I’d Like to Say | Patrick Carolan

Patrick Carolan

Patrick previously served as executive director of the Franciscan Action Network. He is also a cofounder of the Global Catholic Climate Movement.

He currently serves as director of Catholic outreach for Vote Common Good. He is a recipient of the 2015 White House Champions of Change Award and is personally dedicated to social justice through individual and societal transformation.

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COVID-19 Can Lead Us to a Better World

My good friend and former pastor Father Tom Lynch would often say, “Life turns on a dime.” He was generally saying this in reference to Matthew 24:42: “Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.” Father Tom talked about how your life could be humming along, most things going smoothly, when something happens—a death, illness, loss of job, anything—and your life is turned upside down.

We have all experienced positive and negative events that have changed us. Two years ago, while I was working in Washington, DC, my wife received a phone call from the Savannah, Georgia, police telling us that our son had been shot and was in critical condition in a hospital. Thankfully, my son survived, but our lives were changed. How we react to these life-changing events defines who we are. This is true not only for us as individuals but also for society as a whole.

As a result of the COVID-19 crisis, our world has been turned upside down. Everything has changed. We now use terms like “shelter in place,” and we practice social distancing. Stores ration hard-to-find items. Parents have learned how to be teachers. Children have virtual birthday parties, weddings are canceled, and we are forced to remotely mourn our loved ones who have passed. Previously, I traveled across the country on a bus going from state to state as part of Vote Common Good. Now we organize online events. Our lives have indeed turned on a dime.

WHAT IS NORMAL?

As we spend more time socially distanced, we hear people say they cannot wait for things to get back to normal. But what exactly is normal? For many of us, it is working, having friends over, maybe going out for dinner or a movie. We might regularly attend church or volunteer at a food pantry. Normal means settling into a comfortable routine not really affected by the suffering of the poor and marginalized.

But for many others it is a different story. For young black men like my son, “normal” is frequently being pulled over for driving while black and fearing that they may be shot. For women, “normal” often means making less money than men for doing the same work and being sexually harassed or assaulted. For some immigrants, it means fleeing violence and death in your country only to have your children taken away from you at the US border. For schoolchildren, “normal” is having drills in case an active shooter should come to their school.

“Normal” is giving tax cuts to the wealthy while cutting programs to feed the poor. It is the growing inequality between the rich and the poor, where the wealthy can spend a million dollars on a car and poor families are trying to make sure there’s enough food on the table and praying that no one gets sick because they cannot afford health care. “Normal” is 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty and 10,000 children dying from hunger every day. It is ignoring the

damage we are doing to God’s wondrous CHOOSE WISELY and beautiful creation while nearly 2,000 Do we want to go back At some point, this crisis will end. A different species go extinct every year. to the same “normal” vaccine will be developed; the shelter-in

Is this really the normal we want? of inequality, discrimiplace and the safe distancing measures COME TOGETHER If there’s one lesson we have learned from the current pandemic, it is that we are all nation, and separation? Or do we follow Pope Francis and work to will be lifted. Then we will have a choice: Do we want to go back to the same “normal” of inequality, discrimination, and separation? Or do we follow Pope Francis connected to each other. What happens do better? and work to do better? to one of us affects all of us. I believe this We can come through this with a is the message that Jesus is teaching us better appreciation of all of God’s creain Matthew 25:40: “Whatever you did for one of these least tion. We can choose to live simply and full of gratitude as brothers of mine, you did for me.” St. Francis taught us. Knowing how fragile life is, we can live

Jesus’ early followers understood this. In the first days of more intentionally. the Church, disciples “devoted themselves to . . . communal We have the opportunity to come together with God to life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers. . . . All create a new normal, one based on the interconnectedness of who believed were together and had all things in common; all creation. But first we must rethink who we are. We need they would sell their property and possessions and divide to change our paradigm; as Mark says simply, “No one pours them among all according to each one’s need” (Acts 2:42, new wine into old wineskins” (2:22). 45). But if we are to create a new normal, we must first throw

Their vision was not of a Jesus who died on the cross so away our theology of substitutionary atonement, a theology an avenging God might forgive a sin that was committed that Jesus was born because God demanded a sacrifice, a thousands of years ago. Rather, as Marcus J. Borg and John theology of separation. We need to reclaim the theology and Dominic Crossan write in The Last Week: “His protest was message of Jesus, a message of peace, hope, and love—a mesagainst a domination system legitimated in the name of sage that, together with God and all creation, we can build a God, a domination system radically different from what the new creation, a heaven on earth. already present and coming kingdom of God, the dream of God, would be like.” Your Gifts Power Our Work

We know that this ideal community didn’t last long. We hold on to this vision, hoping that it may again be realized. Someday we might do as Jesus told us in Mark 8:34: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny [themselves], take up [their] cross, and follow me.” Instead, we have built a theology around separation and individualism, where we are here only for the sole purpose of “getting to heaven.”

Something is good only if it serves the purpose of getting us to heaven. Instead of taking up the cross as Jesus told us to, we created a theology around worshipping the cross. This theology is called substitutionary atonement—the idea that the cross was necessary and required as an atonement for OUR MISSION is to spread the Gospel in the original sin. spirit of St. Francis in ever-widening circles

In his Easter message, Pope Francis said, “I hope that this through new media. With joy and with purpose, time of danger will free us from operating on automatic pilot, shake our sleepy consciences, and allow a humanist we seek to follow in the footsteps of our founder and share the grace of our loving God. and ecological conversion that puts an end to the idolatry We are blessed to join with generous of money and places human life and dignity at the center.” COVID-19 has demonstrated the power of our collective will partners like you to grow our circle of friends and multiply our efforts. when we agree on what is important. Your gift will support critical Pope Francis encouraged political leaders to “work actively for the common good.” St. Francis viewed the earth new initiatives that share powerful messages of hope, inspiration, and and all nature as God’s creation, a place of continual incarpurpose for nation. St. Bonaventure tells us that how we choose and what our lives. we choose make a difference—first in what we become by our choices and second in what the world becomes by those same choices. For more information please contact Ray Taylor at: (614) 495-7378 or RTaylor@FranciscanMedia.org