Catholic street church news

Here are some reader submissions. Thanks!

Tent city at St. Jude Catholic Church in Redmond, Washington:

St. Jude Catholic Church welcomed Tent City 4 to its Redmond location on February 10th. The city of Redmond, where a one bedroom apartment generally rents for $911 to $1188 a month, issued a permit, but then rescinded it, threatening to fine St. Jude up to $500.00 a day for occupying the space. The stay could end up costing the church more than $37,000, which it says it will pay with donations, not parish funds.

In March, I visited tent city and interviewed pastor David Rogerson and three residents of tent city.

Redmond tent city, Indymedia photo
Indymedia photo

Spanish archbishop shuts down parish with unorthodox priests:

The archbishop of Madrid has shut down a parish where priests said Mass in street clothes and handed out cookies as the holy communion, his office said Monday.

The parish of San Carlos Borromeo, in the working-class Vallecas district of Spain’s capital, was popular among poor people, former prisoners, recovering drug addicts and immigrants.

Misa 1 Abril
Parish of San Carlos Borromeo photo

Liturgical abuse bugs me, but there’s always so much going on in a situation like this, you never know the real story.

San Francisco greens plastic shopping bags

WorldChanging has a good roundup:

This week the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved the Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance, which bans the use of plastic shopping bags by large supermarkets. The ordinance requires these grocery stores to use either compostable bags, made from corn starch or other vegetable-based materials and containing no petroleum products, or recyclable paper bags containing a minimum of 40 percent post-consumer recycled content.

[…]

The San Francisco Department of the Environment estimates that currently about 180 million plastic shopping bags are distributed in San Francisco each year. About 774,000 gallons of oil are used to produce this number of shopping bags.

It’s been pointed out that the Supervisor who sponsored this legislation is a Green:

Supervisor [Ross] Mirkarimi cofounded the California chapter of the Green Party over 14 years ago . . . .

Personally, I’d like to see people switch to greener shopping bags voluntarily, rather than through force. (Retailers would, too.) Maybe this will make greener bags more widely available to retailers elsewhere. Who knows.

Discussing “A Good War Is Hard to Find”

goodwar_small.pngThis week we’re publishing some thoughts on David Griffith’s book A Good War Is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America. We’ll be featuring Dave’s response, too.

The first reviews are from Mike Benedetti and Christine Lavallee.

Several of the essays in the book are available on-line, in excerpted or adapted form:

See also:

God, violence, and what I watched growing up

goodwar_small.pngMost young Americans don’t have a firsthand experience of war. Many grow up with no experience of intense violence at all. Their attitudes towards these things are shaped by art: books, TV shows, the news, and movies.

David Griffith, author of A Good War Is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence In America, is one of those people. So am I.

My peers and I really didn’t question violent entertainment while we were growing up, I think in part because we figured the stories told by adults were probably a good reflection of the world. (Today’s young people may be naturally more skeptical of these sorts of stories, since they can easily share their own videos with their peers over the Internet, and because their video games are more immersive—they can all use adult tools to act out their own stories. For people of my and Griffith’s generation, access to these tools implied some sort of legitimacy.)

In the essay “Some Proximity to Darkness” in Good War, Griffith revists the movies that shaped his sensibilities as a young man, this time taking a cold, hard look at them. I was shaped by many of these movies, and while reading the book I felt that Griffith was taking a cold, hard look inside my own head. Quite a trip.
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Subscribe to “Democracy”

The non-profit Participatory Culture Foundation is trying to raise extra donations as they push towards the 1.0 release of their open-source video player Democracy (Miro): “Because TV is too important to leave up to Microsoft and Apple.” (Cory Doctorow)

If you love this sweet piece of software (even my dad likes it), they’re asking you to “subscribe” and donate $5/month. In exchange, you’ll get a shirt with the new logo.

