Tag: Herro

… Today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. … I beg the Lord to grant us more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the people, the lives of the poor.

—Pope Francis

By Br. Steve Herro, O. Praem.

I came across Pope Francis’ April 2018 Prayer Intention, “For a Just Economy,” three days before “Tax Day.” However, I doubt that the Vatican purposefully scheduled this prayer intention so close to our tax day (believe me, the Vatican has bigger fish to fry than memorizing our secular calendar, despite what some Americans think or wish for).

His words around the prayer intention are not unfamiliar. Andrea Tornielli and Giamoco Galeazzi rocked the Catholic press, the business community, and social ethicists with their 2015 work, This Economy Kills: Pope Francis on Capitalism and Social Justice. That same year, his earth-shattering encyclical Laudato Si’ contained strong words against an economy measured strictly in terms of economic growth, particularly at the expense of environmental justice and human rights (see especially #109). And his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, considered his personal manifesto, spells out, for perhaps the first time, his understanding of an “economy of exclusion” (#53).

In 2015, I participated in NETWORK Catholic Social Justice Lobby’s #TaxPayerPride campaign around Tax Day; it demonstrated citizen gratitude for the benefits of our tax system. Take a moment to consider how our income taxes help provide for:

• public education for all
• nutritious food, warm shelter, and healing medicine for those who cannot meet their own needs, in our country and abroad
• safeguards to protect our communities from the effects of natural disaster

… the examples are nearly limitless.

I recall a conversation with a friend and co-worker a few years ago. I happened to mention that, as a vowed religious, any income that I earned from a Catholic organization was income tax exempt. He wondered aloud how he could get in on this gig in order not to help subsidize the U.S. war machine!

I am sure that no one approves of every single expenditure by our local, state, and federal governments. We must vote for candidates whose budgets priorities are in line with our own. As we embrace the principle of the common good, we accept that we do have a responsibility to contribute toward the benefit of people beyond self and our immediate families. And this is why an income tax system which benefits all of us is also vital to Pope Francis’ model of a just economy.

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.

Photo courtesy Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Washington, D.C. (used with permission)

By Br. Steve Herro, O. Praem.

My brothers, sister, and I often remind ourselves of our mom’s pearls of wisdom that she often shared with us during her 62 years of motherhood. “From the mouths of babes” was one such “Clarism,” uttered whenever a young person scored high on the wisdom scale. Since Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2018, there have been lots of pearls of wisdom by youth.

Who hasn’t been tracking the press appearances, platform speeches, legislative visits, and very clever signs and posters by youth throughout the country since the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, tragedy claimed 17 lives? Within a week after the tragedy, my hunter and gun control supporter Generation Y nephew Luke had this to say about the public outcry and organizing by the next generation: “I am impressed with Generation Z.”

I missed my reservation to march with hundreds of thousands of others when my flight was cancelled by a nor’easter, but proudly Facebook-shared the March 24, 2018, article from America magazine, “Catholic groups join protest against gun violence at March for Our Lives.” My friend Kate Tromble of Holy Trinity Catholic Church, Washington, D.C., and one of her daughters were quoted. Mary Muldoon, another marcher, reminded the author that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have supported an assault rifle ban since 1994.

Our Church is also on record in support of measures that control the sale and use of firearms, such as:

• universal background checks for all gun purchases.
• limitations on civilian access to high-capacity weapons and ammunition magazines.
• a federal law to criminalize gun trafficking.
• improved access to mental health care for those who may be prone to violence.
• regulations and limitations on the purchasing of handguns.
• and measures that make guns safer, such as locks, that prevent children and anyone other than the owner from using the gun without permission and supervision.

Let us hope, pray, and lobby our lawmakers that senseless and preventable gun violence against our youth in our schools, and non-youth in all settings, will come to an end as we all recognize that opposition to gun violence is a pro-life response that undergirds our prioritization of the life and dignity of the human person.

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 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”

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.