Of Slavery and Discrimination
News Intro Text
At times it is important for us to reiterate both Catholic teaching and the Jesuit values of Loyola. The Catechism of the Catholic Church condemns slavery as an offense against the 7th Commandment and racial discrimination as “incompatible with God’s design.”
News Item Content
<p>At times it is important for us to reiterate both Catholic teaching and the Jesuit values of Loyola University. The <em>Catechism of the Catholic Church</em> condemns slavery as an offense against the 7<sup>th</sup> Commandment for its assault on human dignity (#2424) and racial discrimination as “incompatible with God’s design” (#1935). Any defense of slavery or racial discrimination insults all those who have struggled for human dignity and racial justice at Loyola and throughout this land and minimizes the incredible violence, lynching, destruction of families, forced labor, sexual assaults, denial of rights, and systematic dehumanization that have been integral to both slavery and discrimination.</p>
<p>The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a critical legal achievement aimed to end second-class treatment of people of color. More importantly, Catholic social teaching and Jesuit values call all of us to ongoing conversion to positively promote racial equality, sharing of goods, mutual aid, and collaboration with all racial and ethnic groups.</p>
<p>The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a critical legal achievement aimed to end second-class treatment of people of color. More importantly, Catholic social teaching and Jesuit values call all of us to ongoing conversion to positively promote racial equality, sharing of goods, mutual aid, and collaboration with all racial and ethnic groups.</p>
Date
Honduran Agony: The Spiral of Violence and Corruption
News Intro Text
JSRI Associate Mary Baudouin recounts the injustices she witnessed in Honduras this past September. While Dr. Susan Weishar connects these struggles with first hand accounts experienced by local Honduran natives.
News Item Content
<h3>
<span>By Sue Weishar, Ph.D. and Mary Baudouin </span></h3>
<p>In mid- September, JSRI Associate Mary Baudouin joined a U.S. Jesuit Conference delegation for a week of traveling across Honduras to learn about the political and social problems confronting that Central American country of 8.3 million people. The delegation visited small <em>campesino</em> communities struggling to make a living after losing their land to multinational mining companies; a filthy, overcrowded prison farm where a prisoner explained he was not even present at the trial that convited him of murder; a church parish where mothers prayed to hear from their sons who had left for the United States; and a Jesuit advocacy and research center valiantly exposing the corruption and abuse strangling the country. </p>
<p>"The rule of law basically does not exist," Baudouin said. "If someone is threatened by a gang, there is nobody to call to do anything about it. People fear the police almost as much as the marco-traffickers, with whom the police are widely believed to complicit. The Bishop of La Ceibe told us of people forced at gunpoint to sell their land to mining companies. The level of violence is shocking, and the impunity enjoyed by criminal actors has led to an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. I am embarrassed to say that i knew almost nothing about how bad things have become there, even though I have known Hondurans my whole life growing up in New Orleans." </p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Winter 2013- Honduran Agony-Weishar-Baudouin-jsq_1.pdf">Read full article >></a></p>
<span>By Sue Weishar, Ph.D. and Mary Baudouin </span></h3>
<p>In mid- September, JSRI Associate Mary Baudouin joined a U.S. Jesuit Conference delegation for a week of traveling across Honduras to learn about the political and social problems confronting that Central American country of 8.3 million people. The delegation visited small <em>campesino</em> communities struggling to make a living after losing their land to multinational mining companies; a filthy, overcrowded prison farm where a prisoner explained he was not even present at the trial that convited him of murder; a church parish where mothers prayed to hear from their sons who had left for the United States; and a Jesuit advocacy and research center valiantly exposing the corruption and abuse strangling the country. </p>
<p>"The rule of law basically does not exist," Baudouin said. "If someone is threatened by a gang, there is nobody to call to do anything about it. People fear the police almost as much as the marco-traffickers, with whom the police are widely believed to complicit. The Bishop of La Ceibe told us of people forced at gunpoint to sell their land to mining companies. The level of violence is shocking, and the impunity enjoyed by criminal actors has led to an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. I am embarrassed to say that i knew almost nothing about how bad things have become there, even though I have known Hondurans my whole life growing up in New Orleans." </p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Winter 2013- Honduran Agony-Weishar-Baudouin-jsq_1.pdf">Read full article >></a></p>
Date
February is Ignatian Family Advocacy Month
News Intro Text
The month of February has been designated by the Ignatian Solidarity Network as Ignatian Family Advocacy Month.
