This being so, they are not valued very highly at all. But if as a species they were becoming extinct, you can bet that committees and campaigns to save them would abound. There are over five billion human beings alive on this earth today, and in this century, more than in any other century in human history, human life is less and less valued. The baby-boomer generation, namely all those born after the ending of WWII, is committed to individual expression and individual personal choice, to individual rights, to consumerism, to environmental protection plans, the civil rights movement, the women's movement and the sexual revolution as no other generation in human history. Perversely and paradoxically, the people of this century are given to abortion and euthanasia as never before.
Human life is disposable on a scale never before known to mankind.
Life in our century is cheap. And while we ever more forcefully advocate individual rights we witness individual human lives being discarded and disposed of on a scale that boggles the mind. The logical inconsistencies abounding in our newspaper opinion columnists on this topic are beyond any rational explanation. In the midst of all this we hear our Church proclaim today's gospel message throughout the world. Yet not a single sparrow falls to the ground without your Father's consent.