‘JustFaith’
Saturday morning I attended a meeting in the basement of St. Francis Xavier (College) Church.
About 150 people were on hand from the St. Louis and Belleville Archdiocese, as well as from some area Protestant churches and at least one college student group.
The purpose was to introduce participants to a 30 week program called JustFaith — (the word “just” used in the sense of “justice” not “only”).
Catholic social teaching is the root of the program, which seeks to have small groups within parishes and congregations commit to explore the scriptural basis of social justice, with a view toward putting principals of social justice into practical action at the grass roots level.
I went to hear the introduction because I received independent endorsements from two people I admire, especially because they get things done in the community — former Missouri lawmaker Pat Dougherty, now with Catholic Charities in St. Louis, and Rev. Ken Brown, former pastor of St. Margaret of Scotland parish in St. Louis and now is at All Saints Church in University City.
Here’s the JustFaith premise in a nutshell:
The Bible is permeated with stories that exalt the principle that people have an abiding obligation to welcome, protect and provide for the most vulnerable among us — especially the widow, the orphan and the alien — and that our lives will be judged by how well we do in meeting this obligation.
A large part of the primer was given over to a description of a sequence of events said to constantly recur in scripture (and by implication in society at large), a description of which was drawn from a book titled Doing FaithJustice by a Jesuit named Fred Kammer.
Kammer called the sequence the “cycle of Baal,” and I spell it out in some detail here because “social justice” is one of my beats as an opinion writer, and faith communities figure prominently into how this concept plays out in the secular world.
I am interested to learn how people reading this see it in the context of social involvement in St. Louis and the outlook of local Christian faith communities:
— First comes the “original blessing” — all the things that we need to survive and that make life especially worth living, which are seen as “gifts from God” but carry with them the obligation to protect the poor.
— Things start heading down hill, as people become “owners” — with that people start moving away from the poor as what had been seen as a gift becomes for many, Mine!
— As people move away from the poor, they move away from God.
— In God’s place they create other “gods” — in the form of money, land, prestige, even The Bible itself as an object.
— With the creation of these substitutes comes self-destruction.
— Then come prophets who argue that turning away from the poor is the root of the self-destruction and exile.
— The response to which is to attack and ridicule and destroy the prophets.
— Eventually, there is a “crying out for deliverance” and, ultimately, a “restoration.”
Pretty potent stuff.
Powerful things surely would happen the more people treat condition of the poor as a central element of their spiritual lives and well being.
I think of Pat Dougherty and Ken Brown as regular guys. And I think of St. Louis University and the College Church as solid, mainstream religious institutions.
But as religious outlooks and commitments in the St. Louis community go, is the viewpoint being offered up by JustFaith outside the mainstream? Or is what it holds widely understood by mainstream Christians as what is required of them?
(Pictured: St. Francis Xavier (College) Church at Grand and Lindell Boulevards. Post-Dispatch/Eddie Roth)
Eddie Roth writes about education, social justice, public safety, transportation, legal affairs and historic preservation. He joined the Post-Dispatch editorial page in 2008 after six years as an editorial writer with the Dayton Daily News. But he is not new to St. Louis. Eddie grew up in Webster Groves and south St. Louis County. He's a lawyer who for many years practiced with a downtown firm, and was active in civic affairs, including serving a term on the St. Louis Police Board. He and his wife, Jeanne, and their three daughters, Emily, Julia and Alice, live in the Shaw Neighborhood.
When it comes to community organizing, he endorses Quentin Crisp's advice: Rather than keeping up with the Joneses, it's better to pull them down to your level. 
Ruskin was right when he wrote that God created the strong to take care of the weak. And the rich to take care of the poor. Any philosophy that encourages, or even gives permission to, the rich and the strong to prey on the poor and the weak is condemned by Catholicism.