Category Archives: Spirit Filled Network

Christians Should Honor Dr. King With United Witness on Voting Rights

Christians Should Honor Dr. King With United Witness on Voting Rights

Minister Christian Watkins
January 17, 2022

With Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s son calling for “No celebration without legislation,” the milestone of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day resonates differently this year. Never in recent memory have voting rights been so hotly at the center of our country’s policy debate. The Senate has a historic opportunity to restore our democracy and protect our right to vote by passing the Freedom to Vote Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which have now been combined into one bill, H.R.5746. We need immediate action to protect our democracy.

In his 1957 speech “Give Us the Ballot,” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the denial of the sacred right to vote “a tragic betrayal of the highest mandates of our democratic tradition.” With the passage of 34 laws restricting access to voting in 19 states across the country last year, this tragic betrayal is becoming a reality.

In the Senate, the filibuster has been used to block popular bills to stop lynching, end poll taxes, and fight workplace discrimination. The weaponization of the filibuster is racism cloaked in procedure. Now, this Jim Crow-relic is being used to block crucial voting rights protections. Today, Dr. King’s family is joining with faith leaders, civil rights leaders, and voting rights advocates to call on the Senate to end the filibuster and deliver on legislation that protects the right to vote.

This is a crucial moment for people of faith to come together around this issue, and it couldn’t be more apt. January 18-25 is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, an annual observance among Christians who want to see their collective witness in the world live up to the prayer of Jesus in John’s Gospel, “that they all may be one” (John 17:21). For over a century, this has primarily taken the form of theologians gathering to dialogue about issues that divide one church denomination from another — and in many cases finding commonalities and ways to bridge these divides.

But equally important is the pursuit Christian unity through what some call a “dialogue of service,” a shared witness to build up the common good. The commitment to upholding human dignity through the right to vote – and, , the election of leaders who will enact policies that build up the common good as Dr. King rightly pointed out – is something that should draw Christians across denominational lines very close together. Indeed, simply collaborating with my coworkers at NETWORK finds me, a United Methodist, working alongside a Catholic Sister and Presbyterian organizer to push Congress to protect the right to vote.

Now is the time to pass the H.R. 5746, the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act, a transformative piece of legislation that sets national standards to increase access to the ballot box, neutralizes partisan and racial gerrymandering, protects our elections from interference, increases transparency in campaign finance to prevent dark money from buying our politicians, and more. Unfortunately, this bill is at risk of being blocked by the filibuster. These anti-democratic efforts cannot be allowed to sabotage passage of robust voting rights legislation.

Why Catholics Should Be Actively Engaged in Efforts to Protect Our Democracy

Why Catholics Should Be Actively Engaged in Efforts to Protect Our Democracy

Congresswoman Veronica Escobar
January 6, 2022

Rep. Veronica Escobar represents Texas’ 16th Congressional District. She took office on January 3, 2019, making history as the first woman elected to this seat. This reflection appears in the First Quarter 2022 issue of Connection magazine, NETWORK’s official member publication.

When Catholics think about how they can live out the values of their faith through their politics, protecting their democracy is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. But it should be. Not only does the church support democracy as the form of government best suited to guarantee the protection and flourishing of all people, but people of goodwill have the responsibility to exercise solidarity toward those on the periphery who become the most vulnerable when democracy comes under threat.

Some threats are easier to see. On January 6, 2021, our nation and the world witnessed the most direct assault on U.S. democracy in our history: violent insurgents storming the U.S.

Capitol in an effort to stop me and my colleagues from certifying the 2020 presidential election. Not only were the insurgents trying to upend a Constitutionally mandated process, but they were trying to silence the voices of Black and Latino voters in places like Arizona and Georgia who decided the election for President Joe Biden.

The pushback from Republicans was swift and unmistakable.

