Because we are Catholic.

Nearly two decades ago, on Dec. 8, 1975, Pope Paul VI issued an apostolic exhortation, Evangelization in the Modern World. In that remarkable document he impressed on the Catholic faithful two realities utterly inseparable from evangelization: Jesus Christ and people.

* Jesus Christ. As Paul VI insisted, "Evangelization will always have as the foundation, center, and supreme focus of its dynamism the clear proclamation that in Jesus Christ ... salvation is offered to every human being as a gracious gift inspired by God's mercy" (no. 27). Without Christ as the centerpiece, there is no genuine evangelization. And to preach Christ, the pontiff noted, is to proclaim hope in God's New Covenant promises, the gospel of love, the need for prayer, communion with the church, and celebrating the sacraments--culminating in the Eucharist.

* People. Having anchored evangelization in the centrality of Christ, Pope Paul went on to declare: "Evangelization cannot be complete, however, unless account is taken of the links between the gospel and the concrete personal and social life of men and women.... In proclaiming liberation and ranging herself with all who suffer and toil for it, the Church cannot allow herself or her mission to be limited to the purely religious sphere while she ignores the temporal problems of the human person.... The Church considers it highly important to establish structures which are more human, more just, more respectful of the rights of the person, less oppressive and coercive..." (nos. 29, 34, 36). This aspect of evangelization was confirmed by Pope John Paul II when he told the Latin American bishops assembled at Puebla in 1979: "The Church has learned that its evangelizing mission has as indispensable part [como parte indispensable] action for justice and those efforts which the development of the human person demands."

What has all this to do with Catholic identity? More than unnumbered Catholics realize. For if every person baptized into Christ is by that very sacrament called to proclaim the gospel as Paul VI described it--by deed more than by word and by actual living more than by preaching--then "action for justice" is an indispensable facet of every Christian's identity. If, as Vatican II declared, "Christ's redemptive work ... involves also the renewal of the whole temporal order" (Apostolate of the Laity, no. 5), then one can hardly be a committed Catholic without a commitment to justice.

But not justice simply in an ethical sense: give to each man, woman, and child what each deserves, what each can claim as a right because it has been written into law or can be proven from philosophy. When Micah declared to Israel, "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice?" (Mic. 6:8), he was not speaking of a quid pro quo based on merit. The biblical idea of justice includes the ethical but goes beyond it, rises above it. The biblical idea of justice is fidelity to the demands of relationships--especially relationships that stem from a covenant with God. In "Biblical Perspectives on Justice," in the book The Faith That Does Justice (Paulist Press, 1977), edited by Father John C. Haughey, S.J., Jesuit scripture scholar Father John R. Donahue expressed it strikingly:

In contrast to modern individualism the

Israelite is in a world where "to live" is to be united

with others in a social context either by bonds

of family or by covenant relationships. This

web of relationships--king with people, judge

with complainants, family with tribe and

kinfolk, the community with the resident alien 

and suffering in their midst, and all with the

covenant God--constitutes the world in which

life is played out.

Like the biblical Jew, we Catholics, too, have a covenant with God; for us, the covenant was sealed in the blood of Christ. And that covenant includes two inseparable commandments: love God above all else and love your sisters and brothers "as yourself" (Matt. 22:39). The Second Great Commandment is not some sort of psychological balance: as much or as little as you love yourself, so much or so little shall you love others. No, the Commandment means love your sisters and brothers as if you were standing in their shoes.

This covenant with Christ, this fresh understanding of the Second Great Commandment, demands that we hear the cries of the poor. By "the poor" I mean not simply the economically disadvantaged. Recall who the poor are in scripture--the poverty stricken, of course, but others as well. Poor was the leper, ostracized from society, excluded from normal association with others, compelled often to live outside town. Poor was the widow, who could not inherit from her husband, was an obvious victim for creditors, had no defender at law. Poor were the orphans, with no parents to love them. Poor was the woman caught in adultery, to be stoned according to the law of Moses. Poor were those of a lower class, oppressed by the powerful.

