Following the money

National Catholic Reporter, April 28, 2000 by Raymond A. Schroth

Paul Villavisanis, a young, Pax Christi, ninth grade teacher from St. Augustine, Fla., I suspect may speak for his generation in more ways than we have been aware. He wears a "Lift Sanctions against Iraq" sweatshirt, but, unlike many, he has never been to Latin America or Africa. Still, like many, he wants to be part of something larger than himself. He has educated himself on social issues by scanning the Internet and watching videos and he assigns Elie Wiesel's Night and Thoreau's Walden to his class. But he keeps asking himself, "What can I do?" So he comes to Washington in the rain and sun, with a line from W.H. Auden's "September 8, 1938" running over and over in his head: "All I have is a voice ... We must love one another or we die."

Jesuit Fr. Raymond A. Schroth is author of The American Journey of Eric Sevareid (Steerforth Press).