Some 17 states, including my state of Texas, enacted restrictive voting laws that disproportionately burden voters of color and limit their access to the ballot box. In November, the Justice Department sued Texas, noting its strict limits on assisting voters at the polls burdens people with disabilities and limited English proficiency. This is just one example of why our country urgently needs the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the For the People Act, both of which passed the House in 2021 but have languished in the Senate.

“Democracy is based on mutual respect, on the possibility that each person can contribute to the good of society and on the consideration that different opinions do not threaten the power and security of states, but through honest debate mutually enrich them and enable them to find more suitable solutions to pressing problems,” Pope Francis argued in early 2021.

Shutting people out of the voting process is no way to ensure honest debate, and it’s telling that the lawmakers most adamant on enshrining these restrictions into law are also the ones least serious about finding solutions to the pressing problems mentioned by the pope: climate change, mass migration, and unprecedented economic inequality. Those who benefit from these crises know very well that including the voices of marginalized people in these systems could reduce their power and influence, as it did in 2020.

And it’s this awareness that should galvanize the 70 million Catholics in the U.S. and all people of goodwill to fight alongside those who stand to be the most impacted by the erosion of our democracy. The House of Representatives is doing the work — we sent the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the For the People Act to the Senate. We have been patient, we have been willing to work with the Senate, and even supported the Senate-authored Freedom to Vote Act as an alternative to our bills.

But we are running out of time. We must urge the Senate to work for the American people. Whether that means passing the For the People Act or the Freedom to Vote Act, the Senate must act now.

“If one part of the body suffers, then the whole body suffers with it,” St. Paul wrote (1 Cor 12:26). The same applies to threats to democracy. My district is over 83 percent Latino, and we know what it means to have destructive policies inflicted on our communities and families without them ever having a say.

A threat to one person’s voice is a threat to everyone’s. As Pope Francis has reminded us in his teachings on caring for the environment, we are all connected. Women have had the right to vote in this country for only a century, and the original Voting Rights Act passed in 1965 only to be gutted by the Supreme Court nearly 50 years later.

We must take seriously our responsibility to ensure that the rights of all, not just the wealthy and influential few, are protected equally. The Senate and President Biden must pick up where the House left off on voting rights. A democracy that ensures the participation of only the wealthy and powerful is not worthy of its name.

This story will be published in the upcoming First Quarter 2022 issue of Connection. Become a NETWORK member to receive a copy mailed to your home. 

Running from the past is no way to dismantle racism

Running from the past is no way to dismantle racism

Julia Morris
November 23, 2021

Did you know that the Catholic Church was one of the largest slave holders in North America? Me neither.

I have spent over a decade in the church and in countless hours of schooling, Mass, and service projects no one mentioned this to me once. I went to Catholic school for 12 years, 5th grade through college, but it was not until my post-grad Catholic year of service that I learned that the Catholic Church played a role in American slavery.

The private Catholic education system did not just forget to teach me and countless other, predominantly white students about this history. The Catholic Church is and was, running from an uncomfortable past.

The church’s history runs parallel, overlapping, and intertwined with white supremacy United States. The Catholic Church was a major player in the transatlantic slave trade, and the effects of white supremacy are still felt today, as researcher Robert P. Jones reports that white Christians who regularly attend church on Sundays are more likely to hold racial bias.

While the church did not teach me about racism, it did teach me about sins of omission, or leaving out parts of the truth to manipulate your listener. Leaving out parts of our history is lying. If the public education system in the United States was to do the same, it would not only be immoral but contribute to the increasing distrust our citizens have towards our own institutions.

What kind of effects could excluding teaching students about racism have on the American public? Take a look at Catholic politicians.

President Biden was Catholic educated yet he upholds Title 42. A Trump era immigration policy instated under the guise of containing the spread of COVID, which former CDC officials reveal they found no evidence that it would have any control to slow the spread of COVID were “forced to do it”, by the Trump administration. Biden’s choice to uphold Title 42 shows his either lack of care for or his inability to see the policy’s xenophobia.

