Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Marching for Life, Again & Again

This year marked my 7th year attending the National March for Life in Washington D.C. Over the past seven years, I’ve had the opportunity to lead the entire national March, be in charge of organizing trips for my high school and coordinate efforts on behalf of Notre Dame Right to Life. I’ve attended the youth rally at the Verizon Center, gone to the Students for Life of America conference, the Rose Dinner, and the National Review conference, met various senators and congressmen and done everything in between.

My first March for Life, I was a naïve high school freshman looking for an adventure and a chance to miss school to hang out with my older sister and friends. Little did I know that this trip to D.C. was going to become a yearly pilgrimage and end up altering my perspective on life so dramatically. Attending the March all through high school, I vividly remember watching Sister Mary, our high school chaperone, marching us girls through hundreds of thousands of people while holding a tiny stick with two pieces of ribbon. We were told that if we lost sight of that ribbon, we were responsible for finding our own way back to NJ. All of us held tightly to each other, scared of being the one left behind. Looking back, I’m not sure how we all made it safely home, but thank God we did!

In college, attending the March for Life became a larger time commitment, missing classes and opportunities to hang out with friends. Eventually, I had to question why it was so important for me to attend this event every year, what was I getting out of it and what did I hope to achieve? At first, the answer was obvious, I was pro-life, and this was an event I was expected to attend as a pro-lifer. But that simple explanation didn’t hold much weight when you considered the idea of 12 hour bus ride, nights sleeping on a concrete floor and standing outside in the freezing cold.

When I really started to question why I come, I found that attending the March for Life served two main purposes in my life. First, it allowed me an opportunity to discuss my beliefs with my friends. Often times, it’s not easy discussing the question of abortion or contraceptives or even adoption, with friends. Many college age students have been affected by these issues, many have strong opinions they are not willing to stray from and get offended when they are questioned at all. More often than not, it is easy to empathize with friends when these issues come up, not wanting to hurt feelings or step on toes, however, when you attend the March for Life, it is hard to hide your beliefs. Friends question why you’re going to be gone for a couple days, where you’re going and why you’re going and you’re forced to face your fear of receiving judging looks and comments from friends or classmates. These conversations, though painful, are so important to being pro-life and showing people that there is another way to live besides what the media portrays.   


The second purpose, and perhaps more central to my pro-life beliefs, is that attending the March for Life is inspiring. Being pro-life is extremely counter-cultural, and it can be exhausting, both mentally and spiritually. Throughout my four years in college, I’ve questioned why I’m pro-life many times but it has always come back to the fact that I cannot stand for injustice. I get so upset when I hear that abortionists are permitted to continue their practice even though they have illegally performed abortions on underage girls and not reported that they may be rape victims or that health violations are not looked into until a woman is hurt at a clinic. I do not understand how ‘feminist’s’ who say that all they want is equality, continue to look the other way after hearing stories like the Gosnell trial. The pro-life movement has morality, economics, and philosophy on its side and yet sometimes it seems as if we are shouting to an empty room. It can be very tiring. This tiredness, and frustration, however, is washed away as you stand packed into National Mall with over 400,000 other people on your side. The pilgrimage to the March for Life every year is about more than seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade, it is about remembering that you are not alone, that there is an entire community of support, and that we can make a difference. Without this support and this yearly reminder, it is easy to be upset, to give up, and it is this reason that I have continued to come back to D.C. every year.  

Monday, January 20, 2014

Catholic Economics: Paradox or Truth?

One of the things that first drew me to learn more about Catholic Social Teaching were the questions I had about the Church’s teaching as an Economics major. Economics is all about supply and demand, searching for the perfect equilibrium and maximizing outcomes. An interest in public policy has also prompted me to question what the role is of Catholic teaching in regards to government and the economy. My interests have prompted some nagging questions about the government’s role in providing for the poor, specifically in regards to people living on welfare and the minimum wage.

Both of these topics inspired many talks and debates with friends and family as I struggled through what the Church thought and my understandings of its teachings. After learning a couple years ago about the difficulty for those in a low socioeconomic group to live on minimum wage, I had become convinced that raising the minimum wage was not only the answer to ridding the U.S. of poverty, but a necessity in order to allow people to live with the dignity that they deserve. At that point, I became a big advocate of the minimum wage.

As I learned more about economics, in particular labor economics, I began to change my mind. I began to understand that increasing the minimum wage would decrease the amount of jobs and lead to many jobs going to part time, similar to the response to the Affordable Care Act seen by many businesses. Many small businesses would not be able to survive in this type of economy as they would end up running a deficit. If small businesses are not able to survive and many jobs are cut, this policy would hurt the poor even more. So perhaps we should not raise the minimum wage. But this did not change the fact that it is nearly impossible to live on a minimum wage in the United States. So what is the answer to this conundrum?

