By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
Archbishop Thomas Wenski delivered the following keynote talk at the DART convening in Altamonte Springs, Fla., Feb. 3, 2016. DART stands for Direct Action and Research Training Center, a grassroots organization that seeks to empower religious congregations to “do justice” and work to end poverty, violence, corruption and despair. In the Archdiocese of Miami, DART is affiliated with PACT (People Acting for Community Together) and BOLD Justice.
Let me begin with three quotes which I think encompass the reasons for why we are here and for what we do back in our neighborhoods and congregations.
First: “It is important that the voice of faith continue to be heard, for it is a voice of fraternity and love which tries to bring out the best in each person and in each society.”
Second: “Building a future of freedom requires love of the common good and cooperation in a spirit of subsidiarity and solidarity.”
And third: “We need to avoid a common temptation nowadays: to discard whatever proves troublesome. Let us remember the Golden Rule.”
These quotes come from the speech Pope Francis gave to a joint session of Congress this past September. In citing these words of the Holy Father –even though not all of you are Catholic –this morning I hope that I am “preaching to the choir.” Unfortunately, given the climate that seems to prevail in Washington, I’m afraid that the Pope might have been just “spitting in the wind.”
“It is important that the voice of faith continue to be heard, for it is a voice of fraternity and love which tries to bring out the best in each person and in each society.”
Yes, his voice of faith – our voice of faith – must continue to be heard. Secularism is increasingly challenging the role and place of faith based groups in the public square. Religious freedom is increasingly defined only as “freedom of worship.” Our freedom to serve — and our freedom to advocate — are increasingly being challenged. “Stay out of politics,” “Don’t impose your views on us,” Religion is a private matter,” we are told. (As if religion was something that only consenting adults should engage in in the privacy of their homes; and how can I or you “impose” anything – we pastors don’t carry Glocks on our hips. We don’t impose, we propose. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. didn’t impose his views on anyone. He chose non-violence but made a proposal that touched the conscience of a nation.) Faith may be personal; but it is never “private.” As men and women of faith cannot just opt out.
Again, to quote Pope Francis, we have to "help the poor but also we must end violations of human dignity, discrimination, and abuse in the world” — for these so often are the cause of destitution or material poverty. In the face of the modern worships of the false idols of power, luxury, money, Pope Francis urges justice, equality, simplicity and sharing. Jesus told us not to be “of the world” – but that didn’t mean for us to be “against the world” but if he himself came to save the world that must mean he was “for the world” – and we too must be “for the world.”
This being for the world explains why the Church is concerned with education, with health care; it explains our involvement in civic affairs and why we define politics as something honorable and as a legitimate, and even noble, vocation for the Christian. Being for the world and not against the world is why we as a Church advocate for the poor and seek greater economic and social justice for all. As Catholics, we believe that the world in which we live in is our "highway to heaven," the path on which we work out our salvation with the help of God's grace. The Church is committed to the right and dignity of every human life from the moment of conception until natural death, to the family built on marriage understood as a permanent and exclusive union of one man and one woman, to the right ordering of society for the common good and in conformity to the natural law, because she feels that such commitments help promote human flourishing.
But these commitments do not divert her and her members from the pursuit of heaven. Rather, by addressing the obstacles, the roadblocks, the pot holes that may frustrate people’s pursuit of their transcendent vocation along that highway – the consequences of both personal and structural sin — the Church wishes to assist all those that travel it to reach heaven. In this way, our engagement in the world and for the world and never against the world does not contradict the Church's spiritual mission but complements it.
So why should anyone question why we are advocating for civil citations instead of arrest records for young kids who do “stupid things” – as young people are somethings wont to do. Talk about a roadblock or a pot hole on the highway of life, a kid who is arrested in a classroom by a policeman for something that a detention slip could have handled carries that arrest with him the rest of his life – it’ll keep out of the military, it will deny him a scholarship or a job. How is that record going to help him get to heaven?
Back to the Pope’s second quote. “Building a future of freedom requires love of the common good and cooperation in a spirit of subsidiarity and solidarity.”
As Christians we must continue to be involved in the issues of world hunger, human rights, peace building and justice promotion. This social ministry is not opposed to the ultimate spiritual and transcendent destiny of the human person. It presupposes this destiny and is ultimately orientated to this end. If this earth is our only highway to heaven, then we must seek to maintain it – as Catholics we are concerned about ecology – both natural ecology and human ecology. In other words, we have to make sure to the best of our abilities that this highway is cleared of the obstacles which sin - both personal and structural - has placed in the path of those traveling on it.
