- Global Solidarity Partnership
- Archdiocesan Legislative Network
- Cultural Ministries
- Ethic of Life
- Project Rachel
- Catholic Relief Services
- Catholic Campaign for Human Development
- Anchorage Faith & Action: Congregations Together (AFACT)
- Videos Available
- Anchorage Faith & Action: Congregations Together (AFACT)
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
- Social Development and World Peace
- Catholic Campaign for Human Development
- Catholic Relief Services
- Office for Social Justice, Archdiocese of Minneapolis/St. Paul
- Center of Concern
- Center for Catholic Studies
- NETWORK - National Catholic Social Justice Lobby
- Natural Family Planning
- End the Death Penalty
- Horrors of War
Ethic of Life
As Catholic Christians we are committed to protect all life.
Today life is threatened by poverty, racism, war, the arms race, capital punishment, abortion, and euthanasia. All of these important issues must be seen within a broader perspective of a consistent ethic of life.
To Read More about A Consistent Ethic of Life and Its Aspects:
- Hunger
- Natural Family Planning
- The Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death
- Statement from The Catholic League: "Alaska Right to Life Becomes Intrusive"
Creation and Life
by Dr. Peter J. Zografos ©
How do we explain matter’s “puzzling hospitality” toward the creation of life and intellect, when things could very much have been something else. Perhaps this observation makes possible a deeper understanding of God, creation, humans related to the cosmos. The cosmos exists in freedom. All matter has a pre-existing disposition toward becoming alive and creative. It is not natural selection that accounts for this, but rather it is God who shares creation through evolution. It is God’s infinite love poured out into a finite world, which must transform itself to accept this outpouring. “Ever since Darwin, in fact, scientists have found out things about the natural world that are inconsistent with an innocent notion of divine design…” God can never be a secondary cause. God is the primary cause of all and evolution is the secondary cause of creation.
Creation is not about chronological beginnings. It is about the continuous graciousness of God. Matter has a puzzling hospitality toward the evolution of life through complexity and transcendence. God is kinetic. Creation is God’s humble self-emptying act of “letting be.” This suggests a gentle and persuasive God who makes all things new. Faith is an invitation to look for promise. God is present in the process of creation creating. God is the primary cause that holds things in being. Aquinas wrote that creation speaks to us. Effects reveal their ultimate cause. God is present at the end. God is the final cause. God is the lure for all matter.
Creation has an openness to life, freedom, and consciousness. God has left room for freedom in creation and love, because God has loved in abundance.
Augustine warned against the literal reading of the creation stories when he wrote On the Literal Meaning of Genesis. The early church father Basil held that God did not create everything in its present form, but gave all creation the freedom and power to actualize, in the fullness of time, its bountiful life forms. Boethius in the 6th Century wrote of eternity as the omnipresence of everything before God. Paul Tillich tells of the “Eternal Now.”
God decleared that all creation is good and that we are created in God's image, therefore all life is sacred. As Catholic Christians we must be uphold a consistent ethic of life.
