We Little Sisters spend our lives caring for the elderly, but I try to keep up with young people as much as I can. Recently I read a blog for young women about the impact of our throw-away culture on the quality of personal relationships. The more we move around, according to a recent study, the more likely we are to develop attitudes of disposability toward our material possessions – and we also come to perceive relationships in the same way.
An attitude of disposability promotes superficiality rather than deep personal relationships. Research suggests disposability is detrimental to our mental and physical health. It's no wonder that while they often seem absorbed in their mobile devices, young people crave real community and truly meaningful relationships.
Pope Francis understands the hearts of the young. His message for this year's World Day of Prayer for Vocations, to be celebrated April 17, is based on the realization that vocations are born within the community that is the Church. "The call of God comes to us by means of a mediation which is communal," the pope wrote. "God calls us to become a part of the Church and, after we have reached a certain maturity within it, he bestows on us a specific vocation. The vocational journey is undertaken together with the brothers and sisters whom the Lord has given to us: it is a con-vocation."
My conversations with women in discernment confirm that young people strongly desire life in community. At the same time, they want to give the best of themselves to the Church. How important it is for us as a community of faith to journey with young people in discernment, and to support their first steps into the priesthood and consecrated life!
It is no less important to offer our friendship to mature priests and consecrated women and men who give of themselves each day for the sake of God's people. I cannot begin to express how much the support of countless members of the Church meant to us Little Sisters of the Poor in the months leading up to our recent Supreme Court case. Many people commended us for our courage, telling us that we were standing up for religious believers of all faiths. But we could never have done it without the prayerful support of so many!
As we celebrate the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, Pope Francis is calling on all the faithful to appreciate the ecclesial dynamism of vocations, "so that communities of faith can become, after the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, like a mother's womb giving birth to new vocations. "The motherhood of the Church finds expression in constant prayer for vocations and in the work of educating and accompanying all those who perceive God's call," the pope wrote. "The Church is also the mother of vocations in her continual support of those who have dedicated their lives to the service of others."
When people asked our foundress, St. Jeanne Jugan, to pray for them, or when she wished to thank someone, she often suggested, "Let us say a Hail Mary together." On April 17, let's be mothers and fathers of vocations by offering a Hail Mary – or a whole rosary – for the priests and religious who have influenced us, and for the young people in whom we perceive the potential to be holy priests and consecrated women and men.
Sister Constance Veit is the communications director for the Little Sisters of the Poor in the United States.
What we think is the right road
The Church has no right to tell me how to vote, so if I want to be a Catholic socialist, it's up to me to decide. Socialism was also the practice of the early Church, and it was promoted by Vatican II. And, under socialism, we would get a lot of free stuff!
But it's the wrong road
That the Church and the State are separated by an impermeable wall is a grave misunderstanding of both political theory and of Catholic social doctrine. The Vatican II document "Gaudium et Spes" teaches that the Church must have the liberty to "preach the faith, to proclaim its teaching about society ... and to pass moral judgment even in matters relating to politics, whenever the fundamental rights of man or the salvation of souls requires it" (76). Every serious political judgment and every law play out against a moral horizon, and the Church not only can, but must, call us to obey God before men (Acts 5:29).
The Church – and all its homilists and teachers – must teach wise citizenship, meaning that Catholics are called upon to support and obey just laws and to challenge and resist unjust laws (for reference, see Romans 13:1-7, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church 1903, 2239 and 2242). "Without the light the Gospel sheds on God and man, societies easily become totalitarian" (CCC 2257).
Confusion is rampant in this area. A number of faithful Catholics have been taught – incorrectly – that homilies must not cross the line into "politics." To be sure, the priest should not endorse a particular candidate from the ambo. But we Catholics must hear, and we have the right to hear, about state power and whether the exercise of political authority is being accomplished "within the limits of the moral order" (CCC 1923).
If it were otherwise, the Church would stand mute and impotent before such matters as abortion, the destruction of marriage, and the critical bioethical issues of our day.
Pope Pius XI said in 1931, "Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth ...; it is based, nevertheless, on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism (and) Christian socialism are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist." St. John XXIII similarly pointed out, 30 years later, that "no Catholic could subscribe even to moderate Socialism. The reason is that Socialism is founded on a doctrine of human society which is bounded by time and takes no account of any objective other than that of material well-being. Since, therefore, it proposes a form of social organization which aims solely at production, it places too severe a restraint on human liberty, at the same time flouting the true notion of social authority."
State Socialism is a collective system of economic organization in which the major means of production and distribution are owned, managed and controlled by the government. The government becomes a monster, a leviathan (see Job, Ch. 41). When we think of the fountain of justice and of salvation as a benevolent governmental leviathan, we violate the First Commandment. "Power tends to corrupt," as Catholic writer Lord Acton told us, "and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Beware the leviathan!
In the liturgical year, we have the beautiful Feast of Christ the King to remind us that it is to Our Lord, not any government, that we always owe first and true allegiance. This is the key reason Pope Pius XI taught us that "no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist" ("Quadragesimo Anno," 120).
The leviathan – government – has no money of its own; it must expropriate every dollar it chooses to redistribute, reminding us of St. Augustine's compelling admonition: "Without justice what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers?" According to the enduring Catholic social teaching principle of subsidiarity, the central political organs of a state should not unduly interfere with local and smaller government – even, perhaps especially, in financial matters.
The Apostles did, in fact, collect and distribute goods in a small communities, but that is hardly an endorsement of a socialism which implicitly promises perfect justice once it has consolidated and monopolized power. The former Soviet Union was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, where "socialism" meant an imperfect and transitional phase on the way to perfect and eternal communism. The name of the Nazi party in Germany was the Nationalist Socialist German Workers' Party. Both leviathan ideologies sought to replace Christ the King.
Vatican II, of course, did not endorse socialism. Rather, it called us "to cultivate a properly informed conscience and to impress the divine law on affairs of the earthly city" ("Gaudium et Spes," 43). We are wise to heed the ancient counsel that "it is better to take refuge in the Lord than to put confidence in princes" (Ps 118:9), even if those princes, or candidates, are offering lots of ostensibly "free stuff."
Deacon James H. Toner serves at Our Lady of Grace Church in Greensboro.