A Sensible Life

Author: Joe Anderson

  • Are we "Human Capital" or are we Actors Working Out our Own Destiny?

    Are we "Human Capital" or are we Actors Working Out our Own Destiny?

    The Vatican (via the VIS – can be found at www.news.va) released today comments from the Holy Father treating directly with one of the core principles of A Sensible Life: human dignity. I have not yet completed my article on the Six Principles for a Sensible Life but it is in the works and you can be sure that human dignity will be there.

    Following are the words of the Holy Father. Emphases are mine as are italicized comments.

    “Man is nowadays considered in predominantly biological terms or as ‘human capital’, a ‘resource’, part of a dominant productive or financial mechanism. Although we continue to proclaim the dignity of the person, new ideologies – the hedonistic and egotistic claim to sexual and reproductive rights, or unregulated financial capitalism that abuses politics and derails the true economy – contribute to a concept of the worker and his or her labour as ‘minor’ commodities and undermine the natural foundations of society, especially the family. In fact, the human being, …. transcendent by comparison to other beings or earthly goods, enjoys true supremacy and responsibility for himself and for creation. … For Christianity, work is fundamental for man, for his identity, socialisation, the creation of a family and his contribution to peace and the common good. For precisely this reason, the aim of access to work for all is always a priority, even in periods of economic recession.

    Responsibility is another of the Six Principles for a Sensible Life!

    “From new evangelisation of the social sphere, we can derive a new humanism and renewed cultural and prospective commitment”, the Pope continued. The new evangelisation “helps to dethrone modern idols, replacing individualism, materialistic consumerism and technocracy with a culture of fraternity and gratuity, and with mutual love. Jesus Christ summarised these precepts and gave them the form of a new commandment – ‘Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another’ – and here lies the secret of every fully human and pacific social life, as well as the renewal of politics and of national and global institutions. Blessed John XXIII motivated efforts to build a world community, with a corresponding authority precisely on love for the common good of the human family”.

    I have already written elsewhere at A Sensible Life about the central theme of gratuitousness and its importance in understanding ordered relationships between man and man and between man and God. We uphold the dignity of our brothers and sisters by working to ensure they have jobs, by helping them when they are in need, by giving without expectation of return – in this way we live a culture of fraternity and gratuity. We do not live fraternity or gratuity when we abdicate our responsibility to take care of our brothers and sisters or when we attempt to pass this responsibility along to government.

    “The Church certainly does not have the task of suggesting, from a judicial or political point of view, the precise configuration of an international system of this type, but rather offers a set of principles for reflection, criteria for judgement and practical guidelines able to guarantee an anthropological and ethical structure for the common good. However, it is important to note that one should not envisage a superpower, concentrated in the hands of the few, dominating all peoples and exploiting the weakest among them, but rather that such an authority should be understood primarily as a moral force, a power to influence according to reason, or rather as a participatory authority, limited in competence and by law”, concluded the Holy Father.

    Confirmation! No superpower government is going to take on our responsibility for upholding the dignity of our brothers and sisters. We must do it. We must work to teach and convert those around us; convince our culture of the need to take human dignity seriously and, in the U.S., work to restore to individuals those freedoms and responsibilities that will allow individuals to serve each other in fraternity and gratuity.

  • Time for Silence

    Time for Silence

    Following are remarks from Cardinal Dolan of New York republished from Catholic New York (Nov. 29, 2012).  I have added emphases here and there – most notably where Cardinal Dolan speaks about the action that can take place in silence.  Too often we confuse action with activity.  Let’s allow ourselves some silence and stillness this Advent season.

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    “Who We’re Waiting For

    One of the highlights of our bishops’ meetings comes at our morning of recollection.

    It’s rather simple, but we, your bishops, observe that is probably the most effective part of our sessions.

    We gather before the Most Blessed Sacrament, in adoration before the Holy Eucharist, exposed in the monstrance. There we pray together morning prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours, listen to a reflection on God’s Holy Word by one of our brother bishops, and then sit or kneel for most of an hour in silent prayer until the time concludes with Benediction. (During the entire time, 10 or 12 priests are available for the Sacrament of Penance.)

