Category Archives: Spirit Filled Network

Sr. Simone receives Medal of Freedom from President Biden

Watch Sr. Simone receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Watch Sister Simone receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom  

Mary J. Novak
July 7, 2022

On July 7, 2022, President Joe Biden awarded Sister Simone Campbell, SSS and 16 other extraordinary Americans with our country’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. While leading NETWORK from 2004 to 2021, Sister Simone propelled NETWORK’s mission of political ministry into the national spotlight with her committed advocacy for justice.   

President Biden said that Sister Simone and her fellow medal recipients “embody the soul of the nation — hard work, perseverance, and faith,” and I strongly agree. It is people like Sister Simone and each of you — advocates for justice, participating in politics to dismantle systemic racism and advance the common good — who give me hope.  

As we witness rising tension and growing threats to our democracy, it is more important than ever to lobby for federal policies that dismantle systemic racism and create a country where all people can thrive. 

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The Dobbs Decision and NETWORK’s Continued Work for Racial and Economic Justice

The Dobbs Decision and NETWORK’s Continued Work for Racial and Economic Justice

Joan F. Neal, Mary J. Novak, and Sr. Erin Zubal, OSU
June 24, 2022

The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will have deep ramifications in people’s lives, many of whom may not even realize it yet. Undoing nearly half a century of precedent and jurisprudence will undoubtedly have a disorienting and destabilizing impact on our laws, the provision of maternal health care, and our already fraught civil discourse. 

At NETWORK, we speak from five decades of women-led, person-centered advocacy and hundreds of encounters with women, families, and communities across the country that have been disinvested in, and marginalized by, our systems and structures. As a Catholic organization with 50 years of political ministry in a pluralistic democracy, we recognize the role and distinction of the moral and legal questions at issue here.   

This Supreme Court decision leaves NETWORK with the following questions from our perspective of pursuing justice and the common good through federal policy:  

  • Will state and federal legislatures now introduce and pass a groundswell of policies to offer a robust social safety net of resources for all women and families that allow everyone to thrive?  
  • Are religious leaders prepared to allocate resources through the largesse of their institutions and donors to ensure that any gaps in the social safety net are filled?  
  • Will this decision lead to an increase in maternal mortality for the people who are already the most lacking in access to resources in our society, especially women living in rural, low-income communities and women of color?   
  • Will state legislatures continue to pass invasive and punitive measures that create a culture of surveillance and criminalization of women, including those experiencing ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage?   
  • Will this decision create a chilling effect among medical providers, making them hesitant or unable to provide life-saving care to patients suffering conditions such as ectopic pregnancy or hemorrhaging after a miscarriage?  

With polarization and extremist violence growing in our country, people of faith have a moral duty to work toward the common good across a spectrum of issues. Catholic teaching states that a focus on one moral priority cannot lead to “dismissing or ignoring other serious threats to human life and dignity” (“Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” #29).   

For anyone who has made ending federal protections for abortion the singular focus of their political activity, we at NETWORK urge you to expand your focus to include the economic realities of women and families. Now is the time to listen to the experience of women, particularly women living in rural, low-income communities and women of color. 

Founded by Catholic Sisters and imbued with their charisms, NETWORK educates, organizes, and lobbies to create a society that promotes justice and the dignity of all. We invite all who share our passion for justice to work with us to create a more just, equitable, and inclusive future.  

 Joan F. Neal is NETWORK’s deputy executive director and chief equity officer. Mary J. Novak is NETWORK’s executive director. Sr. Erin Zubal, OSU, is an Ursuline Sister of Cleveland and NETWORK’s chief of staff. 

