting in a wheelchair and accompanied by his aunt Lotto who recalled: “We didn’t think we would be so close to the Pope, but the Swiss Guard kept ushering us forward until we were in a corner in the front row. When he came close...
If perchance there might be a person in this audience from Wisconsin, Missouri, or New York, whom I had the honor of confirming, be patient with me, please, for, odds are that I used this same story during my sermon that day.
To be healed does not mean to be cured. Cure restores a former state of being, an expected state, a comfortable state. Medical treatment and prayers for miracles of cure are powerful and sometimes effective. Healing, however, encompasses a much greater and deeper change in someone’s life. Cure may be part of this, but is not a necessary part. Healing opens up a new life, a new way of understanding...
