Viewpoint If
you want to teach justice, stress the vocation of daily life
By TIMOTHY J. SCHMALTZ
As a parent of four sons, a
grandfather and an activist for justice, I have grappled with how to
communicate the social teaching of the church to my children and to the
world.
I believe the fundamental reason that the social teaching of the
church remains on the margins, even in our Catholic universities and schools,
is the spiritual dualism that permeates our practices and teaching. Ordinary
Catholics do not see their work and family as the primary locus of their
spirituality, in spite of the profound teaching to the contrary in documents
such as the U.S. bishops 1986 economics pastoral and Pope John Paul
IIs On Human Work.
Many years ago I began to offer workshops with titles such as The
Vocation in the World, Spirituality in the Marketplace, and Ministry of the
Laity in the World. I found that by working from the bottom-up with
peoples experience in work, family and neighborhoods, ordinary lay people
can be challenged to integrate the justice teachings of the church, not as a
political program but as ordinary everyday spirituality.
In these workshops I would ask, What church ministries are
you involved in? Consistently I would get back, lector,
eucharistic minister, social justice committee,
parish council and sometimes marriage and family life.
I do not remember a time when someone said, I am an engineer,
I am a nurse, I am an accountant, I am a
salesman, I am the manager of an HMO. Daily life is just not
seen among Catholics as an arena of ministry.
Our church vocabulary is part of the problem. Most social
justice ministries call people out of their daily lives and neighborhoods
into working at soup kitchens, homeless shelters, AIDS residences, nursing
homes, Catholic Charities agencies, peace groups and so forth. What ordinary
people conclude is that ministry is something outside of their day-to-day
lives. They do not experience the struggle to transform their work, the Little
League, their neighborhood, their public school and their family as
ministry.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with ministries in soup kitchens
or Catholic Charities agencies. But they are not the primary vocation of the
people of God.
Church practices also reinforce the dualism by giving awards for
people who volunteer their time. I have yet to see a parish or
diocese give awards for being a small business leader who prices his/her
products fairly and pays employees justly. What we are saying is: By leaving
your everyday life and giving a few hours a week at the soup kitchen you are
doing holy and good things (which they certainly are). But by living a life of
justice in our work and family, we are just ordinary.
Other church practices have the same defect. Most parishes
annually bless and commission those who participate in ministries
such as religious education teachers, eucharistic ministers, the catechumenate
team and so forth. I have never seen a parish bless its workers and families
(maybe mothers on Mothers Day). Why do we not have an annual blessing for
the artists, builders, healers, teachers, small business owners, salespeople,
lawyers, technicians, plumbers, government workers, caregivers and so on? By
blessing only the internal church ministries, we subtly but clearly reinforce a
sacred/mundane dualism. We call people out of the world rather than into the
world to build justice and peace.
I would suggest that as the scholarship, formal teaching and rich
intellectual heritage of Catholic social teaching is more integrated into our
Catholic colleges and universities and now all Catholic schools, particular
attention must be paid to the underlying dualisms and practices that so
separate spirituality and ministry in our church settings. We are doing
that separation and not even realizing it.
It is not a matter of just initiating another survey course on
Catholic social teaching at our colleges and universities. It is not just
getting more college students involved in soup kitchens or other traditional
social ministries. Rather we must help students at all levels confront directly
the challenge of their baptism through family and work and ministry in the
marketplace. We must overcome all the dualistic practices so imbedded in our
ordinary church practices that reinforce the separation of faith and life.
We must find ways to integrate the theology of work in
a systematic way into our curricula. We must focus on work as vocation and
career. We must also develop a new set of practices that name, identify and
reward the integration of a spirituality of justice into everyday life. We need
in all of this to make spirituality and ministry interesting and relevant to
todays young people. What better place for this creative thinking to
happen than on the campuses of Catholic colleges and universities?
Most talk of vocations at Newman Centers and at
Catholic colleges is either recruiting talks for the priesthood or internal
church ministries, or soft and not very challenging. This type of talk is not
about the practical aspects of sharing ones gifts in the world as
business people, doctors, lawyers, nurses, social workers, salespeople,
computer experts or whatever. Our talk has to become better, more
relevant, more demanding.
Instead of young people being called out of their daily lives into
church work, such as lectoring or serving as eucharistic minister or in some
type of activism, they must be challenged to make the connections to their
daily work and family lives during their formative years.
Vocation discernment, to use churchy language, is the heart of
Catholic colleges and universities and our schools. In the most profound sense
of these words, God uses the great resources of our Catholic
universities and colleges to prepare young people for the world not so
they can learn about social ministry, but rather so they see their whole lives
as social ministry.
Overcoming the dualisms in all our practices and integrating the
sacred and the ordinary will go much farther toward promoting the social
ministry of the church than our past efforts. That, in my view, is the heart of
infusing social teaching into the churchs colleges and universities and
schools.
Timothy J. Schmaltz writes from Phoenix.
National Catholic Reporter, March 19,
1999
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