The Tennessee Register is launching a series of stories on charity and justice that will offer an in-depth look at Catholic social teaching on a variety of issues. The series will share stories about people working to make a difference, whether meeting the immediate needs of the poor and vulnerable through acts of charity, or advocating for just public policies and helping to change the social structures that contribute to suffering and injustice at home and around the world. The stories are slated to run once a month in upcoming issues of the Register.
In the Holy Name Parish Center on the edge of downtown Nashville, volunteers with Catholic Charities’ Loaves and Fishes soup kitchen feed hundreds of hungry and homeless people in the community every week.
At conferences and classrooms throughout the Middle Tennessee, Catholic Charities staff members work to educate parishioners about social justice concerns, such as the critical affordable housing shortage in the area, which is pushing more people to rely on programs like Loaves and Fishes.
St. Mary of the Seven Sorrows parishioner Mathilde Mellon ministers to women in crisis pregnancy situations, offering maternity clothes and baby items to women who choose life for their babies. She also keeps a close eye on federal and state legislation concerning health care and immigration, which can have a direct impact on her clients.
Father Bruce Morrill, SJ, of Vanderbilt University, serves as a prison chaplain and spiritual advisor at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, and seeks to educate his students and colleagues about race and class disparities in the criminal justice system.
These are just a few examples of how Catholics in the Diocese of Nashville are pursuing their baptismal call to engage in acts of charity, meeting the immediate needs of the poor and vulnerable, while also working to change unjust structures that trap people in poverty, diminish their dignity, and keep them from reaching their full human potential.
The call to perform acts of charity is well understood and largely embraced by people of faith and good will around the world. The call to work for justice, on the other hand, is more complex, and can make some people uncomfortable, especially when it requires a disruption of the status quo. When the Catholic Church advocates for systemic change and new laws, the people in the pews can be divided.
But popes and bishops for more than 100 years have made clear that charitable works and the drive for justice both find a home under the banner of Catholic social teaching and in the Scriptures, each lifting the other.
“Catholic social teaching is a central and essential element of our faith,” explains the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Its roots are in the Hebrew prophets who announced God’s special love for the poor and called God’s people to a covenant of love and justice. It is a teaching founded on the life and words of Jesus Christ, who came ‘to bring glad tidings to the poor ... liberty to captives ... recovery of sight to the blind’ (Lk 4:18-19), and who identified himself with ‘the least of these,’ the hungry and the stranger (Mt 25:45). Catholic social teaching is built on a commitment to the poor,” the bishops write. “This commitment arises from our experiences of Christ in the Eucharist.”
Throughout sacred Scripture, “going all the way back to Genesis, we see that every person is created in God’s image,” said Father Michael Johnston, administrator of the Diocese of Nashville.
“We stand up for life whenever it is threatened, for the unborn, the environment, the immigrant,” Father Johnston said. “The Church has a very consistent message.”
Standing for the Common Good
The Catholic Church’s consistent message of supporting human life and dignity, while working to find solutions to structural problems in our global society, has been crystallized by papal encyclicals going back to the 19th century.
Pope Leo XIII, in his groundbreaking encyclical “On the Condition of Labor” “Rerum Novarum,” addressed dehumanizing conditions in which many workers labor, and affirmed workers’ rights to just wages, and fair treatment, to form unions, and to strike if necessary.
In “On the Development of Peoples” “Populorum Progressio,” Pope Paul VI challenged the nations of the world to focus on the “integral human development” of the poorest nations, and criticized unjust economic structures that have led to inequality and underdevelopment around the world.
Pope John Paul II famously and controversially criticized the “structures of sin” in his 1987 encyclical “On Social Concern” “Sollicitudo Rei Socialis,” calling out systems that place profit over people and widen the gap between rich and poor.
Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical, “Charity in Truth” “Caritas in Veritate,” pointed to love, or charity, as the “extraordinary force” that leads people to faith-inspired engagement in the world. He identified justice as the “primary way of charity” and noted the obligation of “every Christian” to “take a stand for the common good” and work for institutional change.
In his 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’,” Pope Francis reminded the world that “Everything is connected,” including care for creation and the environment, a preferential option for the poor, and a respect for life at all stages.
Pope Francis’ message has “absolute continuity” with his predecessors, according to Dr. Michael Naughton, director of the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, and a consultant to the USCCB’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.
Pope Francis speaks with a prophetic voice, “with a bit of a punch to it,” and sometimes people can miss the fullness of the message, Naughton said.
Pope Francis has consistently spoken out against the excesses of capitalism and, “there’s a tendency to read Francis as being anti-business, but he’s actually not. He says business is a noble vocation, as long as you are dealing justly with the worker, the poor, and the environment,” said Naughton.
Naughton, who helped coordinate and write the “Vocation of the Business Leader” document issued by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace under Pope Benedict in 2012, is currently working on updating that volume to include the teachings of Pope Francis.
“Doing good in any institution is not easy,” Naughton said. “Living out the gospel in our culture is not easy. There’s some risk to it, but it’s what we’re called to do.”
Non-partisan, but consistent
Consistency is the watchword for Jennifer Murphy, executive director of the Tennessee Catholic Public Policy Commission, when she presents the Church’s position to state legislators on behalf of the state’s three bishops.
She might spend one day in downtown Nashville’s Legislative Plaza encouraging elected officials to vote in favor of tougher restrictions on abortion, and the next day speaking with legislators about the value of welcoming refugees to the state or expanding access to affordable health care.
Murphy’s job illustrates that Catholic teaching does not fit neatly into modern political divisions. “The Church is non-partisan and is not going to tell you how to vote,” she said. “But the Church is consistent.”
