Category: Social Justice & Outreach

By Br. Steve Herro, O. Praem.

I was mulling over the world refugee crisis before Pope Francis boldly preached his Midnight Mass homily on Christmas Eve (I was not the only one impressed by his words connecting the Holy Family to today’s refugee families; so were my Catholic, Lutheran, and Unitarian friends on Facebook). Pope Francis preached, in part:

So many other footsteps are hidden in the footsteps of Joseph and Mary. We see the tracks of entire families forced to set out in our own day. We see the tracks of millions of persons who do not choose to go away but, driven from their land, leave behind their dear ones. In many cases this departure is filled with hope, hope for the future; yet for many others this departure can only have one name: survival. Surviving the Herods of today, who, to impose their power and increase their wealth, see no problem in shedding innocent blood.

“Another Year of Record Displacement” (Council on Foreign Relations, December 22, 2017) reported, in part:

Those with the greatest resources exercise the greatest responsibility. At the moment, there is a vacuum of leadership on the refugee question. … But in the main, the wealthiest countries in the world, led by the United States, are turning their backs on the problem, and that is very dangerous.

Though I live in the midst of the U.S. heartland, in a rather frigid and less culturally diverse section of the country, I am reminded of the extent of the refugee crisis in our Church and world. Three Somali leaders presented at our Bay Area Community Council meeting last month. We were surprised when we learned that 5,000 Somalis live in our community—about 2.5 percent of the population of our metro area. After several months of planning and one postponement, I am glad that I did not give up in attempting to arrange the Somalis’ presentation. I shared our positive experience with a local pastor. He replied that one of his congregants was producing a plan to ensure that every liturgy would have armed personnel to protect the churchgoers from an armed attack by Somalis, as one church in the Twin Cities has done. “Ugh,” I thought to myself. We have a long way to go.

2018 will be a very challenging year for the Church’s priority to “welcome the stranger.”

• The security of 800,000 immigrant young people is threatened by a March deadline for Congress to regularize their status.

• The president has cut the ceiling on refugees to be admitted to our country from 100,000 to 45,000 people.

• Salvadorans, Haitans, and Nicaraguans given temporary permission to live in the U.S. following natural disasters in their countries have been told (or may be told in the very near future) that their welcome is over.

Our Church’s National Migration Week (January 7-13, 2018) resource toolkit offers some suggestions on how we can begin to change the tenor in our communities in an attempt to foster real communities of “encounter” with “the other.”

DISCLAIMER: This blog represents Br. Herro’s own opinions and experiences. It does not represent an official position or opinion of St. Norbert Abbey or of any other Norbertine.

—Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

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By Br. Steve Herro, O. Praem.

Demonstrations and counterdemonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, touched our collective nerve last summer. At their outset in early July, I thought, “Wait—did I hear what I thought I heard?”

One month later, August 12-13, round two arrived—same city, similar actors, and more publicity and dangerous aftereffects. Divisions over ultranationalism and white supremacy stressed the nation.

What is an appropriate response by our faith communities to these occurrences? An opinion-editorial by a Catholic Latina theologian and a classic essay by a 1960s civil rights leader both bear consideration.

Nichole M. Flores, assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, wrote in “When the K.K.K. came to town, Catholics prayed. Now what?” (America magazine, July 12, 2017):

I am not naïve about the existence of racism in the United States. As a Mexican-American with brown skin, I have often experienced instances of racism. Until recently, however, I had imagined the K.K.K. as a fossil calcified in our national history, not as a living, active organism still instilling fear, marshaling intimidation and potentially inciting violence.

Flores asks how effectively the Church combats racism and bigotry. She mentions being pleasantly surprised when she received an invitation from an unexpected Catholic parish to attend a holy hour for peace and the end of racism and hatred. Flores wrote:

A holy hour against racial hatred is a profound way to begin this urgent mission of the church: rejecting racism in the clearest possible terms at all times and in all places. These prayers send us out to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with all people of good will against racial terror that assaults human life, inhibits human flourishing and demolishes the common good.

One month later, after another weekend of tension between White nationalist demonstrators and counterdemonstrators in Charlottesville, the Catholic Mass that I attended on Saturday afternoon contained no references to the need for healing and reconciliation; the Unitarian Universalist gathering at which I spoke the following morning did include a period of silence before the start of the service for everyone to respectfully reflect about the ideological tensions facing our country.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

—Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

Conversations revealed little references to the Charlottesville events in Green Bay area churches, but some comments on Facebook posts and online articles did reveal that religious leaders were calling the faithful to the need for unity and accord among our divided populations. When a Public Radio guest recommended that an initial response could be to read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” I fired up Google and read the 1963 classic. King wrote, in part:

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. … There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was the thermostat that transformed the mores of society [emphasis added]. … Small in number, they were big in commitment.

