Hopes and Dreams for 2013

Hopes and dreams for the New Year 2013

How did 2012 turn out for you and what are your hopes for the new year 2013. A new year gives us an opportunity to reflect on the past, to learn from what happened and did not happen and to think and plan for this year for our individual lives, for our Church and other communities as well as for our nation and world. I have been struggling to come up with my own hopes for this New Year for myself, Church and nation. There is so much I long for in all areas and I can best summarize them by saying I long for the presence of two of the basic principles of Catholic Social teaching-- the dignity of every human, made in God's image, and the common good of all people. How we achieve these lofty goals is another matter. Here are my reflections to promote your thoughts.

In our Church and nation, we need to stand up more dramatically for life of all, from the moment that life begins within a mother to each person's last dying breath. We need to work with individuals, families, churches, states and our nation to make abortions unnecessary and undesired. To do this, we need to challenge males and females not to get involved in sexual activity until they are ready to accept the consequences of their actions. We need much more blunt and specific sex education for young people beginning very early in adolescence. Our Catholic Church needs to back off its rigid stance on birth control and leave those decisions to couples. We also need to make available whatever pre-natal and post-natal resources are helpful for parents and infants.
As the children begin to grow up, we need to do all we can to support them and make sure that parents have all the resources, physical, material and spiritual they need to raise their children in a healthy environment, through childhood, adolescence into adulthood. We also need to do all we can to assure that our children grow up, educated with appropriate moral values, whether Christian or otherwise.

In order to help children grow up into adulthood, we need to promote an environment in our cities and states that encourages moral living. To accomplish this, we need to do whatever we can to tone down if not totally eliminate the violence in our society, a violence that is far too prevelant in our nation. The recent tragedy of Newtown is one example of that violence as well as the many other mass and individual killings that continue to occur in our cities. How can we do this? How can we get to the causes of such violence in our society?

It is helpful to hear so many people, including our national government leaders, reflecting on this matter and preparing to propose comprehensive measures to improve the environment in our nation. Surely, something needs to be done regarding the ease with which people can acquire guns in our society and any kind of guns. This has nothing to do with overturning the second amendment. It has a lot to do with bringing reasonable common sense regulations to the exercise of the second amendment. Just as we have the freedom to purchase and drive cars in our society and yet have to pass reasonable tests and obey traffic regulations, so we need to make sure that reasonable regulations are in place and observed regarding the purchase and use of firearms in our society. Most reasonable people do not think that semi-automatic rifles ought to be purchased and used by most people. Nor do ordinary people need high capacity magazines for their guns. And everyone purchasing a firearm ought to have to go through a thorough background check to prevent convicted felons and mentally instable persons from buying them. Previous regulations regarding semi-automatic weapons and background checks have allowed too many loopholes, such as private sales at guns shows.
This leads to another aspect of working to promote a healthy environment for the common good within our society, the matter of mental health. Sadly, too many states are closing down mental health facilities and thus leading to many mentally ill persons walking the streets instead of being supported and helped in an appropriate setting. Even more sadly, some of these individuals end up with guns that lead to killings on our streets, in homes, schools and elsewhere, like the recent tragedy in Newtown.

Another dimension of the violence in our society lies in the entertainment industry and the news media. While some studies have indicated that there is no direct connection between the violence on television, in movies and in Internet games, it is hard to believe that the violence has nothing to do with the behavior of those who are exposed to it. And the news media tends to exaggerate the significance of the violence by repeating its coverage over and over again. Do we really benefit from the twenty-four hour coverage of violence?

Looking at the twin issue of human dignity and the common good more broadly, we need to consider how our nation's attitude toward war and capital punishment further complicate the situation. If we are truly in the business as a Church and as a nation of wanting to promote the dignity of each person and the common good of all, we need to challenge ourselves regarding the approach we have taken toward both war and capital punishment for far too long.
There are indications that more states are moving to abandon capital punishment and replace it with imprisonment for life. Are we truly standing up for life when we kill one person because he or she has killed others? Can we not achieve an even higher goal by convicting those of heinous crimes to life in prison. That kind of sentence will lead the convicted to spend the rest of their lives reflecting on what they have done and possibly even leading to an experience of conversion of life within the prison.

There is always the possibility that some person may be unjustly convicted and sentenced to death. If that person is killed, there is no way to bring him or her back to life once the injustice has been discovered. Perhaps, most important of all, eliminating the death penalty will give a clear signal that we stand for life, even for those who have done horrible crimes, that we leave the end of life to God and nature.

The issue of our nation's attitude toward war is certainly a complicated one. Yet, we ought to be willing to address this issue and ask ourselves if we are too willing to engage in war, rather than use other means to resolve conflicts in the world. How many of these wars need not have been waged? What has been accomplished to promote the common good of all through the recent wars, beyond the killing not only of soldiers but innocent children, women and men? How much physical destruction has been brought to so many countries throughout the world? How much mental and emotional harm has come to all involved, soldiers and innocent people, harm that continues on years after combat has ended. Have the benefits from these wars outweighed the damage and the immense expense in money, resources and personal lives?

Ultimately, if we are going to promote a greater respect for life of every person and the common good of all, we need to look at the total picture and not focus simply on one or another issue. It is too easy to take simplistic answers to the complex issues facing us. Simply focusing on the elimination of any one issue will not work whether that issue is abortion, the death penalty, war, gun control or mental illness. Unless we are all willing to look at our attitudes towards all of these issues and others such as our financial system and immigration,(that deserve individual treatment at another time) we will never achieve the proper dignity of every human being and the common good of all in society. We need to work at these laudable goals as individuals, as families, as communities of religious groups, as cities and states in our nation, along with others throughout the world.

What can each of us do in this new year to further in some specific way the dignity of each person and the common good of our society?