Senator Joe Manchin is Catholic, in spite of foundational Catholic teachings that uphold the family and caring for children, he still pushed for work requirements for the Child Tax Credit that would benefit 400,000 children in West Virginia. Work requirements are a well-known dog whistle aimed at demonizing Black and Brown folks living in poverty.

Lets face it: This is a lose, lose, lose situation. Pandering to racists doesn’t help advance good policy. Refusing to reconcile is hurting the church’s numbers. People of color, as usual, are paying the price with food insecurity, facing bigotry, and their lives.

If the Catholic Church is actually serious when it says that racism is an intrinsic evil, then Catholic educators, politicians, and voters are going to need to start acting like it. So take it from me and the 87% of Americans who want this to be taught in schools -– not teaching about racism helps no one.

As Pope and President Meet, A Call for Interconnectedness

As Pope and President Meet, A Call for Interconnectedness

Mary J. Novak
October 28, 2021

Existential threats to the environment, a global refugee crisis, anti-democratic movements at home and abroad, and the COVID-19 pandemic are among the challenges surrounding President Joe Biden’s meeting with Pope Francis on Oct. 29. As collaboration between these two world leaders takes shape, a key to its success will be their both recognizing and then acting upon the interconnectedness of everything that confronts them.

This ability to see interconnection is constitutive to the spirituality of the Catholic sisters whose legacy lives on in the U.S. Church and at NETWORK in particular where it is my honor to continue that legacy. And it is not difficult to see this ability lived out by the pope and the president themselves. Both men are of the same generation. Both came into leadership positions in their 30s, have weathered periods of darkness and were entrusted with power late in life. They share the opportunity to use that power to guide the world toward a much brighter future than is currently being offered and both feel called by God to this role at this time.

Their meeting will be the 31st of its kind, starting with the 1919 meeting of Woodrow Wilson and Benedict XV. But to connect this week’s meeting with a comparable example of a pope and president meeting amidst great upheaval and positioned to build the future anew, we should look to the October 1965 meeting in New York between Paul VI and Lyndon Johnson.

Two months before that meeting, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, offering legal protection to millions of people whose rights were violated by racist laws. The ground lost on this issue in recent years would have once been unthinkable to many well-intentioned white people. But now, as that ugly truth confronts us, we urgently need to protect the right to vote under federal policy with the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Two months after the New York meeting, Pope Paul closed the Second Vatican Council and instituted the Synod of Bishops, setting a trajectory of engagement with the world and encounter with people at the peripheries. Communities of women religious were among the most robust adopters of the council’s vision, and Pope Francis ardently pursues it for the whole church to this day.

Biden, himself a proponent of that vision and an ally to women religious, has proposed a formidable economic agenda, reminiscent of LBJ, which seeks to help people where they are, in their everyday struggles. These struggles are worsened by the egregious income and wealth disparity in this country, a fact the Catholic Church rightly condemns. In 1965, the U.S. sought to go to the moon in a shared spirit of scientific exploration. Today billionaires have begun traveling to outer space for fun.

The last time Francis and Biden spent significant time together was the pope’s 2015 visit to the United States, where Francis challenged our country to live up to our own ideals. The same year, Francis published his letter on care for the environment, “Laudato si,” again highlighting the interconnection of all creation. A lot has happened since then, and at times the pope seems to grasp the threats we face more acutely than our own elected officials do.

Shortly before the election of Donald Trump, Francis spoke against building walls and the manipulation of fear, which he said “anaesthetizes us to the sufferings of others, and in the end makes us cruel.” He later noted that those who manipulate fear reject the interconnection of all people and shift blame onto a “non-neighbor.”

These words proved prophetic in heralding the racist immigration policies of the Trump administration. They also highlight why it’s so unacceptable for the Biden administration to have continued Title 42 and other policies that make life even more difficult for people seeking refuge in our country. Disapproval for the president’s handling of immigration is now at 58 percent (Grinnell College National Poll), and it is senseless to allow these cruel policies to jeopardize his entire agenda.

