We are all interconnected

Speaking at a Press Conference presenting the Pontifical Academy for Life's upcoming Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life, which took place both in-person and online and from 27 to 29 September 2021 (Public Health in Global Perspective: Pandemic, Bioethics, Future), Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia talks about the importance of global equality in healthcare. In his address, Archbishop Paglia noted that the upcoming Assembly, the twenty-seventh since the Academy was founded in 1994, is not about the pandemic, “but about what we have learned from the pandemic”.

“We had never understood so well how much the health of every single individual is connected to the health of all individuals as in the last period: we are all interconnected, for better or for worse”, he stressed, adding that “the privilege of some people at the expense of others is no longer admissible”.

Archbishop Paglia noted that “the backdrop of the Assembly remains Pope Francis’ Encyclical Fratelli tutti” and the concept that “we are part of a single human family and no one will be able to save themselves on their own”.

“We affirm that life and health are equally fundamental values for everyone”, said Archbishop Paglia, reiterating his concern “that there will always be a free health care system”.

He noted that “if the priority for Western countries is vaccines”, then we must not forget the need to build equitable healthcare on a planetary scale. For the majority of the world's population, in addition to vaccines, the priority is real and effective access to care, but also to the goods that "simply" allow us to live. It is necessary to overcome not only the vaccination divide but also the unequal access to public health, removing barriers such as the lack of facilities and managing more wisely the resources for treatment.

Source: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2021-09/archbishop-paglia-academy-life-plenary-assembly-press-conference.html

Recognizing personhood for all human beings

Pro-life Wisconsin has issued truly awesome a video with a brief but straightforward message: in a world increasingly aware of human rights, can it be long before the battle is won for recognizing personhood for all human beings - born and unborn?

Care arises from the concrete love

Recently I did some research on relationships of caring. I've come across to this description of caring by philosopher Eva F. Kittay, which I want to share here on my blog.

Kittay claim that "giving care to another infuses that other with the worth of the one who does the caring — to do damage to the cared-for is also to violate the caring individual. The iconic representation of this fundamental connection between a mothering person and the fate of the individual she has mothered is located in the figure of the Mater Dolorosa where the suffering of Christ is imaged through the suffering of Mary. The widespread appeal of this image and of the use of the locution ‘some mother’s child’ cross-culturally is telling. It speaks to the relationship, forged through the care of a vulnerable dependent, and the value that this relationship imparts to the one cared for and the caregiver alike. This relationship is ubiquitous in human society and is as fundamental to our humanity and our dignity as any property philosophers have invoked as distinctly human, and thereby the basis of a distinctly human dignity."

Source: Kittay, Eva Feder.‘Equality, Dignity and Disability', in Mary Ann Lyons and Fionnuala Waldron (eds.) (2005) Perspectives on Equality: The Second Seamus Heaney Lectures. Dublin: The Liffey Press, p. 116.