'Justice'
Podcast – A Nation of Immigrants – America Magazine
Posted on 15. May, 2012 by admin.
Cardinal Roger M. Mahony discusses immigration reform at the L. A. Religious Education Congress. Interview by Kerry Weber.
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Making Justice a Habit – Fr. Garrett Galvin ofm
Posted on 21. Mar, 2012 by admin.
Animating justice in our lives can come down to some basics. We’re not talking theory here, but about how, in a sense, to tune and retune ourselves as instruments of justice. Thanks to our brother Garrett for passing on some novel insights.
Great Mosque of Kufa
I recently read a story in Charles Duhigg’s new book The Power of Habit about an army major in the town of Kufa in Iraq. He had been conducting an impromptu habit modification program. He had analyzed videotapes of recent riots and had identified a pattern: Violence often happened after a group of Iraqis convened in the town square. I imagine this would often happen after prayer on Fridays when they would have a lot of free time. As the crowd grew in size during the afternoon, food vendors would come to sell their wares. Then, angry chants would begin, followed by provocative actions, and finally a full scale riot would break out.. [...]
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Project Gubbio at St. Boniface – Heather Knight
Posted on 13. Mar, 2012 by admin.
The Gubbio Project at St. Boniface takes its name from the famous story of St. Francis’s encounter with the wolf in the village of Gubbio. Witnessing the faith and compassion of St. Francis, the villagers were moved to a change of heart. They made their village a sanctuary for the creature they had once so feared. Thanks to the efforts of good people at St. Boniface the church itself has become a sanctuary.
Project Gubbio at St. Boniface: sanctuary of sleep – By Heather Knight (SF Gate Online)
From 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. on weekdays, homeless people can find rest at St. Boniface Church in San Francisco. Photo: Brant Ward / The Chronicle
The ornately painted ceiling, stained-glass windows, huge marble columns and organ pipes high above the wooden pews could make St. Boniface Church a stop on any San Francisco tourist’s must-see list. But the loud snores and incense burned to help cover pungent smells quickly indicate this isn’t your standard sanctuary.
For the homeless people who enter the Tenderloin church at 6 a.m., it’s something even more sacred: a place to stretch out and enjoy hours of safe, uninterrupted sleep.
Project Gubbio was founded around Easter 2004 by activist pastor Rev. Louie Vitale, who retired several years ago. He named it after the town of Gubbio, Italy, where legend says that townspeople befriended a killer wolf who they realized wasn’t dangerous at all – just hungry. [...]
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St. Anthony’s Dining Room Serves Last Meal – Valerie Schmalz
Posted on 05. Mar, 2012 by admin.
- A guest at St. Anthony’s Dining Room holds the last tray to be used at the last meal to be served at the dining room’s original location. The same tray is slated to be used for the first meal at the new facility when it opens in 2014. Photo courtesy of Catholic San Francisco Online
The great Franciscan, Fr. Alfred Boeddeker ofm, is often quoted as saying, “The great activity of our lives is to love, like the sun always shining.” This inclusive love, as scripture says, “falling on the just and unjust”, animates the JPIC values of St. Anthony Foundation, the organization that is Fr. Alfred’s legacy to the city of San Francisco. At this great turning point in the organization’s history it is good to recall how advocacy, service, and peace-making have been combined with perseverance, generosity, and sacrifice in the efforts of so many thousands of good people. Because of these spirited individuals – volunteers, donors, staff, and guests – for over 50 years St. Anthony Foundation has been a JPIC beacon.
St. Anthony’s Dining Room serves last meal at original building
- By Valerie Schmalz
St. Anthony’s Dining Room is a dining room – not a soup kitchen – and that philosophy of respect for the dignity of the human person was on display yet again as the dining room served its last meal Feb. 1 in the converted auto repair shop at 45 Jones St. that has been its home for 61 years.The dining room has been open every day, serving a free hot meal to its guests, since it opened Oct. 4, 1950. It will continue in an interim facility at 150 Golden Gate Ave. while a new larger dining room is under construction at 121 Golden Gate Ave., said St. Anthony Foundation Executive Director Shari Roeseler.
The new dining room will open in 2014 with seating for 43 percent more people and 40 percent more space for food storage. For the first time St. Anthony’s guests will have a street level view and natural light rather than walking down the former car shop’s concrete ramp into the dining room. On the floors above, Mercy Housing will build 90 units of affordable housing for seniors. The second floor will house St. Anthony’s free clothing program and social work center.
Ten million of the $15 million capital campaign for the new facility has been raised, Roeseler said. Completely outfitted, the new dining room will cost $22 million, the foundation said.
