For many years under the legal precedent of Roe vs. Wade, Catholics have been a powerful witness for the Right to Life cause. While Roe has been overturned, the cause of changing hearts and minds in the general population remains. Glenmary Home Missioners support these efforts, as well as efforts to broaden the way people view the Respect Life cause.
“All Catholic social teaching is grounded in its first principle, the life and dignity of the human person,” says Polly Duncan Collum, Glenmary’s Director of Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation (JPIC). “Everything flows from that, including of course the Church’s insistence that abortion is a grave moral evil. Other principles also flow from that first principle, such as the dignity of work and the rights of workers.”
One important point, she says, is to remember respecting life means looking at the big picture. That’s something Glenmary does well. In Erwin, Tennessee, in addition to its stance opposed to abortion, St. Michael the Archangel mission provides help to the migrant workers living in difficult conditions on nearby farms. In Blakely, Georgia, Brother Jason Muhlenkamp and C-Hope Ministries helps people in need with temporary housing, addiction care and financial literacy. Viewed from a high level, Duncan Collum says, all of Glenmary’s ministries show a respect for life.
“Glenmary works every day out in our mission territories with people in desperate situations, with the poor and vulnerable,” she says. “Those are situations that involve human dignity and life. In our Glenmary parishes, we have the same negative cultural influences as anywhere else. There are crisis pregnancies that happen. There are issues of end-of-life care. What we at Glenmary are trying to do through JPIC is to expand the notion of what a consistent life ethic is and show how at the grassroots in our mission territories, Glenmary really is addressing issues of life and dignity in a broader sense.”
Duncan Collum noted that over the years Catholics have sometimes coalesced into tribal camps when it comes to life issues. A divide exists between what some might call anti-abortion Catholics and advocates of Catholic Social Teaching. Duncan Collum says those divisions are slowly beginning to melt away.
“I have seen movement [in breaking down divisions] over the years because I’ve been at this for a while,” she says. “If you have an expanded notion of this consistent life ethic, then you’re going to care about protecting life and helping human individuals fulfill their God-given human dignity to the greatest degree possible.”
Her work is both very local, in our missions, and even national, through her participation in larger networks. The goal is the same: to bring the faithful together across divisions that exist in the Church. Duncan Collum insists, “A consistent life ethic provides a framework for that effort.”
