1085: Monday, March 6, 2023 -- Many important announcements!
Day 1085: Monday, March 6, 2023
Many important announcements!
Announcement #1: Meet and assist immigrants at the border at "Posada del Migrante" (House of the Migrants) Trip dates: October 16-20
From our dear friend and Emmaus member Annette Lomont:
In October a group of St. Ignatius San Francisco parishioners is going to Mexicali to volunteer at the Posada del Migrante Trip dates: October 16-20. This shelter is supported by Border Compassion, started by Sr. Suzanne Jabro, CJSA. Suzanne is a social justice champion and she's asked me to recruit 20 volunteers, if possible, for the October trip. She's eager for those volunteers to include nurses, lawyers, teachers, translators, and volunteers willing to visit one-on-one with the residents of the shelter. So far, I've signed up 15 volunteers. I'm one of them, so is our friend from the El Paso experience Chris Unruh. :) Are you, Linda, or other members of Emmaus interested in joining us?
Here's a link to the Border Compassion website: https://border-compassion.org/
A small group of SI parishioners volunteered at the Posada in January. They were featured in the January Border Compassion newsletter:
It would be great if you could join us in October! If anyone is interested in going on the trip, let me know, and I'll send trip details.
Annette
Announcement #2: From National Catholic Reporter: "Francis 10 Years On -- What's Ahead?" at St. Ignatius in San Francisco
Hello California friends and readers!
This is a fascinating time for the church. Francis is marking his 10th anniversary as pope and the synodality process continues to move toward a potentially pivotal meeting of bishops from around the world in Rome this fall.
I’m writing to extend an invitation for readers to learn more about what’s happening from two of NCR’s best-known journalists.
NCR Vatican correspondent Christopher White and political columnist Michael Sean Winters will join me at several events in California during the week of March 12. I am sharing our schedule with you in the hopes you’ll be able to join us for a session.
Since becoming CEO/publisher in November 2022, I have been taking every opportunity I can to connect with our readers. These connections have been very rewarding and I honestly look forward to meeting and thanking our readers in person!
It’s a genuine pleasure for me to offer you, our readers and donors, these opportunities to meet Christopher and Michael Sean — and to hear their stories behind the stories making headlines. Pope Francis has had an enormous impact on the church and the world. I look forward to gathering with NCR readers to talk about this amazing moment in our history as Catholics.
Sunday, March 12:
We’ll begin our series at St. Ignatius parish in San Francisco. We will attend the 10 a.m. Mass, followed by a reception and presentation. Christopher will present Francis Ten Years On: What Lies Ahead? He will share a few photos with us, and talk about what they capture of Francis’ papacy. Then he will open it up for questions. Yours truly will serve as the moderator.
Mass: St. Ignatius Parish
Reception and presentation: Xavier Room at the Fromm Center, USF
650 Parker Ave, San Francisco, 94118
Following the 10 a.m. Mass
Announcement #3: From NETWORK Catholic Lobby (Nuns on the Bus)
This year, commit to pray and act for reparations
This year, commit to pray and act for reparations
Pax Christi USA supports NETWORK’s invitation to pray for a national reparations study commission.
For more than a year, our friends at NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice have been engaged with legacy reparations organizations, civil rights groups, faith tables, and other coalition partners in the effort to get President Biden to create a reparations study commission.
There is an urgent need to issue the executive order now. If the reparations commission is to assemble and complete its work in the 18-month window prescribed in HR 40, it must start in the next few weeks. Otherwise, it could be abandoned if the next Administration does not agree that repair and redress is needed for the original sin of slavery – and the racial violence, abuse, and policy that came after it.
During Black History Month, NETWORK invites us all — justice-seekers, from all faiths, and those who claim no faith at all — to “level up” our advocacy with prayer.
