Editor’ s Notes
Pope Francis sent a message to the gathering of about 700 community organizers and social justice advocates in which he called on all people to become Samaritans and resist the“ grave danger” in this moment to disown our neighbors amid a culture of indifference.“ Do not classify others in order to see who is a neighbor and who is not. You can become neighbor to whomever you meet in need, and you will do so if you have compassion in your heart.”
Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, one of the speakers, called for comprehensive immigration reform and condemned the deportation policies of the last two presidents, but in particular, President Trump.“ I do not like the harsh tone, the sense of indifference and cruelty that seems to be coming out of this new administration in Washington. They are playing with our emotions, with people’ s emotions, toying with their lives and futures, and that’ s not right.… A person is still a person even though he is without papers.”
It was San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy most of all who energized the crowd in his remarks, calling on the gathering to become disrupters and rebuilders amid current American politics. Some examples:
“ President Trump was the candidate of disruption. He was the disrupter, he said. Well now, we must all become disrupters. We must disrupt those who would seek to send troops into our streets to deport the undocumented, to rip mothers and fathers from their families. We must disrupt those who portray refugees as enemies, rather than our brothers and sisters in terrible need. We must disrupt those who train us to see Muslim men and women and children as sources of fear rather than as children of God. We must disrupt those who seek to rob our medical care, especially from the poor. We must disrupt those who would take even food stamps and nutrition assistance from the mouths of children.”
“ We must make the issues of jobs, housing, immigration, economic disparities, and the environment foundations for common efforts, rather than of division. We must seek prophetic words and prophetic actions which produce unity and cohesion, and we must do so in a spirit of hope, which is realistic.”
“ This is an especially important anchor for us in an age in which truth itself is under attack. We’ ve come to a time when alternate facts compete with real facts, and whole industries have arisen to shape public opinion in destructively isolated and dishonest patterns.”
“ The tradition of Catholic social teaching is unequivocally on the side of strong governmental and societal protections for the powerless, the worker, the homeless, the hungry, those without decent medical care, the unemployed. This stance of the church’ s teaching flows from teaching of the Book of Genesis, that creation is the gift of God to all of humanity. Thus in the most fundamental way, there is a universal destination for all of the material goods that exist in this world. Wealth is a common heritage, not a... right of lineage or of acquisition.”
“ For Catholic social teaching, the surest pathway to economic justice is the provision of meaningful and sustainable work for all men and women capable of work. … Work is thus a profoundly sacred reality. It protects human dignity even as it spiritually enriches that dignity. If we truly are in our work co-creators with God, don’ t we think that deserves at least $ 15 an hour?”
“ We have to rebuild this nation so that we place at its heart the service to the dignity of the human person, and asserts what that flag behind us asserts and is our heritage: Every man and woman and child is equal in this nation and called to be equal.”
“ So let us see and judge and act. Let us disrupt and rebuild. And let us do God’ s work.”
Needless to say, there are those who are now castigating this bishop for his words. Not asking to reason together, just criticizing— in often angry ways. This is the air we breathe right now in this country and this Church. We each get to choose how we will lead and how we will respond to leadership, good and not so good. Channel the anger; disrupt and rebuild. W
March 2017 • The New Wine Press • 3