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December 11, 2018 | The Valley Catholic
COMMUNITY
Community Organizing Moves Us from Charity to Justice
By Joanna Thurmann
“Charity and justice walk hand-in-
hand, and the need for charity never
ends. But sometimes there are injustic-
es which are not just transactional but
structural. How do we address them?”
asked Bishop Oscar Cantú during his
Thursday keynote at Santa Clara Faith
Formation Conference 2018. We must
work together in solidarity to affect the
systems that affect the poor.
Bishop Cantú’s talk was part of the
preconference day titled “Preferential
Option for the Poor: Moving Beyond
Charity and toward Social Justice in the
Local and Global Church,” organized
by the Social Justice Commission of the
Diocese of San Jose.
The focus of the day was on both
education and action. Presentations by
Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Catholic
Campaign for Human Development
(CCHD), Teamworks Coop, and Indus-
trial Areas Foundation (IAF) explored
various issues at the local, national,
and international level, from affordable
housing to immigration. The hope was
that attendees walk away with a better
understanding of the need and power
of broad-based organizing to address
injustice and the passion to engage in
their parishes and communities.
CCHD provides grant funding for
organizing and training people of
low-income in order to develop local
leadership, build power and sustain-
ability, and promote the values of
Catholic Social Teaching. 25% of the
annual CCHD collection stays locally
and is invested in various types of
organizations, such as the TeamWorks
Cleaning cooperative. Founded in 2004,
Teamworks is an example of success in
every aspect. It has provided a living
wage, insurance benefits, and growth
opportunities to its 20 members who
are themselves workers of the business.
But beyond profitability, at the heart
of the coop is solidarity. “During the
financial crisis, the coop had a choice
to either cut a member or to lower the
pay of everyone else by 15% to make
up the difference. Members chose the
latter,” said Sean Wendlinder of CCHD.
This is testimony not just to the success
of forming community, but also to the
power of CST teachings on solidarity
and respect for human dignity.
Bishop Oscar Cantú meets with attendees
at the 2018 Santa Clara Faith Formation
Conference.
Photo courtesy of Jen Vazquez
Anna Eng is with IAF, and a lead or-
ganizer of Bay Area Organizing Com-
mittee, which has also received a grant
from CCHD. She helps to organize
parishes and other institutions, such
as teachers’ associations and schools,
to tackle structural changes needed
locally. Prime example is the Silicon
Valley housing crisis created by an
influx of tech giants “To be prophetic,
you need power. And that is hard to do
as single individuals or even a single
parish,” says Eng. “When institutions
come together, they can fight back.
They have the capacity to negotiate on
behalf of the people.”
There is process to such organizing,
which includes building a team, holding
1-on-1 meetings, researching, acting,
and then evaluating. To tackle homeless-
ness, for example, we must understand
how the money is being spent, and there
isn’t just one answer. When evaluating,
the key question is whether people are
being changed, not just the policies.
Education is part of the answer.
That was the focus of the two after-
noon presentations by CRS on the issue
of migrants and refugees from Africa
and Central America. Conference at-
tendees learned the statistics and
reasons for leaving, heard the stories,
and explored various CRS programs
responding to the issue.
CRS works in 110 countries. “Their
work is highly respected,” said Cantú,
who visited many migration and
conflict hotspots as former Chairman
of the USCCB Committee on Interna-
tional Justice and Peace. “The reason is
because people recognize in us values
which are not sectarian, but human,
societal, and communal. It is about
valuing human dignity.”
Changing Our Narrative to Build Bridges with Millennials
By Joanna Thurmann
Each session of Santa Clara Faith
Formation Conference 2018 began with
a prayer of hope to the “God who builds
bridges and who crosses borders.” The
same bridge-building and border-
crossing is needed in our ministry to
millennials.
“Evangelization is the old model,”
said Father Dave Dwyer, CSP, of Busted
Halo Ministries during his keynote ad-
dress on how young adults are reshap-
ing the church. “Immanuelization is
the new way. We must operate as the
embodied and experiential presence
of Jesus.”
He began by defining the demo-
graphic. The diversity in this age group
is part of what makes it challenging.
They can be in their late teens, twenties,
or thirties. They may be single or mar-
ried parents, in college, in the military
or the work force. “That is a big chunk
to bite off,” said Dwyer.
We often treat this emerging adult-
hood as pastoral juveniles and lump
them with teen ministry. Yet their ex-
perience and practice of faith is increas-
ingly not marked by religious worship.
These are the people who check “none”
on the box asking about religious affilia-
tion. Currently, 36% of younger millen-
Photos courtesy of Jen Vazquez
nials say they are unaffiliated, and that
number is growing.
To understand how to build better
bridges, we must understand what
has changed in the last hundred years.
There was a rite of passage between
child and adult. Mary was betrothed at
14. But many in their mid-twenties today
do not yet think of themselves as adults.
“Their life has morphed into a new
experience quite different from that
of previous generations,” said Dwyer.
Many macro social changes happening
in the wider society, especially in North
America, contribute to the disparity.
This includes the increase in higher
education, shorter careers and more job
changes, contraception and the delaying
of marriage, and a post-modernism that
holds no ultimate truth.
In short, this has emerged psycho-
logically, sociologically, and culturally
as a different period of time. It is marked
by intense identity exploration, instabil-
ity, naval-gazing, a feeling of limbo, and
yet a sense of endless possibilities. “Not
all of this meshes with what we think
of as church – tradition, stability, and
permanence,” noted Dwyer.
Hence their religiosity varies as
widely as their reasons for not attend-
ing. Depending on the study, this may
be 25% committed traditionalists to 25%
religiously indifferent or 20% irreligious.
Reasons vary from disillusionment with
organized religion to irrelevance and
uncertainty if God exists at all.
Thus, our response must be a model
of accompaniment, wherever they are
found. We must learn what they want;
to be welcomed and not judged, to be
given opportunity, and to be needed.
We must offer them a home and relevant
preaching, allow them to question, and
have some fun, too.
“We must be parish in a whole new
way; move from church as Sunday event
or a bunch of programs, to church as
presence,” said Dwyer. “Instead of in-
viting people to events, we invite them
into our lives.”
In other words, we must find God
where He already is, in all things. “This
is very Ignatian,” noted Joe Paprocki,
D. Min., during his conference session
on “Living the Sacraments.” He said,
“the intersection of heaven and earth
is wherever you are, as long as you
recognize it.”
Hence we only need to help millenni-
als put on the right type of night goggles
to see what is already there, despite the
perceived darkness. As catechists and
ministers, we project, proclaim and
spread this light.” The presence of God
is invisible but we are a sacramental
people. Our symbolic actions and our
concrete accompaniment can change the
narrative. From the world’s narrative of
fear, pain, and death, Jesus offers rescue,
restoration, and reassurance.
That is precisely what the millenni-
als desire. “I want a place of rest from a
world that is increasingly yelling louder
and louder; a place to restore my soul,”
said one millennial surveyed.