Two ways you can do this:
1. Sign the pledge (https://www.mobilize.us/network/event/549632/) and invite others to sign. Once people sign up, they will receive an email with the prayer
2. NETWORK has a toolkit that includes a copy of the prayer and unbranded social media graphics, as well as sample language for social media posts so that you can simply invite your members and supporters to pray.
The Prayer
During this month dedicated to celebrating and honoring Black history, we pause to reflect on the sin of racism—the original sin of our country, whose effects have been perpetuated by systemic racism and inequality. We come together, believing the collective power of prayer and our growing consciousness, as we reflect on the myriad of ways our lives have been impacted by racist policies and beliefs. As Dr. Martin Luther King said, “The time is always right to do the right thing.”
We pray: Good and Gracious God,
We lament the lasting legacy of slavery and the many manifestations thereof,
yielding racist policies and deep trauma that has continued for centuries since its ceremonial ending in the United States.
We commit ourselves to ongoing repair and redress of these sins.
We lament our complicity in allowing racist policies and practices to continue.
May we have the courage to disrupt and avert any system of inequity.
We affirm ourselves as members of one human family, believing that what affects one of us, affects all of us.
May we commit ourselves to seeing and hearing one another, and being our siblings’ caretaker.
We lament that HR 40 has been introduced in Congress for 34 years without a floor vote and, now, We call on President Biden to establish, by Executive Order, the Commission to Study Reparations.
NOW is the time. Amen.
Announcement #4: From Future Church: Screening and discussion of “The Women Fighting to Be Priests” with guest speaker Fr. Anne Tropeano:
Wednesday, March 8⋅4:00 – 5:30pm
Please join us for a screening and discussion of the BBC Documentary, “The Women Fighting to Be Priests,” with one of the women featured in the film, Fr. Anne Tropeano.
Fr. Anne Tropeano is one of over 200 women across the world who are part of the Roman Catholic woman priest movement.
Join us as we explore Fr. Anne’s experience and the wider roles for women in the church.
Bio
Father Anne was ordained on October 16, 2021 in Albuquerque, NM through the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests. She has a deep love of the Society of Jesus and Ignatian spirituality, which blossomed over twelve years of ministry with Jesuits. She earned a Master of Divinity from Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, CA, and has worked in several parishes in the JesuitsWest Province.
In addition to her formation and work in the Roman Catholic Church, Father Anne has a Master’s degree in Rhetoric and Writing Studies from San Diego State University, and 24 years of experience in strategic communications. She harnesses this background in working for a priesthood that welcomes women.
Deeply grounded in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, Father Anne has a passionate interest in participating in the discernment of what the next era of the Roman Catholic Church will look like. While many have understandably walked away from the Roman Catholic Church, Father Anne obeys the call of the Holy Spirit to collaborate with God on the project of equality within one of the most powerful institutions in the world.
Register with this link:
Announcement#5: From Future Church: Dr. Nikki Taylor Discusses Her Book, “Driven Toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio”(2016): Thursday, March 23⋅4:00 – 5:00pm
Dr. Nikki Taylor Discusses Her Book, “Driven Toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio”(2016)
As part of our Women Witnesses for Racial Justice series, please join Dr. Nikki M. Taylor, Professor of History and Chair of the Department as she discusses her book Driven Toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio (2016).
The focus of her story is Margaret Garner, an enslaved wife and mother who, along with her entire family, escaped from slavery in northern Kentucky in 1856. When their owners caught up with the Garner family, Margaret tried to kill all four of her children–and succeeded in killing one–rather than see them return to slavery. Using black feminist and interdisciplinary methodologies, this book tetells this harrowing story from the perspective of Margaret Garner–a woman who could not read or write and left little of her own voice in the historical record. Ultimately, Driven Toward Madness examines why this fated act was the last best option for her as an enslaved mother.
