c. 1999 Religion News Service
LOS ANGELES _ More than 3,000 Roman Catholic peace and justice activists have ended their four-day National Catholic Gathering for Jubilee Justice pledging to make the new millennium as justice-centered as humanly possible by combating a host of global woes.”We have a lot to celebrate; we have a lot to do,”said Daniel Mulhall, assistant secretary for catechesis at the U.S. Catholic Conference, one of about 67 organizations sponsoring July 15-18 event. The meeting was called to honor Pope John Paul II’s call for the millennium to be a”jubilee”time devoted to promoting justice and peace worldwide.”We are called to see our unity with Catholics throughout the world and with men and women of good will who share many of the values and aspirations that give us hope for the new moment of grace,”said Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville, Ill., and vice president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Two days of numerous workshops in English and Spanish covered the broadest range of Catholic social teaching _ the death penalty, affirmative action, foreign policy, domestic violence, workplace rights and unions, gays and lesbians, pacifism, women and ethnic minorities in the church, Palestinian rights, environmental concerns, higher education, euthanasia, internal church divisions, world debt, child labor and sweatshops, land use planning, hunger, abortion, teaching peace and justice in catechism, institutional, historic and individual racism, AIDS, the arms trade and U.S. military spending.
For his part, Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark, N.J., chairman of the USCC’s international policy committee, directly criticized billionaires for accumulating massive wealth as millions of people go hungry.”It is also no accident that the three richest people in the world have assets that exceed the combined Gross Domestic Product of the 48 least developed countries,”McCarrick said.”The United Nations estimates that for $40 billion per year the world’s poor would have adequate food, water, sanitation, health care and education which would require the world’s 225 richest people to contribute just 4 percent of their wealth.”This disparity is a moral scandal, and it is only likely to get worse.” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who is Catholic, listed a host of low-paying jobs clung to by poor, non-unionized people who cannot afford health insurance.”To overcome the tactics of the anti-worker, anti-union employers,”he said,”our union movement is asking our community allies to stand with workers in their struggles, and across the country. Religious leaders and churches of all denominations are responding.” Despite major rich-poor income gaps and violations of workers’ rights, McCarrick said he had hope.”Ten years ago the world was trapped in a vise of what Reagan used to call the `evil empire’ _ communism,”he said.”But it’s gone now. The Soviet Union is no more. Who can say that 10 years from now there won’t be something else? You have to be filled with hope.” East Timorese Roman Catholic Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo, co-winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, told the gathering that”respect for the independence and dignity of others is our responsibility.”Above all, tolerance, which flows from simple humility, is both a human right and responsibility for all of us,”he said.
Belo also spoke of the”great power”the United States has on the world stage.”How you exercise that power shapes not only your character as a nation, but also the future of the world, for good or evil.” The conference introduced an eight-point”Jubilee Pledge”for next year, including promises to pray regularly for justice and peace; learn more about Catholic social teaching; reach across boundaries that divide people; live justly everywhere; serve the poor and vulnerable; give more generously to those in need; advocate public policies that respect human life and dignity; and encourage others to work for charity and peace.
At this conference of mostly church lay professionals, priests, bishops, nuns and brothers, some Catholics emphasize different points in church social teaching. A social ministry worker from the Detroit archdiocese said church teaching on the environment is a big blank page in southeast Michigan, a region dominated by heavy pollution from the dominant auto industry.
By contrast, struggles for parity inside the Catholic church were discussed as vigorously as struggles for broad, societal justice.
One workshop found diocesan employees noting how they are generally”at will”_ employees subject to easy dismissal. Several labor activists said that at times church leadership seems more interested in pushing for unions and workers’ rights outside the church than inside Catholic hospitals, schools and other institutions.
Abortion, too, was interwoven with church teaching about respecting all life from conception to natural death. One workshop speaker noted how,”the medicalization of life,”has changed abortion from a more concrete moral issue to a more opinion-driven medical issue.
Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony told the group the Democrats”have very obviously abandoned even a hint of a pro-life agenda”presenting activists even more clearly the case for a commitment to”that radical conversion according to God’s plan.” NCCB President Bishop Joseph Fiorenza of the diocese of Galveston-Houston, said Catholic social teaching has been hidden away and was often ignored during catechism classes in the 1970s _ a period U.S. bishops in the past few years have criticized as being weak in proper religious education.
Fiorenza said while many Catholics under 40 are”practically ignorant of the social teachings of the church,”the church’s strengthened emphasis on those teachings will help future generations.
On Saturday night, the conference hosted a massive barbecue for its 3,000 participants. Surveying the jovial, sun-filled scene was Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, president of the Vatican’s Central Committee for the Great Jubilee Year 2000.
When asked what he thought of the dinner, the cardinal smiled and said through a translator,”The jubilee means happiness. It is a jubilee because all Catholics are Christians and we are celebrating the joys of the good news, which the Scriptures say comes from God, and the God within us is what we’re celebrating. The joy has to be something that is common among all Christians.”DEA END FINNIGAN
