FROM BISHOP GERALD F. KICANAS…

October is Respect Life Month, and October 7 is Respect Life Sunday.

The materials from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that were sent to all of our parishes contain a wealth of information that our parishes and schools can use in helping to educate our Catholic people about the Church's teaching on life.

In this Third Millennium, too often, life is seen as disposable, of little value and worth.

Yet to us as people of faith, life is good, precious, from the hand of God, to be treated with dignity and respect. The Church's teaching on life is critical today, a time when we see human fetuses thrown in garbage cans, bodies strewn on the streets of Iraq, hostages beheaded while people watch on the Internet, the massacre in Darfur. We do not seem to learn.

Let us use this month to raise consciousness in our society to the full range of life issues, from conception to natural death.