The Church and Alternative Structures

Alternative Structures        

Back in 2010 I was talking with a number of prominent Catholics who were wringing their hands over the impending Affordable Care Act passage.  They indicated that many of its provisions would make it difficult for Catholic hospitals to remain competitive, that many would be absorbed into larger for profit conglomerates, and the mission of Catholic health care would be diminished.  

My response to this hand wringing was perhaps startling to them:  it’s our own fault.  The Church had the opportunity at one time to use its vast network to create a national insurance system for employees and members of the Church in all of its entities.  Using our hospital system as the link, we had the opportunity to create a national network of care and insurance for millions of people, one that would have been portable and provide great health care that reflected our Catholic values.  But we did not do that.  We went along with the system and now we are paying the price.  Our parochialism did not allow us to think beyond our own individual concerns and we lost sight of our own duty to the common good and our call to solidarity.

We can learn from that mistake in four important areas in which we have the ability to partner with others in creating effective alternative structures to the ones that currently exist.  Alternative structures provide us with the opportunity to model good behavior in the marketplace instead of just complaining about bad behavior that exists.  Properly done, alternative structures can be powerful tools for social change that can affect an entire industry.  In each case, we can see the great potential for social change.

1.  Finance and banking:  Throughout the United States there exist untold numbers of small Catholic Credit Unions.  Started generations ago to assist Catholic immigrants from the great waves of migration, they continue to operate, providing great models of banking that can create powerful change.  Many of them offer accounts and services to undocumented immigrants.  They provide low cost wire transfers to families overseas.  They provide small dollar loan programs at just rates that counteract the negative effects of the payday lending industry.  And they provide financial education and budgeting classes to people in many different languages. 

In Missouri community organizing groups have attempted for years to enact regulations to the payday lending industry in a state where almost no regulations exists and many are exploited.  All such attempts proved unsuccessful.  However, when we began to expand the scope and work of our Catholic credit unions, legislators took notice and saw that institutions can provide low dollar loans at just rates.  Consequently, modest reforms have begun in Missouri, due in large part to setting an example.  We have the ability to expand Catholic credit unions nationwide and to create a structure that reflects our values instead of doing business with banks who do not reflect our values.

2. Energy:  Imagine if every single Catholic parish, school, and property were fitted with solar panels.  Now, calculate how much carbon is reduced from our atmosphere if we had every Catholic property fitted with solar panels.  Also calculate how much savings would take place in the Church from reduced energy consumption.  The effect would be tremendous.  Happily, Catholic institutions are already beginning to switch and to be leaders in this movement.  Pope Benedict XVI installed solar panels on the Vatican and made the tiny entity the first carbon neutral nation on earth.  The Benedictine Monks of Conception, MO and the Benedictine Sisters of Clyde, MO led the way with wind turbines by placing them on their rural properties.  This led energy companies in Missouri to begin installing wind farms in Northwest Missouri and elsewhere.  We can continue to drive social change in alternative structures by being more aggressive in moving to renewable sources of energy.
3. Food:  Urban agriculture is sweeping across the United States.  More and more cities are allowing larger scale food production in the urban core, which enables greater access to healthy food to low income populations.  It is also a way to create an alternative structure that is not subject to agribusinesses that dominate our food production. Community urban farming also provides jobs, especially to immigrants who come from agrarian societies and are great resources to urban farming movements. 

The Church has a great deal of property in the urban core on which community gardens and larger scale operations can exist.  Again, many Catholic parishes are leading the way in creating such gardens and helping their communities create them so that people have access to healthy foods, especially in food deserts and to poor communities that often do not have access to healthy foods.  Such a movement can create jobs, provide food to the hungry, and improve the overall health of the community.

