WelCom October 2024
Catholics are being encouraged to reflect on the infinite dignity of every person as the Church in Aotearoa New Zealand marks Support Life Sunday on 13 October.
Each year, the Catholic Church chooses a key theme for Support Life Sunday. The Vatican’s document Dignitas Infinita (On Human Dignity) is the focus for 2024.
Published earlier this year by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dignitas Infinita reaffirms ‘the indispensable nature of the dignity of the human person in Christian anthropology’.
After developing the concept of human dignity, the document reflects on what this means for individual human rights and how this impacts on our freedom in the moral and social spheres.
It then highlights some ways in which that dignity can be violated, including through poverty, war, human trafficking, sexual abuse, abortion and euthanasia.
‘Support Life Sunday offers us a chance to dedicate our prayers, our thoughts and our actions towards an issue of significance,’ said Bishop Steve Lowe, president of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference.
‘The intrinsic dignity of the human person is central to the Catholic understanding of our world, and being ready and willing to identify and condemn violations of human dignity is part of our Christian calling.’
The resources prepared for Support Life Sunday by the New Zealand Catholic Bioethics Centre – the Nathaniel Centre – pick up on that principle with the tagline: ‘Every person matters… always! He mea nui te ora o ngā tāngata katoa… i ngā wā katoa!’
Drawing from Dignitas Infinita, the Catholic understanding of each person’s value and worth ‘calls us to work tirelessly for justice for the weak and needy, the poor and afflicted, the vulnerable, the most insignificant, the marginalised and those downtrodden by the powerful,’ said Dr John Kleinsman, director of the Nathaniel Centre.
Bishop Lowe said the Church’s invitation – and its challenge – to focus on human dignity is enduring, not limited to a single Sunday.
‘We see Support Life Sunday as an opportunity to reaffirm a central and ubiquitous teaching of the Church and we hope it can be imprinted in our hearts and our minds as a daily calling,’ he said.
‘We also hope this day of reflection might encourage more people to read the document in full. Parishes might like to establish a study group to undertake that task.’
Resources, including prayers, social media graphics and slides, can be found at: bit.ly/SupportLife2024
Source: NZCBC
Prayer for Life
Support Life Sunday 2024
Lord, you call us, your pilgrim people,
to be people of life and for life;
to journey in confidence
towards “a new heaven and a new earth”
that is characterised by a commitment
to the infinite dignity of every person.
Lord, look down upon the vast numbers of those
whose human dignity is daily being violated by war,
poverty, exploitation, physical and emotional violence,
premature death, abuse, prejudice and neglect.
Grant that we who believe in you
may proclaim the Gospel of life
in what we think, say and do.
Obtain for us the grace
to accept the Gospel as a gift ever new,
the joy of celebrating it with gratitude,
and the courage to bear witness to it resolutely
so as to build, together with all people of good will,
a world of justice, mercy, truth, compassion and love.
To the praise and glory of God,
the Creator and lover of all life.
Inspired by and drawn from: Evangelium Vitae – The Gospel of Life (Pope St John Paul II, 1995); and Dignitas Infinita (Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2024).
The New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference annual Support Life Sunday’s theme is ‘infinite dignity’. In the following articles, writers offer opinions supporting the infinite dignity of life, and which reflect Catholic Social Teaching.
ACT Party welfare proposal ‘inhumane’
Respecting men, respecting life
‘We choose life, despite being surrounded by death’
Catholic Social Teaching: ‘a hidden taonga’
How does the Declaration on Human Dignity apply in Aotearoa New Zealand?