12
in the church/nation
November 5, 2013
T
he Valley Catholic
JFK’s call to ‘ask not ...’ still resonates in commitment to public service
• The 50th anniversary of President
John F. Kennedy’s assassination will be
Nov. 22, 2013.
By Patricia Zapor
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The president who admonished Americans to
“Ask not what your country can do
for you. Ask what you can do for your
country,” didn’t live to see how it played
out, but there are plenty of people trying
to keep his vision alive.
That starts with President John F.
Kennedy’s own relatives -- many of
whom appear to treat public service as
the family business -- and extends to
entire generations of people who have
been brought up with the expectation
that they have an obligation to make the
world a better place.
Kennedy’s inaugural address in 1961
launched a new approach to public service, helped by his creation of the Peace
Corps, VISTA and other organizations
that provided an institutionalized way
to volunteer in developing countries and
among the poor and disadvantaged in
the U.S.
“We are just now realizing the full
fruits of that call,” said Mathew Johnson,
an associate professor of sociology at
Siena College in New York, and director of its VISTA program (Volunteers
in Service to America, a domestic
anti-poverty program now paired with
AmeriCorps.).
Today’s young adults were brought
up by baby-boomers who were the first
to step up to Kennedy’s call to service,
Johnson said. The children of the first
generation of Peace Corps and VISTA
volunteers have reached college age or
their early career years having lived
with the expectation that service is a
part of everyday life, he said. Public and
private schools now routinely require
public service. That’s created a fundamental shift in how society thinks of
service.
The National Assessment on Service
and Community Engagement, an online
President John F. Kennedy is pictured in the
Oval Office of the White House July 11, 1963.
In 1961 he became the 35th U.S. president
and the first Catholic to hold the office. In his
inaugural address, he said: “Ask not what your
country can do for you. Ask what you can do
for your country.” (CNS photo/Courtesy of the
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library in Boston)
and wanted to keep doing it.
With the benefit of college educations they could get because of the G.I.
Bill, veterans were primed to continue
in public service, said La Salle Brother
survey conducted by Siena of students at
more than 50 colleges, found that close
to 90 percent of entering freshmen have
done public service, Johnson said. That
typically drops off during college, “and
they’re not happy about it,” Johnson said
the survey found, which suggests that
helping others becomes a way of life that
people want to continue.
Another survey by Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at
Georgetown University, commissioned
for the Catholic Volunteer Network,
found that nearly all former volunteers
in the study said their service made
them a better person, that they enjoyed
it and it helped them become who they
are today.
Johnson said the experience of public service since the 1960s constitutes
a significant institutional investment,
spreading through all levels of society
through public entities, public-private
partnerships and religious institutions.
Jesuit Father William R. Byron,
professor of business and society at St.
Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, said
Kennedy’s call caught on with students
who wanted to make the world a better
place and with a wave of returned veterans of World War II who understood the
value of service in the military context
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Gerald Molyneaux, a communications
professor at LaSalle University, Philadelphia, who has researched and written
about the founding of the Peace Corps.
He said the Peace Corps, in particular, was a combination of altruism and
Cold War politics. It appealed both to
people who wanted to make the world
a better place and those who “liked the
idea of young Americans carrying the
flag to the developing world” in competition with the Soviet Union as it sought
influence around the world through
development aid.
Pope: Bishops are pastors, not princes;
‘be humble, loving, return calls’
By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Don’t be on
the road all the time, aloof or deaf to
people’s needs; be simple, loving and
always close by, just like a spouse
would be for his wife, Pope Francis told
new bishops.
Bishops are pastors, not princes, so
always return people’s calls, listen to
parishioners, recognize one’s limitations and sharpen that sense of humor,
he said Sept. 19 to 120 recently appointed bishops from around the world.
“Your presence (among the people)
isn’t secondary, it’s indispensable,” he
said. People want their bishop to be
near, sharing their hopes, joys, pains
and sorrows.
The pope based his talk on what St.
Peter meant with his words: “Tend the
flock of God in your midst.” Tending
one’s flock, he said, is all about welcoming people with joy, and then walking
and staying with them through thick
and thin. A bishop should remain appreciative and faithful to his diocese.
Dioceses need stability, he said.
Staying put and not becoming “airport bishops,” who are constantly out
of town, is good not only for pastoral
governance, it also has theological
importance. “You are spouses of your
community, deeply bonded with
them,” he said.
“Please, we pastors are not men with
a princely mentality, ambitious men,
who are married to this Church, waiting for another that’s more beautiful or
wealthier.” Such careerism is scandalous and “a cancer,” he said.
The pope emphasized how important it is for bishops to spend time with
priests and return their calls. “Time
spent with priests is never a waste of
time,” he said.
Bishops must be “welcoming, walking with your people, with affection,
mercy, a gentle manner and paternal
firmness, with humility and discretion,
also able to recognize your limitations
and have a measure of good humor,”
he said. Being able to laugh at oneself
and other things “is a grace we have to
ask for.”
Most Catholics aren’t searching for spirituality online,
CARA study says
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Most U.S.
Catholics are not looking for spirituality
online, in fact, half of them are unaware
the Church even has an online presence,
according to researchers at Georgetown
University’s Center for Applied Research
in the Apostolate.
The most widely used communication tool in the Catholic Church is the
parish bulletin, followed by a diocesan
newspaper or magazine -- in print form
-- which one in four adult Catholics have
read in the past three months, CARA
reports.
Narrowing the focus on Catholics
who attend Mass each week, CARA said
13 percent of them read Catholic blogs
and 17 percent view religious material
on YouTube.
These findings and other trends
among U.S. Catholics were presented
Oct. 10 by CARA’s Melissa Cidade,
director of pastoral assistance surveys
and services, and Mark Gray, director
of Catholic polls, to a group of editors in
Washington attending a Catholic Press
Association/Catholic News Service
Liaison Committee meeting.
CARA’s communication findings
were of particular interest to the group.
Robert DeFrancesco, CPA president and
editor and associate publisher of The
Catholic Sun, newspaper of the Phoenix
Diocese, said the study affirms the good
work the Catholic press is doing and
also highlights the work they still have
cut out for them in balancing print and
online efforts.
He said it reveals how “younger
Catholics are not clamoring for news
online” -- which could be particularly
disheartening to Catholic journalists
who focus on their online product, but
also needs to be balanced with the finding that one in four Catholics overall
have read a diocesan paper recently
-- primarily in print -- and eight in 10
readers described these papers as good
or excellent.
The fact that print versions of diocesan papers still reach so many Catholics
is something to think about, he noted,
especially with the limited resources of
many diocesan newspapers.