Subsidiarity and Solidarity

Welcoming Our New MN Catholic Conference Director

I am pleased to announce that the Minnesota Catholic Conference, made up of the bishops from all six dioceses in the state, has hired a new executive director of the office, Jason A. Adkins.

Jason is a native of St. Paul who obtained his law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School in 2006. He also has a master of arts degree in Catholic Studies from the University of St. Thomas.

While studying in Rome for this degree, he served as a reporter for the Zenit News Agency on stories of international interest. He has written and spoken widely on topics about constitutional law. He has also donated volunteer time to community activities, even serving as a baseball coach for youth.

The other bishops and I are delighted with his rich background and experience and look forward to his assistance as we respond to so many important moral concerns in our civil society today.

Grateful for service

At the same time, I wish publically to thank Father David McCauley, a priest of this archdiocese, who has served as interim director these past few months. Father McCauley had previously served as MCC director and came out of retirement to help us during our search for a new director. The bishops and I, indeed all Catholics in the state, are grateful for his service.

The Minnesota Catholic Confer­ence monitors the legislative process of our state government, raising issues that have moral/ethical ramifications. For example, the “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” was introduced last week in the House of Repre­sen­tatives.  The MCC provided a priest to speak to the issue at the public hearings on the bill.

Some might ask why churches (we are not the only church to be so involved) should be actively engaged with governmental legislation. The best answer I have heard comes from a column by Father Tad Pacholczyk on staff at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, which I reprint here with his permission.

God bless you!

Imposing our beliefs on others

By Father Tad Pacholczyk
(Sept. 1, 2005) — A lot of hot-button topics are being debated in our state legislatures these days, topics of great ethical and bioethical importance, ranging from emergency contraception to gay marriage. These debates address important issues for the future of our society. Lawmakers face the daunting task of making decisions about what should or should not be permitted by law within a reasonable society.

Recently, I was asked to speak in Virginia at legislative hearings about embryonic stem-cell research. After I gave my testimony, one of the senators asked a pointed question: “Father Tad, by arguing against embryonic stem-cell research, don’t you see how you are trying to impose your beliefs on others, and shouldn’t we as elected lawmakers avoid imposing a narrow religious view on the rest of society?”

The senator’s question was an example of the fuzzy thinking that has become commonplace in recent years within many state legislatures and among many lawmakers.

Error in thinking

Two major errors were incorporated into the senator’s question.

First, the senator failed to recognize the fact that law is fundamentally about imposing somebody’s views on somebody else. Imposition is the name of the game. It is the very nature of law to impose particular views on people who don’t want to have those views imposed on them. Car thieves don’t want laws imposed on them which prohibit stealing. Drug dealers don’t want laws imposed on them which make it illegal to sell drugs. Yet, our lawmakers are elected precisely to craft and impose such laws all the time.

So the question is not whether we will impose something on somebody. The question is instead whether whatever is going to be imposed by the force of law is reasonable, just and good for society and its members.

The second logical mistake the senator made was to suppose that because religion happens to hold a particular viewpoint, that implies that such a viewpoint should never be considered by lawmakers or enacted into law.

Religion teaches very clearly that stealing is immoral. Would it follow that if I support laws against stealing, I am imposing my narrow religious viewpoint on society? Clearly not. Rather, the subject of stealing is so important to the order of society that religion also feels compelled to speak about it.

Religion teaches many things that can be understood as true by people who aren’t religious at all. Atheists can understand just as well as Catholics how stealing is wrong, and most atheists are just as angry as their Catholic neighbors when their house is broken into and robbed. What is important is not whether a proposed law happens to be taught by religion, but whether that proposal is just, right and good for society and its members.

Protecting the weak

To be more coherent, of course, the senator really should have chosen to address the substance of my testimony, rather than talking about the imposition of religious views.

The argument I had offered, interestingly, did not depend on religious dogma at all. It depended rather on an important scientific dogma, namely, that all humans come from embryonic humans. The statement that I was once an embryo is a statement about embryology, not theology.

Given the fact that we were all once embryonic humans, it becomes very clear why destructive embryonic research is an immoral kind of activity. Exploiting the weak and not-yet-born in the interests of the powerful and the well-heeled should not be permitted in a civilized society. This argument, moreover, can be clearly seen by atheists, not just Catholics.

