Simple Ways to Help the World: The Practice of Catholic Social Teaching

Consumer boycotts, like other works of justice, provide opportunities for more than just individual action. Catholic social teaching encourages us to involve others. Parents and grandparents can invite their children and grandchildren, as well as their friends and colleagues, to co-sign letters to political leaders, to heads of corporations and local businesses, and to school officials to change unjust policies and/or institute constructive ones. It is precisely such intergenerational action that is making a difference in how we are caring for God’s creation. It’s been the younger generation that has moved many a family to recycle more and moved their communities to start or expand recycling efforts.

Integrating our social action with worship, especially around the theme of "being bread for others," helps us to see that our "Communion" in Jesus is a communion with the whole body of Christ. Parishes associated with Bread for the World (www.bread.org) sponsor an "Offering of Letters" every year on behalf of the hungry of our communities and world. Parishioners write letters to their political representatives and bring them to Sunday Mass, where they are collected, lifted up, and then mailed.

Linking social action with our faith deepens our commitment and provides wonderful catechetical opportunities even at home, especially when we integrate such action with the feasts and seasons of the Church year. For example, the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi (October 4) is an opportune moment for renewing our commitment to care for God’s creation. Holy Week is the perfect time to respond to Jesus as he suffers today in the lives of the poor. Dying eggs for Easter egg hunts with children in shelters like Catholic Worker houses, making Easter baskets for shut-ins, writing letters to people in prison or to legislators, can all be intergenerational and/or parish-wide activities.

If our actions are truly rooted in our faith, they will bring us into conflict with the world. (See Jn 16.) If our sight is set on Jesus (see Heb 12:2), then we will hear and respond to his prayerful plea as he wept over Jerusalem, "If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!" (Lk 19:42). The Catholic social teaching principle of solidarity of the human family challenges us to work for peace and a just redistribution of the world’s resources. Those of us who have more of these resources than we need have a responsibility to share them generously. Dorothy and Sandy and their families have done so by donating to groups like Catholic Relief Services and Bread for the World and by supporting their legislative efforts to expand U.S. foreign aid for poverty reduction programs. Others have used their resources to finance "work trips" to countries like Haiti and Nicaragua, where their personal presence brings a message of solidarity even more than their resources.

Through groups like Pax Christi USA (www.paxchristiusa.org), many U.S. Catholics are putting the peacemaking emphasis in Catholic social teaching into practice. As the war in Iraq continued to expand, Sandy added a "peace" bumper sticker to her car and joined the email list of the Instead of War Coalition in her community so that she would know when local peace events were being held. As a way of extending her action, she occasionally forwards these emails to some of her colleagues and friends. Other individuals, families, schools, and parishes across the U.S. are adopting peacemaking as a way of life through the Institute for Peace and Justice’s Pledge of Nonviolence (www.ipj-ppj.org/pledge.html).

Whatever the specific principle, Catholic social teaching invites us to respond with our hands and hearts as well as with our heads. It calls us to action. As the World Synod of Bishops made it clear in 1971, it is "action on behalf of justice" that is "a constitutive dimension of preaching the Gospel," echoing the Letter of James, "Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead" (2:17).

In the face of any fears that may keep us from action, we have Paul’s reminder in 2 Timothy that we have not been given "a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love" (1:7). Let us pray daily that this spirit will prevail in our souls, be manifested in our deeds, and transform our nation and world.

James and Kathleen McGinnis are the founders and co-directors of the Institute for Peace and Justice, an independent, interfaith, not-for-profit corporation promoting peace, justice, and care for the earth through education, social action, and prayer.