Pastor’s Page – Proclaiming Peace, Love, and Justice

The equality of human beings and their inalienable rights are stated clearly in our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. “All men are created equal." But "men" for our nation's founders meant white males. Women and blacks did not have equality with white males. Were they lesser human beings? Slavery and the slave trade were not discussed by our founding fathers. It took the Civil War and horrendous bloodshed to create peace and unity between North and South. The Emancipation Proclamation brought to slaves an equality in the law, but racism and prejudice continues in the United States.

Women fought hard and successfully for the right to vote. But equality in business and society remains a task unfinished.

Racism and sexism have their tentacles in the fabric of our nation. They are threats to human dignity; the
dignity of every man, woman and child-all of us who have been made in the image and likeness of God. The
creator of the universe entered into our human history through the Son Jesus, one like us in all things except personal sin. We did not achieve the dignity and worth on our own. Society did not give it to us. Rather our dignity comes from our belief that we are creatures made in the image of the Creator.

The mission that we have as a church: to proclaim the kingdom of God, the kingdom of justice love and peace until Christ returns - has political, social, and economic consequences in our world. We are committed to safeguard and defend human dignity. We are committed to the promotion of human rights. We work hard to foster unity and reconciliation among all members of the human family. We understand
work and a just wage as a human right that promotes the kingdom of God.

Human beings are social beings. "No man is an island." We are made for one another, and cannot truly live without one another. We are networked with one another, and we have an obligation to contribute to the good of one another so that human life can flourish.
Church teaching calls this "the common good". The common good are the conditions necessary for people to live fully with one another and achieve their own perfection as images of God.

Promoting the common good means collaborating in eliminating whatever makes people miserable. War, poverty, hunger and malnutrition, persecution and so much more, are evils that destroy the common good. Pope John Paul II used the word "solidarity" to describe the compassionate desire to build the bonds of common life.

He described it as a "firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good."


Peace,
Father Bruce

Next week: "Pope Benedict's new encyclical on the economy and social justice"