Democracy: Internet TVMy philanthropy strategy is to give to my church first, then to Oxfam or UNICEF for childhood disease prevention, then to small groups that are doing effective work in areas where a little work has a big impact. These days, for me, those would include groups like Vegan Outreach, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the PCF.

Perhaps you would care to Digg this project.

CitySquare: money being spent, streets being named

A tipster points out that documents show the names of four streets in Worcester’s CitySquare project: an extension of Front Street, Mercantile Street, Eaton Place, and Trumbull Street.

Telegram & Gazette:

City Manager Michael V. O’Brien said all the conditions of the General Development Agreement with Berkeley Investments Inc. of Boston, the project developer, have now been satisfied, enabling the city to proceed with its first disbursement at the negotiated sum of $6.1 million.

Mr. O’Brien said the amount, nearly $1 million less than originally projected, comprises expenses in the approved DIF program — such as tenant relocations, engineering, land transfers and design — that must be done for the new public street and block pattern, the public underground parking garage and other public amenities.

Midwest Catholic Worker retreat ends in protest, one arrest at Notre Dame

South Bend (Indiana) Tribune:

A few dozen members of the Catholic Worker movement staged a protest in front of the University of Notre Dame’s administration building today, saying the university’s ROTC program contradicts Catholic teaching.

“It saddens us that one of the preeminent universities is training warriors,” said the Rev. Ben Jimenez, a Catholic priest from Cleveland.

An appropriate quotation from the pope (Feb 18, 2007):

Why does Jesus ask us to love our very enemies, that is, ask a love that exceeds human capacities? What is certain is that Christ’s proposal is realistic, because it takes into account that in the world there is too much violence, too much injustice, and that this situation cannot be overcome without positing more love, more kindness. This “more” comes from God: It is his mercy that has become flesh in Jesus and that alone can redress the balance of the world from evil to good, beginning from that small and decisive “world” which is man’s heart.

This page of the Gospel is rightly considered the “magna carta” of Christian nonviolence; it does not consist in surrendering to evil — as claims a false interpretation of “turn the other cheek” (Luke 6:29) — but in responding to evil with good. (Romans 12:17-21), and thus breaking the chain of injustice. It is thus understood that nonviolence, for Christians, is not mere tactical behavior but a person’s way of being, the attitude of one who is convinced of God’s love and power, who is not afraid to confront evil with the weapons of love and truth alone. Loving the enemy is the nucleus of the “Christian revolution,” a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power. The revolution of love, a love that does not base itself definitively in human resources, but in the gift of God, that is obtained only and unreservedly in his merciful goodness. Herein lies the novelty of the Gospel, which changes the world without making noise. Herein lies the heroism of the “little ones,” who believe in the love of God and spread it even at the cost of life.

Emphasis added.

See also: Father Michael Bafaro’s address to the Worcester March 24 antiwar rally.

Mason Street Musings

Reprinted from The Catholic Radical, April/May 2007

“You people make me sick!” our guest screamed. “You call yourselves Christians! You’re a bunch of hypocrites! I’ll sue you for throwing me out on the street!”

Although it’s our preference to feature heartwarming stories of guests who are grateful for our hospitality and leave us for a better future, it’s not honest to sugarcoat Catholic Worker reality. Some of those who stay with us have life-long problems which we hardly understand, much less resolve. Some are prevented by addiction or mental illness from making healthy choices. Some steal from each other or from us. A very small number, thanks be to God, fly off the handle.

We had just about every type of challenging guest in February. Several got drunk and lied to us about it. One got up in the middle of the night to smoke in the bathroom. Another relapsed on drugs. An alcoholic former guest tried to sneak into the house at five in the morning to “use the bathroom.” During a previous restroom stop, he stole a guest’s leather jacket. Several guests lied to us about their income and housing plans. One of them told a story so ridiculous that I felt like saying, “Do yourself a favor. Before you tell me another lie, run it by someone else to see if they would believe you.” It’s disrespectful enough that someone lies to me without treating me as a complete idiot.
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