“I preach to you today on the war
in Vietnam because my conscience
leaves me with no other choice.”
Martin Luther King Jr.

Thinking about the issues my conscience moves me to speak and act on, I see a connection. I am talking about discrimination, like against the young men that seek to play basketball in the park across the street or the stigma attached to persons with mental illnesses; violence, like trying to stop the teaching of war and killing at Marquette University; or segregation, like putting the poor and minorities into certain neighbors of Milwaukee; human rights, like allowing women priest in the Catholic Church.

The underlying concern that moves my conscience on these and other issues is what I call the ‘right to life’ or dignity of each human being. I am not talking about the ‘right of life’ like the anti-abortion people who fight abortion but approve the death penalty and support unjust wars. I am not talking about the dignity of humans being meaning that there is no right or wrong or everything goes.

Discrimination, violence, segregation all feed on putting labels on persons and not treating them with the same respect and human dignity as we treat all persons. My conscience cries out for the voiceless, people who are rejected and marginalized because of their illnesses, the women and victims of the all male Catholic Church hierarchy, the young men forbidden from using the county park, the young men and women who are victims and perpetrators of violence in the segregated part of the city that people fear and let slowly die.

We are all connected, brothers and sisters and failure to recognize that pains me. Like a young child in pain I need to cry out. I spent part of this day writing a letter to the Director of the County Parks asking her not to allow the discrimination of young men playing basketball in the park across the street. Also I wrote an announcement for the movie premier of Pink Smoke Over the Vatican, a film about the controversy of women priest in the Catholic Church.

Even my gardening which I now need to focus more attention on puts me in touch with the earth that we all share and must respect.

My conscience seeks the truth. It might only be for now my ‘opinion of the truth’ but if I am open minded, compassionate and struggle for the right of life and human dignity of all I will find it. Taking my guidance from a child and daring to Be Not Afraid, my journey of conscience, if I am persistent and consistent, will only end in death but I will find the Truth, the Light and Salvation.

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