News Item Content
<p>The month of February has been designated by the Ignatian Solidarity Network as Ignatian Family Advocacy Month. The month focuses upon the need for <a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Border-Visions-Immigration-Reform-Summer-2013-JSQ.pdf">Immigration Reform</a> and <a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/CST_Distributive_Justice.pdf">distributive justice</a> by establishing a <a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/minimum-wage-gateway-worker-dignity">fair minimum wage</a> and protecting the <a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Fall%203013-FINAL-I%20was%20hungry-Kammer-jsq_0.pdf">Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program (SNAP)</a>. More information about the month and resources are available <a href="http://ignatiansolidarity.net/ifam/">here</a>. </p>
Date
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Becoming maladjusted for the beloved community
News Intro Text
Dr. Alex Mikulich reminds us of the call of Dr. King to resist systemic and structural injustice in all its forms.
News Item Content
<p class="e2ma-p-div"><span class="e2ma-style">by Dr. Alex Mikulich</span></p>
<p class="e2ma-p-div">I am struck every Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday by the contrast between the way American society treated the living Dr. King and the icon the nation venerates today. </p>
<p class="e2ma-p-div">As society venerates an icon, I wonder if we lose the heart and soul of Dr. King’s message to become “courageously maladjusted” and transform the “midnight” of militarism, consumerism, and racism into the light of racial and economic justice. </p>
<div class="e2ma-p-div">
<p class="e2ma-p-div">One need not venture too far into the archives of Civil Rights history to find how numerous “foot soldiers” gave their lives for civil rights and how many leaders, including Dr. King, knew they were risking their lives. Nor do we need to venture too far to learn that too<span class="e2ma-style"> many </span>white Americans, north and south, felt threatened by the Civil Rights movement and Dr. King’s critique of American society. As a child, I recall how conversations among family and friends either dismissed him as a pariah or feared him as a “radical.”</p>
<p class="e2ma-p-div">Too often the media or speakers take a narrow focus on Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech as if he never wrote or said anything else. Too frequently King’s dream that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” is cited without reference to the speech’s opening indictment: “we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.” Indeed, Dr. King did call for individuals to be judged by their character in the context of calling the nation to transform structures of economic and racial injustice into the Beloved Community. </p>
<p class="e2ma-p-div">Dr. King communicated his pride in becoming “maladjusted.” While he always recognized that people need a balanced life to avoid becoming neurotic or schizophrenic, he invited Americans to become maladjusted to injustice. Passive acceptance of an unjust system, King wrote in <i>The Strength to Love </i>and said repeatedly, is to “cooperate with that system and thereby to become a participant in its evil.”</p>
<p class="e2ma-p-div">To paraphrase Dr. King, we must never “adjust to the evils of segregation and discrimination" or “to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few,” or “to the madness of militarism.” These evils endure as the “midnight” we live today. </p>
<p class="e2ma-p-div">There seems to be no enlightened path forward when so many seem well adjusted to the “midnight” of injustice. In his essay and speech “A Knock at Midnight,” King called people of faith to be the light of the Gospel in this midnight. It was only by embracing the “darkest hour of struggle,” where faith “adjourns the assemblies of hopelessness and brings new light into the dark chambers of pessimism.”</p>
<p class="e2ma-p-div">Dr. King’s voice and witness still rings out to us: only by becoming a community of faith maladjusted in Jesus may we be the light of truth that shines in a new morning of peace rooted in justice and love. How will we take up this communal task?</p>
</div>
<p><a href="http://e2.ma/webview/zup1d/53ce6c3a83de49f8f4f8cb7ccc3fced4">More>></a></p>
<p class="e2ma-p-div">I am struck every Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday by the contrast between the way American society treated the living Dr. King and the icon the nation venerates today. </p>
<p class="e2ma-p-div">As society venerates an icon, I wonder if we lose the heart and soul of Dr. King’s message to become “courageously maladjusted” and transform the “midnight” of militarism, consumerism, and racism into the light of racial and economic justice. </p>
<div class="e2ma-p-div">
<p class="e2ma-p-div">One need not venture too far into the archives of Civil Rights history to find how numerous “foot soldiers” gave their lives for civil rights and how many leaders, including Dr. King, knew they were risking their lives. Nor do we need to venture too far to learn that too<span class="e2ma-style"> many </span>white Americans, north and south, felt threatened by the Civil Rights movement and Dr. King’s critique of American society. As a child, I recall how conversations among family and friends either dismissed him as a pariah or feared him as a “radical.”</p>
<p class="e2ma-p-div">Too often the media or speakers take a narrow focus on Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech as if he never wrote or said anything else. Too frequently King’s dream that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” is cited without reference to the speech’s opening indictment: “we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.” Indeed, Dr. King did call for individuals to be judged by their character in the context of calling the nation to transform structures of economic and racial injustice into the Beloved Community. </p>
<p class="e2ma-p-div">Dr. King communicated his pride in becoming “maladjusted.” While he always recognized that people need a balanced life to avoid becoming neurotic or schizophrenic, he invited Americans to become maladjusted to injustice. Passive acceptance of an unjust system, King wrote in <i>The Strength to Love </i>and said repeatedly, is to “cooperate with that system and thereby to become a participant in its evil.”</p>
<p class="e2ma-p-div">To paraphrase Dr. King, we must never “adjust to the evils of segregation and discrimination" or “to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few,” or “to the madness of militarism.” These evils endure as the “midnight” we live today. </p>
<p class="e2ma-p-div">There seems to be no enlightened path forward when so many seem well adjusted to the “midnight” of injustice. In his essay and speech “A Knock at Midnight,” King called people of faith to be the light of the Gospel in this midnight. It was only by embracing the “darkest hour of struggle,” where faith “adjourns the assemblies of hopelessness and brings new light into the dark chambers of pessimism.”</p>
<p class="e2ma-p-div">Dr. King’s voice and witness still rings out to us: only by becoming a community of faith maladjusted in Jesus may we be the light of truth that shines in a new morning of peace rooted in justice and love. How will we take up this communal task?</p>
</div>
<p><a href="http://e2.ma/webview/zup1d/53ce6c3a83de49f8f4f8cb7ccc3fced4">More>></a></p>
Date
January is Poverty Awareness Month
News Intro Text
The month of January has been designated by the U.S. Catholic Bishops as Poverty Awareness Month.
