Photo credit: Dave Zylstra
Volunteers prepare hot lunches for the poor at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist.
With the election of Pope Francis, the new pontiff brought to the fore an aspect of the Roman Catholic Church that was sometimes lost in recent years amidst scandals. During his long tenure as a cleric in Argentina, the future pope was already remarkable for his concern for the poor and his opposition to both unbridled capitalism and authoritarian brands of socialism.
Pope Francis has prioritized a particular theme in his church’s tradition. Throughout the many centuries of its existence, the Roman Catholic Church has had various and assorted tendencies. The most noble of them are the obligations of the institution and the faithful to the world and humanity. Jesus told his followers that the greatest commandment, the fulfillment of all laws, is to “love your neighbor as yourself.” He did not draw up a social program but left behind the guiding principle that unselfish and voluntary giving is essential to the meaning of being Christian. He did not imagine that the world could end poverty but challenged all people to strive to alleviate the suffering of the poor and downtrodden.
As part of its 175th anniversary celebration in 2019, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee announced a roster of activities designed to showcase its commitment to social justice. Along with assembling care-bundle packages for the needy, the archdiocese is organizing the “Amani Neighborhood Rock the Block Clean Up” for Saturday, Sept. 28, in collaboration with Habitat for Humanity and the Dominican Center (2470 W. Locust St.). Founded in 1995 by Dominican nuns, an order with an emphasis on serving the surrounding community, the Dominican Center is an example of many local Roman Catholic organizations operating outside the authority of the Milwaukee Archdiocese but committed in their various ways to implementing the church’s ideas on social justice.
“There is a rich intellectual history of social justice in the Catholic Church,” says Anne Haines, executive director of Urban Initiative MKE, a diocesan outreach project. “One of our principles is subsidiarity—the idea that decisions should be made at the level that affects the people concerned.” In a departure from the old idea of the Roman Catholic Church as a top-down management structure, subsidiarity is a kind of participatory democracy allowing the “needy” to help determine what they need.
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That rich intellectual history can be found in St. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval Roman Catholic philosopher who proclaimed that “in cases of need all things are common property,” and the faithful must be “prepared to give to others from their property.” In the 19th century, Rome began to wrestle with how to apply the maxims of Jesus, who lived within a primarily agrarian society, to the rapidly changing conditions of modernity and the Industrial Age.
In 1891, Pope Leo XIII laid the groundwork for Catholic social justice with his encyclical, Rerum Novarum (Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor). Rejecting the extremes of capitalism and communism, Leo affirmed the rights of workers to form unions and called for ameliorating “the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class.”
“While some might perceive that Pope Francis has changed Catholic teaching on social engagement, I don’t think that is really the case,” says Bishop Jeffrey Haines of the Milwaukee Archdiocese. “Pope Saint John Paul II, often viewed as a conservative, had some very bold documents on social engagement, too.
“Yet, your suggestion about the change in tone seems fair. He has brought Catholic social teaching to the forefront of his papacy and strongly encouraged all Catholics to reach out to the poor and to strive for justice in society. As you know, he often repeats the exhortation for pastors to be shepherds among the flock, encountering and accompanying the most vulnerable on the margin or the periphery.”
Milwaukee’s History of Catholic Social Action
Milwaukee Catholics can look back on a long history of social justice work. Education for all, regardless of ethnic background, was one aspect of the church’s mission. Founded in 1908, St. Benjamin the Moor Catholic School was “a boarding school for young African Americans, among them Harold Washington, Redd Foxx and Lionel Hampton,” says Milwaukee historian John Gurda. Operated by the Capuchins, a monastic order devoted to the poor, nowadays St. Ben (930 W. State St.) serves dinner for the hungry Sunday through Friday evenings, houses a food pantry and offers used clothing and legal services for the poor.
