Marching for Life, Again & Again

This year marked my 7^th 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.  

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!

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. 

Advent: Coming to Christmas

Advent is a season of waiting in excited and hopeful preparation within the Catholic Church. The first Sunday of Advent, marks the beginning of the New Year within the Church. For many, the Advent season is marked with the frenzy of putting up Christmas decorations and finding the perfect gift. As children, we may have had Advent calendars where you opened a window every day and got a piece of chocolate. A piece of chocolate every day for 25 days is a very exciting prospect as a child, especially when you get to eat it before breakfast. Within the Church, however, Advent holds much more meaning than a piece of chocolate a day or Christmas decorations.

Advent comes from the Latin word ‘adventus’, meaning ‘coming’. During this season we are looking forward toward the coming of Christ. In some ways, it seems strange to put so much emphasis on looking forward to birth of Christ. This is an event that happened in the past, Christ came as a child nearly 2,000 years ago; He is not being re-born every year. We also are not celebrating His birthday in the terms of celebrating another year of life, we are celebrating His birth. So why is it that every year we dedicate an entire season to waiting in hope and anticipation for His coming when we know that He has already come to Earth?

The answer to this is really twofold. First, looking forward and waiting for His coming reminds us of the time before Jesus came to Earth. A time in which the Chosen People really were longing for His coming. While it is hard to fathom that people lived before the first coming of Jesus Christ, it is a reality. Consider the Jews fleeing the Egyptians, their prayers were different than ours in that they were praying for the first coming of Jesus. We are fortunate enough to live during a time in which we have already gotten to experience the first coming of Jesus and have the opportunity to experience His presence in the physical form every day in the Eucharist. 

The second aspect is that we are always waiting in joyful expectation for the Second Coming of Jesus. We are fully aware that we do not know the time nor the place when Jesus will return to Earth. The season of Advent, which reminds us how the Jewish people waited for the first coming of Christ, reminds us that we must always be ready for the Second Coming. The Advent season is a perfect time to ask ourselves if we are prepared to meet Jesus face to face if He should decide to come again during our lifetime.

One tradition that has been handed down through the generations in my family is the preparation of the manger for Jesus’ birth. On the first Sunday of Advent, we set up a manger scene in our house, complete with all the characters minus the baby Jesus. Every day after dinner we gather together as a family and discuss what good deeds we have done for others. For every good deed, we got straw to put in the manger. Over the four weeks, the straw in the manger builds up. By the time Christmas comes, and as long as we have actually performed good deeds, the manger is warm for baby Jesus because of the straw. As little kids, this was a good way of getting us to think about preparing our hearts for Christmas and being able to see the results. This daily exercise of having to think through your day and question if you have performed any good ideas prompts you to remember what the Advent season is all about.

As we prepare for the coming of Christmas this year, let’s try not to forget the importance of Advent. It is through full participation in the Advent season that we are able to truly rejoice in the joy of Christmas. 

The Beauty of Music

As a child I spent countless hours banging away at a piano. I’m honestly not sure I can even call it playing or even practicing. I just banged the keys -- off-rhythm and more often than not, hitting the wrong keys. My stubborn Irish grandma told me that if I just acted like I played the whole song right and didn’t stop that nobody would ever know the difference. I believed her. One time my mom took my sister and I to a specialty teacher that made me sit there for an hour and hit the drum in rhythm. My sister picked it up within the first minute or two and I left after an hour still unsure of what I was doing wrong. Eventually I realized the piano wasn’t for me. Neither was any type of instrument. Or singing for that matter.

A couple months after I gave up on my dream of becoming the best pianist in the world, a priest told me that if you can sing you should use the gift God gave you and if you can’t sing you should sing twice as loud as a gentle reminder to God that singing was not your gift. Since then I’ve been sending a constant gentle reminder to God, especially around Christmas time. I will freely admit that I am one of those people who loves when Christmas music comes on in mid-October. Advent and the Christmas season are my favorite time of the year in the Church because of how exciting and joyous the music is at Mass. 

Advent is a season of waiting in the Church – we are waiting, excited and filled with hope as we look forward to the birth of our Savior, the baby Jesus. The music associated with the Advent season is perhaps some of the most hopeful music within the Church. It is music that inspires giving and encourages us to faithfully prepare ourselves to celebrate one of the most anticipated seasons of the year.

This year, Notre Dame will once again present its annual Advent Lessons and Carols service. This event features all of the Basilica choirs, including the Notre Dame Liturgical Choir, the Women’s Liturgical Choir, Folk Choir, Handbell Choir and the Basilica Schola. Advent Lessons and Carols includes music and readings that are all presented in candlelight in the Basilica. An interdenominational service centered on the singing of traditional Advent and Christmas carols. The event is based off the Anglican Church’s Christmas Eve service. This year, Advent Lessons and Carols will take place in the Basilica of the Scared Heart on Sunday, December 8^th at 7:15pm.

This event is a great way to continue to prepare ourselves for the Christmas season. It is a chance to hear some of the amazing talent that we take for granted all too often at Notre Dame. If you were gifted with the talent of vocals, it is a chance to join in with some beautiful music and if you were not, it is a great opportunity to send yet another reminder to God. 

New Evangelization

November 24^th, 2013 marks the end of the Year of Faith as declared by Pope Benedict XVI. This Year of Faith was themed, “The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith”, a year to “usher the whole Church into a time of particular reflection and rediscovery of the faith.” The process of reflection and rediscovery is not a process that ought to come to a dead halt on November 24^th. The movement of the “New Evangelization” that was started by the hierarchy of the Church around the time of the Second Vatican Council is one that is vital for all of the lay people to consider in their faith lives.

