This morning I was explaining to someone about our struggle against the four million dollar store the Milwaukee St. Vincent de Paul Society has in the suburbs. He said that there are two sides to the issue. I agree but that does not make both sides right. One side says “Spending Four Million dollars “belonging to poor” for a thrift store serving suburbanites is wrong and the other side says the store is right because it will “have a positive financial impact on the organization and increase the number of families we are able to serve.” (From St. Vincent de Paul Letter of June 2015 explaining why they are raising $500, 000 more for the new store.)

Even if that justification from the central office and council of SVDP were true, which I do not believe it is, it would not justify using four million dollars of money belonging to the poor for the store. “Ends do not justify the means”, at least that is what I was taught in my moral education by Jesuits and others.

If all this sound oversimplified and righteous perhaps it is. St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, says in the Spiritual Exercise something like if the moral authority of the Church says something we perceive as white is black we should believe it. I cannot carry it that far but agree with the general principle that if something is morally right, according to our conscience it cannot be morally wrong or somewhere in between the two sides.

When we were out leafleting for our upcoming “poor people’s picket” at the new store, a pastor we met called us “righteous persons.” I was a little taken back by her comment since although righteousness is acclaimed in the Bible I always took it as something like being ‘arrogant’, not a desirable trait. But she meant in the best of ways, as a blessing.

In this morning’s first scripture reading (Amos 7:12–15) a priest of Bethal told Amos to stop prophesying in Bethal for it is “the king’s sanctuary and royal temple.” Amos answers that he is not a prophet but a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores. However, God took him from following the flock and said to him: “Go, prophesy to my people Israel.” This ends today’s reading but looking up the book of Amos I see this conversation was preceded and followed by long messages from God, via Amos, to the people of Israel. Like Amos, I am not prophet and I have not even heard the word of God as clearly as he did.

This morning when I woke up and was dressing for our three parishes outdoor Mass and picnic I was choosing between two tee shirts. One with a quote from Gandhi saying “Be the message you wish to see in the world” and the other had an icon drawing of Jesus in bread line with the title of “The Catholic Worker.” I chose the Catholic Worker tee shirt. This was prophetic since when I was passing out flyers about our action, I was disrupting some people’s conscience. Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker is attributed as saying: “My understanding of the teaching of the Church is that we must follow our conscience, even an erroneous conscience.” She also understood that people might be disturbed by our words based on our conscience.

Our pastor who gave the homily today was brief in his statement that we must be the message we believe in, echoes of Gandhi’s quote. Sometimes being the message we believe in means disturbing people like Amos did in his time. It does not mean we are ‘prophets’ but that we are simply being the message we believe in with our conscience. We may be wrong or have a ‘misinformed conscience’ but do not have much of a choice but to be ‘righteous’ in what we believe.

In the beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus says: “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.” I hope Jesus is right.

Comments

Please send any comments on this post to . Let us know which day’s post your comments pertain to. If the comments are appropriate we will post them here for you.