Bio
Professor Taylor specializes in 19th century African American History. Her sub-specialties are in Urban, African American Women, and Intellectual History. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania (BA) and Duke University (MA, PhD, Certificate in Women’s Studies). Dr. Taylor has won several fellowships including Fulbright, Social Science Research Council, and Woodrow Wilson. She is also the Principal Investigator of two institutional grants, including the $5 million Mellon Just Futures grant (2021) and the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program Grant ($480k in 2017) Nikki M. Taylor is currently completing her 4th monograph, “‘Brooding Over Bloody Revenge:’ Enslaved Women, ‘Wild Justice’ and Lethal Resistance to Slavery.” The manuscript examines enslaved women who used lethal violence to resist slavery from the colonial to antebllum eras, challenging all previous interpretations about the nature of their resistance.
Her first book, Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati’s Black Community 1802-68 (2005) uses the backdrop of one of the nineteenth-century’s most racist American cities to chart the emergence of a very conscientious black community–a community of people who employed various tactics such as black nationalism, emigration, legislative agitation, political alliances, self-education, and even armed self-defense to carve out a space for themselves as free people living in the shadow of slavery.
Professor Taylor’s second book, America’s First Black Socialist: The Radical Life of Peter H. Clark (2013), is a political and intellectual biography of one of the foremost African American activists, intellectuals, orators, and politicians in the nineteenth-century–a man whose name once was spoken in the same breath as Frederick Douglass, Dr. McCune Smith, and John Mercer Langston. This book charts Clark’s journey from recommending that slaveholders be sent to “hospitable/ graves,” to advocating for a separate black nation, to forging alliances with German socialists and labor radicals, to adopting the conservative mantle of the Democratic Party.
Driven Toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio (2016) is Dr. Taylor’s third monograph. This book is a biography of Margaret Garner, an enslaved wife and mother who, along with her entire family, escaped from slavery in northern Kentucky in 1856. When their owners caught up with the Garner family, Margaret tried to kill all four of her children–and succeeded in killing one–rather than see them return to slavery. Using black feminist and interdisciplinary methodologies, this book tetells this harrowing story from the perspective of Margaret Garner–a woman who could not read or write and left little of her own voice in the historical record. Ultimately, Driven Toward Madness examines why this fated act was the last best option for her as an enslaved mother. Inspired by Garner’s story, Dr. Taylor’s current research is about enslaved women who used armed violence to resist slavery.
ANNOUNCEMENT #6: PRAYER - STUDY - ACTION from Pax Christi Second week of Lent, March 5-11
This second week's Lenten reflections in "Witnesses on the Way" were written by Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace Pearlette Springer, Ph.D. In the upcoming second week of Lent, I encourage you to reflect on Dr. Springer's words as she powerfully connects history to our present reality, artfully weaving together the personal and the political.
I was particularly struck by the lamenting, convicting words of her Tuesday reflection:
"It seems that we are fighting one crisis after another. One intentional misdirection after another. One dirty little secret after another. And no direction, no action toward resolving the issue and creating little progress toward peace, justice, mercy, and compassion. It is at these moments that I become consciously aware of my actions or lack of actions. In these moments, I reflect on what I am called to do. Addressing the garbage and baggage in my own life, so I can reconcile with others just as God reconciles with me."
This upcoming Sunday, the Gospel reading centers around the Transfiguration, when Jesus' appearance was transformed as He revealed the fullness of his divinity to his followers. As we face "one crisis after another," how can we be personally, communally, and politically transformed as we witness for "peace, justice, mercy, and compassion"? What is calling out to be transformed in our churches, our movements, and our common life together? 2023 is shaping up to be a year of transformation for Pax Christi USA, as our staff promotes peace on international delegations, our Young Adult Caucus convenes to strengthen our movement, and we explore the next 20 years of our commitment to being an anti-racist, multicultural movement for peace and justice. As we face the crises of today and tomorrow, how will you be transformed and transform the world around you?
