Respect for the Dignity of Life Day enlightens with information on different topics

Intermountain Catholic

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Father Martin Diaz addresses participants at the Respect for the Dignity of Life Day on comprehensive immigration reform, which led to a discussion on what people in Utah can do and how they would like their pastors and church leaders to teach about respect life issues.

TAYLORSVILLE — The Respect for the Dignity of Life Day workshop at Saint Martin de Porres Parish Jan. 11 was filled with new information and discussion on issues that have been going on for many years.

The day began with a Latin Mass celebrated by Father Jan Bednarz, pastor. Speakers were Father Martin Diaz, pastor of the Cathedral of the Madeleine; Deacon Scott Dodge, also from the Cathedral; and Dr. Maureen Condic, a University of Utah professor in the School of Medicine, Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy.

Fr. Diaz addressed comprehensive immigration reform, focusing on why the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is involved with the matter. Deacon Dodge discussed Pope Paul XVI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life). Dr. Condic’s topic was how the medical community determines how a person is declared brain dead.

"All Catholic social teaching starts with the dignity and respect that is due every human person from conception until natural death," Fr. Diaz said. However, modern society allows a person to be put to death or ostracized when they are identified by their actions, such as being called a murderer, an illegal alien or an undocumented wage stealer.

The USCCB is involved in comprehensive reform because people have a right to immigrate and countries have a right to secure their borders, Fr. Diaz said.

Most people who are in the United States without documentation come from Mexico "because there are about 5 million jobs and only 5,000 visas issued yearly," Fr. Diaz said. About 11 million people are in the U.S. without documentation; most have overstayed their student or tourist visas, Fr. Diaz said.

A recent change in federal policy allows those who came to the U.S. before they were 16 and have lived in the country for five years to obtain a work permit, but the stalled DREAM Act legislation is preferable, Fr. Diaz said, because with it "kids can to go school and their parents can work."

"We’re not getting to the root cause of all our problems and that is respect for life," said Nancy Sliwinski, a Saint Ambrose parishioner who attended the workshop. "Our Church needs to actually teach respect for life to every one; that’s the foundation that will put love in our hearts. Our secular society pulls us away from respect for life."

Another respect for life issue is brain death, a complex issue because "we don’t know where consciousness appears in the brain," Condic said.

"The topic of brain death is challenging scientifically and very emotional – it’s not simple," said Condic. "It’s tough because death is a mystery. To be alive you have to have living cells, but cells are capable of being kept alive outside the body. The soul is the principal of the body and without the soul, we are no longer human beings; we are dead. By death the soul is separated from the body, so it is critical to understand when the body is dead. The heart, lungs and brain are required for a person to be alive. Brain death is irreversible."

When a brain dies for any reason, blood stops circulating to the brain. The conflicts of interest occur when providing food and water to a body on life support, which allows bodily functions to continue even when the brain is dead.

The third respect for life topic at the workshop was Humanae Vitae. To begin Deacon Dodge asked two questions: "What makes human life worth passing on?" and "What does it mean to be a human and who are we in terms of our human desire?"

"The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator," said Deacon Dodge. "Because technology allows us to do something does not mean we ought to do it. The advent of birth control pills and condoms are intrinsically evil."

What Diane St. Pierre took away from Deacon Dodge’s talk was a step-by-step progression of contraception and how it affects not only the couple but the family, the community and basically the globe by deteriorating the procreative relationship between the man and woman, she said. It also reduces intercourse to more of a recreation act, which has a ripple effect through all of society, "which is powerful to how we respond in mind, body and spirit," she said.