NETWORK's reparation vigil featured Reverend Traci Blackmon

NETWORK’s Reparations Vigil in Cleveland Featured Revered Traci Blackmon

NETWORK’s Reparations Vigil in Cleveland Featured Reverend Traci Blackmon

Elissa Hackerson
June 17, 2022

NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice hosted Repair and Redress: A Vigil for Reparations (In-Person) on Wednesday, June 15, 2022 at St. Aloysius – St. Agatha Parish in Cleveland, OH. People in the parish church and school community, sisters, the Cleveland NETWORK Advocates Team, justice-seekers, and NETWORK staff made a powerful stand for reparations for Black Americans and called for an H.R.40-style reparations commission by Juneteenth. NETWORK’s reparations vigil in Cleveland featured Reverend Traci Blackmon, Associate General Minister, Justice and Local Church Ministries (United Church of Christ). The United Church of Christ shared a condensed video presentation of her remarks.

[su_vimeo url=”https://vimeo.com/721233419″ title=”NETWORK’s reparations vigil in Cleveland featured Rev. Traci Blackmon”]

Rev. Blackmon’s stirring and powerful remarks spoke to the theological call to repair a society broken by the sin of chattel slavery and the racism that has followed in its wake and addressed society’s need to atone and provide redress.  Rev. Blackmon declared that it is time to end government charity for Black people (giving fish) and deliver justice (equitable access to the lake).

[su_quote cite=”Rev. Traci D. Blackmon”]The reason we have not reckoned with racism in this country–decision makers have decided that God cannot be Black, that God cannot be Brown. That God indeed must be white and therefore we have created a fractured and disabled society.[/su_quote]

A classically trained violinist from Venezuela added music to the vigil.

NETWORK’s Build Anew agenda calls for a society where we all share equally in God’s abundance. For this to happen, our country’s laws, policies, and norms must:

  • Dismantle Systemic Racism
  • Cultivate Inclusive Community
  • Root Our Economy in Solidarity
  • Transform Our Politics

As Rev. Blackmon stated so clearly in her vigil remarks, “Reparations is about the church and the people and the society moving from charity to justice. Moving from hand out to hand up. Moving from simply offering to give someone a fish to giving them access to the lake so they can fish for themselves.”

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis Delivers Keynote Speech at H.R.40 Policy Update _share_credit Beatrice De Gea

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis Delivers Keynote Speech at H.R.40 Policy Update

Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis Delivers Keynote Speech at H.R.40 Policy Update

Elissa Hackerson
June 8, 2022

On June 1, 2022, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice hosted a webinar to educate and mobilize advocates about an H.R.40-style federal reparations committee to study the impact of slavery — and the racist policies and laws that were created in its wake. NETWORK Staff was joined by Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, Senior Minister for Public Theology and Transformation at Middle Collegiate Church in New York City. Rev. Lewis delivered a keynote speech that positioned reparations in a scriptural, theological framework for over 300 webinar attendees.

Rev. Lewis’s reflection zoomed in on human history with examples of humans capturing and conquering God’s people. And she challenged the ideology that some people deserve access to freedom and liberty more than others. She asserted that the ideology of whiteness has broken Black people, baptized the Holocaust, and broke Indigenous people. Reparations will bring healing, and we who have followed a Jewish rabbi into a world of faith seek repair.

Repairers of the Breach

Rev. Lewis began her remarks with scripture as a frame, choosing a beautiful call to the kind of worship, fasting and feast that God wants in Isaiah 58.  “A call to be different kinds of faithful people. A call to Israel then, and to us now, to fix what’s broken in the world…to heal the world. When we do this, God says our names will be changed. We will be called repairers of the breach, restorers of streets to live in.”

Why Reparations?

“Because we have participated, friends, in the breaking of the covenant with God. In the breaking of God’s design, in the dismantling of God’s hope and dream for us. And, I’m not talking about what happened in the Garden [of Eden] where Adam and Eve disobey and eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”

Sacrifice Honors God’s Creation

Rev. Lewis goes on to share that from our Biblical origin story until today, our human desire to be like God, to make a world with God, has been corrupted along the way. White supremacists have imposed their worldview and ideology in a biased way, subduing God’s people.

We are to fast, worship, welcome the outsider, feed the hungry, clothe the naked…not hold onto ideology and a sense of supremacy. This connection to repair and connection to God is the healing and reparations required to “restore the created order” and realize that everyone has enough in “God’s economy.”