Church folk in northeast Wisconsin cannot sit by idly when African-Americans, Jews, Muslims, and Latinos are being persecuted in the name of nationalism and white supremacy. What is preached from the pulpit and prayed for in the Universal Prayer of the Church at every Mass must connect the Scriptures and our current social successes and challenges. May what we hear on Sunday within the walls of our churches help inspire us to stomp out hatred and bigotry the rest of the week, every week.

DISCLAIMER: This blog represents Br. Herro’s own opinions and experiences. It does not represent an official position or opinion of St. Norbert Abbey or of any other Norbertine.

By Br. Steve Herro, O. Praem.

I have come to like to do laundry. The laundry room is warm, generally quiet, and the “mindless tasks” of waiting, transferring clothes and towels from one machine to another, and folding the items provides a great backdrop for reading and praying. During a time when I was considering a different volunteer ministry at a local homeless shelter, another Norbertine blurted aloud as we we passed in the abbey laundry room, “It makes me mindful of those who do not have clean laundry.”

“Yes, like probably half of the population in Puerto Rico, who have not had electricity for several months,” I replied.

It was easy for me to question the constant requests by shelter guests for socks, underwear, and sweatshirts for the several winters that I have volunteered at St. John the Evangelist Homeless Shelter. I asked myself, “What happened to the items that you got last week?”

As a one-month veteran of the shelter laundry room, I have a truer picture of the drill of bagging your laundry, tossing it in the laundry room, and hoping that your jeans and underwear don’t get mixed up with another’s. And this is presuming that the shelter has an adequate supply of donated detergent, that the workhorse washers and dryers are functioning, and that volunteers are available to wash and fold the clothes.

Last month, Jane Angha delivered the presentation Solidarity: We are Our Brothers’ and Sisters’ Keeper at the Norbertine Center for Spirituality. At one point, she asked us to turn to our neighbor and share with each other a definition or example of “solidarity.” Maybe it was the challenge of advocating for a just federal tax bill—a bill that many experts agree will cut rates for corporations and upper-income payers but actually raise the tax burden on many low and middle income taxpayers. But I guess that I was on a roll that night: “The next time that we walk down the grocery store bakery aisle to buy a birthday cake, can we also be mindful of the workers who picked the coffee beans and the tomatoes for the deli and produce departments? Do these workers earn a just wage and labor in safe conditions?”

There are lots of opportunities in the course of every day to reflect, pray, and act in solidarity with those who suffer economic deprivation:

• performing laundry at a time of day when the local electricity grid is less busy
• dropping change in the Salvation Army red kettle as you leave the stores while Christmas shopping
• offering an Our Father when stuck in traffic for those who don’t have access to reliable transportation
• serving a meal at a community meal program or homeless shelter
• writing to your legislator when foreign aid or health care for the indigent is being threatened
• … the opportunities are endless.

DISCLAIMER: This blog represents Br. Herro’s own opinions and experiences. It does not represent an official position or opinion of St. Norbert Abbey or of any other Norbertine.

Read More

• Making a Difference—One Lunch at a Time
  December 11, 2017

• Norbertines in Service: Helping the Homeless (page 8)
  Spring/Summer 2016
  Abbey Magazine

By Br. Steve Herro, O. Praem.

In late October, I fired up Wisconsin Public Radio on my computer to catch the morning news and the headline “Report shows continued racial disparity in children’s well-being in state, nation” caught my attention. According to the report, the “opportunity gap” between Wisconsin African-American children and those of other races is worse in Wisconsin than in all but three of the 44 states surveyed. The “opportunity gap” is derived from 12 different indicators in health, education, and economic sectors.

I continued reading and discovered these jarring statistics:

• 72 percent of White children in Wisconsin live in economically secure families.
• 36 percent of American-Indian children live in economically secure families.
• 31 percent of Hmong children live in economically secure families.
• 30 percent of Latino children live in economically secure families.
• 24 percent of African-American children live in economically secure families.

(Economic security is often defined as the assurance of consistent income to guarantee an ongoing maintenance of your current standard of living.)

This is a severe wake-up call for the people of Wisconsin. In 12 months, we will choose a governor, 99 state representatives, and half of our state senate. Will any candidates running for these offices address these terrible racial disparities in our state?

In an October 25, 2017, letter to U.S. Senators, Bishop Frank Dewane, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, listed six moral principles to guide tax and budget policy-making:

• care for the poor
• family formation and strengthening
• progressivity of the tax code
• adequate revenue for the sake of the common good
• avoiding cuts to poverty programs to finance tax reform
• incentivizing charitable giving and development

I encourage voters and legislators alike to reflect on these priorities and this letter as we work “to form a more perfect Union” with equality and opportunity for all.