4. Housing:  Cooperative housing represents an opportunity for the Church to provide affordable housing in urban areas.  Many cities have land trusts or land banks in which not for profit entities can acquire a vacant or abandoned dwelling for $1.  Parishes can then work with Catholic credit unions to loan money for rehabilitating the structure.  So, for example, say a house needs $50,000 in repairs.  A non-profit can take out a loan for that amount to fix the property, then that loan become the mortgage for a person to assume in acquiring the property for living.  This model has the potential to create quality, affordable housing to low income populations while at the same time returning many of these properties to local ownership rather than out of town land owners who care little for the community.  Such a model has the potential to transform neighborhoods and rebuild local economies and tax structures.

Each of these alternative structures currently exist.  As a Catholic community we have the potential to expand these initiatives exponentially in order to do a great deal of good for communities across our nation.  Social development is part of the mission of the Church; it is part of the evangelization of peoples, as Pope Paul VI reminded us decades ago.  Let us embrace this mission and truly be a light to all peoples.

Doing Justice

Doing Justice 

There is a fundamental difference between social justice in the Christian tradition and that which is found in secular places.  Secular social justice philosophers will confuse charity and justice, and this confusion has spread to Christian circles as well.

Very often one will hear it said that giving things to the poor is charity and being a ‘do gooder.’  However, the Christian tradition holds that providing aid to the poor is not charity – it is an act of justice, because the goods of the earth belong equally to the poor and to the rich.  In giving bread to the hungry and clothing to the naked we are not being charitable; we are being just.  Consider the following statements from leaders in the early church:

St. Ambose (De Nabuthe, c.12, n.53, cited in Populorum Progressio of Paul VI): “You are not making a gift of your possessions to poor persons. You are handing over to them what is theirs. For what has been given in common for the use of all, you have arrogated to yourself. The world is given to all, and not only to the rich.”

St. John Chrysostom (Hom. in Lazaro 2,5, cited in CCC 2446): “Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs.”

St. Gregory the Great (Regula Pastoralis 3,21, cited in CCC 2446): “When we attend to the needs of those in want, we give them what is theirs, not ours. More than performing works of mercy, we are paying a debt of justice.”

The Decretals (Dist. XLVII, cited in ST II-II, q.66, a.3, obj 2): “It is no less a crime to take from him that has, than to refuse to succor the needy when you can and are well off.”

St. Ambrose (cited in ST II-II, q.66, a.6): “It is the hungry man’s bread that you withhold, the naked man’s cloak that you store away, the money that you bury in the earth is the price of the poor man’s ransom and freedom.”

People who engage in helping the poor often discover this truth in the midst of such work.  Kerry Weber, associate editor of America magazine, reflected on her experience of doing the corporal works of mercy for an entire Lenten season.  She shares her reflections in a book she wrote, Mercy in the City:  How to Feed the Hungry, Give Drink to the Thirsty, Visit the Imprisoned, and Keep Your Day Job.  Kerry discovered what these early church leaders had taught:  these actions are actions of justice, not charity.  We are providing to the poor what every person deserves in justice.

Similarly, Jane Knuth, a member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in Michigan, discovered the same lesson as she began volunteering at a local St. Vincent de Paul thrift store.  She recounts her experiences in a book titled, Thrift Store Saints:  Meeting Jesus at $.25 at a Time.  Jane’s reflections can best be summed up from a line in the Gospel of Luke.  When at the end of the day the master comes to reward his servants, the servant says, “We are merely servants.  We have only done our duty.”  Duty involves justice, and this is what we provide in giving immediate assistance to the poor.

In the essays we read from Msgr. John Ryan, he asks us to consider what is enough in our lives.  Very often we have more than enough.  We have excess, and we have an obligation to share that excess with the poor.  This obligation is one of justice, not of charity. 

Secular social justice advocates look down upon such sharing and even discourage it, arguing that we are not getting to the root causes of poverty in failing to change structures that keep people in poverty.  However, this overlooks the fact that poverty has many causes, only one of which is structural.  If we focus only on structures and fail to provide for a person’s immediate needs, have we not incurred the wrath of the Letter of James, for we have failed to help the person in all of their dimensions. 

