A Word from the Staff
by Meredith Dean Augustin
Vice President of Pastoral Services
Something is on my heart this month, and it has shaped everything you are about to read — from our Saint of the Month to our ministry tips and spark. It is a question I keep coming back to: What does it mean to live as if there were no throwaway people?
There is a quiet but dangerous habit taking hold in our world. We are getting used to discarding people.
It rarely happens all at once. It is slow. Subtle. We scroll past suffering, reduce people to headlines, write one another off over differences, and move on. And when that becomes normal, something essential begins to erode.
Our faith does not allow for this.
From the beginning, we have been formed by a truth that refuses to bend: every person has a dignity that cannot be earned, negotiated, or taken away. Not the people we agree with. Not the people we understand. EVERY SINGLE PERSON.
I will be honest. I am really proud to be part of a place that takes this seriously. At RENEW International, we are not interested in simply naming the dignity of the human person. We are committed to forming communities that live it.
That is what our newest resource, No Throwaway People, is all about.
It invites individuals and small groups to take a hard, honest look at how we see others, and how easily people can become invisible, dismissed, or pushed aside. Not out of malice, but out of habit. Out of distraction. Out of a slow drift away from seeing the way Jesus sees.
But this resource doesn't stop at awareness. Because once we begin to see differently, we are called to live differently. And that is exactly where the work gets real—in the everyday choices that shape how we treat one another, how we engage the world around us, how we carry our faith beyond Sunday morning.
That movement, from seeing to doing, is at the heart of everything RENEW forms communities to practice. It is Catholic Social Teaching as a way of life to embody.
Together, we are invited to become the kind of Church our world is longing for. One where dignity is not just preached, but practiced. Where no one is invisible. Where no one is disposable.
The work is about forming communities that refuse to forget people. And there has rarely been a more important time to do it.
I invite you to join us on May 5 for our No Throwaway People webinar and step into this conversation. Or better yet, start today. Notice whom you have been overlooking. Choose to see them differently. Stay awake to the dignity right in front of you, because what we form together is meant to shape how we live every day.
With love,
Meredith
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