While the U.S. Catholic bishops do not endorse partisan political figures, they do to speak out on a wide range of life and justice issues in the public sphere, and encourage the lay faithful to do the same. Murphy finds guidance in their document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” which serves as a call to political responsibility, for Catholics to raise their voices on public policy issues, especially that affect the most poor and vulnerable in society.
In “Faithful Citizenship,” the bishops defend the right to life, traditional marriage, the right to health care, and food security for all, among many other issues.
“You may not be comfortable staying with one party all the time, and you don’t have to,” Murphy said. “Look at the issues … attain a guided conscience … then dig deep and make your own choices.”
Admittedly, this is not easy. “I don’t know if I’ve ever come across a really simplistic issue,” she said. But to her, one thing is for sure, “life and justice issues are all tangled up together and it’s very rare you can separate them.”
While a number of Catholics tend to divide themselves into distinct “pro-life” and “social justice” camps and vote according to which political party best fits their views on these issues, “you always have to be careful about assigning political categories to Church teaching,” Naughton said. “Political categories are not great to judge the Gospel on. The Gospel gets at a deeper root system.”
“The Scripture should orient how we receive the orphan, the widow, the foreigner. … That starting point is quite different than starting from our own political agendas, economic self-interests or social biases,” said Father Morrill, the Edward A. Malloy Chair of Catholic Studies and Professor of Theological Studies at Vanderbilt University. “The starting point is God, who is with us, and who loved us first.”
From the Torah to the Letters of St. Paul to the New Testament Gospel writers, “God’s justice is a constant teaching,” he said.
“If we believe in God incarnate, we must deal with the real human needs on planet earth right now, otherwise we risk living a cheap, if not selfish, version of Christianity,” Father Morrill said. “If we choose not to be engaged, we deprive ourselves of encountering the living God.”
Father Morrill, who also serves as a chaplain at Riverbend prison, is currently teaching a weekly class inside the prison, evenly divided between inmates and Vanderbilt Divinity students. It’s a close encounter with the living God in an unlikely place, in the face of the prisoner. “We come to know God … in struggling people on the cusp of life and death,” he said.
No life, no mystical body of Christ
Mathilde Mellon, founder, chief executive officer, and president of Mulier Care and executive director of the Pregnancy Help Center, regularly encounters women who are on the cusp of making the life-altering decision of whether to abort, parent their child, or give it up for adoption.
As a passionate member of the pro-life community, she and her organization often face criticisms that they do not care about the mother or other social issues surrounding the life of the mother and baby. “That is not the case,” she said. “We are very concerned about the mother, and what kind of environment she will live in during pregnancy and beyond.” Will she be able to safely escape an abusive relationship if she is trapped in one? Will she be able to pay the rent and finish school? Is she at risk for deportation?
Mellon’s clients, many of whom come from low socio-economic backgrounds, are often facing challenges finding affordable housing and health care. Some are undocumented immigrants.
“I follow a lot of social justice issues and how they affect the women we minister to,” she said. “If you are pro-life, you need to understand that goes beyond helping a woman choose to parent.”
The “seamless garment” idea of the inter-connectedness of all life and social justice issues resonates with Mellon. “We’re all part of the mystical body of Christ,” she said. But to perpetuate that mystical body, she notes, “we have to start with life, because all other issues follow. If there’s no life, there’s no more mystical body of Christ.”
Tools, not Band-Aids
Staff and volunteers with Catholic Charities work directly with members of the Middle Tennessee community every day, offering adoption counseling and placement, in-home elder care, refugee resettlement, fresh food distribution, school counseling, job training, and family housing initiatives, and more.
“Everything we do at Catholic Charities is pro-life and pro-family,” said Pam Russo, executive director of Catholic Charities of Tennessee. “Offering a continuum of care that respects human dignity is at the core of everything we do.”
Even though a number of Catholic Charities staff members and clients are not Catholic, they are all tuned into Catholic social teaching. “We all understand and appreciate that we are the hands of Christ in action,” Russo said. “We’re called to do this work by God. … We are committed to walking the journey with clients.”
While Catholic Charities is focused on direct action to meet the immediate needs of people in the community, “we also want to have a role in mitigating and alleviating poverty,” Russo said. “I’m a huge advocate of giving people the tools they need to support themselves versus just putting a Band-Aid on the situation,” she said.
While Band-Aid solutions are certainly needed to feed the hungry and provide temporary shelter, Russo and her staff members want to give people the means to support themselves. For example, Catholic Charities’ Family Empowerment Program initiative to end family homelessness doesn’t just help families find an affordable apartment, it also offers case management services to support them in achieving stability through budgeting and planning.
Russo maintains contact with Murphy at the Tennessee Catholic Public Policy Commission so she can stay current on pertinent legislation. “We see how these decisions roll down the hill and affect clients, Russo said. “We want to give the poor a voice when they feel like they don’t have one.”
Ora et Labora
One of Christ’s core teachings, “love your neighbor as yourself,” is only five words, but is a profound and challenging command; one that demands both charity and justice to achieve.
“Our Church puts an emphasis on both charitable acts and addressing systemic issues that afflict us, so they can be confronted, dealt with and diminished,” said Father Johnston. “We are nourished by Scripture and the Eucharist so we can go out and be the face of Christ where we live,” he said.
To Naughton, the mutually beneficial relationship between contemplation and action is best summed up by the ancient Benedictine motto “ora et labora” – “pray and work” – which reflects the deep connection between being nourished spiritually and serving those in need.
“Receiving the sacraments, the liturgy, the deep contemplative gifts and graces of the Church … only in that deep receptivity do we have a way to act and give of ourselves. … It’s not just doing good works, it’s that dynamism between the two.”
