Guest Commentary
Sister Constance Veit, l.s.p.
Each October we observe Respect Life Month in dioceses throughout the United States. Although ending abortion remains a priority of the utmost importance, threats to the disabled and those at the end of life deserve our attention as well. The legalization of medically assisted suicide in Canada in June should serve as a wake-up call compelling us to reach out in solidarity to our most vulnerable brothers and sisters.
Like abortion, the operative words in the campaign for physician assisted suicide are “personal choice,” “autonomy” and “control.” Compassion and Choices, the leading pro-assisted suicide organization in our country, cites a 2015 Gallup survey claiming that seven in 10 Americans believe that doctors should be able to help terminally ill individuals end their lives “on their own terms … by some painless means.” The organization’s website talks about ensuring that “you get what you want — and avoid enduring anything you don’t” in relation to end-of-life care.
These sentiments strike me as particularly sad. I believe that they are based on two troubling attitudes in our contemporary society: a loss of the sense of God — which leads to the mistaken idea that we are the masters of our own lives — and a corrupt idea of compassion. Our culture has taken this beautiful word and turned it upside down. Compassion literally means “to suffer with;” it does not mean to terminate another’s life. Compassion is the reaction that arises when you are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve it. It is not pity; nor does it entail eliminating suffering by eliminating the person who suffers.
In a speech to Latin American Medical Associations this past summer Pope Francis dwelt on the profound meaning of this virtue. “True compassion is undertaking to bear the burden … This would mean the triumph over selfishness, of that ‘throw-away culture’ which rejects and scorns people who do not fulfill certain criteria of health, beauty and usefulness.… Compassion, this suffering-with, is the appropriate response to the immense value of the sick person, a response made out of respect, understanding and tenderness, because the sacred value of the life of the sick does not disappear nor is it ever darkened, but rather it shines brighter precisely in their suffering and vulnerability.”
He continued, “Fragility, pain and illness are a difficult trial for everyone, even for the medical staff, they are an appeal for patience, for suffering-with; therefore we cannot give in to the functionalist temptation to apply quick and drastic solutions, stirred by false compassion or by simple criteria of efficiency and economic saving. The dignity of human life is at stake; the dignity of the medical vocation is at stake.”
Pope Francis summed up his message to health professionals by quoting the counsel of St. Camillus de Lellis, the patron of nurses and the sick, to his followers: “Put more heart in those hands!” This is excellent advice for all of us. If we wish to see a society that appreciates the inviolable dignity of human life and knows how to practice true compassion, we could have no better prayer than to ask God to “put more heart in our hands.”
With more heart in our hands may we reach out to offer practical help to women in difficult pregnancies and young families in need. May we show mercy by feeding the hungry and helping the homeless to find dignified housing. With real compassion may we offer words of encouragement to the doubtful, speak the truth in a loving way to the ignorant and offer a shoulder to cry on to someone grieving the loss of a loved one.
With more heart in our hands may we bring a home-cooked meal to a shut-in, take a long walk with a grandfather suffering from Alzheimer’s, or offer an elderly neighbor a ride to church. Finally, with more heart in our hands may we have the compassion and courage to stand with a dying loved one to the very end, embracing them in a way that lets them know they are still worthy of our attention and care, and that they are awaited by a God who loves them even more than they can imagine.
This October may we realize that after all is said and done, the Culture of Life begins in our hearts and our hands!
(Sister Constance Veit is director of communications for the Little Sisters of the Poor. This reflection was posted to the blog at www.littlesistersofthepoor.org)

millennial reflections
By Father Jeremy Tobin, OPraem
The next time I appear here the election will be over. For many of us it couldn’t come sooner. This has been the meanest election cycle I can remember. However, this is Mississippi. When elections come and people talk about voting, another set of memories and values come to mind. The right to vote has never been universal, it was fought over. People died simply attempting to register to vote. Why is that?
Casting a ballot is exercising power. Votes either put people in office or get them out of office. The people choose. In our system of representative democracy we give power to those we elect to enact laws and policies we like or we vigorously oppose. They do that, we don’t. We can pressure them to do what we want, but others are pressuring them too. Our one direct most significant exercise in “people power” is to vote. If we don’t like them and we vote them out – that’s the people speaking.
This is why it is important to vote in the “down ticket races.” As we have seen, the president can be quite limited if Congress is controlled by the opposite party.
It is important to vote in every election, especially local ones. Those candidates can have direct impact on their constituents’ life styles.
The right to vote is one of our most basic rights. It guarantees that we have a say in government. The goal is always to expand the vote, make it easier to vote. The more voters the more honest and fair the election will be. Large voter turnouts prevents narrow interests from taking control.
When we look at our history, and reflect on all who have died to exercise the right to vote, there is no excuse to not to vote. Not voting is never a protest act, it is only is a vote for the winner.
It was demanding the right to vote that ended Jim Crow. When I see those old newsreels of young people sliding across the street under the pressure of firehoses for demanding the right to vote, I have to vote, even if I don’t like the choices. It was the struggle for equal access to the ballot box that galvanized the civil rights movement.