If our Catholic president wants to be a world leader in keeping with the vision of Pope Francis, he should follow the lead of women religious and enact policies that better recognize the interconnected nature of all people, all creation, and the common good. He must ensure the protection of the people most targeted by the anti-democratic forces he denounces. I pray Pope Francis can provide him the spiritual strength and fraternal correction he needs to act on the interconnectedness that we know he sees, making it real for the millions of folks who have been left behind for so long.

Cultivating Inclusive Community during LGBTQIA+ History Month

Cultivating Inclusive Community during LGBTQIA+ History Month

Virginia Schilder
October 25, 2021

One of the four cornerstones of NETWORK’s Build Anew agenda is cultivating inclusive community. This means fostering life-giving relationships – in communities and movements – that recognize our fundamental interrelatedness and the intrinsic dignity and worth of each living being. During LGBTQIA+ History Month this October, we reflect on the long history of LGBTQ+ people who have educated, organized, and lobbied for justice. We also recognize how cultivating inclusive community requires affirming our LGBTQ+ siblings and working to end all dehumanizing structures.

We are called to welcome and honor LGBTQ+ people. LGBTQ+ folks have always been a part of our communities, though their stories have often been obscured. Sister Grace Surdovel, IHM creates space for sharing and uplifting these stories in editing Love Tenderly: Sacred Stories of Lesbian and Queer Religious, a recent anthology of personal essays. The book not only makes visible the experiences of queer Catholics, but is also a work of community-building: centering compassion, vulnerability, solidarity, and hope. The religious in the communion that is this anthology are but one part of the vast body of LGBTQ+ justice-seekers calling us to shape more liberative community today.

While anti-trans legislation has been on the rise, Sister Louisa Derouen, OP has ministered among transgender people for over two decades, spending thousands of hours accompanying folks through experiences with churches, families, and transitions. Sr. Louisa writes, “Transgender people are far more attuned than most of us to the reality that we human beings are a complex, mysterious, body-spirit creation of God, and they want nothing more than to honor that reality… They are part of the body of Christ, and they deserve to be treated as the body of Christ.” Sr. Louisa captures the spirit of cultivating inclusive community: acknowledging everyone – but especially those marginalized by dominant society’s refusal to tolerate human diversity – as indispensable members of the body of Christ.

Father Bryan Massingale is a tremendous example of someone who recognizes that affirming LGBTQ+ people is inseparable from advancing a wider vision of social justice. Fr. Massingale is a Catholic priest and an ethics professor at Fordham University who came out as a gay in 2019. His leadership on racial justice as well as LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Church highlights the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and Catholicism in the U.S. Fr. Massingale’s witness calls attention to the ways in which our structures of power deny the humanity of Black people, LGBTQ+ folks, and those with intersectional identities.

As Fr. Massingale leads us to understand, embracing queerness is not only about including LGBTQ+ people in community, but also about breaking free of all oppressive and unjust social systems.  As a queer Catholic, I understand my queerness not just as my sexual identity, but as a mode of being that means challenging categories and structures that stifle flourishing, and living into life-affirming ways of relating to myself and others — which is exactly the work of social justice. In this sense, Jesus’ ministry was a beautiful example of queerness as he subverted the gender, family, and social norms of his time in radically just and life-giving ways.

To me, queerness is deeply Catholic, in that it means being attuned to how God made me as a relational being with inherent dignity and capacity to love. It means looking to God’s creation and finding a rich plurality of forms of life — each “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Justice work requires seeing each person in the fullness of their humanity, which requires affirming the varied ways in which humans love and live in authenticity. In my view, queerness is a powerful, creative basis for envisioning alternatives to structures that seek to suppress, homogenize, and limit possibilities for real flourishing and loving relationship.

