Fall
Ministries - Chaplains Serving with Jesuit volunteers and beyond
By ARTHUR JONES
NCR Staff Newark, N.J.
Ministry begets ministry. Because
there is a Catholic chaplaincy at Yale -- centered at St. Thomas More Chapel --
Stephanie Baralecki has occasionally been hanging around the Immigration and
Naturalization Service asylum detention center in an Elizabeth, N.J., warehouse
district. Shes been there to collect suddenly discharged
asylees -- those given permission to remain in the United
States.
Baralecki, 22, an interdisciplinary ethics-politics-economics
major, was headed for the Peace Corps until one evening at St. Thomas More
chapel, when students returning to Yale for graduate studies told about their
Jesuit Volunteer Corps year of service.
What attracted Baralecki, who had never even heard of the Jesuit
Volunteer Corps, was the idea of living in community as part of a
faith-based program. She applied.
A cradle Catholic from Metuchen, N.J. (her father is a Byzantine
Catholic of the Ukrainian rite, but Stephanie was raised in the Latin rite),
Baralecki soon found herself behind a desk in the second floor of a very
Catholic office in downtown Newark, a space for both the Catholic Legal
Immigrant Network and the Jesuit Refugee Service.
Soon she was teaching English for the Jesuit Refugee Service in
the detention center. Last fall the Immigration and Naturalization Service
killed the program.
The versatile Baralecki, who lives with four other young JVC
women, shifted to something more akin to caseworker for immigrants being
released -- sometimes with practically no notice, with no money and nowhere to
go.
Housing is the greatest challenge, said Baralecki, who
in late July was clearing out her desk for a move to Philadelphia. Jesuit
Refugee Service has a small emergency budget. We put them up at the
[YMCA], and they can charge their meals.
But thats a stopgap. Limited housing is available with the
Franciscan Brothers at Christ House in the Bronx. Otherwise, were
frantically calling around trying to get them longer term accommodation,
she said.
Inside or released, the asylum seekers, who have already come
through some horrific experiences on a tortuous route to America, get trapped
in the overloaded INS bureaucracy. If theyre granted asylum, they might
have to wait three months or more for a work permit, she said.
Meanwhile, Baralecki is busily helping them get Social Security
cards, a place to live and their INS papers straightened out, while they have
no money and cant work.
The hardest part of my job, she said, is I feel
limited in what I can do for the people -- I know many of them personally --
and I get frustrated by the INS red tape. At times you feel down over the whole
thing -- whats happened to them in life, what theyve left behind
and the struggle here to get a life started, and thats where my JVC
community is a big help.
The community living, with times for prayer and retreats,
those kinds of things, keeps you going when the frustration level is
high, she said.
At Yale, Baralecki was in a small community, a group of 10 or so
Catholic students who met weekly to discuss the Sunday scriptures and how those
scriptures applied to ones personal life.
It was a really nice community atmosphere [at St. Thomas
More], with a lot of support from other Catholic students, probably most of
them involved in some part-time volunteer work. Several, said Baralecki,
like herself went into fulltime service for a year or more after graduation --
into AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps or teaching in a foreign country.
Of her college generations Catholics, Baralecki speculates,
I think a lot of people my age are turned off by organized religion --
maybe the Catholic church in particular because of its views and regulations on
women and homosexuals, that sort of thing.
There are certainly aspects of church teaching Ive got
my own doubts about, she said. But overall I know lots of people
who are on a real search for spirituality of some sort, and I find the ritual
aspect of the church very attractive. Its secure, its calming,
its familiar, its appealing.
By August, Baralecki -- whod decided on a second year of JVC
service -- had moved to Philadelphia, to Kairos House (part of Project
H.O.M.E., NCR, Dec. 10, 1999). There shell direct activities in a
transitional center for formerly homeless mentally ill men and women.
And after that? The JVC motto is, Ruined For
Life, she said. The four JVC values -- community,
spirituality, social justice and simple lifestyle -- are expected to have an
impact on volunteers that doesnt end with your service. Its
supposed to affect life choices, and I think thats true.
When her Philadelphia year is done, Baralecki is likely to head to
law school for public interest law. Im not sure what,
yet.
Versatile and engaging, committed and energetic, it probably
wont matter what -- Stephanie Baralecki has learned to minister in the
Catholic tradition. And once hooked, its hard to release the bittersweet
barb that calls one to service.
National Catholic Reporter, September 15,
2000
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