Service?
Sure.
(But How?)
Moreau Center for Service & Leadership
December 3, 2011
Agenda/Overview
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Warm up
Charity, Justice, (Project)
Examples
Large Group Exercise (Debate)
Discussion/De-Brief
Immersion Group Discussions
Who Thinks This is
Service?
Catholic Social Thought
Let each one examine his conscience, a
conscience that conveys a new message for
our times. Is he prepared to support out
of his own pocket works and undertaking
organized in favor of the most destitute?
(Pope Paul VI, 1967)
St. Vincent de Paul Societies
• Food programs
• Emergency financial
assistance
• Emergency
transportation
• Disaster relief and victim
services
• Rent/mortgage
assistance
• Low-cost housing
• Shelters for the homeless
• Shelters for the abused
• Assistance for victims of
AIDS, substance abuse,
and crime
• Thrift Stores
• Free pharmacy services
St. Vincent de Paul Societies
•
•
•
•
•
Employment services
Job training
Counseling/Information
Referral service
Education programs
(GED)
• Homemaker services
• Budget counseling
• Nutritional education
Youth programs
• Camp programs
Catholic Social Thought
Love for others,
and especially for
the poor, is made
concrete by
promoting justice.
Pope John Paul II, 1991
The social order requires
constant improvement: it
must be founded in truth,
built on justice, and enlivened
by love: it should grow in
freedom towards a more
humane equilibrium. If these
objectives are to be attained
there will first have to be a
renewal of attitudes and farreaching social changes.
Second Vatican Council, 1965
CCHD
Catholic Campaign for Human Development
• The domestic anti-poverty, social justice
program of the U.S. Catholic Bishops
• Promotion and support of communitycontrolled, self-help organizations and
through transformative education
• www.povertyusa.org
• .
Omaha Together One Community
(OTOC)
• Receives funding from CCHD
• Conditions in Meat-Packing Plants
“abuses and gross indecencies . . . “
– fast processing lines
– repetitive motion injuries
– lack of bathroom privileges
“I think a lot of people
thought those days were past.”
Fr. Norman Hunke, St Cecilia’s Cathedral
The Right to Form a Labor Union
• Catholic social thought insists on it
• Needs support from groups like CCHD
& OTOC
• In Omaha, people of faith defended
the right of meatpacking employees
to vote yes/no for union
Omaha Together One Community
(OTOC)
City bond issue
to fund sewer improvements

No projects in older, poorer areas
“I knew the people
who had raw sewage
backing up in their basements.”
Fr. Norman Hunke, St Cecilia’s Cathedral
Successful Postcard
Campaign
for the poorer neighborhoods
We had an
impact on a
serious
problem.
Fr. Norman Hunke, St Cecilia’s Cathedral
Fishbowl Debate
Social
justice/social
change is an
intrinsically
better or more
mature form of
service than
charity or direct
giving, and
each of us
should strive to
advance (grow)
along a
continuum,
from charity
toward justice.
Charity and
justice
are equally
valuable
and I could
devote
my time and
resources
toward either
approach,
as long as I do it
well.
“Charity is immoral.”
• Midwest Urban Community Organizer
In the first centuries
of Christianity
the hungry were fed
at a personal sacrifice,
the naked were clothed
at a personal sacrifice,
the homeless were sheltered
at personal sacrifice.
And because the poor
were fed, clothed and sheltered
at a personal sacrifice,
the pagans used to say
about the Christians
“See how they love each other.”
. . . In our own day
the poor are no longer
fed, clothed and sheltered
at a personal sacrifice,
but at the expense
of the taxpayers.
And because the poor
are no longer
fed, clothed and sheltered
the pagans say about the Christians
“See how they pass the buck.”