Dorothy Day and College Catholic Education

Since I come from a small, very conservative Catholic town, one thing I have learned about Catholicism at Loras is that there are other people in this world who don’t agree with everything the Catholic Church teaches. In high school, we were always taught to believe, accept, practice, teach, etc. exactly what the Catholic Church said. I was incredibly turned off by this because I had a lot of disagreements with the church, and I thought in order to be considered Catholic I had to believe everything I was taught. It was not until I came to Loras, and I met some people with similar morals as myself, that I realized I do not have to believe in every little thing of the Catholic Church in order to consider myself Catholic. In addition, I took classes such as Priest, Minister, and Rabbi that actually pointed out some “holes” in the church and made me think about my religion on a more critical and analytical level, that I had been yearning to do in high school. In general, a Catholic college education bestows the religion onto all of the students while still trying to keep an open mind about their own religion, and other religions as well. These experiences have taught me a great deal about my faith and how to be a ‘cafeteria Catholic’, i.e. someone who picks and chooses what to believe and follow from the Catholic teaching.
One thing that is distinctive about a Catholic college education is that the education teaches you every side of the church, the good and the bad. But yet, at times, I feel like they tell me too ignore all of those bad things and just be Catholic anyways. But I don’t want to ignore those things and neither did Dorothy Day. To her, being Catholic was treating everybody equaling and helping the needy. This is something that the church teaches but sometimes has a hard time practicing. Dorothy Day paved her own path and set up the Catholic Worker Houses on the basis of Catholic Social Teaching. I remember when I was a freshman at a bible study group and we were talking about how being Catholic meant that the same Mass was being said all across the world to fellow Catholics. This is admirable but what about the other billions of people out there who are not Catholic? Should we not share something with them every day? Dorothy Day wanted to share something with every human and her way of doing that was by sharing the main thing that all humans have in common, food. She would share her food, house, conversations, etc. with anyone because she saw every human being has having the right to survival. I would have liked to bring this topic up during that bible study and asked, “What are you sharing with the rest of the world today?”

The Politics of Societies

Often times I use the word politics not in reference to a governing body but as a reference to a way things are ran and decided without going by a governing set of rules. This happens all the time in today’s world where people make decisions based on race or social class. For example someone might not attend a particular church because its clergy is mostly of a different race or social class. When I look at today’s society I can see and feel a set of governing rules on how where one is suppose to live, go to church, shop, send their kids to school, etc. And these decisions are based entirely on one’s social class. This is definitely visible at my service placement at the Multicultural Family Center. The vast majority of the kids are African American, come from homes with a low income, and live in the Washington neighborhood. There are no wealthy white kids there because the politics of society say that a wealthy white child cannot go to a free afterschool daycare. Why not? How come some parents don’t send their kids to the center and use the money they are saving by not sending them to a daycare to donate to the center? That money could be used by the center to improve the quality of daycare for your child and all the other children there. It is because the politics of society say that this is wrong; that this should not happen. Society has drawn lines between social classes and races and the politics and rules of these lines make it hard to cross them. I even asked myself the question. “Would I send my kids to the center as an after school daycare?” Quite frankly, I don’t know. By what I believe and what I think is right I would say yes. But for some reason society has such a huge impact on my decision that I just don’t know if I could, and I have no good arguments for this. I feel like this is an issue where I am in the middle of the racist spectrum which I talked about last week. I realize what is there and what is happening but I’m just not stepping up to the plate to do anything about it. I think I will have to spend more time at the center in order to answer this question as well.
I think Ellison is trying to tell us that politics in communities is what divides us. That is what divides our schools, organizations, cities into different social and racial classes. There are walls and barriers between us and if we want to tear them down we must get rid of society politics. There will always be this barriers as long as there are unwritten rules of ‘proper’ conduct between social classes. Ellison shows this in Invisible Man by how the character could not stay at the men’s house any longer for certain reasons. Though I thought it was very unclear to the reader what those reasons were one can still tell that that he was making a point on how divisions between societies are existent.

Races in the Mirror

After spending time at the Multicultural Family Center the last couple of weeks, I have noticed how different my life really is/was compared to children who attend the center. The vast majority of them are African American, and one thing I found shocking is that they realize they are black. I thought these children would not realize that we were of a different race. But when one child asked “Whitey, can you read me a story?" I was shocked and stunned. I did not how to react so I just said “My name is not ‘whitey’ it is Dave.” Later on when I stood up one child said “You are tall like my dad. You kinda look like him!” “He can’t look like your dad! He ain’t black!” another child quickly intervened. Again I was shocked and I realized that these kids are no stranger to race. This does not mean that they judged me for being white; they didn't even care. They still wanted me to help them with their homework, read to them, play with them on the computers, but at the same time they still knew I was white and they were black. This past weekend I was reflecting and talking about this experience at dinner and I was met with a very disturbing fact, every time these children look in the mirror they do not see just a kid but a black kid. How does this make them feel? Do they feel different or think they are different? Every time I go to the center I step into a world where I am conscience of my race and these kids live in that world every minute of their lives. I think I need to spend more time at the center in order to answer these questions so I plan on answering these questions in a future blog.
Then I had to ask myself the question do I look at these kids and see that they are black? Or do I look at them and see them as another human being? I have always thought that I saw people of different ethnic backgrounds as just another human being. Whenever I meet someone of a different race, I automatically think what can I do or say to not come across as racist. And I think this makes me racist in a way. When I see another white person I do not think that so why do I think that when I see someone of a different race? After thinking about this for awhile, I have come to the conclusion that a large part of the way one perceives another race is based on your social environment. I did not grow up with any African Americans in my small hometown but I was always taught not to discriminate in school and at home. But for me not discriminating meant just not saying anything demeaning and being friendly when I very rarely encountered someone of a different race. Now I realize there is a spectrum of discrimination. The absolute racist, and the absolute lover of all peoples on the two ends. Then there are the people who don’t make racist comments but don’t do anything to stop racism in the middle. Hopefully I can move towards the ‘lover of all peoples’ end of the spectrum through this service opportunity.