                Many Catholics are hesitant about the idea of Evangelization. The idea of going out and preaching the Good News and attempting to persuade others of your faith which you know to be Truth is difficult. In some ways, evangelization seems to be a part of the history of the Church. We are familiar with the stories of the apostles and their journeys to various parts of the world to spread the good news like St. Paul and his many letters, Luke the evangelist who traveled with St. Paul, and John who traveled all around Asia Minor.   There is a distinct association of evangelization with the persecution of the early church up through the Middle Ages, which is perhaps why in this modern age we are reluctant to heed the Pope's call.

                Evangelization in modern America, however, very rarely results in death. Today, living out your faith results in a new kind of persecution. Catholic culture is by no means mainstream. In fact, living a Catholic life is very counter-cultural. In a recent homily on the beatitudes, a Holy Cross Father remarked on how living life according to Catholic teaching should not be easy. We live in a culture where we are pulled in an opposite direction. Hollywood teaches us that casual sex is the norm, that modesty is irrelevant and that we should be allowed to express ourselves in whatever means necessary. It is extremely difficult to live a life fully steeped in our Catholic faith where we evangelize through our actions rather than words.

In a recent study performed by the Pew Research Center, only 41% of Catholics report attending worship serves on a weekly basis, 41% report attending monthly or a few times a year and 17% never or seldom attend. We’ve all been in mass on Christmas or Easter in extremely over packed church’s wondering why it is we never see some parishioners at regular Sunday masses. The New Evangelization encourages us to seek out these Catholics. Catholics who have been swayed by the mass media, Catholics who need a helping hand in returning to the faith. This New Evangelization calls us to always be witnesses to our faith and to be vocal about it, to explain why we are Catholic and what that means to us and engage in dialogue with those around us.

       
          Living out our Catholic faith in light of the New Evangelization we are called to means much more than daily prayer or weekly mass. It means first being a witness in the fights we are waging – it means being willing and open to adoption as pro-lifers, it means defending the stance of traditional marriage through both word and action, it means serving and befriending the poor. Being an evangelizing Catholic means encouraging our family and friends to do the same. It means preaching the Good News everywhere we go and not being afraid to talk to others we know to be of different faiths about our own beliefs.

Discernment: What's it All About!?

Discernment: It’s one of those words you are probably very familiar with if you grew up in the Catholic faith and one you’ve probably never heard of if you didn’t. In recent years, I’ve grown very wary of this word. People throw around the word like they should be discerning every life choice. “I’m not sure if I should apply to the program, I have to discern. I’m discerning if this is the right college for me. We are discerning a relationship.” These casual references to discernment, however, detract from the real meaning. Even more than that, I’ve found myself truly frustrated with those people who use ‘discerning’ as a way to push off a commitment or a decision. Several times I’ve heard that discernment is a Catholic’s way to make procrastination seem okay. At the same time, however, discernment is a process that is taught and endorsed by the Catholic Church, so shouldn’t we support it? Well, that depends on the definition and context of discernment.

Discernment can be defined in so many different ways. We can consider spiritual discernment, vocational discernment, career discernment or everyday discernment just to name a few. Digging deeper, we can even consider different approaches to discernment, most notably Ignatius discernment. With all the different types of discernment, however, the most important aspect remains the same, and that is to be acting in accordance with God’s will. Sounds easy, right?

In a conversation with Ed Mack who works with students at ND seeking guidance in discernment, and quite an expert on the subject, he noted that the two most vital things in a discernment process are honesty and prayer: honesty, especially with yourself, and prayer, taking time out of your day and in your decision process to spend time with God. It seems like nearly everyone has a different opinion on how to go about the discernment process, with all of their suggestions including finding peace in your decision. Again, this doesn’t sound super simple, so let’s break it down.

What does it mean to be honest with yourself? Well, this should be the easy part -- if we just eliminate all the influences constantly surrounding us. Unfortunately, that’s generally impossible to achieve. So what do we do? Maybe we give up. Or maybe we first try to be honest with ourselves; are we simply using this discernment period to delay a decision or are we truly struggling with what is the right decision? And then we find those people in our lives who we can always talk to. Those people who will allow us to talk through our decisions and offer advice that we value. Our family and friends often know us best and if they’re true friends, they’ll support us in decisions we think are best for us and will push us to do better when we go down a wrong path. So talk to a friend, a spiritual director, a priest, or Ed Mack! (His office is in CoMo right by the ball floating in water and he is quite open to students dropping by whenever.)

Praying also seems like an easy task. We’ve all been taught how to pray at some point in our lives. However, when we think about finding peace with our decision through prayer, we immediately come up against the question of, how do we know if we’ve found peace? What does that mean? The problem with starting discernment in this way is that if we’ve never known or felt peace, how will we recognize if we are at peace with our decision? As a result, in addition to Ed Mack’s two criteria, I would add a third: if we have never felt peace in our lives, most importantly in our prayer lives, we must learn what it means for us to be at peace. This perhaps is the hardest piece of the puzzle – knowing that we have come to the right decision.

 

In his most recent interview with America magazine, Pope Francis offered some wisdom on the process of discernment. He said, “Sometimes discernment instead urges us to do precisely what you had at first thought you would do later…I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time. The wisdom of discernment redeems the necessary ambiguity of life and helps us find the most appropriate means, which do not always coincide with what looks great and strong.”

The process of discernment takes time and generally relates to big decisions in our lives. We need to be patient in these decisions, but also ready to take the first step.   God works with each one of us in a unique way, all we have to do is listen and follow.