Catholic Social Teaching in the Time of Coronavirus
We will post here a series of reflections that will touch on the seven themes of Catholic Social Teaching. Please contact Christine with your own reflections on “Catholic Social Teaching in the Time of Coronavirus” at christine@sfxstl.org.
Week Seven: Solidarity
Mary White
In these pandemic days the oft quoted phrase, “We’re all in this together” conveys a sense of solidarity. Yet while there is commonality in our current situation of sheltering in place, we each experience it in a solitary way. When I realized that cloistering in my apartment was going to be my Springtime reality, I decided to make a list of things I wanted/needed to accomplish. To be honest, many of the items were things that I had long put off doing, such as organizing photos accumulated over decades. Revisiting the photos reminded me of a tangible experience of solidarity.
It was an afternoon birthday party at a New York City public hospital in da’ Bronx, attended by more than 50 guests. A majority of the guests were patients outfitted in “hospital blues” while others included a few family members, physicians, physician assistants, nurses, social workers, staff and housekeeping. No one was excluded from the party. An onlooker would have assessed the crowd as motley – kempt/unkempt, educated/uneducated, middle aged/elderly, a variety of ethnicities, races and diagnoses.
Nydia, the hostess, a soft-spoken Hispanic woman, appeared elegant with her gray hair pulled back flowing over her shoulders, make-up brightening her face, a blue flowered bathrobe gently folding over the arms of her wheelchair, partially hiding her IV line. As a gesture of gratitude, Nydia was celebrating her 53rd birthday with everyone on the sub-acute floor prior to her discharge the next morning to Calvary Hospital, a hospice just a few blocks away. A widow of very modest means, with a diagnosis of stage IV breast cancer, graciously gathered everyone together for cake and camaraderie. Nydia’s last birthday celebration was a unique event, simple yet profound in its implications.
A global virus is upending our lives/livelihoods, bringing illness and death to countless people, wreaking havoc, challenging our individualism, enhancing our understanding of the commongood. When a vaccine against Covid-19 is developed and administered globally, how will it impact our current sense of solidarity? Will we revert to global indifference or will we, as Pope Francis hopes, in a post-pandemic era possess “necessary antibodies of justice, charity, and solidarity”?
Pope Francis’ questions for reflection*
Are we capable of acting responsibly in the face of the hunger, suffered by so many in a world where there is in fact food for all?
Will we continue looking the other way in the face of wars fueled by [the quest for] domination and power?
Are we willing to change our style of life that submerges so many in poverty, by promoting and encouraging a more austere and human lifestyle that makes possible a more equitable sharing of resources?
Will we adopt, as an international community, the necessary measures to stop the devastation of the environment, or will we continue to deny the evidence [of this devastation]?
Will the globalization of indifference continue threatening and tempting our journey?
*Article published April 17 in the Spanish magazine, Vida Nueva
Week Six: Rights and Responsibilities
Laurie Knight
Probably most of us remember from our civics/government class in school that rights come with responsibilities or duties. For instance, we are afforded the right to vote, but with that right comes the responsibility to become informed voters, the duty to exercise the right to vote, and a myriad of other responsibilities. In our Catholic faith, we also have rights and responsibilities.
What are these rights and responsibilities? For one, we humans have the right to live. This right does not only entail the right to actual living, but also to the right to bodily integrity, and the right to the means necessary for the proper development of life such as food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and social services. This very right is at its most vulnerable at this time in our history because of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis.
As we know from civics class, this right has a corresponding duty/responsibility in other humans. We have an obligation to make sure that every human has access to necessary health care during this trying time. This access should not be limited to nationality, creed, race, or income status. One of the hardest hit populations in the St. Louis area is the African American population in the more under developed economic parts of our region.
All around the world, there are populations more at risk to Covid-19 than us. Some people in Africa are dealing not only with the pandemic but also a plague of locusts. They have to deal with the pandemic’s constraints on the food supply and the loss of crops due to the locusts. How many of those people will go hungry which only then makes them even more susceptible to the virus?