DISCLAIMER: This blog represents Br. Herro’s own opinions and experiences. It does not represent an official position or opinion of St. Norbert Abbey or of any other Norbertine.

By Br. Steve Herro, O. Praem.

Pope Francis has popularized the phrase “culture of encounter” in his many writings and actions.  He writes in The Joy of the Gospel (#220):

“Yet becoming a people demands something more. It is an ongoing process in which every new generation must take part: a slow and arduous effort calling for a desire for integration and a willingness to achieve this through the growth of a peaceful and multifaceted culture of encounter.”

And he writes in On Care for Our Common Home (#47):

“True wisdom, as the fruit of self-examination, dialogue and generous encounter between persons, is not acquired by a mere accumulation of data which eventually leads to overload and confusion, a sort of mental pollution.”

So when Frank Sherman, Executive Director of Seventh Generation Interfaith, asked if I—as the volunteer webmaster and a member of the development committee—could upload his essay entitled, “How Do You Speak to a Climate Denier?” to the Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition for Responsible Investment website, I hesitated. Our organization is not the Sierra Club or Union of Concerned Scientists … what is a commentary on communicating to climate-deniers doing on the website of 25 socially-responsible corporate investors?

After reading Sherman’s essay, I reflected further and recalled my own discussions with other leaders from Wisconsin Interfaith Power and Light about how climate change has been a source of division and tension within many of our families. My curiosity was naturally piqued when I read “A Catholic Response to Climate Skeptics: Create a Culture of Encounter” by Charles Camosy in Crux: Taking the Catholic Pulse on June 5, 2017. Camosy writes:

“Pope Francis’s call for a ‘culture of encounter’ looms large here. Those of us who are worried about climate change should do a better job of genuinely encountering those who think differently. In engaging them we should listen first and answer their arguments seriously. Name-calling and label-slapping is not only antithetical to genuine encounter, it undermines our ability to be heard.”

And on a practical level, Camosy encourages climate change activists to practice what they preach by demonstrating a lifestyle that truly demonstrates a “care for our common home,” including:

• consuming less meat
• living in the climate (that is, limiting air conditioning and toasty warm indoor heating)
• buying local whenever possible

DISCLAIMER: This blog represents Br. Herro’s own opinions and experiences. It does not represent an official position or opinion of St. Norbert Abbey or of any other Norbertine.

By Br. Steve Herro, O. Praem.

Maybe you have heard the expression or seen the bumper sticker, “What if they held a bake sale to fund the defense department and the schools got all the money they needed?” I am not sure who gets the credit for this clever saying, but the quip has crossed my mind quite a bit the last few weeks.

Earlier this spring, I read an appeal by the Dominican Center for Women. The center, founded by the Sinsinawa Domincans in 1995, is an urban ministry program in the Amani neighborhood of Milwaukee. The center seeks to raise $200,000 to test the water and purchase water filters in this low-income neighborhood. As reported: “… The 53206 ZIP code, of which the Amani neighborhood is a significant part, has more lead laterals, lead-contaminated water, and the highest number of children with elevated blood levels in Milwaukee …”

I was dumbfounded. One year ago, the story of contaminated water in Flint, Michigan, took our nation by storm:

• A: I rarely considered what was happening “behind the scenes” when I turned on the faucet to brush my teeth.

• And B: I did not tend to think of who was paying for my water to arrive from Lake Michigan to the city of De Pere.

But a recent visit to a Greater Green Bay Habitat for Humanity worksite educated me on how a city’s water moves to a homeowner’s house and how it is paid for. Most not only pay a fee to the local water utility, but also property owners must pay for the lateral water pipe that connects one’s building to the city’s system of underground water pipes.

Is there anything more basic to human life than water? Why do inner-city residents struggle with lead pipes—a worry that many of us never have to face? Why do peasants in sub-Sahara Africa suffer from drought and famine when others can install irrigation systems to water golf courses without batting an eyelash? To have to independently fundraise for clean water and lead-free pipes flies in the face of the Christian understanding of the common good.

President Donald Trump announced a draft federal budget for fiscal year 2018 on May 23, 2017. Who are the winners and losers? Sr. Donna Markham OP, president and CEO of Catholic Charities USA (CCUSA), announced:

“While CCUSA supports efforts to improve vital safety-net programs needed to move people out of poverty and protect life … cuts to anti-poverty programs such as SNAP, Medicaid and jobs training will have a devastating effect on millions of vulnerable individuals and families who depend on them.”

The budget requests an additional $469 billion for defense during the next 10 years. On the other hand, wouldn’t you rather enjoy a lemonade while visiting with a four-star general at a military bake sale?

