Rebuilding New Orleans with Hands, Hope, and Healing
A Resource Handbook for Immersion & Service Groups
SECTION FOUR: REFLECTIONS AND PRAYERS
Prayer Modeled on Ignatian Themes from the Spiritual Exercises
Opening Song: Send Us Your Spirit, O God.
We see and consider the three persons of the Trinity, God our Creator, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, as they look lovingly upon our world.
We try to enter into the vision of our world as God sees it.
We see the destruction of this beautiful city, homes and churches and businesses filled with mold and debris, emptied of life.
We see the struggle that exists, the poverty, tiredness and despair of so many people.
We smell the dampness, mildew, and rot left by the floodwaters.
We hear the clanking of shovels and crowbars and the sounds of recovery – hammers, dump trucks, backhoes. We also hear the intense quiet of school yards and darkened streets.
We feel the warmth of the New Orleans sun and the New Orleans people.
We see the governments of this city, state, and country, intended to build the common good, but often ineffective in meeting the people's basic human needs and leading them out of despair.
Within our vision are all the people of this city: men, women, children, and all the colors and shades of humanity.
Some are disabled, crippled. Some are strong and whole. Some are newborn, while others are old and diminishing. Some are in suits, others in dirty work clothes
We see them all...those filled with tears, those overjoyed with happiness, those experiencing total alienation.
We see emptied communities and neighborhoods.
We see the exiled and homeless, some in the city, others scattered throughout the country
We envision within our hearts God's great love and compassion for all.
We imagine this love as it moves slowly, tenderly over the darkness of this city and its people.
Through this love the force of God's powerful Spirit is ignited.
It is time, time for God to act, to rescue us from our blindness and self destruction, to bring us to fulfillment.
God's plan, secret and mysterious, is about to be brought forth.
We stay with God's vision as we listen to the prophet Ezekiel (36:25-28)
I shall pour clean water over you, and you will be cleansed.
I shall cleanse you of all your defilement and all your idols.
I shall give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.
I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead.
I shall put my spirit in you and make you keep my laws and sincerely respect my observances.
You will live in the land which I gave your ancestors.
You shall be my people, and I will be your God.
— This is the Word of the LORD.
Spontaneous Prayers of the Faithful and Faith Sharing; Respond to these prayers:
"Draw us to compassion and solidarity."
Our Father
Closing Song: Let Us Build the City of God
The following are a few reflections on Catholic Social Teaching. Sometimes, in the chaos after major disasters and transformations, we do not know who to listen to or where to turn. Following the teachings of the Church, listening to the Gospel, and entering into community as humble servants can help us to understand where the priorities of rebuilding New Orleans should be placed. Use these passages from Papal Encyclicals, the Catechism, and the Bible to reflect on our role in the clean-up. Where are we called to serve? What will we change?
JUST WAGES: Who should get jobs in New Orleans first? What implications does a just wage carry with it?
Among the most important duties of employers, the principal one is to give all workers what is justly due them. Assuredly, to establish a rule of pay in accord with justice, many factors must be taken into account. But, in general, the rich and employers must remember that no laws, either human or divine, permit them for their own profit to oppress the needy and the wretched or to seek gain from another’s want. To defraud anyone of the wage due him or her is a great crime that calls down avenging wrath from Heaven: Behold, the wages of the laborers . . . which have been kept back by you unjustly, cry out: and their cry has entered into the ears of the Lord of Hosts (Jas 5:4).
Rerum Novarum, #20
JUSTICE vs. CHARITY: What is the difference between the two? How is love bound up with justice? Imagine a New Orleans with no justice and little love. Now picture the opposite. Was both love and justice present in your work and experiences today?
Our relationship to our neighbor is bound up with our relationship to God; our response to the love of God, saving us through Christ, is shown to be effective in his love and service of people.
Christian love of neighbor and justice cannot be separated. For love implies an absolute demand for justice, namely a recognition of the dignity and rights of one's neighbor. Justice attains its inner fullness only in love. Because every person is truly a visible image of the invisible God and a sibling of Christ, the Christian finds in every person God himself and God's absolute demand for justice and love.
Justice in the World, #34
THE DIMENSIONS OF JUSTICE: Which type(s) of justice is/are missing in New Orleans? Which type(s) have you seen present? How can you personally change the situation to bring about a New Orleans where all three are flourishing?
Biblical justice is the goal we strive for. ... These norms state the minimum levels of mutual care and respect that all persons owe to each other in an imperfect world. Catholic social teaching, like much philosophical reflection, distinguishes three dimensions of basic justice: commutative justice, distributive justice, and social justice.
Commutative justice calls for fundamental fairness in all agreements and exchanges between individuals or private social groups. ...
Distributive justice requires that the allocation of income, wealth, and power in society be evaluated in light of its effects on persons whose basic material needs are unmet. ...
Social justice implies that persons have an obligation to be active and productive participants in the life of society and that society has a duty to enable them to participate in this way.
Economic Justice for All, #68-71
UNCOMFORTABLE WITH BEING COMFORTABLE: Is it possible to live our lives as if Katrina never happened? How many friends and family members do you know that have seemed to lose touch with Katrina? How can you get them (and yourselves) to be uncomfortable with being comfortable?
No one may claim the name of Christian and be comfortable in the face of hunger, homelessness, insecurity, and injustice found in this country and the world.