During my testimony, I pointed out how in the United States, we have stringent federal laws that protect not only the national bird, the bald eagle, but also that eagle’s eggs. If you were to chance upon some of them in a nest out in the wilderness, it would be illegal for you to destroy those eggs.

By the force of law, we recognize how the egg of the bald eagle, that is to say, the embryonic eagle inside that egg, is the same creature as the glorious bird that we witness flying high overhead. Therefore, we pass laws to safeguard not only the adult but also the very youngest member of that species.

Even atheists can see how a bald eagle’s eggs should be protected; it’s really not a religious question at all.

What’s so troublesome is how we are able to understand the importance of protecting the earliest stages of animal life, but when it comes to our own human life, a kind of mental disconnect takes place. Our moral judgment quickly becomes murky and obtuse when we desire to do certain things that are not good, like having abortions, or destroying embryonic humans for their stem cells.

Taking a deeper look

So anytime we come across a lawmaker who tries to suggest that an argument in defense of sound morals is nothing but imposing a religious viewpoint, we need to look deeper at what may really be taking place.

That lawmaker may not be so concerned about avoiding the imposition of a particular view on others — more likely, they are jockeying to simply be able to impose their view, a view which is ultimately much less tenable and defensible in terms of sound moral thinking.

Hence they seek to short-circuit the discussion by stressing religious zealotry and imposition without ever confronting the substantive ethical or bioethical argument itself. Once the religious imposition card is played, and Christian lawmakers suddenly become weak-kneed about defending human life and sound morals, the other side then feels free to do the imposing themselves, without having expended too much effort on confronting the essence of the moral debate itself.

Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D., earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, Mass., and serves as the director of education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Phila­delphia.

The Catholic Church seems to wear a permanent black eye these days. Whether it’s disturbing new revelations about the priest sex-abuse scandal, data showing mass defections from the church, or vociferous blow-back against a decision or decree by the U.S. bishops, the church finds itself — time and again — on the damage-control defensive.Even in the midst of easing its long-criticized opposition to condoms as measures against AIDS, the Vatican seemed to set off as much head-scratching as applause at year’s end. Were Pope Benedict XVI’s quotes in the new Light of the World book really the best way for him to reveal such a momentous shift? Couldn’t the Vatican have better clarified the portentous implications for health workers, priests and others tasked with implementing Catholic teaching on contraception?

Under the weight of these problems and others, some are probably more convinced than ever that it’s time for the Catholic Church to fade into history. But as a non-Catholic paying attention to the church’s travails, I am struck, too, by the steadfast faith of the Catholics I know, and the principled public witness of the Catholics on the ground — the nuns, community activists, volunteers and everyday parishioners who keep on keeping on in the face of adversity.

Because of them and the principles that inspire them, count me as one rooting not for the church’s decline and death, but for its recovery and renaissance. May Catholicism’s best days lie ahead.

The Church, or church

When I recently asked some Catholic friends of mine about their religious perseverance, they were quick to make a distinction between “The Church” (the Vatican, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the official doctrine and decrees) and the lower-case church (the community of rank-and-file believers). It’s in communion with the latter where they find the experiences and spiritual replenishment that keep them coming back, where their lives are continually changed for the better.

If my Catholic friends had their way, women would be ordained as priests, contraception would no longer be banned, and the Vatican would operate more in sync with the democratic values it espouses. Like many liberal-leaning Catholics — and, yes, there are plenty of them — these friends of mine cringe when the U.S. bishops do something like fight legislation that would extend health care to many vulnerable Americans.

Conservatives no doubt have their own frustrations. Isn’t the church abetting illegal immigration with its constant support for undocumented immigrants? Isn’t it getting in the way of the free market with its ceaseless insistence that governments play a lead role in helping the poor and weak?

Political arguments aside, here is the plain, unavoidable fact that faces the fathers of the U.S. church: For several decades now, people have been leaving — en masse. As Robert Putnam and David Campbell found in their exhaustive polling for their new book American Grace, roughly 60% of Americans raised as Catholics have either left the church entirely, or have become only nominally Catholic. That’s a lot of ex-Catholics and Christmas-and-Easter-only Catholics out there.