During these trying weeks I have struggled with what I can do to help people during the pandemic. I have no medical skills to provide care to those in need or sewing skills to produce masks for others. While reflecting on this, I realized I can do one of the most fundamental actions that we Americans can take. I can exercise my constitutional rights to make a difference in how we as a whole react to this pandemic and ones like it in the future. I have the duty to my fellow men and women to become informed and active in government with voting, writing to my legislators, and demanding that our government act more swiftly and precisely in this time of great need. Every one of us can help our fellow man and woman by paying attention to what our governments from local to national are doing during this pandemic. I certainly have noticed how certain government officials have handled themselves during this pandemic and that definitely influences my voting power. I have a duty to vote based on my Catholic beliefs to help each other.
Week Five: Community, Family, and Participation
Joan Rice
The Social Ministry Commission is reading a book called The Challenge and Spirituality of Catholic Social Teaching. The chapter on Community, Family, and Participation begins with a reflection that God is the reason for our communal identity, having formed covenants with biblical leaders like Moses and the prophets to Jesus and disciples of Jesus and early church leadership. The book also examines how the family is a symbol of the importance of the domestic church. Papal messages call on Catholics to form inclusive communities that ensure social and economic equality by embracing and providing for those who are underserved.
The world-wide pandemic of the coronavirus made it especially difficult to heed these calls, when most cities and towns shut down business. Such a challenging time has been difficult for many who have dealt with great losses. I currently live alone
and gave up my car keys due to poor sight over a year ago. However, my isolation is eased by neighbors in my closed-knit community, members of the Voelker and Rice families, and two College Church families, the choir and Social Ministry Commission. All of these families offer a sense of the healing, sometimes highlighted by leaving food and treats on my front porch, backyard distanced visits, phone calls and Zoom gatherings. So in contrast to others in the metro region, I am blessed. As the second oldest in a family of seven children, my earliest community consisted of my siblings, mom and dad simply because my family moved from St. Louis to the west and east coasts with stops back to St. Louis in between. When my family was finally preparing to settle in St. Louis in 1966, dad went ahead of us to acclimate to his new job at McDonnell Douglas and secure a new home for us. At the age of 13, I wrote him a newsy letter and signed it “Your Loving Daughter and Family.” I added a P.S.: “We’re always praying for you.”
When we moved in, it was two weeks before school was to begin. I was in the seventh grade in the sixth grade school I had attended since kindergarten. My brothers and I relished the community we found in our neighborhood, playing games like “kick the can” with our new friends after dinner nearly every night. From then on, I learned the importance of forming relationships within and outside of my family.
Thirty years later, I had earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism, married a St. Louis police officer and started working at a newspaper and then non-profit organizations. My husband and I thought we could help others by becoming foster parents. We were licensed through the St. Louis Division of Family Services.
We learned how beautiful a loving family can be. Over the course of 10 years, we individually fostered two toddlers and two babies. All had special needs and challenged us to love them as they were. We had to deal with grief as they were reunited with their families. Then, sight unseen, we opened our home and hearts to our last foster child. He became our son for keeps.
Week Four: Option for the Poor and Vulnerable
Dean Sullivan
Jesus tells us that what we do “for the least of my people, you do for me.” Clearly, caring for the poor is central to following Jesus.
At College Church we have many opportunities to follow Jesus in this way. I have been involved in the Social Outreach Program, on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings (to resume after quarantining), which provides assistance in obtaining birth certificates and/or Missouri State identification. I and dozens of other parishioners take part in this. We have a nice mix of retired, religious, students, and others who can afford the time. Much of the funding for that comes from the “For the Poor” collections, so those who cannot afford the time have another option for helping out.
I got involved with the Social Outreach Program shortly after I retired (November, 2018) as a way to fill the time. My wife (Colleen McCluskey) recommended it to me; she had been involved in it previously. What started as a way to fill time became much, much more, in a very short time. First, I realized that there is a strong sense of camaraderie among the volunteers; friendships have formed and flourished. We rely heavily on each other for feedback on how to handle a particular situation. Secondly, various volunteers have evolved into specialized roles. I tend to arrive early Tuesday and tackle lunchmaking (we provide carry-away sack lunches to guests). Finally, and most importantly, I began to develop a deep compassion for our guests. These are often people who are struggling mightily to get on their feet. Our society puts up barriers to the marginalized. We can help, not only by filling out forms and sending them away with a voucher to cover the cost of the ID or Birth Certificate, but by listening. Sometimes, we can recommend an agency that can help with another problem they have, but if not, we can let them know that we care, by listening.
