The month of October is designated in the Catholic Church in the United States as Respect Life Month. The respect for human life is often most associated with anti-abortion efforts and the protection of the unborn, which indeed an important issue. However, many issues fall under this theme of respect for human life. On Wednesday, October 4, we celebrated the feast day of St Francis of Assisi, who saw nature and the animal kingdom as an important part of God's creation, as our brothers and sister to which we must act as good stewards. In addition, respect for human life includes issues such as access to adequate medical care, caring for those suffering at the end of their lives, fighting against racism and discrimination, reading out to those who are battling addictions, establishing just labor laws, protecting the poor and the vulnerable, eliminating the death penalty, and access to a quality education. One issue that seems to get overlooked in Respect Life Month is standing up against bullying. Bullying can take many different forms. We most associate bullying with what children and youth go through at school. As I attended very rough inner city schools most of my years as a youth, encountering extreme forms of bullying and having nowhere emotionally and physically to go to for safety, this is a subject that hits home to me in a very real way. But then we have bullying in social media as well. I myself was the target of an extreme form of bullying on Facebook. Many efforts to report this bullying to the Facebook moderators fell on deaf ears, as they refused to take down the posts. This caused me great anguish and distress. Sometimes it is very difficult to find sympathy as an adult when we are bullied. Often times, deep inside, we might feel that we deserve the criticism that bullies inflict on us. I myself can say that I turned to some who I thought would be most sympathetic to the way I was bullied, who would help me in this situation, only to find that they dismissed me and turned their backs on my cries for help. Even now, it is a frightening thing for me to speak out against it, fearing how others might judge me. However, I fell that through my story, I can draw attention to the terrible harm that bullying inflicts in our society on people of all walks of life. May we unite against it.
There is a wonderful organization I found on the internet who is speaking out against bullying. Here is its link and its statement about the month of October as National Bullying Prevention Month.
"Every October, schools and organizations across the country join STOMP Out Bullying™ in observing National Bullying Prevention Month. The goal: encourage communities to work together to stop bullying and cyberbullying by increasing awareness of the prevalence and impact of bullying on all children of all ages."
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