The good news for the keepers of American Catholicism is that immigrants, largely Latino, are replenishing the ranks, keeping the Catholic portion of the population steady at a robust 25%. There are still millions upon millions like those unwavering Catholic friends of mine, who keep attending Mass, keep volunteering at the Friday night meals for the homeless, keep practicing the ancient Catholic traditions.

When it comes to politics, you can often judge the integrity of people and organizations by their willingness to say or do the inconvenient thing. Give credit to the Catholics on that score — even the conference of bishops that is so often the scourge of progressives. Just when they seem on the verge of finding permanent common cause with political conservatives, the bishops go and say something that sounds positively liberal, like reminding the politicians and public of the moral dimension to the debate over tax cuts. “Too often,” the bishops rightly declared in a letter to members of Congress this past fall, “the weak and vulnerable are not heard in the tax debate.”

Whatever your stance on abortion, give the Catholics credit, too, for treating “pro life” as much more than an anti-abortion rallying cry. By creed and deed, they apply the sanctity-of-life principle all along the chain of human life — from “womb to tomb,” as the saying goes — and to all manner of people, from death-row prisoners to collateral victims of war in enemy countries.

The point is not that the church’s injection of liberal ideas into public debates redeems its other, conservative teachings; in truth, a conservative could just as fairly say that Catholicism’s staunch conservatism on abortion and homosexuality redeems its ridiculous liberalism on economic issues.

The point is that Catholicism’s political presence has, for the most part, remained above the one-party, one-ideology kowtowing that can make religion a tool for politicians, and a fool for status and power. (For a case study on what that looks like and the consequences it can wreak, consider the lock-step allegiance between most evangelicals and the Republican Party over the past 30-some years, and the alienating effect it has had on the young would-be Christians who have drifted in droves toward the burgeoning “spiritual but not religious” category.)

Catholicism’s unique role

Yes, the church could use some changing. But what shouldn’t change about this 2-millennia-old religious movement is its inconvenient refusal to forget the poor and vulnerable in these winner-take-all times. Catholicism is not alone in this; indeed, all religion at its best, and secularists, too, have a role and a say. But Catholicism, with its numbers and history and highly relevant teachings, has something unique to offer.

As Stephen Schneck, director of the Institute for Policy Research at the Catholic University of America, writes, “Our nation’s diverse faith traditions, especially Catholic social teaching, emphasize the common good and the essential role government has in building a just economy that works for all. This … powerful message is not heard enough today and is urgently needed at a time of economic anxiety, growing ideological polarization and voter anger.”

Give it to the Catholics. When it’s more fashionable than ever to take to the public square with torches and pitchforks, could the Catholics — those whose own church has faced so much hostility — lead the way to restoring the common ground and common good? Don’t put it past them.

Tom Krattenmaker is a Portland,Ore.-based writer specializing in religion in public life and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors. He is the author of the book Onward Christian Athletes.

Teni is the beneficiary of a trade model that guarantees fair wages to disadvantaged artisans, farmers and workers around the world while providing consumers in the United States a way to shop that gives back. By purchasing fair trade products, consumers promote fair wages for impoverished workers in developing countries, and fair trade helps these small-scale farmers and artisans to survive in a very competitive international market.

“Before Trade Aid (a fair trade organization in Ghana), I had to sell in the market and didn’t consider the cost of my skill and the materials. I sold too low. With Trade Aid, I learned to consider the raw materials and workmanship, and I sell my baskets for double,” says Anyopoka Apana, who also earns a living as a basket weaver.

“Fair trade is a very tangible way of supporting farmers and artisans by investing our money in communities that promote opportunity,” says Katy Cantrell, Program Advisor for CRS Fair Trade. “The principles of fair trade really align with Catholic values and enable Catholics to shop in a way that honors those values.”

Teni’s and Anyopoka’s baskets are part of a large selection of gift items available through Catholic Relief Services’ Fair Trade program, which also includes coffee, chocolate, specialty food items and handcrafts. The items were put together by 90 small producer groups and artisans in more than 40 countries throughout the world, and are now available at http://www.crsfairtrade.org/crafts/ .

Last year, Catholic parishes held more than 3,500 fair trade crafts, coffee and chocolate sales. By holding these sales, Catholics have created a marketplace where consumers and producers both benefit, and they have brought the market to those who need it most.

