As we enter the last year of the 20th century, we find three worlds coexisting on planet Earth:
* the first world, comprising the advanced nations and the globe's middle class, lives in prosperity;
* the second world consists of a vast array of people who live comfortably but not extravagantly in the context of their cultures;
* the third world is made up of people living in misery and destitution.
According to a recent United Nation's report (UN Development Report, September 1998) people's expectations "have gone global but the affluence has not." Consider these statistics:
* 20 percent of people in high-income countries account for 86 percent of the world's private consumption, while the poorest 20 percent of the world's population consume only 1.3 percent;
* the richest one-fifth buy nine times as much meat, have access to 50 times as many telephones, and use 80 times more motorized vehicles and paper products then the poorest fifth;
* two million people now live on incomes of $400 annually (in rich countries the average is $19,300);
* Americans spend more annually on cosmetics ($8 billion) and western Europeans on ice cream ($11 billion) than it would cost to provide primary education, safe drinking water and sanitation to more than two billion people;
* while the number of hungry people worldwide has fallen somewhat in recent years, nearly 800 million people still face persistent hunger on an everyday basis with much larger numbers suffering from malnutrition and temporary hunger.
Papal view
Those dire issues have been of particular concern for Pope John Paul II. In his World Day of Peace message issued on January 1, he called for a new world vision to deal with the downside of free markets, pointing out that economic globalization and financial fluctuations are hurting millions in the so-called underdeveloped nations.
The Holy Father is especially strong in highlighting the "frightening problem of international debt on the poorest nations" and in calling the more affluent countries to "an immediate and vigorous effort as we look to the year 2000 to ensure that the greatest possible number of nations will be able to extricate themselves from a now intolerable situation" (World Day of Peace Message "Respect for Human Rights: The Secret of True Peace").
American facts
What is equally if not more distressing is that in our country, there are numerous signs of the widening chasm between the haves and the have-nots, the powerful and the powerless. Indeed, the number of poor people in the United States and the degree of income inequality are a scandal:
* a recent survey, for example, reveals that the wealthiest 20 percent of our population earns 48 percent of all household income, the highest ever recorded;
* the most vulnerable segments of our society continue to be female-head households, African-Americans, Hispanics and children;
* today, a black child's chance of being poor is nearly one in two; an Hispanic child's, more than one in three; an Asian-American child's, one in six; and a white child is one in eight. Sadly, these victims of poverty are often blamed for their plight and are viewed as a burden on the taxpayer.
Respect for life
Concomitant with this growing gulf between the haves and the have-nots in this closing year of the American century -- indeed, perhaps the root cause of it -- is the alarming erosion of respect for the sanctity of human life.
We have strayed far from our country's founding principles of promoting and protecting the inalienable rights of all and from our shared belief in what Stephen Carter has called "The American moral code, that clear understanding between right and wrong that sparked the Civil Rights Movement and won the Cold War."
We have allowed the rhetoric of choice and an ethic of selfishness, utilitarianism and moral relativism to undermine our respect for the most fundamental human right, the right to life. We have succumbed to the culture of death wherein abortion, euthanasia and capital punishment are not only tolerated socially but seen as a positive good.
Assault on life
This blatant disregard for the sanctity of life -- evidenced by more than 37 million abortions since Roe v. Wade and now the toleration of infanticide through so-called "partial-birth abortions"; the legalization of physician-assisted suicide; and the restoring of the death penalty as the bogus solution to the vicious cycle of violence -- not only speaks volumes about the moral character of our nation but also has global consequences as well.
It weakens our efforts to promote human rights abroad when we ourselves are eliminating or marginalizing the weakest among us: the unborn, the terminally ill or the condemned prisoner.
Solutions
Therefore, as an effective antidote to these and so many other grave assaults on human dignity and human life, both domestically and internationally, it is imperative that we in the Church understand, reflect upon, pray over and communicate the social teaching of our Church as well as integrate this into our personal and communal lives.
We must study and appreciate the body of this teaching, stemming from Leo XIII's "Rerum Novarum" to Pope John Paul II's "Evangelium Vitae," and reflected in the pastoral documents of our own bishops' conference, including most recently "Sharing Catholic Social Teaching: Challenges and Directions," and its companion document, "Summary Report of the Task Force on Catholic Social Teaching and Catholic Education," as well as the documents "Salt and Light" and "Everyday Christianity: To Hunger and Thirst for Justice."
Social teaching
This teaching is profound, complex and comprehensive, and has evolved from the Church's reflection on the Scriptures and the lived experience of the Christian life over the centuries. I would suggest it can be summarized in three fundamental values:
1. Every person has been endowed by God with a dignity that is unique, sacred and inviolable. This transcendent dignity of the human person is a profound religious truth that appears from the first chapter of Genesis to the last line of the New Testament. The defense of this human dignity has been and must continue to be the preeminent and perennial task of the Church in its teaching and social witness.
2. From this dignity, there flows certain rights: the right to life, and the right to adequate food, clothing, shelter, employment, education and health care opportunities for oneself and one's family.
3. A solidarity exists among the members of the human family. For the human person is essentially a social being and human rights are rights held in community. We, therefore, must develop social structures and institutions which facilitate the achievement of these rights and which reflect the dignity of the human person. It is the role of the government and other mediating institutions within society, such as the Church, to effect those changes which ensure that the common good is promoted and that basic human rights are protected.
Ten principles
Furthermore, these values are supported by ten principles, which Father William Byron, SJ, in an excellent article in America magazine (October 31, 1998) has suggested serve as the building blocks of Catholic social teaching: human dignity, respect for human life, association, participation, a preferential protection for the poor and vulnerable, solidarity, stewardship, subsidiarity, human equality, and the common good.
While many Catholics, at least of my generation, could recite the seven sacraments and Ten Commandments or even the beatitudes and four cardinal virtues and know what they meant, many today -- both old and young -- are largely unfamiliar with these values and principles of Catholic social teaching and fail to realize that they are an integral and essential part of our Catholic faith, as much a part of our tradition as the proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the sacraments.
I urge, therefore, as do the United States bishops in the documents I have cited earlier, that we in the Church commit ourselves to making the imparting and implementation of Catholic social teaching a priority as we enter the 21st century. If we do, I am confident that individually and collectively we can make a significant and enduring contribution to addressing the millennial challenge of overcoming a blatant disregard for human life, and its consequences of poverty and social justice.