Testimony

First, I was called to uncomfortable new places as a student social worker in the emergency room of a hospital for indigent people, in prison, and in a shelter for homeless people. In my own very inadequate way, I accompanied people who suffered from illness, homelessness and, in some cases, unfair sentencing to prison, but who were also victims of unjust policies and practices that kept them poor and sick and imprisoned.I realized that while I could (sort of) tend to their needs as a direct practice social worker, perhaps I was being called to working at the systemic level to address injustice. Second, I worked as a leader with other students to organize the Loyola University Community Action Program (LUCAP), a student-led organization that involved students in a variety of service and justice initiatives. Within 3 years of starting the organization, nearly 200 Loyola students had joined, becoming “men and women for others” right around the time that the term was put forth by Pedro Arrupe – even though I don’t think any of us knew who Pedro Arrupe was!

I continued with my social work studies at Washington University in St. Louis, specializing in community development and community organizing. I knew then that I wanted to do organizing within a Church setting, but at that time I didn’t even know if a career like that was possible. But God answered my prayers, and I was hired right out of graduate school by Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New Orleans to organize their Parish Social Ministry Program. For seven years, five other organizers and I worked with parishes throughout the archdiocese to develop social ministry and social justice projects. We were all young, inexperienced, and naïve, which was both a blessing and an obstacle – a blessing because we were willing to try anything to onboard pastors and parishes to the social apostolate, and an obstacle because we were not necessarily strategic in our organizing efforts. But it was an exciting time to be working in the social justice arena in the Church in the United States: the US Bishops had recently promulgated prophetic pastoral letters on peace and economic justice, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development was funding and supporting grassroots efforts of low-income community organizations, and priests and women religious, along with many lay people, were allying themselves with people in Central America who were victims of torture and murders by US trained and backed military.

After the US bishops released their pastoral letter Economic Justice for All, they established a special office for 3 years at the US Catholic Conference in Washington DC to assist dioceses, parishes, and lay organizations to implement the pastoral letter, and I worked first as an organizer and later as director of that office. Our office developed a number of resources to help make the pastoral “practical”, some of which were well-received and used and others of which were actually (kindly) rejected by the bishops when they realized that it meant that the church also had to take a hard look at their own practice of economic justice, such as whether church institutions should allow unions and pay just wages.

After that office closed (not because of the resources that we suggested but because it was only meant to last for 3 years), I returned to the Archdiocese of New Orleans, where I was first the Mission and Legislative Coordinator for Catholic Charities and then the director of the grassroots organization of low-income elderly people - Seniors with Power United for Rights. After the birth of my third child, I spent several years doing consulting work with faith-based organizations in the areas of grant-writing, strategic planning and board development, and as a co-director of a Church nurse program, which trained nurses to work as health providers and advocates in their own mostly low-income congregations.

In 2003, I was invited by then provincial Fr. Fred Kammer, SJ, whom I had worked with for many years through Catholic Charities and USCCB, to join the staff of the Jesuits of the New Orleans Province as the Provincial Assistant for Social Ministries. The province had run out of Jesuits willing to take on this job in addition to all the other jobs they were doing. Working with the Jesuits in this role has been a homecoming for me, bringing me back to the roots of the faith that does justice that started as a tiny seed at Loyola University.

Throughout my long journey in the social apostolate, I have experienced God is so many surprising ways. When I started my journey, I thought I was going to have a career in social work; instead, I have found a vocation. While my vocation has not been a call to the religious life (which I once thought that I might have had until my mother firmly reminded me that I would never be able to keep a vow of obedience), it has been a clear and persistent call to a ministry deeply rooted in my faith. On this vocational journey, I have known God through the love and faith of the many people I have had the blessing to walk with, especially those who in spite of so many obstacles on the road to a more just world, remain hopeful and joyful and committed, and who never, ever give up. My husband and I have been blessed to belong to a small Christian community that has met twice monthly for the past 30 years. My three children grew up with our community members as their s/heroes. Our little community includes civil rights attorneys, prison chaplains, public school teachers, peace activists, social workers, Catholic Workers, community organizers, and environmental advocates. I count it as one of my greatest blessings that as my children prayed and reflected with our community, albeit sometimes begrudgingly, they were nurtured in choosing career paths committed to working directly with poor and marginalized people.

But I have experienced God most profoundly in my ministry has been through accompanying poor and marginalized people, hearing their stories of sadness and courage, and bonding my heart to them in whatever meagre ways I can. They are how I know Jesus, which became clear to me when I was doing the 19^th Annotation retreat. My spiritual director had asked me to imagine during my prayer Jesus walking with a “crown of glory”. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t conjure up that image of Jesus; instead I kept getting images of a homeless person on a street corner who I passed every day with a beautiful golden crown, and an inmate that I’d met at a state prison crowned with flowers, and a little migrant child with a tiny crown. When I told my director that I’d failed at the exercise, and who I saw “crowned in glory” he teared up and told me with assurance that it was a gift that this was how I see Jesus. I still weep with gratitude that Jesus has chosen to reveal himself to me through those who are poorest and has invited me to walk with them in my journey.

When I reflect on my journey, I would say that there are many times and ways that I have felt desolation, but I have never felt despair, which is another gift that I believe God has given me. I am frustrated by years of working with other organizations and coalitions to change laws and policies that oppress poor and marginalized people and rarely seeing success – or even worse seeing things get worse. But I am not discouraged enough to exit from this struggle. I am deeply troubled –dare I say angered - by the increasing polarization in the Catholic Church and in my own country. This polarization deafens people to points of view different from their own and fosters hatred in their hearts. But I am not troubled or angry enough to stop trying to build bridges. And, though it pains me to say it, especially in this venue, I am really, sad that while women are able to exercise leadership in almost every other aspect of society, we continue to be excluded from leadership in the Catholic Church. So many of my incredibly competent and committed sisters in ministry have not just hit a glass ceiling in the Church, they have slammed into a concrete wall. But, unlike many of them, I am not sad enough to leave the Church that I am happy to call my spiritual home. And I am greatly heartened by the recent establishment of a Women’s Commission for the Society of Jesus and a Women’s Advisory Committee in our own UCS province.

I have been especially consoled these last 18 years to be a companion with the Society of Jesus working with Jesuits and Jesuit apostolates to deepen even further their commitment to the “faith that does justice.” The new Universal Apostolic Preferences, and the way that I see provinces and Jesuit apostolates genuinely grappling with how these will be implemented, gives me great hope and energy for the future of the social apostolate. And in this ministry, hope and energy is a huge blessing for which I am grateful to God – and to the Society!