NETWORK Lobby Advocates for Catholic Social Justice

Ecological Justice Means Holistic Justice

Laudato Si Week Calls Us To Advocate For Our Whole Community

Virginia Schilder
May 27, 2022

This is part three in a three part reflection on Laudato Si Week, which is May 22-29, celebrates the anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical on integral ecology and care for creation by inviting all people of goodwill and prayer and study to on how they can tackle the climate crisis.

Read Part One Here | Read Part Two Here

The Catholic tradition affirms this interrelationality and calls us to honor our interdependence in holistic, grounded, ecological communities. One of the key principles of Catholic Social Justice is “Care for Creation.” In addition to conserving the Earth and curbing climate change, this principle calls us to critically examine how we live — how we encounter and treat living, breathing bodies and how we understand ourselves and what we need to live well.

This means reflectively asking ourselves: What does it mean to live in ecological community?

Luckily, ecological community exists all around us – in the interactions between plants and animals (including humans) outside your window, for example, but also among humans anytime we help one another and work for our mutual flourishing. Alternatives to the alienation of our present structures are already in practice, modeled by those who choose, as best they can within damaging systems, to live out ecological harmony. Through even small acts of connection, we participate in our common ecosystem life, and thereby resist systems of destruction and disconnection.

Promoting ecological justice policies, especially as they arise in NETWORK’s Build Anew agenda, embody Catholic Social Justice in their care for the earth and its inhabitants. These policies include ending fossil fuel tax subsidies, guaranteeing clean, safe drinking water as a right in all communities, updating water infrastructure and protecting watersheds, restoring ecosystems, instituting widespread renewable energy access, and developing other green infrastructure and natural solutions. They include curbing the ongoing conversion and destructive development of land (especially Native lands), and supporting green economies, localized agriculture, and responsible and integrated land stewardship.

As we enact other social and economic policies, we have a responsibility to make equitable ecological impact a key consideration. Dr. Kate Ward writes that in a just economy, “The environmental costs of economic production, which impact human health and livelihood, would be borne equitably when they cannot be eliminated.”

The same goes for environmental benefits, which we must equitably share. Our economic restructuring, including with the recovery package, must center ecological impact while prioritizing equity and community needs – because protecting the most vulnerable communities necessarily means protecting the land, air, and water on which they depend.

But above all, we are called to adopt an integral ecological orientation in our advocacy work and in the way we envision a just society. This means taking an ecosystems-view: highlighting our interrelationality, rooting more deeply in the land, and working from and in communities to conserve and promote mutual flourishing. It means taking seriously our interdependence with and embeddedness in all of creation, and letting that realization transform our politics.

Additionally, we can never discuss ecological justice without speaking of colonialism. Colonialism operates in large part via the stealing and destruction of the lands, waters, and wildlife on which Indigenous peoples’ livelihoods and cultures depend. Native Americans and First Nations peoples have sustainably inhabited and skillfully stewarded North America for millennia. It is impossible to truly respect and honor Native communities without also respecting and honoring their rights to land access, inhabitation, protection, and stewardship. Ecological justice means ensuring that economic development does not further burden Native communities with environmental destruction, and that our policies cease the ongoing usurpation and poisoning of Native lands.

Regardless of our issue area or community role, we are called to see that building thriving communities requires not domination over but harmony with the Earth. Because in an ecological sense, justice means the fullness of all God’s holy creation in integrated community.

Virginia Schilder, a graduate student attending divinity school in Massachusetts, completed a one-year fellowship with NETWORK’s Communications team in early May 2022.

NETWORK Lobby Advocates for Catholic Social Justice

Ecological Justice Means Economic Justice

Laudato Si Week Calls Us To Reject Oppressive Structures

Virginia Schilder
May 26, 2022

This is part two in a three part reflection on Laudato Si Week (May 22-29, 2022) which celebrates the anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical on integral ecology and care for creation by inviting all people of goodwill and prayer and study to on how they can tackle the climate crisis. 

