Where Do We Go Now?

From Sadness and Fear to Community and Hope

Joan F. Neal
January 30, 2025

Joan F. Neal is NETWORK’s Interim Executive Director.

It has always been true in our country — and reflected in our experience at NETWORK — that our greatest strength is in our communities, especially our grassroots friends, neighbors, and families. We were inspired and overwhelmed with gratitude at every stop of the Nuns on the Bus & Friends “Vote Our Future” tour last fall, with the good people and the good work we encountered along the way.

In the wake of the outcome of the recent federal election, we now know these neighborhoods, parishes, local service agencies, and mutual aid networks will be even more important in the years ahead. The incoming administration’s agenda will likely prove disastrous for many of the places we visited. They have promised to slash funding for communities who rely on federal housing, food, and health care programs. The president-elect promised mass deportations of our neighbors, violent repression of our Constitutional freedom to protest, retribution against political opponents, and so much more. This agenda threatens to destroy rather than support our communities.

For many people this is the cause of great fear, grief, disappointment, and even anger. Sadly, Catholics played a consequential role in the outcome of the Presidential election. Exit polls reported that, despite Catholic teaching and Gospel values, 61% of white Catholics voted for Donald Trump and 58% of all Catholics voted for him, an increase in Catholic support compared to 2020, when 50% of Catholics voted for him. This support carried him to victory. On the other hand, according to a National Catholic Reporter poll in seven battleground states, nearly 7 out of 10 Hispanic Catholics and more than 80% of Black Catholics supported Kamala Harris.

Beneath these numbers lie deep-seated beliefs and attitudes. In the PRRI American Values survey, 61% of white Catholics canvassed agreed that “immigrants should be kept in armed camps,” a view that directly contradicts the Catholic teaching about welcoming our immigrant neighbors. This is a systematic failure of catechesis when so many purported followers of Jesus are unable to look beyond a small handful of wedge issues to see how their views and their vote are disconnected from the common good and our shared humanity.

We justice-seekers have some choices to make. We can surrender, or we can speak out and resist every attempt to curtail our freedoms, deepen our country’s corrosive wealth gap, push people to the margins of our society or out of our country altogether, and demonize anyone who disagrees.

We can use our vote, our voice, our values, and our agency to defend our inclusive community, our way of governing ourselves, our principles, our respect for truth and the integrity of our faith, the dignity of all people, and the sacredness of creation. We can be the change we want to see in our neighborhoods, our country, and our communities of faith. But it will take affirmative and consistent resistance to do it.

At NETWORK, we will be joining our coalition partners — faith-based and secular — to stop bad federal legislation and to support positive policies wherever possible. We will mobilize our grassroots members and supporters to lobby their Congressional Representatives and Senators to pass legislation that promotes the common good. We will call out nefarious tactics and promote opportunities for good legislation to pass. We will hold our elected officials accountable at every opportunity.

What we need is to gather our collective courage and move forward, in community, toward the future we all want. As people of faith, we must reactivate our call to civic discipleship — to join in partnership with our brothers and sisters and continue with fervor our quest to protect, preserve, and promote our democracy and the freedoms that only democracy affords its people. Now is a time for unity and affirmative resistance.

But this sort of work requires hope. And there, Pope Francis has provided us with the perfect opportunity. He has announced a worldwide Jubilee Year of Hope, beginning December 24, 2024, and ending January 6, 2026. “[B]y looking to the future with an open spirit, a trusting heart and far-sighted vision…the forthcoming Jubilee…can contribute greatly to restoring a climate of hope and trust as a prelude to the renewal and rebirth that we so urgently desire.”

We must use hope as our strategy to overcome the sorrow of today and carry us into the light of tomorrow. As Catholics and people of faith, we know God has not abandoned us. Even in the face of the abyss, all things are possible. So join us as we go forward in hope and faith toward the Beloved Community and a new day in our country and in the church.

This story was published in the Quarter 1 2025 issue of Connection.