Texas-size ministry

National Catholic Reporter, August 11, 2000 by Pamela Schaeffer

After the nation overhauled its welfare system in 1996, Lashley organized the Welfare-to-Work Network to help inform herself and other social ministers about Texas' complex benefits system. "If the system is too complicated for me, a 63-year-old, college educated person, to understand, then I want to know why that is," Lashley said. "It's a natural tendency of mine to think, `Why should we have to deal with this? Why can't we fix it?'"

Savvy also means knowing that, while the work of social justice belongs largely to the laity, sometimes recruiting "a collar" -- a local priest or even the bishop -- to show up at a public meeting sends an important signal.

The need for such street smarts doesn't mean that the parish regards social ministry as the province of an informed elite. Rather, Doran said, it means that you have to approach it professionally. You have to keep learning. A certification program for social ministers, once available only downtown on weekdays, has been brought to the neighborhood. The program is held on weekends one day a month. "We don't pressure, we invite," Macy said. "And we give people plenty of time to discern what they want to do."

For people who want to be active in the parish program, the eight-month program certification is required. "Most of our social ministers don't stop with the formation program," Macy said. "They go on to take other courses. We go on retreats. We send people to conferences."

If the classes are optional, no one at Christ the Good Shepherd escapes the principles. "If you belong to this parish and don't know the principles of Catholic social teaching, you aren't really in the parish," Doran said. They are projected, one at a time, on the wall behind the altar before Mass each Sunday. They infiltrate the Sunday bulletin and homilies. They are printed on T-shirts of all sizes, translated into "kid language" on small sizes (see box). They permeate religious education. If you start with kids, Doran believes, "we won't keep running into what I run into: adults who are unfamiliar with the best-kept secrets of the Catholic faith.

"Because we're lay people, we know we have to be on rock solid ground" when we speak, Doran said. "We only steal from the best. We quote scripture, we quote encyclicals, we talk about how the principles apply today. We talk about this stuff all the time."

Justice permeates everything

"Social justice permeates everything, mainly because we have this incest voice," said Nanette Coons, coordinator of religious education for the high school. "I call Kathy the burr in my saddle.

"I remember one time, at a staff meeting, I was frustrated. I said, `Why are we Catholic?' Kathy looked right at me and said, `Why are you Catholic?' It started a dynamic discussion and from that a visioning process that lasted a whole year. Through that process, the Catholic social teachings played a prominent role."

The parish's social ministry program began by offering a few direct services from an office where people could call or come in to seek help or even just to talk. Sometimes when people are in the middle of problems, "their story is all they've got left," Doran said. "Their stories are sacred." It's a sentiment she voices often.