By their witness and ministry, Sr. Grace, Sr. Louisa, and Fr. Massingale call us to center people and experiences on the margins over ideology in our work for justice. As we strive to enact the Build Anew agenda, let us ensure that our policies — especially in health care, housing, taxes, and workplace and family policy — include and protect members of the LGBTQ+ community and their families.  Let us remember to ground our advocacy work in our encounters with our neighbors, in all their vibrant variety of gender and sexuality. And let us see queerness as a mode of being that invites us to creatively challenge oppressive social structures and imagine new forms of community that truly honor the wondrous diversity of God’s holy creation.

Hope is a Verb

Hope is a Verb

Audrey Carroll
October 21, 2021

On October 18th, NETWORK hosted a monthly Community Conversation titled “Called to Action– The Spirituality of NETWORK’s Political Ministry.” The event began with a presentation on NETWORK’s foundational history from Historian Sister Mara Rutten, RSM. NETWORK was founded in 1971 when 47 Catholic Sisters gathered at Trinity College in Washington, D.C. to form a lobbying group in the spirit of Catholic Social Teaching. These Women Religious created a nationwide community of political justice activists and held legislative seminars to train new justice-seekers on priorities such as fair wages, tax justice, health care, workers’ rights, and more. Over the decades, our spirit-filled network has expanded to include thousands of people of all backgrounds.

NETWORK’S foundresses based the organization’s mission on Catholic Social Justice tradition– living out the Gospel values of pursuing the common good and uplifting every person’s inherent human dignity. When approaching federal policy through a Catholic Social Justice lens, we center the lived realities of those experiencing systemic inequalities such as sexism, racism, and economic exploitation. NETWORK’s principles of Catholic Social Justice continue to guide our approach to educating, organizing, and lobbying for transformative change.

After reflecting on NETWORK’s history, Community Conversation participants were asked to consider how Catholic Social Justice informs our current work as advocates. Many participants shared frustrations of living in communities where many Catholics are single-issue voters and are unaware of equally sacred issues. People agreed that our country’s divisive political climate can be discouraging on a familial, parish, neighborhood, and national level in the fight for justice and the common good. However, a profound message stood out to me on how we can sustain our work during difficult times.

In my small discussion group, I explained how advocacy work is very important to me, but can disheartening and emotionally draining at times. One of my group members, Sister Betty McVeigh, then shared a phrase that has stuck with me: “Hope is a verb.” In the moments where there seems to be only tragedy and an extreme lack of progress on the issues that matter, we must move forward with radical hope in order to realize our vision of an equitable society with justice and human dignity at the center. As the NETWORK community organizes and lobbies on priorities such as democracy, the Build Back Better plan, immigration reform, and more we must come together to rise above the brokenness and suffering, and live out the same Gospel call NETWORK’s foundresses were moved by.

Catholic Social Justice is not only doctrine, but a tool we can use to build relationships and work for societal change. So much can be achieved when we approach every situation with the hope of building our country anew to dismantle systemic racism, cultivate inclusive community, root our economy in solidarity, and transform our politics. Pope Francis calls us to be “social poets,” people that “have the ability and the courage to create hope where there appears to be only waste and exclusion.” As we embark on the journey of celebrating NETWORK’s 50th anniversary I hope we can all renew our dedication to the foundresses’ mission of rejecting exclusion and inequality and building a just world together. We be social poets together through hope, hope, hope.

2021 Hispanic Heritage Month Playlist

2021 Hispanic Heritage Month Playlist

Colin Longmore
October 4, 2021

We’re back with part two of our Hispanic Heritage Month playlist. Here are some selections that highlight a small part of the diverse kaleidoscope that is the Hispanic and Latinx world. We hope you enjoy these songs of celebration, reflection, lamentation, and pride!

La Jaula de Oro by Los Tigres del Norte

 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnvNfE9fOv4&w=560&h=315]

 

The issue of immigration on the U.S. southern border can become so two-dimensional in our public discourse, that the nuanced lived realities of migrants are often lost.  This song, by beloved Norteño band Los Tigres del Norte, paints an honest and heartbreaking picture of the life of an undocumented immigrant living in the United States. The title, which translates to “The Golden Cage,” highlights the internal and external tensions that migrants face when building a new life in an unfamiliar place. The linked video is from the band’s recent live concert that they performed at Folsom State Prison (50 years after Johnny Cash’s famous concert), for both the men’s and women’s facilities. You can check out the documentary on Netflix.

