Editorial
Going beyond the boundaries
When an American diocese forms a "partnership" with a Third World diocese, it’s really about giving the Americans an opportunity to donate, share, offer charity, right?
Not necessarily.
The American Catholic church has been urging its members to something deeper than charity with its global solidarity partnership program. The principles are laid out in the bishops’ 1997 pastoral letter, "Called to Global Solidarity: International Challenges for U.S. Parishes."
Charity is still necessary and good, but Christian responsibility goes beyond giving alms to the poor. "Global Solidarity" describes an ethic of care and concern that should extend to every person as if that person were a close relative.
"A suffering world must find a place in the pastoral priorities of every Catholic parish," the bishops say in the letter. "A parish’s ‘catholicity’ is illustrated in its willingness to go beyond its own boundaries to extend the Gospel, serve those in need, and work for global justice and peace."
In that spirit, Archbishop Roger Schwietz and the archdiocese’s Office of Justice and Peace engaged in a search for a partner more than a year ago. The archbishop and Justice and Peace director Angela Liston just hosted Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblos of Butuan, Philippines, to celebrate the establishment of a global solidarity partnership between the two dioceses.
The partnership program, administered by the U.S. bishops’ Catholic Relief Services, is about solidarity rather than mere charity; about a mutually beneficial relationship rather than a give-and-take that only goes one direction.
It encourages personal interaction among Catholics in the dioceses in order to foster learning and mutual growth. The first group of Alaskans will be traveling to the Butuan Diocese in December, and Bishop Pueblos is eager to send some of his people to Alaska.
The skeptical might ask what the people of a poor, rural diocese in the Philippines have to share with Alaskans.
The answer can be summed up in a word: perspective.
Bishop Pueblos told about conditions in his diocese that force people to rely on one another just to survive, and said this hardship replaces individualism with a "strong sense of communion."
Alaskans could surely benefit from a little of that perspective. Individualism, rampant here on the "last frontier," is not an altogether bad trait, but it can lead to an inflated sense of self-accomplishment, self-centeredness and the very parochialism the bishops warn of in "Called to Global Solidarity."
The Catholic community here should look at this new partnership as another way to help build the kingdom of God, and as a shining opportunity to enrich their personal faith experience.