Since the coronavirus outbreak, a number of the Social Outreach volunteers, along with our leadership (Christine Dragonette and Tess Sanders) have begun meeting virtually on a weekly basis (ZOOM!). Topics include how we’re all coping and, just as important, how the pandemic will affect just how we offer this program, post-quarantine. Some considerations are: the number of people we can handle, whether we should try to move to a larger space, what protections we may need to put in place (Masks? Disinfectant? Table spacing, etc.). We will be challenged to protect ourselves, our fellow volunteers, and the guests that we serve. Also, we utilize a space that is then utilized for other purposes; we will be challenged to protect other users of the space. We want to continue in this calling, but it has become more complex.
Another program is the Xavier Winter Inn, an emergency shelter for homeless people on very cold nights. While only for the months of December through February, this is a critical program that saves lives. We have a number of volunteer roles for this program. I am especially impressed by the people who fill the role of “greeter.” They are often SLU students, who bring the incredible enthusiasm of youth. Greeters spend time with the guests, talking, playing cards or board games, and listening.
At College Church, we have these and several other ways to respond to Jesus’ call to serve his people. These are very rewarding ways to answer the call.
Week Three: Care for Creation:
Listening Under the Gaze
Catherine Swanstrom
In the Gospel of John, a heart-broken Mary of Magdala peers into an empty tomb before dawn. As we ourselves often experience, Mary enters with a mixture of emotions: sheer grief, hope, fear, helplessness. In her bewilderment, she has the courage to peer into the unknown.
On the first Easter morning, Mary models for us an attitude of listening and response. To her (and our own!) utter surprise, she hears Jesus call her name. Mary knows this voice because her heart has become attuned to its whisper. Mary responds to her risen Lord, "Teacher!"
As we peer in with a mixture of emotions to the acute suffering in our world now, how is the Risen Lord teaching our hearts to know his voice, to listen, and to respond? We might begin by naming what breaks our hearts - in our own lives and in our world. Like Mary, we will come to embrace our discipleship under the gaze of the risen Lord and Teacher.
With Mary, we too are transformed in Encounter with the Risen Jesus. We, too, are called to respond by "telling the brothers and sisters."
In his encyclical Laudato Si': On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis calls us away from "rapidification" - the fast-paced demands on the earth and the poor - to a slower pace that allows our earth to breathe. In the midst of the sorrows of the Covid-19 pandemic we are somehow being given this quiet space.
Jesus is teaching me. How might I enter, listen, and respond in this pause by asking myself
What would it feel like to lack food or health insurance for my family?
What is the panic of a community facing Covid-19 with an inadequate or even non-existent medical structure?
What is it like to not have access to clean water to wash my hands?
What is like to live in loneliness?
With Mary of Magdala, I hope to have the courage in this time to enter...to listen and respond in love under the gaze of our Teacher, the Risen Lord.
Week 2 Life and Dignity of the Human Person
Dale Auffenberg
I do not need to enumerate all of the ways that the current world wide pandemic has upended and challenged our everyday life. It is a reality that we are all living out each and every day. But it is my hope that with this unexpected opportunity to slow down and evaluate our priorities, that when we are able to come out of isolation that we have a renewed sense of purpose.
Volumes have been written, legislated and spoken about the concept that human life is sacred. It goes without saying that abortion, euthanasia and the death penalty are direct affronts to the life and dignity of the human person. So today I would like to focus on some of the other realities in this theme.