    Two weeks ago, as the hundreds of bishops were in front of Jesus in the Eucharist in silent worship, I quietly got up to go to confession. As I passed one of the helpful hotel attendants, who had been with us all week to make sure that the sound and light were fine, and who I had gotten to know, he whispered to me, “Cardinal Dolan, what are all of you bishops waiting for?”

    “What do you mean, Alex?” I asked.

    “Well, you’re just all sitting there quiet, waiting…none of you are talking or doing anything. Is something wrong?”

    I smiled and tried to explain to him that, actually, we were doing something, praying, but that this was best done quietly, with all the “action” inside of us, in the heart and soul, invisible to all but the Lord.

    “And yes, Alex, we are waiting for Someone: we wait for Jesus to answer our prayers.”

    What Alex observed about us bishops in prayer he could also claim about the next four weeks, because Sunday we begin Advent.

    Advent, of course, is our spiritual “getting ready” for Christmas. We try to squash into four weeks all the hoping, longing, preparing…all the waiting of the People of Israel, our older family members in the household of the faith.

    As we bishops were doing in front of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, we now, in Advent, wait for Jesus:

    …We wait for His grace and mercy, sure to come;

    …We wait for Him to answer our prayers, sure He will, but unsure when, where, or how;

    …We wait for reasons to explain suffering, struggle, and worries;

    …We wait for Him to call us to be with Him for all eternity.

    And, lest we forget, the Lord waits for us!

    …Jesus waits for us to open up to His grace and mercy;

    …Jesus waits for us to admit that, as a matter of fact, we do need a Savior!

    …Jesus waits for us to admit that He is the answer to the questions our lives of searching pose.

    …Jesus waits for our ultimate return to Him, for He “has gone to prepare a place for us.”

    My friend Alex couldn’t figure it out. He had watched us bishops rushing around all week, busy with meetings, committees, projects, and talking. And then He sees us quiet, not a sound, not a hand raised to ask a question, no speakers, no reports. Something must be wrong, he worried. So he asks, “What are you waiting for?”

    Really, Alex, it’s who we’re waiting for…and He will come! In the waiting is the very arrival…

    And deep down inside, cradled in the soul, where no one but the One who counts can detect, is again an empty manger where the Son of God wants to be re-born. Christmas can do that.

    “Come, Lord Jesus!”

    A blessed Advent!

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    Happy Advent from A Sensible Life, too!  Let us all make time for silence during this season of preparation.

  • Letter to Women: A Word Regarding the Real War on Women

    Letter to Women: A Word Regarding the Real War on Women

    In the 2012 presidential election cycle one of the parties (need I name names?) continues to accuse the other of waging a war on women. I recently came across an unbelievably insightful letter written by the superior of a community of Catholic religious sisters wherein the author, Sr. Anne Marie Walsh, SOLT, discusses the real war on women. The real war on women is not the one described by the Democratic Party:  the “war on women” in which the “right” of women to kill their babies is under attack and the “war on women” wherein the “antagonist” wants to withhold federal funding for contraceptives and sterilization.

    Sr. Anne Marie writes movingly of the gift that women are to our culture and she describes the real war on women:

    “There’s another country where women have been victimized by a powerful propaganda that has brought them to be ashamed of their bodies and the meaning of their bodies. Because of this propaganda, they have sterilized themselves in great numbers and had 50 million of their babies killed in the last 40 years.”

    This country is the United States of America, a country wherein a dangerously high number of citizens are coming to believe the lie “that women cannot have control of their destiny unless they can get rid of actually what makes them women.”

    “The current propaganda has been just as lethal to women and children in the US as anything that goes on in any country in Asia or Africa or Latin America. Any man (or woman) who encourages a woman to think that access to sterilization and abortion will make her equal to men, has rejected her womanhood, and therefore has rejected her as a real person.”