However, the Christian notion of justice forces us to consider the fundamental question of what is enough for ourselves and demands that we share with the poor.  Christian social justice is not merely concerned with structural change, but more fundamentally it is concerned with metanoia – change and conversion within each person.  We cannot seek change in structures if we ourselves will not change our behaviors, if we ourselves will not ask what is enough and share with others around us who lack what is due to them.  Structures will change when we change.

 

Stepping Back and Taking Stock - Reflections on Msgr. Ryan on Charity and Welfare

Stepping Back and Taking Stock – Reflections on Msgr. Ryan on Charity and Welfare 

This morning I was talking with my 11 year old son about clean water.  He raised the issue because he’s been learning about depleting water supplies and the lack of access many have globally to potable water.  He has created a presentation on it and is educating people on the issue; he was asking me what we can do to help solve the problem, and so we talked about various ideas:  using less water, conserving water using rain barrels, helping developing countries gain access to clean water by helping projects like Water.org and the like. 

At no point in our conversation did we talk about government, laws, or anything of the like.

And it struck me that in the three essays of Msgr. Ryan that we reprinted here, at no point did Msgr. Ryan talk about any of those things either.  He began by asking us to examine our consciences and asking what we are going to do about charity and welfare for others.  This is not to suggest that government and laws have no role in these various issues.  It is to suggest, however, that the first impulse of the Church is not in that arena, but in its own arena of living the Gospel as we ought and in ways that respond to the signs of the times. 

In suggesting that Christians live differently and not seek a lifestyle above a certain annual income, he does not suggest any governmental or legal solution.  He urges us to give away the excess, for that is what the Gospel calls us to do.  We as Christians are called for forego the luxuries of the world in order to live simply; this is not merely the command of those who take formal vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.  It is an obligation of every Christian.  Such an assertion strikes us as radical and contrary to the tradition, but in many ways Msgr. Ryan anticipated the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on this point.  In #2053 the Catechism states that the evangelical counsels are intrinsically connected to the Ten Commandments and the life of charity, thereby making them in some way a requirement of every Christian.  Following the teaching of St. Francis de Sales, the Catechism then points out that each of us is called to live lives of poverty, chastity, and obedience according to our state in life.  Paragraphs 1965-1974 provide great reflection for us on how we might accomplish this in our own lives.

At the same time, it must be said that Msgr. Ryan, following the teaching of the Church, does acknowledge that governments do have a legitimate role in preserving the common good in these areas in providing a safety net and in providing an environment in which such a life of charity and welfare can flourish in society. 

What might our own response be to the call to live the evangelical counsels in our lives?  One concrete example is intentional communities where people come together to live in community in order to live lives of prayer, community, simplicity, and service.  Nazareth Farm in West Virginia and Jerusalem Farm in Kansas City, MO are two of many examples of living this call in the modern world.  Some families live individual lives of simplicity and are intentional about what they use and how much they use.  One family I know intentionally lived at the poverty level for an entire year in order to experience what the poor experience, reflect upon their lives, and at the end live more simply so that they could give more to the poor and marginalized.

Another suggestion is to move out of the outer suburbs where the pressure to succumb to consumerism is so great, and relocate to the urban core.  It provides an opportunity to really be neighbor to the poor, to experience the life of the poor by immersion.  Cities will not be transformed and renewed by vicarious activity in far removed suburbs.  And we cannot truly understand the problems of the urban core until we immerse ourselves in them.  Besides, properties are less expensive, transportation is less expensive, access to public transportation is more plentiful, and opportunities for urban farming are more accessible. 

In any case, these are merely suggestions of appropriating the call to live the evangelical counsels in our particular states of life.  Each person and family must discern their own particular response to the call themselves, but we must not ignore the obligation.  We must take it seriously.  Just as Jesus called the rich young man to such a life of simplicity, so He calls us to that same life.  How will we respond?  May we not walk away sad, clinging to our many possessions, but may we instead cast off our robe like St. Francis and respond with great joy.