NEWS STORY: U.S. Catholics mark millennium jubilee with justice focus

c. 1999 Religion News Service LOS ANGELES _ About 3,000 Roman Catholic social activists and their supporters are gathering here for a four-day church-sponsored meeting to talk about ending the death penalty, reforming immigration laws, and aiding the poor as means to implement Pope John Paul II’s call to make the new millennium a justice-focused […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

LOS ANGELES _ About 3,000 Roman Catholic social activists and their supporters are gathering here for a four-day church-sponsored meeting to talk about ending the death penalty, reforming immigration laws, and aiding the poor as means to implement Pope John Paul II’s call to make the new millennium a justice-focused era.”It puts some meaning in the millennium,”said John Carr, director of the social development and world peace office at the U.S. Catholic Conference, a sponsor of the July 15-18 National Catholic Gathering for Jubilee Justice.”Lots of people are trying to figure out _ beyond New Year’s cruises and parties _ what does the millennium mean?” The Rev. Robert Vitello, executive director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the bishops’ anti-poverty program, and another conference organizer, said the four-day conference seeks”to tell the good news about what’s already happening in terms of justice and charity.”So often people focus on the problems, the special problems that we have to struggle with. But we want to tell the good news, what the church has accomplished through its social ministry,”he said.

Among the scheduled speaker for the meeting are East Timorese Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo, co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize; anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean; AFL-CIO President John Sweeney; Helen Alvare, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ top spokeswoman on abortion issues; actor Carroll O’Connor; and Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, president of the Vatican’s Central Committee for the Great Jubilee Year 2000.


Carr said the millennium marks a calendar change but”the jubilee is the biblical process of looking back and looking ahead. You can’t celebrate the jubilee without focusing on justice.” The bilingual English/Spanish conference is unique in part because of the range of groups it is bringing together _ from the National Black Catholic Congress to the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries. All 11 secretariats, or agencies, within the NCCB along with Catholics Charities USA, the Society of St. Vincent DePaul and Catholic Relief Services will be represented. Some 60 groups are participating in the meeting.”Justice is a constitutive element of the gospel,”said Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the NCCB and its social policy arm, the U.S. Catholic Conference.”To be an active Catholic is to be involved in justice issues. We have all different human needs. The justice issues flow through all of them. Each of us has to make an individual commitment for justice.” The conference is costing about half a million dollars to put on, Vitello said. Money has come from the bishops’ conference, the organizations involved and fund-raising events.”We made special efforts to reach out to the different groups,”Vitello said.”We’ve reached out beyond the people who are usually engaged in social ministry _ the small groups of people that are totally focused on justice ministries.” National Catholic associations participating here represent lay workers, deacons, personnel administrators, musicians, nuns, brothers, priests, teachers, Hispanics, rural and disabled people, young adults and youth ministers. Criteria for groups included having national constituencies, Vitello said,”and they needed to be listed in the official Catholic directory.” Seminar topics cover the broad sway of Catholic social teaching: community organizing, rural and environmental issues, abortion and crisis pregnancies, the death penalty, immigration, health care, political responsibility, domestic violence, AIDS, world debt, hunger, land reform, sweatshop and child labor, the arms trade and military spending. Also included are specific workshops on atoning for the sins of racism both individually and institutionally in American history. The latter, Vitello said, was included as part of an effort”to come towards some healing eventually.” Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony is scheduled to preside over Sunday’s closing Mass. In a letter of greeting to participants, Mahony said the four-day event is”a significant and meaningful opportunity to lift up in a very public way the Catholic Church’s rich social tradition and teaching.” Vitello said the conference, more than two years in the planning, fuses teachings often separate from one another, as some Catholics focus just on immigration issues while others do only prison ministry.”We said from the very beginning that we wanted to look at all the issues related to justice and charity,”he said.”We really want to do more than just give information to people.”

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