Many conversations with my dad and his perspective as a small business owner, prompted me to look deeper into what the Church teaches on the minimum wage and other welfare policies. My Introduction to Catholic Social Teaching class last semester provided me with the perfect opportunity to study and discuss exactly what it is that the Church teaches on this topic. What I discovered is that the Church’s teaching on these social economic issues are still being worked out as the perfect answer has yet to be discovered.


My biggest breakthrough in understanding the Church’s teaching came with the understanding that the Church does not encourage one perfect system of government. The Church acknowledges that there are pros and cons to different government systems, and that as long as the government is based on human dignity, many different types of government set-ups can be considered just. In regards to minimum wage, the Church advocates for a liberal teaching; not, however, in the traditional terms of ‘liberal’. The Church advocates for a personal liberal stance – that each business owner should take into account his or her employees and pay them both according to their ability and taking into account their dignity and familial circumstances. Small businesses that are just beginning and not producing a profit, may have to pay their employees a lesser wage in order to be able to compete in the market and get their feet on the ground. Once the business starts to return a profit, however, the employees should be rewarded. In regards to a government-set minimum wage, however, I personally do not see a strong Catholic argument for such a policy. The Church does not necessarily see this as the role of government but the responsibility of each of us to look out for our brothers and sisters. I understand the Church’s call to advance the economic freedom of everyone as a call to personal liberalism rather than a liberal government. This idea revolves around the notion of subsidiarity -- that what can be done on a local level, should be done on that level rather than relying on a more centralized organization. This difference was key to my understanding of the teaching of the Catholic Church. Because Catholic Social Teaching is still being expanded upon, these are questions that are being debated and dialogued about with many Church authorities. As a Catholic Economist I will definitely be keeping an eye out for what the future holds in light of these teachings!

Monday, January 13, 2014

Catholic Social Teaching

Entering into my senior year this past August, I decided that I should seize the opportunity to learn more about the Catholic Church while I had access to some of the best theologians in the world. Almost by chance I stumbled upon and ended up adding the Catholic Social Tradition minor. I was looking for a class that offered the opportunity to study some of the papal encyclicals, writings that I did not even know existed until I came to Notre Dame. The class that offered this opportunity was the Catholic Social Tradition minor introductory class and while I was at first hesitant about the class, it ended up opening my eyes to a new perspective on the Church’s teaching.

Catholic Social Teaching is an aspect of our faith that is often forgotten about, regularly referred to as the Church’s Best Kept Secret. The Gospels and the life of Jesus Christ lay the foundation for Catholic Social Teaching. Although this foundation was laid over 2,000 years ago, the philosophy and term “Catholic Social Teaching” did not come about until a series of encyclicals were written on the idea of social teaching. Beginning with Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 and continuing today with Lumen Fidei by Pope Francis, the past 100+ years have featured prolific writing on thephilosophy of Catholic Social Teaching. So what is Catholic Social Teaching and why is it that we don’t hear more about it?

At its core, Catholic Social Teaching is a call to love and protect human dignity, most especially the dignity of the poor. Through the recognition of the dignity of the poor blossoms a commitment to improve the circumstances of the poor. We come to recognize this inherent dignity and this commitment through our experiences of Christ in the Eucharist, God humbling himself out of love for us. In seeking to understand Christ, we are often called to study his life. The life of Christ portrays a complete commitment to the poor. Consider that Jesus was born in a manger, the Holy Family fleeing from persecution and that he made a living as a carpenter. Jesus could have been born into any circumstances he chose. He could have been born an earthly king as well as a heavenly one and yet he chose to be among the poorest of the poor. This decision to live among the poor provides a lesson that no other king has been able to provide because Jesus truly lived out his teaching.

In the story of the Rich Young Man seeking to follow Jesus, Jesus told the young man “if you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me” (Matthew 19:21). Jesus’s life and teaching revolve around a commitment to the poor, to loving those whom he considers his equals. This tenement is at the core of Catholic Social Teaching, this is how Jesus calls us to live our lives.


While the call to love and the model of Jesus’s life are a powerful foundation, in my Introduction to Catholic Social Teaching class, I found that the prolific writing on Catholic Social Teaching challenged many beliefs I had always believed to be endorsed by the Catholic Church. This class challenged be to come to a deeper understanding of my faith by way of reason, forcing me to examine and grapple with my beliefs rather than assume them to be true. In my next blog post I will expand upon the aspects of Catholic Social Teaching that I most struggled with and my perspective on them.