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Tag Archives: Catholic Social Teaching
Gospel Reflection for June 25, 2017, 12th Sunday Ordinary Time
23 JunSunday Readings: Jeremiah 20.10-13; Romans 5.12-15; Matthew 10.26-33
“Everyone who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven.” – Matthew 10.32
Jesus’ saying turns on the principle of reciprocity. Jesus will treat us the way we treat others. We recognize this principle every time we pray the Our Father, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The saying challenges us to be public witnesses of Jesus’ way.
The early Christians lived in the shadow of the Roman Empire, which considered their faith illegal. Today Christians live in a capitalist economy gone global that considers religion irrelevant. The revenue of many multi-national corporations rivals the gross national product of nation states. Yet, corporations have no obligation to uphold Christian values or human rights as nations do, only to profit stockholders.
Catholic social teaching challenges us to live Jesus’ message in our public and corporate lives. People are not commodities. They have dignity and rights, including the right to a living wage and health care. Are our senators and representatives in the 117th Congress thinking about treating people who need Medicaid the way they want to be treated? Do they realize people like my sister, diabetic since she was 22 for whom the cost of insulin has skyrocketed, face being unable to afford the medicines that keep her alive even with insurance?
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Gospel Reflection for November 6, 2016, 32nd Sunday Ordinary Time
2 NovSunday Readings: 2 Maccabees 7.1-2, 9-14; 2 Thessalonians 2.16-3.5; Luke 20.27-38
For U. S, citizens debate fatigue has nearly exhausted us during this election year. Jesus, however, continues debating in Sunday’s Gospel. This Sunday the topic is resurrection. Jesus goes each day to the Temple courts and interacts with the religious and political groups of his time. He shows himself a skilled rabbi, able to interpret and argue from the Israel’s scriptures. In Jewish tradition learning is communal. Students question, argue, and debate with one another. Questions invite curiosity and broaden thinking. Conversations can transform us.
Talking religion and politics challenges us to keep conversation civil and constructive. Both democracy and Catholic social teaching require thinking together, hearing more than ourselves, and learning the needs of people left out. The common good requires the hard work of weighing and balancing competing needs. Democracy requires Christians to participate not only on election day but on every day our society needs us to speak and act.
How do you use the bible in making life decisions? How do you use the scriptures and Catholic social teaching in discerning the needs of our nation?
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Gospel Reflection for October 23, 2016, 30th Sunday Ordinary Time
17 OctPhoto via Flickr user Martin LaBar
Scripture Readings: Wisdom 11.22–12.2; 2 Thessalonians 1.11–2.2; Luke 19.1-10
“When he reached the sycamore tree, Jesus looked up and said, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry down, I must stay at your house today.'” – Luke 19.5
The tax collector Zacchaeus climbs a tree to see Jesus. He is a seeker. When Jesus notices him in the tree, he calls Zacchaeus by name, suggesting a prior meeting. Perhaps like everyone else Jesus knows the chief tax collector from having to deal with him and pay the taxes he exacts for the Romans. As a homeowner Zacchaeus should invite Jesus to his house but Jesus reverses the role and invites himself as a guest. He demonstrates his mission to reach out to all and enter into our lives. Jesus draws the marginalized tax collector into the mystery of unconditional love. In response Zacchaeus pledges half his possessions to the poor. At every Eucharist Jesus comes to our house.
With whom have you had an inspiring Zacchaeus moment that centered you in work for the common good, the well being of the whole rather than your own?
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Jesus for President
8 JulPhoto via Flickr user Jared Budlong
Show Me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?” “Caesar’s,” they answered. So Jesus told them, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” And they were unable to trap Him in His words before the people; and astonished at His answer, they fell silent. –Luke 20:24-26
A billboard popped up all over my city on the 4th of July. The background is red and blue, with three white stars across the top. JESUS is spelled out in huge, white letters. Across the bottom it says [A Christian radio station] supports this message.