CRS has also partnered with numerous coffee companies throughout the United States that are committed to the principles of fair trade. They offer a variety of quality roasts, and with every purchase designated to support CRS, consumers are contributing a percentage to CRS’ Fair Trade Fund, which benefits fair trade organizations in the United States and abroad. In Madagascar, for example, a CRS grant was used to train artisans in product design. Sharing their own skills and learning about product trends—such as a growing interest in recycled materials in the American market—prepared them to more effectively export their products.

For many Catholics, the principles of fair trade closely reflect their values, and the Catholic market for fairly-traded goods has seen continued growth in recent years. The commitment of Catholics in this country to pay a fair price for the products they enjoy, and to introduce fair trade to their parishes, helps CRS’ long-term efforts of promoting economic justice around the world.

“These days we’re all careful about how we spend our money and many Catholics, driven by their faith, choose to spend in a way that helps those who made the product build a better future for themselves,” Cantrell says.

The CRS Work of Human Hands catalog is filled with an extraordinary selection of fine jewelry, kitchen and tableware, household items, gift baskets, games, accessories, and holiday decorations. By purchasing these fair trade items, everyone wins: consumers get high-quality one-of-a-kind handcrafts and the people who created them get hope for a better future for themselves and their families.

To browse the catalog or place an order, visit http://www.crsfairtrade.org/crafts/.

by Gail Ivers

As he celebrates 15 years as the leader of a multi-million dollar operation, Bishop John Kinney still thinks of himself as a pastor first.

To read the complete story on Bishop Kinney, click here.

1)   CST Timeline Educational Activity

This engaging new activity challenges high school, college and adult learners to reflect on the major social teaching documents and their responses to the signs of the times over the last 120 years. This creative learning activity is for individuals and small groups alike.  Go to resource .

2)   Multi-Media Youth Arts Contest

This contest for schools and parishes leads young people (grades 7-12) through a process of learning about poverty and our Catholic response. They then become educators themselves by creating any type of “art” (video, essay, drawing, music, etc.) to communicate what they have learned. November is the perfect time to tell schools and parishes in your diocese about this fun and educational program.  Learn more .

3)   CCHD Collection: Educate Your Parish about Poverty in the U.S.!

Have you checked to make sure your parish is planning to participate in the collection in support of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD)? In most dioceses, this collection is held on the weekend before Thanksgiving. Collection weekend is an opportunity to educate your parish about poverty in the U.S. and to help support the continuing good work of CCHD to address its causes.  Learn more .

4)   National Migration Week 2011
Resources are now available for National Migration Week, which is January 2-8, 2011. Echoing Pope Benedict XVI’s 2011 World Day of Migrants and Refugees Message, the U.S. bishops will focus on migrant families for the 2011 Week. A poster, prayer card, and bulletin insert focusing on the economic crisis, underdevelopment, and the stresses and strains of migration on families,  can be found here .

5)   New Holy Land Film
Currently showing in cities around the U.S., Budrus tells the story of a Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites members of all factions along with Israeli supporters in an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction.  Learn more .

6)   Peacebuilding Book

In Peacebuilding: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Practice, an international team of scholars examine the theology and practice of peacebuilding, past, present, and future.  Read more .

Posted: 28 Sep 2010 11:33 AM PDT

The Census released results from the 2009 American Community Survey on Tuesday morning - and the numbers do not look good for Minnesota (read our press release).

Poverty increased. The overall percentage of Minnesotans living in poverty rose to 11 percent in 2009, a significant increase from pre-recession levels. Some people in Minnesota saw a particularly strong increase in poverty between 2007 and 2009, including Latinos (four percentage point increase), children (two percentage point increase) and white non-Hispanics (one percentage point increase). Remember, in 2009, a family of three would have had to earn less than $18,300 to be considered living in poverty.

Median household income fell. Demonstrating that the effects of the recession were felt by most families, Minnesota’s median household income fell by two percent between 2008 and 2009, after adjusting for inflation. Although it dropped by about $1,000 to $55,616, Minnesota’s median household income remained higher than the national level ($50,221).

The racial disparities are stunning. Even though non-Hispanic whites experienced a significant increase in poverty and a significant decline in median household income, Minnesota’s communities of color are the ones who are really being left behind. Demonstrating the impact of the historic lack of access to educational and employment opportunities, Blacks, American Indian and Latino communities experienced much lower median household incomes and much higher rates of poverty in 2009.