Today, many people describe themselves as being “not religious but “spiritual.” But spirituality must be more than an exercise of navel gazing (or what Pope Francis would call "being self-referential.") And too often, the adjective “parochial” – even when used in reference to a parish – means narrow-minded: concerned only with narrow local concerns without any regard for more general or wider issues. Pope Francis says, we are called to the margins: to go forth encountering Christ in the heart of the world.
In a message for a World Peace Day some years ago, Pope St. John Paul II wrote: “…How can we exclude anyone from our care? Rather we must recognize Christ in the poorest and the most marginalized, those whom the Eucharist – which is communion in the Body and Blood of Christ given up for us – commits us to serve. As the parable of the rich man, who will remain forever without a name, and the poor man called Lazarus clearly shows, ‘in the stark contrast between the insensitive rich man and the poor in need of everything, God is on the latter’s side.’ We too must be on this same side.”
Thus, for someone who takes his or her faith seriously, involvement in what are sometimes called “peace and justice” issues is not optional – nor is it the purview of those who would label themselves either “liberal” or “conservative.” Rather such involvement is a constitutive part of the living out of our faith. Solidarity as John Paul II once said is another word for justice in our day. It is “a firm and preserving determination to commit oneself to the common good.” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis#38)
Solidarity, I think, is a term everyone is familiar with. Subsidiarity is a bit more obscure: It means that basically decisions should be made closer to those affected by them. The school shouldn’t usurp the prerogatives of parents; the state legislature shouldn’t usurp the prerogatives of the school board, etc. Now these principles are not mutually exclusive – and I think the community organizing done by DART affiliates illustrates how subsidiarity and solidarity can and do intersect.
Classical theology understands the virtue of justice as composed of two elements which for the Christian cannot be separated. Justice is the firm will to render to God what is owed God, and to our neighbor what is owed to him. Justice toward God is what we call the “virtue of religion;” justice to other human beings is the fundamental attitude that respects the other as a person created by God. To put it in the vernacular, religion – especially a religion centered on the Cross – isn’t supposed to be about making us “feel good”; it’s supposed to be about helping us to “do good.” Doing good – that is, love of the common good and cooperation in a spirit of subsidiarity and solidarity – is what builds a future of freedom.
“We need to avoid a common temptation nowadays: to discard whatever proves troublesome. Let us remember the Golden Rule” This was the third quote that I exerted from Pope Francis’ address to Congress. We live in a world which we recognize as both fallen and redeemed. The Church’s social doctrine is dedicated to the proposition that man matters. Indeed, the entire body of Catholic social teaching, with foundations in Sacred Scripture but also accessible to human reason, is a reasoned dialog on why this is so. Now these teachings sometimes can appear to be quite complex – and the arguments very difficult. (I know that some have suggested that reading through a papal encyclical can be a good cure for insomnia.)
However, I suggest that all the Church’s social doctrine can be summarized in one simple phrase: no man is a problem. No man is a problem. Any anthropology that would reduce the human person to being just a problem is simply a defective, an erroneous anthropology – unworthy of man created in the image and likeness of God. Likewise, a way of looking at the human person – which is what I mean by the word “anthropology” that reduces him to one of his needs alone, namely consumption is also unworthy of man created in the image and likeness of God.
This is why Pope Francis
condemns “the cult of money” in which “the dictatorship of an economy which is
faceless and lacks any truly humane goal” has worshipping a new and heartless
golden calf. Whole generations are sacrificed on its altar – look at the
millions of young people who have no prospects for a future, those that are
called in Latin America, the “nini’s,” ni trabajan, ni estudian. This is an
example of what Pope Francis has called “la cultura de descarte,” a culture of
disposal where human beings themselves are nowadays considered as consumer
goods which can be used and thrown away.
When we allow ourselves to think of a human being as a mere problem, we offend
his or her dignity. And when we see another human being as a problem, we often
give ourselves permission to look for solutions. The tragic history of the 20th
Century shows that thinking like this even leads to “final solutions.”
This is why Catholic social teachings proclaim a positive and consistent ethic of life: no man is a problem. As a Church we must proclaim and promote the respect of each person’s dignity — this must include the unborn, the handicapped, the migrant, the elderly… and it cannot fail to include the prisoner as well. Even criminals – for all the horror of their crimes – do not lose their God-given dignity as human beings. They too must be treated with respect, even in their punishment. This is why Catholic social teaching condemns torture and works for the abolition of the death penalty and supports sentencing reform. No man is a problem; nor can we allow ourselves to think of any man, any person, as “disposable.”
“God is,” Pope Francis reminds us, “in everyone’s life Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else — God is in this person’s life.”
And so, as we reflect on why we are here; and on what do back in our neighborhoods and congregations, let us remember the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
