To be actively pro-life is to contribute to the renewal of society through the promotion of the common good. It is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life, upon which all the other inalienable rights of individuals are founded and from which they develop.
Interpretation
Being pro-life involves supporting societal renewal by advocating for the common good, which starts with defending the right to life.
This quote emphasizes the importance of a pro-life stance as a foundational principle for promoting the common good within society. Pope John Paul II argues that without recognizing and protecting the right to life, other fundamental rights cannot be upheld, and societal renewal relies on this core principle to foster respect and dignity for all individuals.
In practice
During a speech at a pro-life rally, one might say, 'As Pope John Paul II stated, to be actively pro-life is to contribute to the renewal of society.'
True freedom is not advanced in the permissive society, which confuses freedom with license to do anything whatever and which in the name of freedom proclaims a kind of general amorality. It is a caricature of freedom to claim that people are free to organize their lives with no reference to moral values, and to say that society does not have to ensure the protection and advancement of ethical values. Such an attitude is destructive of freedom and peace.
Like so many pilgrims before us, we kneel in wonder and adoration before the ineffable mystery which. was accomplished here... In This Child - the Son who is given to us - we find rest for our souls and the true bread that never fails - the Eucharistic Bread foreshadowed even in the name of this town: Bethlehem, the house of bread. God lies hidden in the Child; divinity lies hidden in the Bread of Life
And everything else will then turn out to be unimportant and inessential except this: father, child, and love. And then, looking at the simplest things, we will all say, Could we have not learned this long ago? Has this not always been embedded in everything that is?
Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.
Man matures through work which inspires him to difficult good.
United with the angels and saints of the heavenly Church, let us adore the most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. Prostrate, we adore this great mystery that contains God's new and definitive covenant with humankind in Christ.
Our first and most pressing problem is how to do away with warfare as a method of solving conflicts between national groups within a society who have different views about how the society is to run.
It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans.
Love is cheap. You can buy it anywhere. Lives are cheap. It's money that's dear. You have to work days and sit up nights thinking how to make money.
Meditation helps me feel the shape, the texture of my inner life. Here, in the quiet, I can begin to taste what Buddhists would call my true nature, what Jews call the still, small voice, what Christians call the holy spirit.
Civilization is first of all a moral thing. Without truth, respect for duty, love of neighbor, and virtue, everything is destroyed. The morality of a society is alone the basis of civilization.
People know things and have a remarkable capacity to act in their individual immediate interests all the time.
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