A diocese rich in spiritual, cultural, and geographical diversity!
 

Bishop Calvo's statement on Human Dignity and Human Decency

The key words to the pro-life stance of the Catholic Church are sanctity of human life, respect, and human dignity.  They express our belief that every human being is created in the “image and likeness of God” and our obligation to respect the life and dignity of the human person, from conception to natural death.  There are many ways we respect human life; one that is indispensable is human decency: how we treat one another.  “Do unto others whatever you would have them do to you,” (Mt. 7:12) is the Golden Rule.  Decency is more a matter of fairness than compassion.  It is our conduct toward one another in word and deed that refrains from inflicting unnecessary harm.  This is not political correctness but behavior basic to the well-being of society.  The lack of human decency degrades human dignity, erodes moral sensibility and tears apart the social fabric.
 
Events in our nation raise concerns about our standard of decency.  The separation of families on our southern border is one example.  This is not about politics; it is about children being taken away from their parents.  This is not simply about law enforcement, for the standard of human decency applies to all who are detained, arrested or incarcerated.  Decency demands assessing whether the trauma inflicted on a child by separation or the resulting terror in a mother’s heart is commensurate with the transgression or even necessary.  Did our government plan ahead for the eventual reunion of families or, failing to do so, possibly render as orphans hundreds children?  To claim deterrence as the reason for separating children from parents is to use people as a means to an end, an affront to human dignity.  A human being is not a pawn to be manipulated by policy makers.  A person cannot be held hostage for the enforcement of law.
 
The people crossing our southern border cannot be lumped together as a bunch of drug traffickers, criminals or undesirables.  To do so would neither be fair nor honest.  Many have traveled hundreds of miles in search of what our nation’s founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence asserted as “certain inalienable rights” endowed to people by their Creator, among which are “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  They seek asylum to keep their children and themselves out of harm’s way.  They came because they believed in the United States as a land that would give them refuge, opportunity to escape poverty, and liberty from the threat of violence.  Many of our forebears came to our country for these same reasons.
 
We are a fractured nation and our immigration policy is broken.  Speech that disregards the standards of human decency only deepens the divide and paralyzes our ability to fix things.   We need civil discourse that allows for disagreements; speech that respects the person holding opposing views.  Only by according one another the dignity each person deserves, can we work together to solve the problems facing our society.  For the sake of our nation, let us choose life, by respecting the God-given dignity of each person and treating one another with decency.