Who are the poor whose cries we must hear if we are to be authentically Catholic? Poor are our children. One of every five grows up hungry in the richest nation on earth. Every minute or so, a child is sexually abused or runs away from home or is arrested for drug abuse or is killed by a gun or has a baby. In the District of Columbia, children are planning their own funerals--for in a culture of coke and crack, of bullets and knives, they have every reason to suspect they will not be around very long.

Poor are the elderly, for our dominant American culture glorifies youth, strength, beauty. To be "retired" is to be literally "useless"; the aged don't "do" anything. They are irrelevant to big business, big government, big labor, big military, big education. They are an economic liability and use up medical resources that could benefit the so-called useful members of society.

Poor are blacks; for, as the cancer-ridden Sister Thea Bowman put it to the bishops of the U.S. before she died, the blacks are "still scratching and clawing, still trying to find home in the homeland and home in the church, still struggling to gain access to equal opportunity." Black men are still dying in disproportionate numbers of suicide, AIDS, drug abuse, and low self-esteem.

Poor are the AIDS afflicted. For many Americans, AIDS is God's plague on the promiscuous--here are today's lepers. Poor are our women, crying out against the feminization of poverty, the powerlessness of women to shape their nation or their church in any but a masculine mold. Poor are the Hispanic communities, in so many ways second-class citizens, hardly accepted in our Anglo liturgy and lives. Poor are our Native Americans, driven from the land they revere, homeless in their own homes, without work, without dignity, without hope. Poor are our Jewish sisters and brothers, increasingly fearful as Americans shout that the Holocaust, which consumed 6 million of their dear ones, is a gigantic hoax. Poor are the dehumanized on scores of death rows while most Americans clamor to avenge one killing with another killing.

Such, briefly and inadequately, is the American context that challenges a significant segment of our Catholic identity. Here, a story told by John Carr of the United States Catholic Conference's Department of Social Justice and World Peace is powerful and relevant. Not long ago, at a gathering of Catholics concerned for social justice, one of the participants asked the speaker: "Why do we try to help all these people? We never ask them what exactly they believe, whether they go to church, or even whether they are Catholic." The speaker responded: "We don't do this because they are Catholic; we do it because we are Catholic."

How simple, yet how profound! To be Catholic is to be catholic, open as Jesus was to the hurts of a crucified world, to every human creature created in God's own likeness. Like his Father, Jesus revealed a decided preference for "the poor," not because they were necessarily or usually holier than the rich and powerful, but because in areas of human and religious living, they stood in greater need. His mission to "the poor" (Luke 4:18) simply carries from the Hebrew Testament to the New the poignant challenge of Yahweh to Israel on the lips of Isaiah (Isa. 58:6-7):

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of injustice,

to undo the thongs of the yoke;

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your

house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,

and not to hide yourself from your own

kin?

We dare not limit Catholic identity to love for God, however profound, however intimate, however mystical. The First Letter of John is terribly uncompromising: "If anyone has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need, yet closes his heart against him or her, how does God's love abide in him?" (1 John 3:17).

Increasingly, as I experience more intimately the "dread-full" aspects of the human condition, I sense why the Son of God borrowed our flesh when he could have redeemed our sinful, sorrow-laden earth in other, less painful ways. With divine intelligence, he already knew what human life was like. But he wanted to experience it as we experience it. And so he was born of a mother's flesh as we are born. He grew in knowledge and wisdom as we grow, learned from Joseph how to turn out a plow, from Mary how to love God. For three years he was as homeless as the lepers he healed. He found out what it feels like to grow hungry and tired, to have his relatives think him mad, and his townsfolk try to toss him over a cliff. He felt thorns in his brow and lashes on his back, experienced what Godforsakenness feels like, drew his last breath in exquisite anguish and public disgrace, died as we die--not with experience of resurrection but with faith in his Father, with hope of life without end.

Catholic identity indeed means identifying with Jesus. But to identify fully with Jesus is not a me-and-Jesus spirituality; it involves identifying, as Jesus did, with our less fortunate sisters and brothers, the despised and marginalized, the homeless and hopeless, those who experience far more of Jesus' crucifixion than of his resurrection, the men and women and, yes, the children weary unto death of what we call "living." To be genuinely Catholic is to murmur sincerely with Jesus, "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28).