DISCLAIMER: This blog represents Br. Herro’s own opinions and experiences. It does not represent an official position or opinion of St. Norbert Abbey or of any other Norbertine.

By Br. Steve Herro, O. Praem.

The ‘transportation prison’ is trapping more and more people in the United States, unable to keep up with the renewed sprawl of jobs and homes. In ‘Laudato Si,’ Pope Francis described the ‘suffering’ associated with a worldwide dependence on cars, ‘causing traffic congestion, raising the level of pollution, and consuming enormous quantities of non-renewable energy’ (No. 153).

—“The Right to Ride,” America magazine, January 2, 2017 (page 5)

Earth Day is April 22, 2017; the more ambitious supporters extend it to Earth Week, April 22-29, 2017; the most ambitious supporters extend it to Earth Month, April 2017. How about considering the connection between transportation and Catholic Social Teaching this month?

Pope Francis’ work to connect transportation to care for our common home is quite pertinent in my small corner of the world:

• St. Norbert College leaders cite a lack of parking as a major challenge facing the institution, and the college is remapping the campus to replace its existing First Street.
• The 2016 Brown County LIFE (Leading Indicators For Excellence) Study reports that 85 percent of all Brown County workers drive alone to their jobs; the state average for Wisconsin is 81 percent and the national average is 77 percent.
• Wisconsin’s governor and legislative leaders, though of the same party, cannot agree on how to fund Wisconsin’s state roads and highways.

Our communities pay dearly to meet the American love affair with single-person transit and car ownership. Convenience and independence have great indirect costs, including dirtier air, less fit citizens, expensive roads and highways, and sacrifice of green space and farmland for road construction. Mass transit is indeed a common good; its support falls clearly within the purview of Catholic Social Teaching.

How about this Earth Day 2017 resolution?

Commit to reduce the times you drive alone to work AND commit to reduce trips to the store for a single item or purpose.

DISCLAIMER: This blog represents Br. Herro’s own opinions and experiences. It does not represent an official position or opinion of St. Norbert Abbey or of any other Norbertine.

By Br. Steve Herro, O. Praem.

January 8, 2017, was the first day of National Migration Week (described by the U.S. Catholic Bishops as “… an opportunity for the Church to reflect on the circumstances confronting migrants, including immigrants, refugees, children, and victims and survivors of human trafficking”), the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, and a day in the midst of a news cycle about possible changes in the U.S. refugee resettlement program. At Mass that Sunday, I was standing at my customary post in the St. Norbert Abbey Church—welcoming guests and handing out worship aids.

There are usually about 120 guests for Sunday Mass at the abbey. Some come every Sunday; others are visiting the area for the weekend and discovered this convenient time and location; others live in the area and “bop in” less regularly. There are singles, couples, and larger families that regularly attend this Mass; the age range is indicative of the usual spread at any Catholic church on a given Sunday morning.

But, to be honest, the assembly generally does not reflect the cultural diversity of the U.S. Catholic Church; it is pretty white, with most descended from western European countries. But for some reason, I noticed a family of four from India for the first time at our abbey that Sunday. Before Mass, I approached them in their pew and asked them if they would bear the offertory gifts that morning; they were honored to be asked and agreed to do so.

Abbot Gary Neville, O. Praem., presided and preached that morning. In the context of the Epiphany, National Migration Week, and Pope Francis’ and the U.S. Bishops’ frequent messaging on “bridges not walls,” welcoming the newcomer amongst us, and the severity of the world’s current refugee crisis, the abbot’s homily “nailed it.” Or, to use a baseball expression, “he hit it out of the park.” On this Epiphany, we received a reminder that this most solemn feast reminds all of us to be a welcoming community to people of all backgrounds, as the Holy Family received foreign magi who recognized the greatness of the newborn Jesus. The newborn Jewish child was sent by God the Father for the redemption of all people.

These are difficult days for refugees and immigrants fleeing countries from troublespots on nearly every continent. And, this is a stressful time for the many advocates who have worked on the ground while helping to resettle migrants in our country, or who have spent days/months/years engaging government officials for more just migration policies.

I silently wept that morning. My four new Indian “friends” represented the entire assembly when they bore the gifts of bread and wine, not unlike the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh bore by the “other wisemen from the East” in that morning’s Gospel. In one small way, for one brief moment, I witnessed the exact sense of acceptance and welcome that our Norbertine community extends to our guests—regardless of their race, country of origin, or social class. The “stars” of National Migration Week, Epiphany Sunday, the current debate surrounding safety for migrants, and Norbertine hospitality really did align.

DISCLAIMER: This blog represents Br. Herro’s own opinions and experiences. It does not represent an official position or opinion of St. Norbert Abbey or of any other Norbertine.