If the current crisis has done nothing else, it has shown that we are all in this together. Just as the virus does not discriminate between race, creed or economic status, so too are we all called to acknowledge the worth of every person regardless of color, economic status or intellectual ability. In order to safeguard the value of every human life, we must not support an economy of exclusion and inequality. The dignity of all persons demands that we strive for fair and humane conditions for all people. As this pandemic has made us all painfully aware, we are codependent on not only our scientists, doctors, nurses, economists, pharmacists, teachers and other educated specialists but also on our grocers, delivery persons, janitors, truck drivers, factory workers, mail carriers and farm workers.
One of my good friends owns a company that is dependent on migrant laborers from Mexico. He has always employed seasonal laborers with proper documentation who come to the US in early March and return in December. I was discussing with him the increasing difficulties he is having hiring his workers this year. It has taken weeks for his workers to get through the border even though they have legitimate documents. If one signature is out of place or one paper is not perfect, they are not allowed to enter. Our friend has hired a bus to bring his laborers to St. Louis. It has taken several weeks to get all 12 of the workers vetted and through the border to begin their bus journey to St Louis.
In the meantime, the coronavirus pandemic is raging. It is not lost on me that these hard working migrant workers have left their homes for months just to have the opportunity to earn enough money to feed their families. And in doing so, they are risking their lives by staying in overcrowded shelters on the Texas border while waiting for everyone to be approved. There is little to no regard for their time and health. They were finally approved to begin their trek to St Louis after 2 1/2 weeks. Once they arrive here, they will then go into quarantine for 14 days before they can begin work. Over a month has been lost while these laborers try to navigate a complex system of rules and regulations in order to earn a paycheck to send home to their families in Mexico.
Think about the last time you were told that your flight had been canceled or delayed and how frustrated you felt in having your plans changed. Imagine constantly having to deal with a system that is set up to frustrate and ‘catch’ you in a misstep even though you were trying to do everything by the book. It is my hope and prayer that once this pandemic is behind us, that many things will change in our country. Not only will we determine how we could have been better prepared for the virus, but I pray that we will have a renewed appreciation for and systems that show our regard for those whom we depend on to harvest our food in the fields, package them in our plants, and sell them in our grocery stores. We are all in this together and we must have a renewed sense of gratitude and appreciation for the countless people who work hard to make our lives comfortable and possible.
Just as the theme acknowledges, each and every life has dignity and value regardless of where they were born, the size of their paychecks or the number of degrees that they have. If we learn nothing else from the time, We Are All In This Together. It is our individual responsibility to respect and protect each and every life.
Dale Auffenberg is a long time member of St. Francis Xavier College Church. She has been a member of the Social Justice Commission for 5 years.
Week 1: Introduction
Cheryl Sommer
Her response delighted and saddened me! There I was learning to make Christmas tamales with a small group of people, most of whom I had just met. I told about my work with the Catholic Campaign for Human Development-- the Catholic Church’s work to empower low-income people to break down systems of injustice in their lives. I explained that this was part of our essential living out of Catholic Social Teaching. A woman in her thirties blurted out, “That’s amazing!“ I wish I’d heard about this earlier. I may not have left the Catholic Church!”
I’m often delighted when people tell me how wonderful our Catholic Social Teaching is. I’m all too often saddened when former Catholics say they never heard about it. Grounded in our Jewish roots, the teaching of Jesus and most recently developed by our popes and bishops in the last 130 years, Catholic Social Teaching has great wisdom. It addresses social justice, the ordering of our society, the role of government, wealth distribution, and other current social concerns.
In this time of Covid-19 and beyond there will be much to rethink. Catholic Social Teaching has much to offer us as we ponder what kind of society and economy we want for the future. Over the next few months, St. Francis Xavier’s Social Ministry Commission will be reflecting on 7 key themes of Catholic Social Teaching including Human Dignity, Rights and Responsibilities, Option for the Poor, Care for Creation, and more. As we look to the future for a better world, we will be sharing reflections with you on what these themes may have to say to us as a parish and a faith community at large. Our Catholic Social Teaching has great wisdom to offer. Let’s share it freely and joyfully!
Keep an eye out for more reflections within this ongoing series. Please contact Christine with your own reflections on “Catholic Social Teaching in the Time of Coronavirus” at christine@sfxstl.org.
