Analysis Out of the pews and against the grain
By ARTHUR JONES
NCR Staff Los Angeles
Its going to be tough being a practicing American Catholic
in the 21st century if the leading Catholic social service agencies have any
say.
And they believe they do.
Some 67 of those agencies cosponsored Jubilee Justice here July
15-18 to identify the Catholic churchs good works and to get Catholics
more deeply committed to them.
Jubilee Justice, a first-of-its-kind gathering, drew 3,000 people
to the University of California Los Angeles. It was planned to give parish and
diocesan social justice ministers fresh insights into how they could jolt,
encourage or cajole Catholics into joining the social action fray. The
meetings title reflected Pope John Paul IIs call for Jubilee
Year 2000 in obedience to the biblical injunction to forgive debts,
redistribute wealth and reconcile relationships every 50 years.
Last April, said meeting cochair Annette Kane,
executive director of the National Council of Catholic Women, dozens of
these Catholic organizations met to devise a way to show to the church how
broad-based the Catholic commitment is to its social mission. And then to
encourage Catholics at the parish level to pledge themselves anew to works of
charity, justice and peace. Catholics are doing more than talking about
creating a just society.
In practical U.S. terms, Jubilee Justice also showed how much who
carries on the tradition of Catholic social teaching -- and how thats
done -- has changed.
No longer the province of academics, nuns and individual priests
committed to special works, the tradition has been institutionalized in the
United States. Much of the teaching is done by agencies that do the work --
such hands-on national organizations as the Catholic Campaign for Human
Development, Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Migration and Refugee
Services. They act in happy collusion with the bishops Social Development
and World Peace Office.
Jubilee Justice cochair Fr. Robert Vitillo, executive director of
the Campaign for Human Development, warned conference participants that
it is so easy for many of us living in the U.S. to lull ourselves into an
uncaring complacency -- ignoring the needs of those in neighboring
countries and neighboring communities.
According to dozens attending Jubilee Justice, its apparent
that todays parish-centered Catholics, however hesitant, however middle-
and upper-middle class they may be, are ready to listen and likely to
respond.
They want substance, said Stephen Picha, social
justice minister at Houstons Christ the Good Shepherd, a parish of 3,300
families.
Looking for a vision
They want a vision to hold as they build on principles and
absorb the social justice stuff, said Margaret Roncalli of St. Augustine
Parish of Oakland, Calif.
Theres a lot of charity, said Frany Bose of
Sacred Heart community in Pullman, Wash. Were trying to improve
participation and move it toward justice.
Added Picha, whose parish has three full-time social justice
ministers, including one who focuses on advocacy, I think most people are
very ignorant of the teaching. Once theyre exposed to it, they become
hungry for it -- if its given to them in a way that has
application.
Think of this four-day event as a way of tuning the strings on the
Catholic instruments of social justice.
Theres no doubt why these people gathered, said
Jesuit Fr. Fred Kammer of Catholic Charities USA. It was to put ourselves
in the presence of God, and to learn. Kammers topic was
Spirituality for Leadership in the Third Millennium.
In another room, people listened intently as Marie Denis, director
of Maryknoll Global Concerns, delivered a revolutionary message in gentle,
measured tones. Linking sacred to simple, Denis revealed the biblical
principles of economy: Enough for everyone, the abundance given to all by
a loving God. Self limits. Take no more than you need. She then deftly
turned to confront globalization and self-aggrandizing transnational
capitalism, revealing the depth of Christianitys economic
counterculturalism.
Life issues on the line
Dr. Marcella Colbert laid the life issues on the line as she
talked of the medicalization of life, with physicians involved in
everything from abortion at one end of the continuum to lethal injections for
capital punishment at the other. Medicine has reversed over 2,000 years
of medical practice, she said, by abandoning the moral for the
therapeutic.
At one point, Colbert, who directs Galveston-Houstons
Respect Life Office, zeroed in on racial and ethnic discrimination, pointing
out that one in two black babies dies of abortion, one in three Hispanic
babies, one in four white babies.
In Houston, she said, abortion clinics are all
in the poor parts of town, along the freeway that feeds into the housing
projects. Theyre there for a reason. These people are targeted. They are
not given alternatives. And make no mistake. Euthanasias coming right
down the line.
Another life issue, world peace, drew Fr. Bryan Hehir of Harvard
Divinity School, who traced the evolution of Catholic peace teaching. In
another room, Jesuit Fr. Drew Christiansen did the same with teaching on
nonviolence.
Local Catholic Workers put a twist on the theme of forgiving debts
of poor nations. Why dont dioceses forgive the debts of poor
parishes? their placard pleaded. (Other placards urged, Build
houses, not cathedrals.)
Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo of Dili, East Timor, the 1996
Nobel Peace Prize winner, was among speakers.
To some attending Jubilee Justice, the overall message was nothing
less than the remaking of Catholic identity in the light of social teaching,
not least the words of Pope John Paul II, who has spoken deeply and
encouragingly across all the topics this gathering grappled with.
If the first half of the meeting was reviewing the issues by
meeting the workers in the field, the second half moved to education and
implementation: carrying the message back to dioceses and parishes in practical
ways.
As one participant put it, I need something thatll
capture the parishioners imagination in order to direct that imagination
toward programs. Thisll work.
At the opening liturgy, Native Americans addressed their
grandfather and brought blessings to the four corners of the world
and the four corners of the meeting. Vatican Cardinal Roger Etchegaray of the
Jubilee Central Committee brought greetings from the pope.
The table was set for 3,000. At the halfway point in the Mass,
dozens of crystal goblets filled with red wine and interspersed with big, brown
loaves, were arranged around three sides of a giant square wooden altar --
covered for the Mass in brilliant cloth.
To the extent that a gathering in the present can reveal what lies
ahead, Jubilee Justice revealed a promising link between Catholic social
teaching and the public identity of post-Vatican II Catholics.
In U.S. terms, that means 62 million Catholics, with lesser and
greater levels of spiritual commitment, will be invited to stand against the
American grain -- to go against their own grain perhaps -- on matters as
complex and contentious as immigration and abortion, as capital punishment and
national atonement for racism and Americas many trails of
tears, as Social Security and worker justice at home, as sweatshops and
debt forgiveness overseas.
Tough road, often the road less traveled. But increasingly
its labeled Catholic and Christian, and the arrows
pointing to 2000 and beyond.
National Catholic Reporter, July 30,
1999
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