You did it for Me?
Posted on October 28, 2008
Filed Under Franciscanized World |
You did it for Me? Is that what it means to follow the social teachings of the Catholic Church? During a recent CROP walk, Roncalli High School Lasallian Youth raised nearly $900 to end poverty in Manitowoc, WI and in the wider world. University of Wisconsin Green Bay Catholic Campus Ministry students folded, pasted, colored and marked “Happy Fall” cards after the October 26, 2008 Sunday Eucharist for area elderly. You did it for Me?
In the second of a Today’s Catholic Teacher educator development series of articles on the theme of Catholic Social Principles, Franciscan Sister of Christian Charity Sister Kay Klackner, OSF begins with a quote from the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. The Second Vatican Council prelates (1965) wrote that:
In our times a special obligation binds us to make ourselves the neighbor of absolutely every person, and of actively helping him [or her] when he [or she] comes across our path, whether he [or she] be an old person abandoned by all, a foreign laborer unjustly looked down upon, a refugee, a child born of an unlawful union and wrongly suffering for a sin he [or she] did not commit, or a hungry person who disturbs our conscience by recalling the voice of the Lord: “As long as you did it for one of these, the least of my brethen, you did it for me.”
Practically speaking, the Roncalli Lasallian youth and the UWGB college students’ outreach shows that they are making the poor and the elderly their neighbors, Jesus in the flesh. Read Sister Kay’s entire article on the foundational principle, respect for the life and dignity of the human person, a central construct of the Catholic Social tradition.
Conscious of people struggling the most in these tough economic times, what are other examples of “you did it for Me?”
(First photo: Fred Graber, Madison, WI)
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Sister Kay’s paper; the example of the Roncalli Lasallian youth; the outreach of the UWGB Newman Center students; along with so many other selfless, socially conscious Christian people are right in with the global Church as identified in Zenit today:
http://www.zenit.org/article-24092?l=english
Social Doctrine Compendium Heads to Korea
VATICAN CITY, OCT. 28, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Continuing a worldwide tour to present the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Cardinal Renato Martino will head to Korea this week.
According to a communiqué from that Vatican dicastery, the objective of the trip will be “to offer the contribution of Christian social teaching to the solution for the grave problems of the Asian world.”
May the Lord give us peace,
Congratulations to Sister Kay Klackner for her series of articles related to Catholic Social Teachings. She has been writing these articles concurrently with carrying out her fulltime responsibilites as Director of Teacher Education at Silver Lake College. Many thanks to Sister Kay for sharing the fruits of her doctoral work.
The Church’s social teaching is surely a rich treasure of wisdom about building a just society. Peter Hennot, S.J., offers a definition of social justice that challenges one to action: “Social justice means loving people so much that I work to change structures that violate their dignity.”
I have memories from over 40 years ago of integrating “The Christian Social Principles,” which were posted in my 8th grade homeroom, in the curriculum. Any one else with similar memories?