During the 1960s, Milwaukee Catholics played leading roles in the civil rights movement and protesting the Vietnam War. “I think there are a lot of different currents in the Catholic tradition, but one of them is surely an emphasis on social action,” Gurda says. “The Catholic Worker movement (Casa Maria, locally), the Milwaukee 14 (which included five priests) and James Groppi’s activism were all tangible expressions of that tradition. There was a countervailing conservatism in the pews, of course.”
Founded during the Great Depression by Roman Catholic lay people, the Catholic Worker movement operates outside the church’s jurisdiction (and sometimes in opposition to the political conservatism within the church). The group’s Milwaukee house, Casa Maria (1131 N. 21st St.), provides shelter for single mothers and their children and participates in protests against gerrymandering, assault weapons and other political issues.
In 1968, the Milwaukee 14 staged a spectacular action against U.S. involvement in Vietnam by entering a draft board office and burning thousands of Selective Service documents in a bonfire. They remained at the scene, reciting passages from the gospels, awaiting arrest. Perhaps the best known among the era’s “radical priests,” Father James Groppi, pastor of the inner city St. Boniface parish, helped lead celebrated marches that attracted Catholics and non-Catholics from across Wisconsin for desegregation and against cutting welfare benefits. Some have said that he was tolerated rather than supported by the local archdiocese.
“We had lots of churches that were focal points for neighborhoods in the central city,” Anne Haines says of the Groppi era. Many of those churches have since been closed as part of diocesan budget cutbacks. “We want to reinvest in the central city. We have a lot going on,” she continues. The diocese is the parent organization for Catholic Charities, which provides a range of services, including legal counseling for immigrants and in-home care for the elderly. At Milwaukee’s episcopal see, the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist (812 N. Jackson St.), the Open Door Café provides hot lunches for the poor and its prison ministry visits local inmates and their families.
Immigration
Bishop Haines explains that, given the Roman Catholic Church’s hierarchical structure, “an archdiocese traditionally does not issue its own personal stance on issues of a national or international scope,” such as the ongoing controversy over the current administration’s immigration policy. However, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has been clear in its condemnation. In a May 2019 statement, the Conference condemned “proposals that seek to curtail family based immigration and create a largely ‘merit-based’ immigration system. Families are the foundation of our faith, our society, our history and our immigration system. As Pope Francis notes: ‘Family is the place in which we are formed as persons. Each family is a brick that builds society.’”
The church’s advocacy of molding bricks instead of building walls has other implications. According to the Conference’s statement, the bishops “are deeply troubled” that White House proposals don’t “seem to address Dreamers and Temporary Protected Status holders, nor provide them a path to citizenship to ensure their full integration into American life. Lastly, securing our borders and ensuring our safety is of the utmost importance, but this will not be achieved by heightening human misery and restricting access to lawful protection in an attempt to deter vulnerable, asylum-seeking families and children. Instead, we must confront the root causes of migration and look to humane and pragmatic solutions, such as improving our immigration courts, expanding alternatives to detention and eradicating criminal networks.”
Bishop Haines adds that Roman Catholics in Milwaukee and throughout the U.S. “are invited to keep informed on these issues and are given updates on how to advocate for the bishops’ proposals on reform through an organization entitled Justice for Immigrants.”
“The Archdiocese of Milwaukee has a committee of concerned Catholics who meet to promote the efforts of justice for immigrants,” the bishop continues. Many Milwaukee parishes “also seek to assist immigrants, often trying to meet their human needs. A number of them are taking up collections, financial and material, to send to the dioceses on the borders who are sheltering those seeking entrance to the United States.”
Working for the Future
Although the Roman Catholic Church is unlikely to change its position on several issues of concern to political progressives, it has embraced several progressive issues, leading with a long history of hands-on support for the poor and its philosophical objections to exploitation and racism. In Milwaukee, diocesan and other Catholic-based organizations continue their work in those fields.
“We have a lot going on, but we need to be coordinated in a way that better serves the people,” says Anne Haines. “We don’t push our religion on people. We don’t proselytize. We show our faith through our service, by meeting people where they’re at, by creating ministries where gaps exist,” Haines concludes.
