Millennium Development and the UN

I would like to echo most of Susan's post from earlier in the day, and I would like to call attention to Cardinal Sodano's intervention made on the same day as the Murray Symposium at Villanova, last Friday, September 16. Most of the Cardinal's address stressed the importance of the global community, through the UN, to pull together and provide relief to the hundreds of millions of people in the world who wonder what having a dollar a day to buy necessities of life would be like. Mosquito netting, clean water, and basic health care would be a wise investment in ensuring their survival and promoting the common good without upsetting the principle of subsidarity. You will note, however, that the Cardinal ended his intervention with a passing comment about "reproductive health", and he asked the rhetorical question why this term has become the consuming effort of of many delegates when the real issue of basic health is ignored. Under the guise of "human rights," the harsh reality of population control and the campaign for denying basic necessities of human life are hard at work. It strikes me that a core of Catholic Legal Theory on these points would sooner or later take into account the exhortation of St. Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 25: whatsoever you do to the least of my family, you do to me.   RJA sj