Read Part One Here | Read Part Three Here

Ecological injustice is intimately linked to economic injustice. They both refer to how we live in our common home, Earth – in fact, the “eco” in both “ecology” and “economy” comes from the Greek word “oikos,” meaning house!

At present, we distribute the resources of our home through a global economy that is based on accumulation, consumption, competition, extraction, and exploitation. Global, imperial capitalism has long been driving the degradation of local sustainable economies and food systems, as well as natural resources depletion, habitat destruction, and the mass pollution that has created climate change. In this way, our capitalist system and its concentration of resources is fundamentally at odds with ecological flourishing, which is predicated on practices of sharing, cooperation, reciprocity, and respecting limits.

The central role of capitalism in ecological degradation further exemplifies the way in which the ecological crisis is inseparable from our structures of economic, racial, and social oppression. All of these interconnected realities reflect a need for something that Pope Francis calls “integral ecology” in his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si.

Integral ecology refers to an interstructural and holistic approach to political, social, economic, and environmental problems. What integral ecology gets at, essentially, is that we live in an interconnected world. We are connected to each other, as well as to the Earth’s lands, waters, air, non-human life, and climate. Similarly, structures of power and oppression – such as capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and colonialism – are also intertwined.

This is why Pope Francis observes, “We are not faced with two separate crises, one environmental and the other social, but rather one complex crisis which is both social and environmental.” Francis emphasizes that the health of our institutions has implications for the health of the environment, our bodies, and our communities. As a result, Francis offers, “Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded, and at the same time protecting nature.”

Integral ecology has much to teach us about ourselves as holistic, interdependent communities. It helps us see the ways in which our present socioeconomic structures disrupt harmony with other humans and the Earth. Many of us may feel alienated from one another, from the land we inhabit and the other creatures around us, from what we produce and what we consume. But in ecosystems, all beings are enwrapped in an enormous web of reciprocal interrelation.

Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese highlights Pope Francis’ teaching that “Relationships take place at the atomic and molecular level, between plants and animals, and among species in ecological networks and systems. For example, [Francis] points out, ‘We need only recall how ecosystems interact in dispersing carbon dioxide, purifying water, controlling illnesses and epidemics, forming soil, breaking down waste, and in many other ways which we overlook or simply do not know about.’”

We too are embedded in these webs. Pope Francis affirms that the natural world is not simply our “environment.” Nature is not something separate from us, nor the mere setting in which we live. Rather, “we are a part of nature.” Plants, animals, the air, water, fungi, bacteria, and soils are members of our communities — or rather, we are members of their communities! — and our flourishing is linked to theirs.

We have the choice of either participating in our ecosystems with care and respect, or forgetting our embeddedness, taking more than we need, and ravaging the land and each another.

Virginia Schilder, a graduate student attending divinity school in Massachusetts, completed a one-year fellowship with NETWORK’s Communications team in early May 2022.

NETWORK Mourns the Lives Lost in Uvalde

NETWORK Mourns the Lives Lost in Uvalde

May 24, 2022

We grieve the murder of innocent children in Uvalde, Texas. The loss of so many lives to gun violence in our country is a tragedy that must not be acceptable to us or to our elected officials.

This perpetual violence in our society is evil. We must envision, and create, a better future. May we come together to transform our politics and transform our country so that we consistently affirm and protect the God-given dignity of every person,

We hold the children, families, teachers, and entire Uvalde community in our prayers  and all whose lives have been impacted by gun violence.

Prayer: Let the Shooting End from Sisters of Mercy of the Americas.

Social Poet Award Winners | NETWORK Lobby Celebrates 50 years of Justice

Gratitude and Memories from Our Spirit-Filled Celebration

Gratitude and Memories from Our Spirit-Filled Celebration

Joan Neal and Mary Novak
April 25, 2022

We are full of joy, hope, and gratitude for the NETWORK community! Our time together at the Advocates Training and Justice Ablaze Gala was the perfect way to honor the 50 years of work we’ve done together.

We have selected a few favorite photos to share with you, with more to come in the weeks ahead! Thank you to those who celebrated in D.C. and those who held us in your hearts. We are on this sacred journey together.