La Negra Tiene Tumbao by Celia Cruz

 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imeXSRNRMeg&w=560&h=315]

 

The Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz, left a significant mark in the music industry thanks to her illustrious 50 year career that made fans all around the world get up and dance. However, her late-career smash hit “La Negra Tiene Tumbao” (which can be roughly translated to “The Black Woman Has Style”) is a standout for its joyous and unapologetic celebration of Black womanhood. Give this one a listen whenever you need an extra dose of azucar in your life!

Breathe (from In the Heights) by Lin-Manuel Miranda

 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSQFjtszBYg&w=560&h=315]

 

After reimagining the story of the U.S. Founding Fathers in Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda received widespread praise for his gifts of song and lyricism. These skills are seen in another one of his projects, In the Heights, a musical about the lives of several Black and Latinx residents of the Washington Heights neighborhood in New York City. In this production, the song “Breathe” is sung by Nina, a first-generation Latina college student who is returning to her neighborhood after dropping out of Stanford University. It’s a heartfelt reflection on the support and pressure that comes from community, and the struggles faced by many first-generation students. In the Heights was adapted into a movie which was released this past year.

Como La Flor by Selena

 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwZTgDjRLM0&w=560&h=315]

 

Tejano is more than just a musical genre — it’s the unique culture of the descendants of Spanish settlers in the Tejas area, established over 100 years before modern-day Texas became a U.S. state. And no one is more synonymous with Tejano culture than Selena Quintanilla-Perez, known widely as just Selena. Her music is a fusion of various Mexican and U.S. influences that is “ni de aquí, ni de allá” (neither from here, nor there). It also embodies the wonderful complexities of being a Hispanic/Latinx American. Selena’s life (and tragic death) was made into a biopic in 1997, with Jennifer Lopez playing Selena. Most recently it was also re-made as a Netflix series.

Mi Gente by J Balvin & Willy Williams

 

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnJ6LuUFpMo&w=560&h=315]

 

If you’ve been to any quinceanera in the past 4 years, chances are that you’ve heard the infectious beat of Mi Gente playing loudly. J Balvin is a singer from Medellin, Colombia, and is often referred to as the “Prince of Reggaeton,” a musical genre from Latin America that has taken the world by storm and flooded dancefloors everywhere. The song is a collaboration between J Balvin and French DJ, Willy Williams, and has gained broad international success thanks to its wildly fun energy and bilingual lyrics which invites everyone to be part of mi gente (my people).

Nearly 50 Years of Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month

Nearly 50 Years of Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month

Audrey Carroll
September 29, 2021

The annual observation of National Hispanic Heritage Month began this year on September 15 and continues until October 15. In September 1968, President Johnson signed the National Hispanic Heritage Week bill into law. The following year, Representative Esteban E. Torres of California proposed extending Hispanic Heritage week to a month, saying supporters of the bill “want the public to know that we share a legacy with the rest of the country, a legacy that includes artists, writers, Olympic champions, and leaders in business, government, cinema, and science.” Unfortunately, Torres’s bill died in committee, but 20 years later in 1988, Senator Paul Simon of Illinois succeeded in passing a similar bill lengthening Hispanic Heritage Week to Hispanic Heritage Month. President Reagan signed the bill into law in August 1988.

The start date of September 15 coincides with Independence Day celebrations in many Hispanic countries like Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Mexico and Chile also celebrate their Independence Days in September.

Hispanic and Latinx individuals and communities have made a substantial impact on politics, pop culture, art, music, and more in our country. Hispanic Heritage Month serves as a time to honor and celebrate achievements and contributions made by Hispanic Americans in the U.S.

Check out the Calendar of Events from the Library of Congress to learn more and find out how you can celebrate this month.