Recently, the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at Center for American Progress (CAP) released a list of “21 Faith Leaders to Watch in 2021.”

The list highlights the important work of faith leaders in leading our communities towards progressive, equitable change. NETWORK’s Mary Novak was included on CAP’s list alongside Anthea Butler (@AntheaButler), an associate professor of religious studies and Africana studies and interim chair of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Shantha Ready Alonso, a former NETWORK staff member who led Creation Justice Ministries (@CreationJustice) before becoming Director of Intergovernmental and External Affairs at the Department of the @Interior.

When asked how her faith inspires her, Mary told CAP:

“My grounding in the Catholic intellectual and social tradition, lived through my Ignatian spirituality, motivates my work to transform federal policies and shapes me as a restorative justice practitioner. This prophetic, living tradition compels me to act out of a faith doing justice that is inclusive, centered on race and human dignity, and trauma-informed. Catholic sisters founded NETWORK to center those who are forced to the margins by our systems and structures. For me, this praxis is an essential place of connection, solidarity, and inspiration. Society has prioritized the powerful for too long.”

We are thrilled Mary’s leadership at NETWORK and commitment to advancing the Build Anew Agenda has been recognized amongst many other instrumental faith leaders. See the full list of CAP’s “2021’s Faith Leaders to Watch” here.

I am a longtime supporter of NETWORK with financial contributions, prayer support, and occasionally (pre-pandemic) attending in-person witnesses in Washington, D.C. I am also a longtime admirer of the women religious and the lay leaders at NETWORK.

For many years, I have been immersed in advocacy for justice, especially in state and local organizations in my home state of Virginia. Like so many other justice-seekers, the dawn of 2021 and the inauguration of our newly elected president brought rays of sunshine and hope that We the People were embarking on a new journey replete with reform and improvement for all, but especially for people struggling on the margins of our great country.

I was invited to join NETWORK advocates in northern Virginia to advocate for President Biden’s legislative initiatives to rescue the American people from the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic and to restore many of the basics of our country’s democratic systems fractured under the previous administration. NETWORK provided me with a unique opportunity to learn about proposed legislation and why it was critical to persuade Congress to pass it. As a NETWORK Advocate, I received resources that explained the problem, proposed solutions and gave me tips for how to present it to my Members of Congress. NETWORK also provided materials (“leave behinds”) to share with our legislators and their staff.

Our small group of enthusiastic advocates for justice met in advance (virtually) to discuss the legislation we planned to raise with the Senators, choose the specific issue on which each of us wanted to focus and outlined a strategy for our meet-up. We took a couple of days to study our focus-areas in the legislation and then had a final brief meeting (virtual) for a practice lobby meeting. By the time we met with our Senators’ staff, I felt like I was sufficiently knowledgeable to share my concerns for struggling people and why the proposed legislation would help solve the problems we wanted addressed.

Now, I am more attentive to what is happening on the federal stage and am looking forward to further collaboration and participation with NETWORK Advocates.

Anne Murphy
New Member of the Virginia NETWORK Advocates Team

This article was originally published in Connection. Read the full issue here.

While traveling on the virtual “Bus” last year, our biggest learnings were first, that our Spirit-filled network is hungry for community and second, that technology offers a powerful opportunity to bridge geographic divides. On Election Night 2020, as we awaited to hear results, NETWORK members and supporters gathered for a time of conversation, reflection, and prayer. As people responded with great enthusiasm, we decided to continue these virtual conversations on a monthly basis. While each monthly conversation has had a different theme (ranging from reflecting on racism in our faith communities to advocacy in a new administration), the basic premise remains the same: to bring people together for reflection, community, and conversation.

For upcoming community conversations, check out www.networklobby.org/communityconvo.

This article was originally published in Connection. Read the full issue here.

NETWORK has or is building Advocates Teams in 12 states. Teams gather monthly to build community, dream together, and do the work of advocacy, including preparing for lobby visits, writing letters to the editor, planning public events, and more. If you want to learn more about a NETWORK Advocates Team and you live in…

• Ohio
• Michigan
• Virginia
• California
• New York
• Texas

Contact Catherine Gillette.