    Sr. Anne Marie’s letter is full of hope and optimism and serves as a call to women and men to take heart and work to rid our culture of the deceptions perpetrated against women so that “the feminine genius can then be unleashed for the building up of a true civilization of life and love.”

    Please read Sr. Ann Marie’s full letter here. I have most assuredly not adequately conveyed the importance and wisdom of her words.

  • Mitt Romney the Social Justice Candidate

    Mitt Romney the Social Justice Candidate

    A few days ago I published an article explaining why Catholics and others of good will have a moral obligation to vote for Mitt Romney. The crux of my argument centered around the non-negotiable moral issues that are in play in this election as they never have been before.

    I enjoyed the healthy give and take resulting from that last article.

    That article dealt with moral imperatives. Now I would like to write about an issue of prudential judgment. However, I believe the argument in favor of Romney in this case is just as clear, if not as imperative. If you care seriously about living authentic Catholic social teaching and social justice in the United States of America then you must vote for Mitt Romney.

    Romney is a distributist. That is, he believes in a distributed economy wherein the primary economic engine is small business – an economy of multitudes of independent businesses whose capital is provided by innumerable individuals and whose laborers are not separated from investors by multiple layers of bureaucracy. Business owners are close to their workers, close to their business partners and close to their customers. This creates an economy of relationship, an economy in which the providers of capital and the providers of labor work together and share equitably the rewards of the production that results from their collaboration. This is an economy whose participants understand that they best serve each other and the best serve their own interests by cooperating with each other. This is an economy living solidarity. This is the sort of economy that made America great and it is the sort of economy to which Mitt Romney wants to return.

    Let me bring to your attention several quotes from Mitt Romney of comments made during the presidential debate on Tuesday, October 16 (emphasis added):

    “Fifty-four percent of America’s workers work in businesses that are taxed as individuals. So when you bring those rates down, those small businesses are able to keep more money and hire more people.”

    And…

    “My five-point plan does it: energy independence for North America in five years; opening up more trade, particularly in Latin America, cracking down on China when they cheat; getting us to a balanced budget; fixing our training programs for our workers; and finally, championing small business. I want to help small businesses grow and thrive. I know how to make that happen. I spent my life in the private sector. I know why jobs come and why they go.”

    And in response to a request to point out how his positions differ from those of President Bush…

    “And then let’s take the last one, championing small business. Our party has been focused on big business too long. I came through small business. I understand how hard it is to start a small business. That’s why everything I’ll do is designed to help small businesses grow and add jobs. I want to keep their taxes down on small business. I want regulators to see their job as encouraging small enterprise, not crushing it.

    And the thing I find most troubling about “Obamacare” – well, it’s a long list, but one of the things I find most troubling is that when you go out and talk to small businesses and ask them what they think about it, they tell you it keeps them from hiring more people.

    My priority is jobs. I know how to make that happen. And President Bush had a very different path for a very different time. My path is designed in getting small businesses to grow and hire people.”

    Our current president has an abysmal record when it comes to the economy and small business. One of the reasons for this is his failure to understand and support small business. He believes government creates jobys. He is wrong and his policies have stymied growth in small business, have discouraged individuals from investing in small business and have set up road blocks to individuals who want to embark on their own small business ventures.

    By getting government out of the way, Romney will turn small business loose. This will lead to more jobs, less poverty, greater freedom and a renewed sense of responsibility among private citizens. Consequently we will see a flowering of authentic social justice, a social justice focused on bettering the condition of all rather than what we see as the focus of the current administration, a promotion of strife between social and economic classes policies directed a pulling some groups down in order to “level the playing field.” The fruits of authentic social justice are solidarity and communio. We certainly are not seeing these fruits now.

  • Bishop Speaks on the Moral Obligations of Voters

    Bishop Speaks on the Moral Obligations of Voters

    Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois has provided some beautiful clarity with regard to our moral obligations in the upcoming presidential election.  He speaks of intrinsic evil and warns us of the consequences of our actions in voting.  I encourage you to watch this video:

    Bishop on Moral Obligation of Voters

    Wow!