News Item Content
<p>The month of January has been designated by the U.S. Catholic Bishops as Poverty Awareness Month. Resources are available <a href="http://www.usccb.org/about/catholic-campaign-for-human-development/poverty-education/poverty-awareness-month.cfm">here</a>. Catholic Social Teaching focuses on poverty as an assault on human life and dignity <a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/CSTandPoverty-Winter2009jsq_0.pdf">here</a>. </p>
Date
This is National Migration Week
News Intro Text
January 5-11 is National Migration Week, focusing the attention of Catholics and others on the plight of refugees, immigrants, and migrant workers here in the United States and across the world.
News Item Content
<p>January 5-11 is National Migration Week, focusing the attention of Catholics and others on the plight of refugees, immigrants, and migrant workers here in the United States and across the world. The <a href="http://www.justiceforimmigrants.org/index.shtml">Justice for Immigrants website</a> of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops contains extensive materials on people on the move and what each of us can do to respect and promote their rights. See JSRI materials on migration<a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/migration"> here</a>.</p>
Date
December Monthly Calls Us to Gospel Solidarity
News Intro Text
In the December Monthly, Dr. Mikulich calls to mind the joy of living Gospel Solidarity
News Item Content
<p>In the <a href="http://e2.ma/message/70vwd/vr4vzb">December </a><em><a href="http://e2.ma/message/70vwd/vr4vzb">JustSouth Monthly</a>, </em>Dr. Alex Mikulich reflects on the call of Pope Francis to live the joy of Gospel solidarity and its place in our reflection on the mystery of Christmas and the angel's message to the poor shepherds.</p>
Date
JustSouth Monthly focuses on gratitude for immigrant workers
News Intro Text
The November JustSouth Monthly focused attention on the importance of gratitude to workers in our discussion of immigration reform.
News Item Content
<p>In the November 2013 <em>JustSouth Monthly, </em>Dr. Sue Weishar called upon New Orleaneans and others to remember the importance of gratitude in the Ignatian tradition and its application to discussions of immigrant workers, reminding all of us of the critical contribution which immigrant workers made to the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after hurricane Katrina. See <a href="http://e2.ma/message/b4gud/vr4vzb">monthly.</a></p>
Date
JSRI Launches JustSouth Monthly
News Intro Text
In October JSRI converted its JustSouth Enews into the JustSouth Monthly, focusing on perspectives on faith doing justice. The monthly is distributed to all Loyola students, staff, and faculty and 1500 persons on the JSRI mailing list.
News Item Content
<p>In October JSRI converted its <em>JustSouth Enews</em> into the <em>JustSouth Monthly,</em> focusing on perspectives on faith doing justice and well as reports on JSRI activities and upcoming events. The monthly is distributed to all Loyola students, staff, and faculty and 1500 persons on the JSRI mailing list. The <a href="http://e2.ma/message/r04qd/vr4vzb">October Monthly</a> featured <em>The Globalization of Indifference: Pope Francis asks, "Who is responsible?"</em> by JSRI director Fred Kammer, SJ.</p>
Date
New JustSouth Quarterly published
News Intro Text
The Fall 2013 JustSouth Quarterly addresses the assault on the hungry, CST and hunger, and marching for racial justice.
News Item Content
<p>The new <a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/justsouth-quarterly"><em>JustSouth Quarterly </em></a>addresses the relentless assault on America's hungry, Catholic Soclal Thought and hunger, and the meaning of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.</p>
Date