Celebrate 50 Years! Get your NETWORK Zoom Background

Celebrate 50 Years with a NETWORK Zoom Background!

Save the images below to your computer as an image file (.png), then add them on Zoom to use as your virtual background!

Zoom support: Changing your Virtual Background image

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NETWORK Lobby invites you to join your Lent 2022 journey with ours. Our weekly Lenten lesson includes reflections and a video series on individual bias and racism and racist policy built into the US tax code

Lent 2022: Lent Calls Us to Atone

Lent 2022, Week 6: Lent Calls Us to Atone

View earlier Lenten Reflections: Ash Wednesday | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 

Mary Novak
April 8, 2022

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Watch Tax Justice For All

The Conclusion (starting at at 38:37)
As Lent gives way to Easter, we must ask ourselves, how can we atone for our part in the systemic evils that oppress so many? How can we carry the lessons that we’ve learned this Lent with us? One practical exercise is found in NETWORK’s Tax Justice Calculator. In the final video installment, our interactive tax calculator lets you simulate the impact that a more just tax code could have. [su_youtube url=”https://youtu.be/r4q9c0WYIFg” width=”360″ height=”300″ title=”Watch NETWORK Lobby’s Tax Justice For All Series for Your Lenten Reflection”]

Questions for reflection:

  1. How can I incorporate what Tax Justice For All taught me about racist policies and laws into my daily life?
  2. How can I continue to do the work of recognizing racist structures and policies and (if applicable) how they directly or indirectly benefit me?
  3. What would it look like for our society to be transformed into one that has eradicated racist structures and policies?

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What does it mean for us to atone?

This Lenten season, NETWORK invited you to journey with us in exploring racist impacts hidden in something mundane: the tax code. Through our Tax Justice for All resource, we examined how tax policies historically and systematically disadvantage Black and Brown families and disproportionately benefit white people and the ultra-wealthy.

We all have a part in this. Those of us with the right to vote to bear a responsibility for who we elect and the policies they enact. And Catholics and other people of goodwill have a moral duty to see that our government policies benefit people pushed to the peripheries of society. Pope Francis calls this a lofty form of love.

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As we journey through Lent in preparation for Holy Week, the language associated with Jesus’ suffering and death becomes familiar: atonement. But this complex concept is too often oversimplified as Jesus dying “for our sins.” Accepting this shortened summary fails to capture the pernicious nature of sin in our world and convey what is demanded of us as participants in God’s transforming grace. This is why we have focused on one aspect of structural sin with our Tax Justice For All series.

It is important to reflect more broadly as well. On April 9, 2022, NETWORK will host a special conversation on “White Supremacy and American Christianity,” featuring Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), Father Bryan Massingale of Fordham University, and Dr. Marcia Chatelain of Georgetown University, the recipient of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History. Watching this conversation can also serve as a form of penance, educating ourselves about the reality of white supremacy in U.S. Christianity. 

Many people do not realize that the Catholic Church did not abolish ‘penitential days’ on Fridays year-round. In fact, the Bishops’ 1966 statement says “Friday should be in each week something of what Lent is in the entire year.” Today, in place of — or in addition to — fasting from meat on Fridays, people are encouraged to engage in other personal penance.  

As someone who holds many privileged identities in our society, I can think of no worthier personal penance than the reflecting on systemic racism, examining my own complicity in it, and finding paths forward to end the sin of racism.  

In the hope of Easter, I believe accepting this work of penance will allow each of us to atone and be transformed. 

[su_quote cite=”NETWORK Prayer to Move from Reflection to Action”]Good and gracious God, as we prepare ourselves to share in the joy of Easter, open our hearts and minds. Help us to see what we would rather not see, especially the suffering caused by the injustice of systemic racism. Help us reflect on these painful realities and see them for what they are. Help us to avoid despair and to move from reflection to action, galvanized by your Spirit. Grant us the courage to speak out and the clarity to cooperate with your grace in building the world anew. Amen. [/su_quote]