From my Church’s earliest days colonizing the traditional caretakers of this land at the San Gabriel Mission, to the Catholic Archdiocese’s long refusal to address the torrent of sexual abuse by some of its clergy and staff, to its almost total silence in the face of policies and practices of today’s politicians targeting vulnerable communities, our past leaves a haunting legacy.
I also spend my days working with dedicated organizers who struggle for systemic change around many issues my Church has been complicit in, but do not see their dignity respected by Her. And I am part of building a movement culture that labors for an end to power-heavy institutions that avoid democratic, accountable leadership. I show up each day both aware of and heartbroken by the fact that my Church hurts people I love, and opposes shifts that I believe would keep us in a right relationship with God and others.
Still, holding all of this, I source my spirit of resistance from my Catholic faith.
Though our Church’s Tradition of resistance hasn’t earned us the honor of being a “peace church,” She does have an uninterrupted and vibrant legacy in social movements for progressive change.
Our clergy and laity have built and supported countless mutual aid efforts to meet the needs of our neighbors. We have organized with labor unions and supported boycotts, canvassing with Farm Workers at grocery stores. We have marched across bridges for civil rights and taken to the streets weeping after the murders of our black family and community members by police. We’ve barricaded doors to Federal buildings, broken into FBI field offices to burn draft cards with homemade napalm, and even poured our own blood on buildings of power to protest war crimes.
Our somewhat clunky, often tepid, U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops reminded us in 2012 just how far we must be willing to go: “Some unjust laws impose such injustices on individuals and organizations that disobeying the laws may be justified.” They went on, “When fundamental human goods…are at stake, we may need to witness to the truth by resisting the law and incurring its penalties.”
So, as structures of democracy are disassembled, as fundamental responsibilities of our governments are slashed and sold off, as funding streams are dammed, as vulnerable communities are put in the crosshairs and institutions fall in line to White House Orders, we must open ourselves to the possibility that this is the era of unlikely bedfellows and strange dance partners.
Those with an axe to grind with the Catholic Church might think about a momentary pause. Not to overlook or forgive past harms, but in consideration that it may be neither helpful nor strategic to cast the entire institution and its followers aside. There is much in Her Tradition, Scripture, and people that make the Catholic Church a potential ally in this political moment.
Having bad theology, a poor political analysis, and misguided priorities can be destructive, but those things need not be damning. None of us started with the clarity and practices we now hold. We don’t acquire wisdom without experience and mentorship. I believe this faith community can be organized just like I was.
There is still hope that my faith community may pursue practices and relationships that model the radical witness of our Palestinian refugee savior who was executed by the state for preaching a community diametrically opposed to Empire. The Church still might come to reconsider Her relationship to accountability and transformation. By putting stronger flesh on the bones of our faith, our over three million believers in Los Angeles could change the material conditions of and systemic policies directed at oppressed people right now.
It is no surprise that as the November elections ended, some Churchgoers awoke from their slumber and began gathering at the Los Angeles Catholic Worker to see what we could do in this moment, birthing the non-denominational Coalition of Faithful Resistance.
As the incoming administration uplifted playbooks of violence, crafted policies, made appointments, and instituted practices out of alignment with the central values of our Tradition, that folks knew they needed to act. Even pastors who had long shied away from “political” comments began to name behaviors and promises they saw as incompatible with our faith.
It was also no surprise to me when 50 people – mostly Catholic – showed up to the downtown Los Angeles Federal Building in the rain on Ash Wednesday with a promise to wield our Tradition and rituals, to organize our spiritual family, and to join with other communities of conscience to protect all of our neighbors.
With ashes gained from the burning of Executive Orders, we marked our foreheads in the sign of the cross and cemented our commitment to: “Repent and Resist.” And so we have. Our coalition has joined the major marches and protests throughout LA to stand with the most vulnerable communities amongst us. Our members are working with nationwide advocacy groups to ensure corporate polluters pay for the harm they have wreaked on our communities. Some members are prepared to risk arrest while trying to support local community self defense efforts to prepare for immigration raids.
As we grow our efforts and create a space where newly activated people might step outside their comfort zones, we will continue our Friday afternoon vigils throughout Lent outside the downtown LA Federal Building.
Calling to mind the words of Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller, we also recognize the unique risk before us today: First they came for the undocumented and I did not speak out. Then they came for the environment and federal employees and worker protections and LGBTQ+ folks and healthcare and social security and education and consumers and more.
And we know that if we do not speak out now, if we do not place our bodies on the line for the vulnerable amongst us, then by the time they have dismantled the protections and promises our Constitution, Amendments, and democratic processes seem to offer, when they have stripped us of the things that support everyday people, privatized our needs, and sold our wellbeing to the highest bidder, there will be no one left to speak up for us and no structures left to ensure that we are ok.
There is a popular Catholic Worker t-shirt that boldly declares: “If they come for the innocent without crossing over your body, cursed be your religion and your life.” And so we prepare to shoulder our crosses, to assemble the People of God, to follow our Prince of Peace knowing that which we did for the least of God’s people we did for God and, if we are honest, we did for ourselves too.
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