Prayers for Christian Unity Apply to Catholics Too

By Bishop Denis Madden

As the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity draws to a close, maybe it would be a good idea for Catholics to resolve to spend the other 50 weeks of the year praying for Catholic unity. This is something Catholics already do at every Mass, praying for the Church and for the pope, whose unenviable job it is to hold the entire Church together. The least we can do, with our prayers and our actions, is make that job a little easier for him.

Unfortunately, the Catholic Church in the United States suffers from increasing division. Journalist John Allen described this in 2009 as a kind of "tribalism" in which a variety of groups within the Church all "speak their own language, follow their own heroes, and engage members of the other tribes largely as sparring partners in ideological debates."

One could argue that Catholics get along better with members of other faith traditions who happen to share our views on certain hot-button issues than we do with our fellow Catholics whose lived-out faith has a different emphasis than our own. If this is the case, maybe it would help if Catholics involved in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue shared some of the lessons we have learned in promoting harmony between people of faith with divergent views:

1. Pray together. It's simple, but it's an essential part of ecumenical dialogue especially because prayer brings us closer to Christ. The classic image of ecumenism is that of different Christians like spokes on a wheel with Christ at the hub. The spokes are closest to each other when they're closest to the center. Catholics have the added benefit that they not only can pray the Creed and read the Scriptures together, but also share in the sacraments, the signs of God's grace that unite us as a Church.

2. Do good works together. This approach shifts the focus away from divisive issues and allows both parties to witness to their faith through actions. It could be volunteering at a soup kitchen, helping at-risk youth with their homework, visiting the sick and imprisoned or any of a number of ministries. We encounter Christ in the poor and the marginalized, so this work would allow otherwise warring Catholics to encounter him together.

3. Try to understand one another. Our culture often fixates on proving to the other guy how wrong he is. The goal of dialogue is to understand the other. It's easy to assume someone acts a certain way for the wrong reasons. But Catholics should recognize our differences as a vital diversity, part of the richness of the Church, the one body with many parts. As St. Paul says to the Corinthians in this Sunday's readings, "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I do not need you.'" Whether someone is passionately defending the unborn, the poor, the immigrant, the worker, etc., all of these efforts are part of a consistent bigger picture.

4. Always charity. When all else fails, choose to love. The Church is a family. Family is about not always having things exactly as we want them, about learning patience. It's about loving and supporting one another in spite of our failures and flaws. Pope Benedict recently said that divisions among Christians "disfigure" the Church. We have no option but to put our best face forward.

Bishop Madden is an auxiliary bishop of Baltimore and chairman of the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Catholics Care. Catholics Vote: Poverty and Helping People to Flourish

"The poor you will always have with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them," Jesus says in Mark's Gospel.

This would, at face value, seem like a fairly open-ended statement. But it gets a pretty heavy degree of specificity from the U.S. bishops in the introductory note to the reissued Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, when the bishops cite "an economic crisis ... , increasing national and global unemployment, poverty, and hunger; increasing deficits and debt and the duty to respond in ways which protect those who are poor and vulnerable as well as future generations" as one of their six areas of concern going into the 2012 elections.

If these are issues that are supposed to matter to Catholics, the bishops have certainly led by example in this area. For the Church, political engagement isn't just about what happens in a voting booth in November; it's about consistently bringing one's values and perspective to the public discussion. The U.S. bishops have brought their values to the issues of debt, poverty, unemployment and hunger in numerous letters to leaders in Congress. The Vatican has even tackled the more overarching challenge of financial reform.

Of course, every Catholic is called to engage the political process, as voters, lawmakers, advocates, etc. And all Catholics are called to, as Jesus said, do good for the poor, through whatever means are at their disposal, whether they're a teacher educating the next generation, a banker engaging in responsible lending practices or a legislator shaping public policy that will impact millions of lives. In his encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI called this the "institutional path of charity."

On this path, Catholic teaching places a crowded cast of characters, all with their own responsibilities: government, businesses, churches and other organizations, and individuals. The Church's vision for society involves all of these stakeholders working together in a way that allows people to flourish, living life with a sense of dignity and reaching the potential God intended for them. In Catholic terms, everyone has a responsibility to promote the common good. To keep this from becoming stifling or chaotic, the Church prescribes principles like solidarity and subsidiarity.

Solidarity is the recognition of the responsibility of everyone in society to care for those who are poor and vulnerable. (The words of Jesus in Matthew 25 put this in perspective by saying that feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc. are requirements for entering the kingdom.) Subsidiarity is the principle that says care for the poor -- and all human problems, in fact -- should be addressed at the lowest level possible and the highest level necessary. It promotes the robust network of relationships in society, from the individual to the global. It can be seen at work when, for instance, funding from the federal government goes to finance anti-poverty programs that are regulated and administered at the state or local level, often by charities, sometimes by Catholic charities.

The goal is always human flourishing. The tangled, interconnected mess of joblessness, the economy, poverty, etc. is a political concern for the bishops because it impacts the lives and dignity of so many. "Work is more than a way to make a living," the bishops write in Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, "it is a form of continuing participation in God's creation." And as so many people struggle in financial hardship to regain that part of their lives, it becomes apparent that "The poor you will always have with you" isn't a license to ignore the poor or assume they will disappear when times improve for everyone. Rather it's a reminder of a duty shared by everyone and articulated by the bishops:  "The economy must serve people, not the other way around."