SCCC - Justice/Service

Baptized for the World      Printable Copy

by Mary Lou McGee

Jesus said, “…be my witnesses…to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)  For the last 40 years, the church has been getting back to its roots, to living as a community fulfilling its mission…of service to the gospel.   Small Christian Communities have been integral to this renewal. 

In his empirical study of the Catholic Experience of Small Christian Communities (Paulist, 2001), Bernard J. Lee, SM, discovered SCC members are active, participating Catholics, who attend Sunday liturgy regularly, pray daily and are active in parish ministries. However, members “attend much more easily to a community’s inner life than to the faith’s public life.”  SCC members do have positive attitudes regarding social issues; they do talk about social concerns at their gatherings but Lee said, “there is no real follow-through that would have them making a difference.”  Lee challenged SCC members to strengthen their focus on outreach/mission as an essential reality in living fully as SCC’s, both are gathered and sent. 

So what’s happening today?  Here are some responses from members of mature SCC’s, who were contacted for this article.

John Meyer, an SCC member for over 30 years, first experienced the power of SCC in Panama in 1969.  His Phoenix SCC has evolved over the years growing from a Marriage Encounter Group into an Apostolic Community, then adding new members and becoming more inclusive.    They have done outreach, such as sponsoring needy families, but group outreach has been challenging with family and work commitment.  Members do support one another in individual ministries: deacon, theology teacher, catechetical leader, St. Vincent de Paul and Parish Social Justice Committee.

An SCC member for more than six years Frank Pease’s men’s spirituality group feeds the homeless at a men’s shelter.  Individually, members engage in “humble service unnoticed,” counseling terminally ill patients, serving on parish volunteer committees and developing a kinder, more patient attitude in their relationships.

Established more than 30 years, a Colorado SCC is actively involved in group outreach by supporting their twin SCC in Tanzania as well the local needy with material resources and prayer.  Individual outreach includes serving in soup kitchens, visiting the sick and gathering needed materials for homeless and battered women’s shelters.

A St. Austin Parish SCC, gathering for more than 14 years, has engaged in both group and individual outreach.  Member, Sharon Bieser, says they wrestled with the decision to undertake a major housing project as a group instead of participating in mission activities individually.  They decided to do both.  The transitional housing project their SCC started has served more than 50 families in Austin. Members make mission trips to colonias and orphanages in Mexico.  They also advocate for the poor at all governmental levels and work with alcoholics and addicts in recovery.

I asked one of the most committed, socially conscious persons I know, my friend, Tom McLaughlin, an SCC paticipant, what he thought moved people from “talking to walking?”  Tom, who runs the St. Vincent De Paul Winter Shelter Program , responded, “It’s the experience. Reaching out to others touches something within our own experience. The doing transforms our thinking, builds empathy within us and changes our hearts…and with ensuing experiences, the transformation deepens.   It’s not skills or intellectual knowledge—it’s the experience! 

At the Last Supper, Jesus stoops to wash the apostles’ feet and he tells them to do the same for one another. Felix Just, SJ, the Scripture scholar, says with the attention Jesus gives to the ritual of washing his disciples’ feet, wouldn’t you think “washing the feet” would be a sacrament?  When we reach out to wash one another’s feet in loving service –we become bearers of God’s grace—sacraments to one another.  We have been baptized for the world—“to share the message of Christ, to renew and transform the social and temporal order.”

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Resisting Issues of Justice                   Printable Copy  
Taken from a 2001 interview of Rich Fowler, National Council of Bishops

“Social action, outreach and justice work is how we learn as a community to care about our brothers and sisters across the aisle in church, across the street, across town or across oceans.”  Rich Fowler

“People of faith have a responsibility to figure out what their faith is and what implications that has for public policy and then to lobby for that policy. That is a right and a responsibility we have and there is nothing in our government that says we shouldn’t do that.” Rich Fowler

What are the reasons so many individuals and groups resist working on issues of justice?

• They don’t know the church’s teaching
• They think others are doing it
• They prefer the immediate gratification of direct service
• They are afraid; it’s controversial; people of good will have different opinions
• They have learned that being a Christian is nice and this stuff is not nice
• They don’t know how to do it; they aren’t confident that they know enough to talk about the issues
• They believe that as church members they have no business in the political arena
  

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