• New Jersey
• Pennsylvania
• Indiana
• Kentucky
• Illinois
• Missouri

Contact Emily TeKolste.

This article was originally published in Connection. Read the full issue here.

“In this moment of dual life-threatening epidemics: COVID-19 and racism, the voice of the Church in America is eerily silent when it comes to the racial unrest in this country.”
– Sister Anita Baird, DHM

In honor of this year’s Catholic Sisters Week, Sister Anita Baird, DHM spoke to the NETWORK community about the history of Black sisters in the United States and their work today. Sister Anita, a recognized religious leader, community leader, and racial justice activist in Chicago, presented, “This Is Our Story…This Is Our Song: Black Catholic Women Religious Standing in the Breach.” While the hour-long talk was only enough time to brush the surface of the rich and complex legacy and the often painful history of Black women religious, Sister Anita told the stories of several sisters and the 53-year history of the National Black Sisters’ Conference, as well as her personal journey of becoming Catholic and a member of the Religious Congregation of the Society of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary.

As Sister Anita remarked, “Over 500 years of Black Catholic faith and presence in what is now the United States… is a history that was not just erased, but rather, it was often never documented or recognized by the larger Church, even to this day.” Sister Anita went on to share a wealth of insights into both this history and the Church today. While Black Catholics are sometimes seen as “recent newcomers” to the faith, that is an inaccurate and uninformed assumption.

Sister Anita explained that Black Catholics had an active presence in the United States and in the U.S. Catholic Church for more than two centuries before Declaration of Independence was even written. This began in 1526, when the first enslaved African peoples (who were themselves Spanish-speaking Catholics) were brought by force to what is now the U.S. by Spanish colonists, all with the blessing of the Catholic Church.

As Sister Anita’s description of the history of early U.S. Black Catholics continued, including instances where religious conversion was held as a price for freedom from enslavement, I was reminded of Cardinal Gregory’s February 2021 reflection on Black Catholics in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. He named the often-unspoken truth that many Black Catholics’ ancestors did not come to their faithfulness by choice, but by cruelty. Sister Anita and Cardinal Gregory’s truth telling led me to reflect on how often white people are encouraged to not name racism in our history or the current reality of race in the Catholic Church and in the U.S.

Sister Anita named the three Black Catholic Women included in the group of six Black American Catholic candidates for sainthood, including Mother Mary Lange, O.S.P. She noted that in 1829 when Mother Lange founded the first African-American religious congregation, the Oblate Sisters of Providence, in Baltimore, Maryland, it was still legal to enslave people in parts of the United States and named some of the challenges and tragedies the Oblates faced. White religious orders in the U.S. did not accept African-American women until the 1940s, and Sister Anita told how Eliza Healy (sister of the first African-American bishop, Bishop James Augustine Healy) joined the Congregation of Notre Dame in Canada and served as a superior and Mother Superior decades before then. Even Sister Antona Ebo’s story, shared by Sister Anita, illustrated the racism present in the Church for Sister Antona and the two other Black sisters who joined the Sisters of Mary in 1946. When Sister Antona Ebo marched alongside Congressman John Lewis in Selma following “Bloody Sunday” and spoke out for racial justice in the years following the Civil Rights movement, she was bearing witness to racism that infected even her religious life.

For herself, Sister Anita knew she wanted to be sister since she was young, but as a Black woman was discouraged from considering religious life. Sister Anita spoke about the day when she saw two Black nuns at a department store and followed them around, in awe. After that, Sister Anita says, “I knew I could be a Black woman religious. I had seen them with my own eyes.”

Today, Sister Anita and the sisters and associates who comprise the National Black Sisters Conference continue to grapple with what it means to be Black Catholics, and continue to take their place at the table. Faithful and prophetic, they expose the racism of the Catholic Church and hold the hope that it can change.

Watch Sister Anita Baird’s talk: www.networklobby.org/sistersweek2021.

Learn about the National Black Sisters’ Conference: www.nbsc68.com.

This article was originally published in Connection. Read the full issue here.