In peace, John Noble (he/him) Director of Development Pax Christi USA
PRAYER
Prayer to the Holy Spirit Diarmuid O'Murchu
Come, Holy Spirit, breathe down upon our troubled world. Shake the tired foundations of our crumbling institutions. Break the rules that keep you out of all our sacred spaces, and from the dust and rubble, gather up the seedlings of a new creation. Come, Holy Spirit, enflame once more the dying embers of our weariness. Shake us of our complacency. Whisper our names once more, and scatter your gifts of grace with wild abandon. Break open the prisons of our inner being, and let your raging justice be our sign of liberty. Come, Holy Spirit, and lead us to places we would rather not go; expand the horizons of our limited imaginations. Awaken in our souls dangerous dreams for a new tomorrow, and rekindle in our hearts the fire of prophetic enthusiasm. Come, Holy Spirit, whose justice outwits international conspiracy; whose light outshines spiritual bigotry, whose peace can overcome the destructive potential of warfare, whose promise invigorates our every effort to create a new heaven and a new earth, now and forever. Amen.
>> Join us throughout Lent every Monday for a short Lenten prayer service with the Pax Christi USA national community over Zoom. Service lasts 30 minutes and includes reflection, readings, prayers of the faithful, music, and more. Our second prayer service is this Monday, March 6 at 8:30 pm Eastern/5:30 pm Pacific where we'll be joined by Dr. Pearlette Springer. Click here to register.
STUDY
How are you being called to political and personal transformation?
Political transfiguration: Read "From Mountaintops to Valleys," a reflection on the political implications of transfiguration from Anglican theologian Anderson Jeremiah. Jeremiah reflects on the importance of transfiguring a church "that is institutionally racist, steeped in its colonial past, and primarily denied by its white normative theology." In place of a racist system of control and domination, the author asks us to follow Jesus in building a "politics of love built on pursuit of justice and truth in every sphere of life." Reflecting on Jeremiah's words, ask yourself: "What violations of human dignity do I see in my own context? How can these be transfigured into just systems?"
Personal transfiguration: Our friends at New Ways Ministry (NWM) have compiled a beautiful resource on the LGBTQ+ experience and transfiguration, inviting prayerful reflection on disclosure, vulnerability, and community. From the resource: "Each time we disclose a truth about ourselves, we part a veil. By doing so, we invite others to come into our lives and make contact with us. Parting any veil forces a degree of vulnerability and demands unimaginable trust and faith."
Use the NWM resource to guide your own reflections on transfiguration, LGBTQ+ equality, and living in wholeness and truth. How can living in authenticity inform your work for peace and justice? Where can you practice vulnerability, trust, and faith?
ACTION
Actions for Good Friday, disarmament
Catholic Social Teaching reminds us that spiritual transformation and living in right relationship with those around us ultimately means considering "the joys and the hopes, the griefs and anxieties" of our neighbors, "especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted." For the Second Week of Lent, here are two ways that a group of peacemakers can witness for social and political transformation in your local context:
1) Traditionally, many Pax Christi USA local groups plan and stage a “Way of the Cross” event on Good Friday, connecting the sufferings of Christ during his passion with the suffering of our siblings at the hands of violence, greed, poverty, sickness and war. >> Let us know if you have a Way of the Cross planned in your community by filling out this form.
2) Join Pax Christi USA as we celebrate the United Nations' first International Day for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Awareness (IDDNPA) on March 5. Along with our international partners around the world and at the UN, Pax Christi USA supports multilateral disarmament efforts. The new International Day seeks to promote better awareness and understanding of disarmament issues, especially for young people. Here's how to join us in this week of action that starts March 5: >> Use this action alert from the Back from the Brink campaign and urge your U.S. House Representative to show leadership on nuclear weapons by co-sponsoring H. Res. 77. >> Request an “in-district” meeting with your House member(s) to discuss H. Res. 77. Let the campaign know your plans in advance by emailing jeremy@preventnuclearwar.org so Back from the Brink can keep track of these requests and offer assistance to you