Reflecting on this precious right to vote, Fannie Lou Hamer comes to mind in her addresses at the Democratic Convention, her co-founding the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The driving, insatiable thirst for people to have the right to vote and equal access to the whole process has ingrained the importance of voting in every election. To be registered to vote and to exercise that right is basic. Regardless how people can look at campaigns or feel the creepy paralysis of cynicism invading their thoughts, voting matters and voting decides.
Every election is important. This cannot be overstated. Our country has been divided for a generation. This division has been amplified by those who vote. Many people feel discouraged or think, “Does it really matter?” Yes it does. One trip to the precinct and casting your vote might not change the world. One election might not bring reconciliation to the nation. Change takes time. It takes persistence. The most important way to effect change is to vote. This is not to say, “Go vote and do nothing else.” No, people who are committed to causes must also speak out and do other things to educate motivate and organize people.
Jesus came proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is at hand. He also said “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” He also said “The worker is worthy of his pay.” The whole Catholic teaching on social justice can be found in the Bible. This teaching can inform us on how to vote.
The bishops speak of “Faithful Citizenship” and much of this issue will be devoted to that. My emphasis here is to get out and vote. Get to your precinct. Learn where it is. If you need help getting there, make plans.
I repeat, too many people have died so we all may have the right to vote. Not to vote is saying they died in vain. Did they? Of course not! So get out and VOTE!
(Father Jeremy Tobin, O.Praem, lives at the Priory of St. Moses the Black, Jackson.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
When Pope Francis launched the Holy Year of Mercy, he promised that Christians could gain a special indulgence during this year. That left a lot of present-day Roman Catholics and even more Protestants and Evangelicals, scratching their heads and asking some hard questions: Is Roman Catholicism still dealing in indulgences? Didn’t we learn anything from Luther and the Reformation? Do we really believe that certain ritual practices, like passing through designated church doors, will ease our way into heaven?
These are valid questions that need to be asked. What, indeed, is an indulgence?
Pope Francis in his decree, The Face of Mercy, (Misericordiae Vultus), says this about indulgences: “A Jubilee also entails the granting of indulgences. This practice will acquire an even more important meaning in the Holy Year of Mercy.
God’s forgiveness knows no bounds. In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God makes even more evident his love and its power to destroy all human sin. Reconciliation with God is made possible through the paschal mystery and the mediation of the Church. Thus God is always ready to forgive and he never tires of forgiving in ways that are continually new and surprising.
Nevertheless, all of us know well the experience of sin. We know that we are called to perfection (Mt. 5, 48), yet we feel the heavy burden of sin. Though we feel the transforming powered of grace, we also feel the effects of sin typical of our fallen state. Despite being forgiven, the conflicting consequences of our sins remain.
In the sacrament of reconciliation, God forgives our sins, which he truly blots out; and yet sin leaves a negative effect on the way we think and act. But the mercy of God is stronger even than this. It becomes an indulgence on the part of the Father who, through the Bride of Christ, his church, reaches the pardoned sinner and frees him from every residue left by the consequence of sin, enabling him to act in charity, to grow in love rather than to fall back into sin.
The church lives within the communion of the saints. In the Eucharist, this communion, which is a gift from God, becomes a spiritual union binding us to the saints and the blessed ones whose number is beyond counting (Rev. 7, 14). Their holiness comes to the aid of our weaknesses in a way that enables the Church, with her maternal prayers and her way of life, to fortify the weakness of some with the strength of others.
Hence, to live the indulgence of the Holy Year means to approach the Father’s mercy with the certainty that his forgiveness extends to the entire life of the believer. To gain an indulgence is to experience the holiness of the church, who bestows upon all the fruits of Christ’s redemption, so that God’s love and forgiveness may extend everywhere. Let us live this Jubilee intensely, begging the Father to forgive our sins and to bathe us in his merciful ‘indulgence.’’’
What’s the pope saying here? Clearly, he’s not teaching what has been for so long the popular (and inaccurate notion) that an indulgence is a way of shortening one’s time in purgatory. Rather he is tying the idea of indulgences to two things: First, an indulgence is the acceptance and celebration of the wonderful gratuity of God’s mercy.
An indulgence is, in effect, the more-conscious acceptance of an indulgence, that is, the conscious acceptance of a love, a mercy and a forgiveness, that is completely undeserved. Love can be indulgent. Parents can be indulgent to their children. Thus whenever we do a prayer or religious practice with the intent of gaining an indulgence the idea is that this prayer or practice is meant to make us more consciously aware of and grateful for God’s indulgent mercy.
We live within an incredulous, ineffable mercy of which we are mostly unaware. During the Holy Year of Mercy, Pope Francis invites us to do some special prayers and practices that make us more consciously aware of that indulgent mercy.
Beyond this, Pope Francis links the notion of indulgences to another concept, namely, our union and solidarity with each other inside the Body Christ. As Christians, we believe that we are united with each other in a deep, invisible, spiritual and organic bond that is so real that it forms us into one body, with the same flow of life and the same flow of blood flowing through all of us. Thus inside the Body of Christ, as in all live organisms, there is one immune system so that what one person does, for good or for bad, affects the whole body. Hence, as the pope asserts, since there is a single immune system inside the Body of Christ, the strength of some can fortify the weakness of others who thereby receive an indulgence, an undeserved grace. To walk through a holy door is make ourselves more consciously aware of God’s indulgent mercy and of the wonderful community of life within we live.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)