by Joseph Nangle, OFM
Pax Christi USA 2023 Teacher of Peace
The Gospel for this 28th Sunday in Ordinary time suggests a challenging examination of conscience for us who live at this time and place in history. Mark’s gospel relates the story of a rich man who cannot part with his possessions despite the Lord’s invitation to do so; and Jesus’ follow-up: “How hard it is [for the rich] to enter the Kingdom of God.” Yet the thought of judging our personal and societal lifestyles through the prism of this sad story and Jesus’ reaction tempts us to look away. We are reluctant to confront our way of life in this world of enormous privilege, especially when compared to the rest of the world. It evokes defensiveness. Still, doing honestly the work of assessing critically how we live, will surely result in deep and healthy self-awareness before God.
Most of us are rich, objectively and especially in comparison with the majority of people who live today. Our “wants” far exceed our “needs.” The capitalistic system is a house of cards, dependent on our being “constant consumers.” It insists on continued growth, through ever increasing purchases of goods and services that are often superfluous even useless. [One commentator boasted that her contribution to the “recovery” after the tragedy of September 11, 2001 was to “keep the system” going by buying a new car – an insane disconnect.]
This dehumanizing system is propelled by clever observers of our psyches who bombard us with ceaseless advertisements promising greater health, happiness and social standing in and through their products. Being subjected to such manipulation is truly a violation of our intelligence and common sense, but unfortunately it is effective.
This temptation to constant “upward mobility” is not confined to personal matters. How many of our parishes, at the whim of their clerical leaders, spend exorbitant amounts of money on ever-more ornate liturgical artifacts? How often we hear of new multi-million dollar churches and cathedrals being built – monuments to men who occupy powerful positions in Catholic (and other) institutions? [By way of comparison, we recall the decision of Archbishop St. Oscar Romero who refused to reconstruct his admittedly rundown cathedral in San Salvador so as not to insult those living in poverty.]
There is a real hope that Pope Francis’ synodal dream for the Church will empower our laity to take issue with practices of excessive expenditures at parish and diocesan levels. After all, it is the laity who actually pay for them.
Religious communities, too, are hardly immune to this capitalist aberration. Often members of orders and congregations, who have vowed lives of poverty, find themselves embarrassed and reluctant to invite visitors to their convents and monasteries because of their affluence. There is a curious paradox here. Clearly many members of wealthy religious congregations are good-willed people faithfully living out their vow of poverty. Sometimes one discovers the contrast between their private lives of austerity and their privileged surroundings when clearing out their “possessions” when they die.
Without doubt the capitalist mentality drives virtually the entire corporate world. The Catholic Nonviolence Initiative has pointed to the violence being done, for example, to Mother Earth by profit-driven big businesses of every type. When asked, executives of large corporations shamelessly admit that the “soul” of their enterprises is the “bottom line,” the balance sheet. Business practices which favor the shareholders, however harmful to consumers, are permissible.
Over against all of this is a simple and profound ideal and challenge: the preferential option for the poor. This corollary to Catholic Social Teaching was spelled out clearly in the 1986 prophetic pastoral letter of the US bishops titled “Economic Justice for All.” They wrote: “[Personal and societal] decisions must be judged in light of what they do for the poor, what they do to the poor and what they enable the poor to do for themselves.” #20
Joe Nangle OFM is a Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace and the 2023 Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace. As a member of the Assisi Community in Washington, D.C., he is dedicated to simple living and social change. Joe also serves as the Pastoral Associate for the Latino community at Our Lady Queen of Peace, Arlington, Virginia.