Every year, the Office of Student Development sponsors a Leadership Summit that brings Marquette students together to discuss a pressing issue or theme. I have attended several in the past and found them a mixture of generating productive ideas and kumbaya handholding.
This year’s theme is built around “civic engagement and how leadership makes a difference in modern day issues of civil rights, social justice, and equality.” Breakout sessions will focus on race relations, housing, education and poverty. That’s all fine, good and frankly to be expected at Marquette, but the list is incomplete. Where is building a Culture of Life where every child is welcomed in life and protected in law? Where is fighting for marriage and families against an onslaught of hostile societal forces?
Often times we hear liberal Catholics, good, well-meaning, faithful people, who say that we must represent “the whole of Catholic Social Teaching.”
Liberal Catholics level this phrase against conservative Catholics, both lay leaders and bishops, who they accuse of focusing so substantially on fighting abortion and same-sex marriage that they ignore issues like poverty and access to health care. Conservative Catholics respond, rightly I think, that certain policy issues are more morally pressing than others, and certain policy questions are less open to prudential judgment than others (i.e. faithful Catholics can disagree about whether the Iraq War met just war criteria; they cannot disagree about whether abortion is moral).
It is also fair to argue, though, that liberal Catholics “ignore the whole of Catholic Social Teaching” when they get to set the agenda. This conference is a perfect example of that reality: contending for the sanctity of life and for one man-one woman marriage are absent from the program, which focuses instead on big-government solutions to other social issues.
Several years ago, the United States Jesuit Conference promulgated “Standing for the Unborn,” a social statement that tied the fight against abortion into the larger Jesuit message of contending for justice.
The Jesuit Provincial Fathers wrote, “[O]ur common calling is to stand in solidarity with the unborn, the ‘least of our brothers and sisters’ (Matthew 25:40), through prayer and political activism.” A summit on civic engagement should take that calling seriously.
In response to my column last week, a helpful staff member of the Haggerty Art Museum points out that the Museum will be sponsoring an exhibition of photographs by awardwinning photojournalist Reverend Don Doll, S.J., incumbent of the Wade Chair next semester. The exhibition, “The Grandeur of God,” will feature images from Fr. Doll’s missions around the world. I encourage you to visit the Haggerty between January 31 and April 13 to see this exhibit and to show your support for Catholic art on campus.
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