My knee-jerk reaction upon reading the billboard was to groan loudly and roll my eyes. I support the separation of church and state and see how often Jesus gets tied into a God bless America agenda that is sometimes at the expense of people in other countries or people who practice other religions. Sojourners created a bumper sticker that read, “God is not a Republican. Or a Democrat” as a response to this subtle hint of Jesus being American or taking political sides. “God Bless the Whole World. No Exceptions” is another bumper sticker made in response to the red, white and blue Jesus Christ.
I’m sure the radio station was just trying to be clever. You can’t blame them for running that ad on the 4th of July during a presidential election year. I’m sure it will be quite effective. As I continue to see it around town, however, I can’t help but go to a place where they are inserting Jesus into a political campaign in an unhelpful way. Jesus has a lot to do with how I vote, yet I do think we should carefully talk about the distinction between what makes good law and personal faith. What makes an effective politician who can put into law a structure that supports vulnerable people is fairly distinct from my choice to follow Jesus as my Lord.
It’s hard. Our system is broken. There is never a perfect candidate. Yet Catholic Social Teaching pleads with us to be engaged citizens who enter into politics in a meaningful way, not sidestep the process. Law matters. Good policy speaks up for the voiceless in our society. Fair legislation puts people before profit and promotes the common good. We are living in a season when our faith is calling us to both continue to follow Jesus with passion and to enter into the secular political process, to hold our politicians to a higher standard for the betterment of us all.
Care for Creation
19 JunPhoto via Flickr user Travis Morgan
What better time than during the beauty of summer to reflect on the gift of God’s creation and our role in it. After Pope Francis’ summit on global warming at the Vatican, he plans to to issue the first-ever papal encyclical on climate change and its effect on the world’s poor. The news has tended to focus on the fact that the contents of the document were leaked. However, I’m interested in the content of the encyclical. Pope Francis writes that the Earth
“is protesting for the wrong that we are doing to her, because of the irresponsible use and abuse of the goods that God has placed on her. We have grown up thinking that we were her owners and dominators, authorized to loot her. The violence that exists in the human heart, wounded by sin, is also manifest in the symptoms of illness that we see in the Earth, the water, the air and in living things.”
His statements are in line with Care for God’s Creation as one of the seven tenants of Catholic Social Teaching. We are stewards of the Earth, which is a gift from God. Pope Francis calls all people to take a look at their energy consumption and make lifestyle changes that care for our common home.
Man, who discovers his capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through his own work, forgets that this is always based on God’s prior and original gift of the things that are. Man thinks that he can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it without restraint to his will, as though it did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which man can indeed develop but must not betray. Instead of carrying out his role as a co-operator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature, which is more tyrannized than governed by him. —On the Hundredth Year
Care for the Earth is in relationship to our care for other people. We are called to care for the Earth for the sake of our children and in the realization that the effects of climate change most severely affect the vulnerable members of our global community. This encyclical is timely and specific, asking us to eliminate those things obstructing real change:
“The attitudes that stand in the way of a solution, even among believers, range from negation of the problem, to indifference, to convenient resignation or blind faith in technical solutions.”
It will be interesting to watch the global reaction to the encyclical, yes, but I am also taking it as challenge on a personal level to evaluate my own lifestyle choices while celebrating nature.
Loving God and Neighbor
25 OctFrom the Spirit 4 Teens blog:
via Flickr user Alvaro Canivell
“One cannot honor another person without blessing God who created the person. One cannot adore God without loving all God’s creatures.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church #2069
Loving our neighbors as ourselves is another way of expressing the golden rule — “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The golden rule challenges us to develop empathy — the ability to feel with others. To empathize is to walk in our neighbor’s shoes, to put ourselves in their place. Catholic social teaching rests on the principle that every human person is sacred, made in God’s image and likeness, possessing inalienable rights to life and its basics. We cannot love God without loving our neighbor. We cannot love our neighbors without listening and learning their culture. Loving our neighbors is vital to becoming our whole selves.
Some ideas for putting your faith in action include inviting neighbors of diverse cultures in your area to visit your groups and talk about their lives, values, and dreams, practicing empathy consciously for a day — put yourself in the shoes of people you dislike or dismiss, talk to a coworker you don’t know every day for a week, and visiting the Southern Poverty Law Center to explore and use the center’s 101 Tools for Tolerance.
