If you’ve driven past the Sacred Heart Convent and Sacred
Heart-Griffin High School campus on West Monroe Street recently, you’ve
probably noticed the many “golf signs” – what the printer calls them – around
the perimeter. They proclaim, “Hear the cry of Earth,” “One Global Human Family”
and “Immigrant Rights & Dignity.”
Our hope is that the signs will help more people become
better acquainted with principles commonly called Catholic Social Teaching
(CST). We sisters believe that understanding the utility of these principles
when thinking about complex issues can help us find common ground during
divisive times and contribute to the solutions we choose for our civic life.
Maybe they can help us slow the vitriol, take a breath and
think about the consequences of demonizing immigrants, abandoning a basic
commitment to truth, threatening journalists, lawyers and intellectuals, and
eviscerating the Constitution. These things diminish our humanity and threaten
democracy in ways that will not bode well for the future.
From that moment last month when a man from Dolton stepped
on to the balcony at the Vatican and was announced as “Leonum XIV” – it was
inevitable that CST would find a renewed place in the American lexicon.
That’s because this particular Pope Leo is the 14th in a
line of papal Leos, the 13th of whom advanced CST most significantly with an
encyclical on the rights of labor, Rerum Novarum, published in 1891.
South Side Leo, White Sox-loving Leo, most certainly chose his name to signal
that these principles would be at the center of his papacy.
Sometimes called Catholic Social Doctrine, or Catholic
Social Thought, the foundations of CST lay in the Jewish prophets, the life
Jesus, Christian scriptures, and doctrine honed through centuries of thinking
by theologians and philosophers.
It is not necessary to be Catholic to appreciate or
understand CST. In fact, Pope Leo recently acknowledged that recognizing
others’ dignity – the first and foundational principle of CST – is something we
do because we are human first, not because we are “religious.”
So, the signs ringing our campus express our hope that
passers-by will consider how these principles can help them make moral choices
in a complex world. Maybe they’ll be inspired to follow the QR code links to
springfieldop.org/stand to learn more. Maybe the signs will inspire us to think
together about the values that underlie participation in our municipalities,
states, nation and world.
A rich selection of resources for the curious is available
at the website. One of my favorites is a recorded panel hosted last winter by
Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life.
The panel was called: What Do We Do Now? Catholic Responsibilities, Opportunities After the Election and Synod.
The public intellectuals who participated in the
conversation were asked to choose their favorite principle of CST. That’s hard
to do! John Carr, founder of the Georgetown Initiative, called CST “a moral
alternative to the broken status quo” in our nation. Sister Terry Maya, CCVI,
director of theology at the Catholic Health Association, focused on human
dignity and the role of community. “You cannot have human dignity without
community,” she said. “We are human in relationship, and we’re human when we
care for one another. So, let’s be Catholic and truly care for one another.”
The pundit and author David Brooks, who was raised
culturally Jewish and has only recently come to Christian faith, choose to
focus on the whole of it. “There’s no philosophy in our public life (like CST)
that’s so rigorous and communal, but also beautiful,” he said.
Vincent Rougeau, the first lay and first Black president of
the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., and a former Dean of Law at
Boston College, chose solidarity and the common good, saying, “When we act
together with some interest in the good of others, something new emerges,
something better comes out of it, something that really creates a meaningful
understanding of community.”
As I awaken each day to a fresh assault on these principles
to which I’ve dedicated 40 years of consecrated religious life, I find it
challenging to face the erosion of the sacredness of truth, shameless,
self-serving abuses of power, and complete disregard for the institution of
democracy.
Catholic Social Teaching is an antidote to all of that. It
grounds me as I ponder how best to contribute meaningfully to solutions for our
civic challenges. It unmasks the self-serving cynicism now ascendant in U.S.
culture. It helps me to remember that I’m responsible for being part of the
solution.
To help my Dominican Sisters and I spread the word about CST
and highlight the practical moral support it offers for our complex time,
please join us any Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. for a half-hour peaceful vigil at the
entrance to our property on West Monroe Street. We’ll be there to greet all who
pass with this hopeful, loving message that we can be the change we wish to
see.
Sister Beth Murphy is the communication director for the
Dominican Sisters of Springfield.
This article appears in Jun 5-11, 2025.