St. Boniface Parish pastor Franciscan Father Alfred Boeddeker founded St. Anthony’s in the first year of his 31-year pastorate, “in response to what he saw as a growing need on the sidewalks outside the church” in the Tenderloin District – a need that continues today, Roeseler said.
“Everyone who came through the door was a guest,” she said, stressing the philosophy of St. Anthony’s, which serves 40 percent of the free meals in San Francisco and is the only free food program in San Francisco open every day. It receives no government funding, but meets its $17 million annual budget with donations, bequests, corporate and foundation grants, investment income, and program revenue. Thirty eight million meals have been served since 1950, with about 3,000 people eating at the dining room daily, the organization said.
“He would not have any part of soup kitchen,” said Father Boeddeker’s nephew Joe Boeddeker, who attended the ceremony Feb. 1. “It was very important to him, the dignity of the person. That’s why the name St. Anthony’s Dining Room.”
“You represent the best we do here in San Francisco,” said Mayor Ed Lee about St. Anthony’s.
Approximately half of St. Anthony’s 9,000 volunteers are Bay Area high school students, who serve meals and then eat a meal with the guests, St. Anthony’s said. “Our trips to St. Anthony’s … bring more light into the minds and hearts of my students than the other 79 days we will spend in the classroom that semester,” said Archbishop Riordan High School religion teacher John Ahlbach who takes his sophomore classes to St. Anthony’s.
The first day St. Anthony’s opened in 1950, Father Boeddeker expected to serve 150 meals and had 400 guests, in what has become, in St. Anthony’s lore, the “Miracle on Jones Street,” Roeseler said. From that day until this day, “somehow there was always enough food.”
The statue of St. Anthony of Padua that greeted guests will move temporarily to the interim facility and then be permanently in place in the new facility, said Karl Robillard, spokesman. The statue depicts St. Anthony holding the Christ Child in one arm and offering a loaf of bread with his other hand.
The continuing success of St. Anthony’s is a credit to those who have followed after Father Boeddeker, said his nephew Joe Boeddeker, who attended the ceremonies Feb. 1 with three U.S. Naval Academy buddies who graduated with him in 1964. “It continues and continues to grow,” said Boeddeker. About a quarter of those eating at the dining room are veterans, said Boeddeker. “It’s tragic.”
Father Boeddeker’s absolute faith in God motivated the founding of the dining room and kept it going, said his nephew.
“He way he put it was: ‘You do it and I’ll help. If you won’t do it, I won’t help.’ He really felt he was there as God’s instrument,” said Joe Boedekker who was a child during the early days of the dining room but would hear stories as his uncle and parents chatted. “When facing a challenge, he would put problems in his prayer and all of a sudden the next day someone would come forward with a solution to a problem and they didn’t even know there was a problem.”
From February 10, 2012 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
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The God We Present to the World – Fr. J. Chinnici ofm
Posted on 10. Feb, 2012 by admin.
In a homily for the Feast of the Presentation given at the Franciscan School of Theology, Fr. Joe Chinnici poses a provocative question for students of theology and for all of us. Sustaining our efforts to live justice, peace, and care for creation means examining the “God we present to the world.
Who is this God we present to the world? Is it the God of material success or upward mobility, one who leaves behind those who are poor? Is it the God of justice, a male or a female, made in our own image, one whose justice is singular and whose totalitarianisms are many? Is it a God, convenient to be sure, who stands on the sidelines cheering our aspirations, baptizing our efforts to reform the world, once in a while ordering a replay just to make sure the other players did not violate the rules? Is it the God of the mind that can cram experience into pure boxes of sterilized judgments; or a God of the heart that bleeds mercy without zeal, and compassion without reality? Is it the God of truth who dissolves all uncertainties, or perhaps the God of answers to questions no one asks? Is our God, a personal God, a priestly God, who marches into the sanctuary, gratefully leaving the wailing sinners in the back pew of the cathedral of life? Is our God the God who has no flesh and blood in his Body, the Church, one who escapes from the history of a human community into the snowy white cumulus clouds of angelic self-perfection? Is our God a God who has given up thinking in a world of frenetic confusion?
Somewhere along the line, in the course of our life and the course of our education, we must come to grips with the gods of this world, the gods of the cigarette air we breathe together, the gods who dwell deep in our hearts and whose wilderness is made fertile only by the Word of the scriptures. Our Gospel today is redolent with those who have actually taken the word spoken by the prophet seriously and practiced it. They are the ones who are blessed:
” Listen to me, you fainthearted, you who seem far from the factory of justice. I am bringing in my justice, it is not far off, my salvation shall not tarry.” (Is. 46.13)
“It is too little for you to be my servant…I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth.” (Is. 49.6)
“The Lord has bared his holy arm in the sight of the nations. All the ends of the earth will behold the salvation of God.” (Is. 52.10)
