Where's the beef?
Reidy, Maurice Timothy
THE LAST WORD WHERE'S THE BEEF? Maurice Timothy Reidy Ihave a confession to make: I've lost my taste for soup kitchens. Well, I don't have a problem with soup kitchens per se. But I...
...Some of the church's best intellectual work has been done in the field of social justice...
...No weekly Catholic roundtable, except for a periodic discussion of Catholic social teaching...
...Like most people, I chose the former...
...But at what cost...
...I'll leave it to you to figure out who sponsored those talks...
...Albert Raboteau, Paul Sigmund, and the medical ethidst James Keenan, S.J., were just a few of the luminaries then on campus...
...The church's intellectual and social-justice traditions are not separate, but part of the same cloth...
...Things aren't much better for young people who have graduated from college...
...My choices living in New York City were basically to volunteer at Covenant House or hear George Weigel at the Union League Club...
...If it packs the pews, why not give it more play...
...They, understandably, want to find ways to connect with young Catholics, so they concentrate on action for social justice and hand out copies of Dead Man Walking and the National Catholic Reporter...
...Who can argue with feeding the hungry and clothing the needy...
...Book learning should be part of the messy business of faith, and should therefore have a place in campus efforts to nurture that faith...
...Take my experience...
...Like most young Catholics, I went to a secular school, so I didn't have access to the rich stock of Catholic professors available at, say, Fordham or Notre Dame...
...Most Catholics my age have grossly neglected the church's intellectual tradition...
...No regular speakers...
...I don't want to pick on Princeton...
...Maybe the best way to get through to them is to let them see the whole package...
...I do, too...
...At a time in life when young Catholics often find themselves forced to defend their church to skeptics, it's no wonder they are drawn to a part of the tradition that has self-evident appeal...
...But—as some of my friends might ask—how can we spend our days stalking card catalogues while children go hungry...
...And that wasn't for a lack of resources...
...When you think about it, it's easy to see why social justice has taken over youth ministry...
...And it goes without saying that it's an indispensable part of the faith...
...Campus ministries run trips to Ecuador...
...Think of it this way...
...In general, there was no encouragement to read magazines like Commonweal or America...
...You've shown us Dan Berrigan and Helen Prejean...
...That fact isn't lost on Catholic chaplains and youth ministers...
...Theology departments dispense reading lists...
...But there are others who were inspired by Newman or Greene or O'Connor...
...Most Catholic activities for young adults involve making sandwiches...
...But it seems to me that, even at Catholic schools, there isn't enough effort to incorporate what goes on in the classroom into ministry programs...
...If you wanted to hear prominent Catholic speakers on a regular basis you had to attend the Jacques Maritain Society's lectures, which featured the likes of George Rutler and Henry Hyde...
...I'm glad so many people find it compelling...
...As the editor of this magazine wrote recently: "In the spirit of gospel values, all Catholics should signal support for the poor, the 'other/ the marginalized, but a naive romanticism must not lead us to suppose that the poor, the 'other/ the marginalized have needs any different from our own: to grow in wisdom and in grace, to learn, and to Team how to learn.'" I don't mean to minimize the importance of social justice...
...But I think we do a disservice to separate the two...
...Now let's see the rest...
...But ours is a catholic tradition...
...Conversely, a commitment to the poor is incomplete if it does not include an educational or intellectual component...
...Sure, there were many who arrived via Dorothy Day...
...I'm afraid the situation is much the same on many campuses...
...And it's gotten to the point where we are neglecting other parts of the tradition— particularly our intellectual heritage...
...Over the years, people have found their way in through many different doors...
...Writers like Flannery O'Connor, Georges Bernanos, and Oscar Hiiuelos are unread...
...Young conservative Catholics have a pretty good handle on this heritage, but they shouldn't have all the fun...
...Maurice Timothy Reidy is a reporter for the Hartford Courant...
...Campus ministry consisted of daily Mass, the occasional Friday night social, and weekly trips to the soup kitchen...
...Thinkers like John Tracy Ellis and John Courtney Murray are unmined...
...But I do have a problem with the prominent role they play in the church's ministry to my generation...
...For one reason, it's engaging...
...Any and all "intellectual" events seem to be sponsored by conservatives...
...While I'm sure there are places where youth ministry is diverse and stimulating (I'm told that Yale has an excellent program), my experience has been that most youth programs begin and end with trips to the soup kitchen and other social-justice activities...
...The majority of young Catholics are highly educated...
...When I was a student at Princeton in the mid-1990s, there were two options for Catholic students: join the traditional campus ministry or sign up with the local branch of Opus Dei...
...Why should things be any different today...
Vol. 128 • September 2001 • No. 15