Economic Justice for All, #27
ORGANIZED SOCIAL RESPONSE: What has been the response to Katrina in the past month in the world in which you live? At school? At work? At home? At Church? Are people still organizing like they did a month after Katrina? Why or why not? Why does it seem that society moves on so quickly to forget about the poor, oppressed, and marginalized?
Every citizen also has the responsibility to work to secure justice and human rights through an organized social response. In the words of Pius XI, "Charity will never be true charity unless it takes justice into account ... Let no one attempt with small gifts of charity to exempt himself from the great duties imposed by justice" [71]. The guaranteeing of basic justice for all is not an optional expression of largesse but an inescapable duty for the whole of society.
Economic Justice for All, #120
Statement of Rev. Fred Kammer, S.J., Provincial of New Orleans Province of the Jesuits
September 23, 2005
My name is Father Fred Kammer, SJ, and I am a native of New Orleans. From 1992 to 2001, I was the president of Catholic Charities USA. In 2002, I became the provincial superior of the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus. In this capacity I am responsible for the leadership of the 240 Jesuits in six states of the South and Southwest. Sixty-five of those Jesuits, including me, live and work in New Orleans. This includes forty Jesuits who lead and help staff Loyola University, Jesuit High School, Immaculate Conception and Holy Name parishes, and our provincial offices. Twenty-five other Jesuits live in our retirement community on the West Bank. In New Orleans we also sponsor the work of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, Boys Hope Girls Hope, the Tompson Center for service to the homeless poor, Café Reconcile for employment training and economic development, and Good Shepherd Nativity School for inner-city youth.
In the past three weeks since Hurricane Katrina we have been amazed at the wonderful outpouring of generosity from people across the nation and around the world. Jesuit high schools and universities all across the country have reached out to accept our New Orleans high school and university students into their ranks. Jesuit communities and provinces have sent donations. Generous friends have sent financial gifts and many have offered to come to our region to assist in relief efforts. We are deeply grateful for this generosity as a sign of the common humanity which we all share and the faith that calls forth love for those in need.
Hurricane Katrina was an unprecedented natural disaster. But it also brought to light in stark contours the human disaster of poverty in our region. One cannot consider the fact that 27.9% of New Orleanians lived in poverty or that 100,000 people did not have access to an automobile to flee this terrible storm without realizing that something was terribly wrong with our society. This is all the more acutely true when we realize that in June 2002, the New Orleans Times Picayune had a three-day series of stories on what would happen to the city in the event of the storm that everyone has called “the big one” when a natural disaster encountered the human disaster of so much poverty for so many people. Yet, little was done by any of us to change what inevitably happened.
Instead our nation continued twenty-five years of spending priorities that have ignored the declining state of our infrastructure—including flood control and levees—in the interest of exorbitant tax cuts, unwise defense spending, and other special interests. During this time it seems that our political leaders were so concerned about their own interests and views that they ignored the very basic needs of the poor. The images of those left behind by Hurricane Katrina cannot be ignored. So what do we need to do now as a region and as a nation?
In the short-term, besides the wonderful generosity of individuals, churches, and others, dislocated families need the support of municipalities, states, and the federal government to get through the coming weeks, months, and even years. They specifically need to be able to meet basic family survival needs through expanded Unemployment Insurance, Disaster Unemployment Insurance, Food Stamps, WIC, subsidized housing for poor families and elderly people, and Medicaid.
For the longer term, we should remember the statement of the U.S. bishops in their 1986 pastoral letter Economic Justice for All that the first line of defense against poverty is a decent job paying a decent family wage. Across the world New Orleans has been known as a wonderful place for tourists to visit—a place for delicious food, great music, and a good time. The underside of a city whose primary business is tourism is that the jobs of so many of its people are minimum wage jobs washing dishes, making beds, cleaning hotel rooms, and waiting tables. It is well known that the U.S. minimum wage is not enough to raise a family out of poverty. And so tens of thousands of the people of our region lived in poverty, as do tens of millions all over the country. When you mix poverty with hurricanes, the combination is deadly. As the Catholic bishops stated last week:
In the aftermath of the storm, people not only lost their homes, they lost their work and their ability to support their families. Recovery requires more than food, water, and a place to live, but also a chance to make a contribution, to have decent work, wages, and working conditions.
To make decent jobs with decent pay a reality for the New Orleans of the next six months and the next six years, we need the political will and the legal assurance that people doing the rebuilding:
There are already many different governmental, corporate, and community entities planning for how to rebuild the areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina. I believe there is a particular role for the faith-based community in insuring that this reconstruction is done in a way that insures that the poorest families are included in the recovery of their own communities. I urge leaders of churches, synagogues, mosques, and other faith communities to join together to see that the demands of justice are not overlooked as the areas and lives impacted by the storm begin to rebuild.
There is much else that will need to be done to heal the wounds of the natural and human disasters which we have watched unfold in the past three weeks. We will need to insure that schools teach, that those in political office serve their communities before all other interests, that reconstruction resources are targeted to the common good and to those most in need, and that all of us recognize the lingering chasm that racism has created in our nation and respond to it in ways that reach across all the divisions that separate us.
In the midst of the horror of these weeks, we have seen great generosity and heroism in service to people in need. Now, we will need the same courage and generosity for the years of rebuilding that lie ahead.
Post-Article Reflection: