Theme: Life and Dignity of the Human Person

1. Theme: Life and Dignity of the Human Person

2. Life and Dignity of the Human Person • The Catholic Church proclaims that human life is sacred and that the dignity of the human person is the foundation of a moral vision for society. • This belief is the foundation of all the principles of our social teaching. In our society, human life is under direct attack from abortion and euthanasia. • The value of human life is being threatened by cloning, embryonic stem cell research, and the use of the death penalty. Catholic teaching also calls on us to work to avoid war. • Nations must protect the right to life by finding increasingly effective ways to prevent conflicts and resolve them by peaceful means. • We believe that every person is precious, that people are more important than things, and that the measure of every institution is whether it threatens or enhances the life and dignity of the human person.

3. Take out a piece of paper • Stay completely silent throughout the entire activity. • Write down as many positive/good qualities about each person presented. • Completely describe what you see.

4. Use your imaginations to name a positive or good characteristic about each person.

15. What does this lesson present?

16. We need to See and Respond • D: Dignity...of the Human Person • C: Call…to family, community, participate • R: Rights… and responsibilities • O: Option… for the poor/vulnerable • W: Work…Dignity and Rights of Workers • S: Solidarity… being one family (love) • C: Care… for God’s Creation

17. Building the Foundation: CST

18. Foundation • The foundation of the house is our fundamental belief in the dignity of the human person. This is so important that we need to dwell on it. It's not just an idea that emerged in the 19th or 20th century. We can trace it all the way back to the Book of Genesis. We are made in the image and likeness of God. Vatican II said that the role of the Church in the modem world is to be the sign and safeguard of the dignity of the human person. So this is the cornerstone-the reason why we have a social teaching. Everything flows from this.

19. Walls • Now I have a friend who has a priceless collection of Sports memorabilia. You can't just put these objects in a closet. He had a custom cabinet designed to hold and display them. Then he had the house alarmed as a protection. The point is, when you have something precious, you have to design structures to protect it. The walls and roof of our house are human rights, which protect human dignity. Human rights are civil and political as well as economic, social, and cultural. They spell out what we're entitled to just by being human. In many countries, the Church is the lone voice speaking out for human rights. We do so because they affect human dignity.

20. Family Room • In the family room of our house we are reminded that we are called to community and to active participation in society. We are not isolated individuals but we are linked to others in our family, workplace, neighborhood, and community. This is how we work out our salvation, not alone, but with and through others. We are not observers on the sidelines; we contribute to society according to our talents.

21. Dining Room • In society, we come in contact with the poor and recognize that we are called to have a preference for them. So, in our dining room, there are places reserved for the poor. They have a standing invitation to be there, together with us. Because they are voiceless and powerless, we are ready to stand up for them, to have a special love for them. Again, this is not something new. The prophets in the Old Testament told us that how we treat those on the margins--the widows, the orphans, and the aliens could judge the quality of our faith. Without concern for them, our faith is shallow, hollow.

22. The Office • There are rooms in our house where different forms of work go on. There's the kitchen where meals are prepared, the study where tax returns are worked on, the internet where the teens have learned to surf, etc. Our social teaching tells us that those workers have a dignity and certain rights precisely as workers, that work has a dignity. This teaching came as a response to the industrial revolution in the late 19th century when workers were exploited, mistreated, and discounted. The Church was there to say clearly that workers have the right to organize, the right to collective bargaining, the right to a just wage, and the right to a safe work environment.

23. Bedroom • But our house is not a self-contained universe; it has windows on the world. We are called to be in solidarity with the rest of the world. Pope John Paul II describes solidarity as a "firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say the good of all and of each individual because we are all really responsible for all." Now that statement could overwhelm us--being told that we are responsible for all, but it's understood that we can only do what one human being can do. The important thing is the orientation, the attitude, and the lens through which we look at the rest of the world. We can't pull down the shades of our windows on the world because, in fact, the whole world is our home.

24. Outside Landscape • Finally, the lawn in front of the house reminds us of our duty to care for God's creation. This goes far beyond recycling, but it can begin there. We have over-consumed and damaged much of our environment. We need to repair and care for the earth as stewards of creation.

25. Life and Dignity of the Human Person • Respect for all life • All stages of life • Primacy of humanity

26. Current issues… • Abortion • Euthanasia • Capital Punishment • War

27. # 2 Call to Family and Community • Fulfillment in families and communities • Government rightly ordered when the family is safe guarded • Community open to all • Everyone has an obligation to contribute to the good of the community as a whole.

28. # 2 Issues • Breakdown of the family • Isolation of the elderly • Policies or social trends that deemphasize the focus on the family as the essential unit • Lack of open avenues for participation in political life

29. #3 Rights and Responsibilities • Human dignity achieved only if certain rights are available. • Right to life, food, clothing, shelter, health care, and education. • Rights require duty to self, others, and society.

30. #3 Issues • Rights for all? • Health care • Education • Food, Shelter, Clothing • Employment

31. # 4 Option for the Poor and Vulnerable • Basic test of any society how do we treat the poor among us? • In serving the poor we see our dependence on God mirrored in the poor’s dependence on others. The Church says this is one of the four avenues we use to know God. • Special attention because we are called to love others as we love ourselves.

32. # 4 Issues • Understanding poverty • Not because people are poor and lazy • Understanding generational poverty • Understanding poverty at a global level

33. #5 Dignity of Work and Rights of Workers • Just living wage. • Rights to certain benefits and humane working conditions. • Private property and economic initiative. • No right to accumulate mass amounts of wealth while others go without.

