Our 2011 Annual Report reveals people and organizations who are willing to “open the door” to Christ calling us. Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) unlocks fear and judgment and clothes it in a zealous fight for immigrants’ and migrants’ shared membership in society and comprehensive immigration reform. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) sustains the knocking of Christ in minds and hearts to love as we have been loved. Will we, too, abandon rugged individualism and self-sufficiently and open the door to ethical imperatives and eternal happiness? By opening their doors for 30,312 elementary students in 2011, the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and the Catholic Inner-City Education Fund (CISE) opened human flourishing through Catholic education that seeks to maximize potential and moral formation of each child. St. James School and Parish in Bay City, Mich. share this mission and open the door to solidarity by ensuring resources for their community, which suffers a nearly ten percent unemployment rate, above the national average. Will we recognize that the unemployed want to work, the underemployed want to be challenged and the wealthy must share the sacrifice? DePaul Cristo Rey High School, a new Catholic school for students below a certain income, is opening doors to careers and college preparatory education. Will we join in opening these doors, like the corporations that are providing jobs to DePaul Cristo Rey students? conform to society, seeing people as commodities, markets or burdens? Are we opening the door to Christ’s richness and vision for community and total reliance on God, or are our daily choices focused on greed, smugness and self-sufficiency? Are we opening the door to a discipleship that calls us beyond charity to justice?
Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton tells us, “How we will laugh when we look behind, at the troubles we have endured and which will then appear in their true light. And that bright and glorious cross which we now drag through the mud and dirt, how beautiful and lovely it will appear when we find it opens the door of our eternal happiness to us.”
During the 25 years after World War II, the wealthy paid taxes well over 50 percent of earnings, enabling middle class expansion and economic growth.
We pray that our Annual Report will provide stories and reflections that help us take up and endure our cross together and remain vigilant in opening the door to our eternal happiness!
In our society, Church and organizations today, who is winning and losing, who is deciding and are we complacently colluding? Do we hear Christ knocking and are we willing to open the door?
Sister Sally Duffy, SC President and Executive Director SC Ministry Foundation 3