The numbers are dramatic – 35 percent of Blacks and American Indians in Minnesota fell below the poverty line in 2009. Latinos (26 percent) and Asians (17 percent) also had a significantly higher poverty rate than non-Hispanic whites (eight percent).

In 2009, the median income for Black ($26,930), American Indian ($33,930) and Latino ($38,751) households in Minnesota was also significantly lower than the median income in non-Hispanic white households ($57,979). While non-Hispanic white households had a median income well above the national median in 2009, Black households in Minnesota fell below the median income for their counterparts nationally.

Where do we go from here? In a recession, the pressure builds as the need for public services increases while state revenues are falling. We know that the state continues to face large budget shortfalls, but reducing or eliminating state services to balance the budget will not help us move forward from this recession. Continuing cuts in services means more job losses, a greater strain on remaining public services and higher poverty. It leads to a cycle where families can’t get help when they need it most.

But we can help our communities recover from the recession, and that means raising revenues to help balance the budget and maintain investments in education, health care and job training. We also need to be building a strong economy where we can reverse the disparities in our state and give everyone the opportunity to succeed.

-Christina Wessel

A translator is a traitor.

Father Paul Turner, a priest of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, knows the saying as an inside joke among those who move words, phrases and meanings from one language to another. He points out that the joke works better in Italian, where the words for traitor and translator are almost the same.

But in any language the phrase points to a greater truth, says Father Turner, a Latin scholar who worked for the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) that developed the translation of the new Roman Missal.

“Anytime you translate you are doing your best. But it is nearly impossible to capture all the nuances and bring them into a new language,” he says.

At the ICEL commission meetings Father Turner served as a recorder of the proceedings held by 11 bishops from the English-speaking world. Led by Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds, England, the group reviewed liturgical translations. Along with other scholars, Father Turner, who is also pastor of St. Muchin Church in Cameron, Mo., could raise points about meaning and grammar, but only the bishops voted on the actual approvals.

Sometimes proposed suggestions were inserted into the revised texts; other times suggestions failed to win approval. The group, says Father Turner, was determined that the original Latin of the liturgical texts was faithfully rendered into English as much as possible.

“We want the liturgy to be understood,” he says. “But those who pray it have to know that it is the prayer being brought to us by the tradition.” The result, for American Catholics who first encounter the Missal, will take some adjustment.

The current translation focuses on rendering the texts understandable to modern English-speakers. The new translation will focus more on keeping the nuances in the original Latin. The result will be the use of some phrases and words that are not normally a part of everyday English discourse.

“It’s not that the translation we have is wrong or heretical. But what we gained in fluidity (in English) we lost in nuance (from the Latin),” says Father Turner.

For example: the new translation sometimes uses the word “ineffable” to describe the power of God. Webster’s defines the word as anything “incapable of being expressed in words.” While not a part of daily English speech – although Father Turner notes he saw the word in a recent edition of Newsweek – “it’s a great word when you talk about the mystery of God. It is a word that means we are speechless before God.” When taken in context, he says, English speakers will become familiar with it for a description of a mysterious quality of God.

Other examples: in the Creed of the new missal, the old translation read that Jesus was “one in being” with the Father. The new translation will describe this relationship as “consubstantial,” an English word as close to the original Latin meaning as possible.

“It’s an unusual word. But the relationship between Jesus and the Father is unusual and needs a unique word,” says Father Turner, who adds that ancient Church councils attempted to define this relationship in a precise a way as possible, and modern English speakers should have the benefit of those insights.

American Catholics routinely recite the Creed each Sunday in which Jesus is described as “born of the Virgin.” That phrase, says Father Turner, fails to capture the full nature of Jesus. “Incarnate,” the word used in the new translation, is intended to emphasize that at Jesus’ conception the divine was present.

It may sound strange at first but, says Father Turner, English-speaking Christians through the ages have recited the Lord’s Prayer, with its famous phrase, “hallowed be thy name.” The word “hallowed” is rarely used in English anymore, but English speakers reciting the Lord’s Prayer easily recognize it in that context. The same should hold true for the terminology in the new missal, says Father Turner.

The ultimate goal will be English-speaking Catholics reciting prayers that more precisely render their original Latin meanings, making the traitor in translation as unobtrusive as possible.