34. # 5 Issues • Working conditions for all? • Just and living wages? • Economy to serve people.

35. # 6 Solidarity • Global solidarity. • Our humanity unites us together in a common bond. • Need for unity of all peoples. • Fair Trade.

36. #6 issues • Fair Trade • Corporate rights over those of people • Globalization and the race to the bottom • Rights of immigrants and migrants • Racism • Fear • War • Bobby Kennedy’s Speech “Mindless Menace of Violence”

37. #7 Care for God’s Creation • Stewards of the Earth • Care for sustainability • Appropriate view of our responsibility to those who come after us.

38. #7 Issues • Environment • Pollution • Consumption • Need to sustain other avenues of energy consumption

39. New Evangelization • Attractiveness of activism • Energy of youth channeled through proper understanding leads to a relevant moment of the “Gospel” being preached. • Avoids danger of dualism. • Risk - can seem overly political.

40. What can we do? • Personally • Family • Community of Friends • Parish • Diocese • Church

41. Future of Social Justice • Address the morality of globalization • Power of the Corporation • Role of Government • New Technologies • Fair and Free Trade • By end of the year Pope Benedict to promulgate new encyclical on the 40th anniversary of PopularumProgressio -- topics globalization.

42. Test Your Social Justice IQ • 1. Which is the most socially just: a Chiquita, a Dole or a Del Monte banana?

43. Sometimes a banana is just a banana, but sometimes it's a symbol of the downside of globalization. A growing proportion of bananas are produced by workers who lack health care or wages high enough to feed their families, and who are exposed to pesticides, says Stephen Coates, executive director of the US/Labor Education in the Americas Project (www.usleap.org).In June, Chiquita, the largest producer of bananas in the world, signed a contract with its unions to respect workers' rights. "Neither Dole nor Del Monte has discussed these issues with Colsiba," the Latin American Coordinating Committee of Banana Workers' Unions, says Coates. The contract was the result of a two-year campaign and was a "very significant breakthrough," he adds.According to "Bananas: An American History" by Virginia Scott Jenkins (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), we eat 75 bananas per person each year, more than any other fruit. The major U.S. banana-importing companies were among the first multinational corporations.

44. Test Your Social Justice IQ • A "slave-free" label has been proposed in Congress for which of the following? • The Big Mac • Chocolate • Cotton

45. A two-month investigation by Knight Ridder reporters earlier this year found children as young as 11, sold or tricked into slavery, laboring on cocoa farms in Africa's Ivory Coast, which supplies 43 percent of the world's cocoa. The beans harvested by youngsters are made into chocolate products that appear in groceries everywhere."The big chocolate companies -- Archer Daniels Midland, M&M Mars, Hershey, Nestle -- all use cocoa from the Ivory Coast," says Debora James, fair-trade director for the human rights group Global Exchange.The United Nation's International Labor Organization in June reported that tens of thousands of children are being exploited. In August, the U.S. State Department said there are as many as 15,000 child slaves in Ivory Coast.A documentary, in part financed by HBO and based on "Disposable People," a book by Kevin Bales (University of California Press, 2000) was shown in the United States, but the part about child slavery on cocoa farms in West Africa was cut out, says James.According to Bales' book, the new slavery is linked to several factors: an enormous population explosion over the past three decades; poor farmers dispossessed by economic globalization and modernized agriculture, and corruption and violence associated with rapid economic changes in developing countries.

46. Test Your Social Justice IQ • What is the "race to the bottom?" • A new Olympic swimming event. • A new reality-based TV show about competitive socially incorrect behavior. • The tendency of corporations to seek out the countries with the cheapest labor and fewest safety and environmental regulations to produce their products.

47. In "The Race to the Bottom: Why a Worldwide Worker Surplus and Uncontrolled Free Trade are Sinking American Living Standards" (Westview Press, 2000), Alan Tonelson explains how countries with the weakest workplace safety laws, the lowest taxes, and the toughest unionization laws win investment from American and European countries. Tonelson, an economist active in national trade politics, argues that this "race to the bottom" lowers American living standards and causes even bigger problems for the world economy.

48. Test Your Social Justice IQ • When Harvard students staged a sit-in at the university president's office early in 2001, they were protesting: • The university's endowment fund's investments in stocks and bonds towards the school. • The university's janitor wages. • The firing of a professor who took students on a field trip to a crack house.

49. In 1998, Cambridge City Council instituted a living wage ordinance for all city employees. Harvard University, the largest employer in Cambridge, continued to pay 1,000 custodial and dining-hall workers as low as $6.50 per hour without benefits.After an unsuccessful two-year campaign to convince the university to pay its workers a living wage, 30 students in the school's Progressive Student Labor Movement moved into the president's office building in protest. One month later, the university agreed to raise the pay of the workers to $10.25 per hour.The concept behind the living wage is that people who work in a community should be paid enough for them to live there decently. According to the Living Wage Resource Center (www.livingwagecampaign.org), many campaigns have defined it as equivalent to the poverty line for a family of four (currently $8.20). Standards vary by region, but they are all considerably higher than the federal minimum wage, which puts a parent with one child below the federal poverty line.

50. Test Your Social Justice IQ • What's a fair price for a pound of coffee? • $6.95 • $3.45 • $1.26