Under The Shadow Of Pandemic . . . Speakers Consider Faith, Family, Responsibility

By DEXTER DUGGAN

PHOENIX — In many ways before Vatican II, people thought the mission of the clergy was to evangelize, but now it’s the mission of every baptized Catholic, a veteran lay evangelist told a morning presentation being livestreamed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We really need to be focused on what John Paul II has called a new evangelization,” Bill Marcotte, one of three speakers, told the April 18 morning session of the Institute of Catholic Theology (ICT), based at St. Thomas the Apostle Church here.
As the session concluded, ICT director Eric Westby, Ph.D., wryly noted that the pandemic so affected the proceedings, this was “the ICT news hour.”
Marcotte is director of evangelization and discipleship at St. Andrew the Apostle Parish in suburban Chandler, Ariz., and has a master’s of theology degree from the University of San Francisco.
Introducing Marcotte, Westby said the two of them long have been involved in the Church’s mission, with Marcotte racking up more than 30 years in evangelization.
Catholics need to show “we really believe what we believe,” Marcotte said, adding “that’s an obstacle” if people’s lives don’t reflect what they proclaim during a relativistic time that regards one religion to be as good as another.
Because of pandemic restrictions, Westby stood at a lectern in an empty classroom and exchanged thoughts with the morning’s three speakers, each of whom was at a different location, appearing on a screen next to Westby.
He noted that the world responds better to people who live as witnesses of their faith, not only teaching about it. But, he added, potential evangelizers may feel reluctant, such as thinking, “I don’t want to make Uncle Bob upset” at Thanksgiving dinner.
Marcotte agreed, saying, “It can be very, very, very scary” to evangelize. “If you’re not connected with the Holy Spirit. . . . We really need the Holy Spirit to be the force within us to do it.” This, Marcotte said, is “the most vital” part of evangelization courage.
Although his wife hates the word “evangelization,” Marcotte said, she’s a great witness by the example she gives.
In the stresses of the pandemic, Westby observed, calling on the biblical story of the storm-tossed boat with Jesus asleep, “even though there are waves around the ship, the Lord is still in command.”
The morning’s second speaker, Ramon Luzarraga, Ph.D., is assistant professor and chair of the Department of Theology at Benedictine University at Mesa, Ariz.
Westby began this part of the program by noting “how very quickly the world was stopped cold…everyone was at a standstill” with the arrival of the pandemic. This was an opportunity to recall St. John Paul II’s emphasis on solidarity.
Luzarraga said he’s a member of a Caribbean theologians group whose most frequent experience of seeking survival isn’t from the disease but from hurricanes on their islands.
He said that from its beginning, the Church has stood for the common good, and it says the “way we survive and thrive” is that everyone comes along. This isn’t a utilitarian concept, he said, but recognition that “we need each other, and we cannot leave anyone behind.”
Asked by Westby what individual Catholics can do about offenses against the human person, Luzarraga said that “we first practice solidarity among ourselves.” He cited current layoffs which, he said, should not be happening at Catholic schools and parishes.
Since World War II, Luzarraga said, the Church changed from a structure that mostly had clergy who didn’t draw salaries to a lay Church that does draw them. Now a Church is needed that has “all hands on deck” to work to build “mediating institutions” that construct “a society of love,” including “organized labor.”
Sounding a political tone, Luzarraga said he rejects the “false corollary” of conservative commentator Dennis Prager that a big government is a threat to freedom. “Modernity is complex,” and a libertarian government isn’t the answer.
Anti-vaxxers are wrong, he said. “Everyone has to be vaccinated.” Also, people “need to tread the Earth a little more lightly. . . . In being hands-on, we are responsible.”
After touching on topics including “good pay and good benefits” for Church workers, and the idea of primacy of conscience being “Kool-Aid” that U.S. Catholics drank upon emerging from their “ghettoes,” Luzarraga said people moving to Arizona thought they’d be libertarian individuals. However, “Strong individuals require strong communities that are free to help us flourish and thrive.”
The morning’s third speaker, Christina Strafaci, spoke of how the family, “the domestic church is more important than ever” due to restrictions or lockdowns because of the coronavirus.
A French-language teacher at St. Mary’s High School here, Strafaci holds a master’s of theological studies degree from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family and graduate degrees in French literature from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
With Catholics’ mission of living “together in a community of prayer,” Strafaci said, “The domestic church is the smallest cell of society . . . the first school of life and love.”
This isn’t a new concept but dates back to the beginning of the Church, she said, adding that this small cell has the potential “to evangelize the world.”
However, one currently sees “fights, tantrums, power struggles” while families are anxious about jobs, health care, and are “separated from sacraments” instead of having an idealized version of life, she said.
The coronavirus forces everyone “to look at the reality of our families . . . with all of us under one roof,” including college students who had to come home early, she said, with families “being very honest” about their “massive struggles.”
It’s a time of “trying to make dinner with eight people in the kitchen,” Strafaci said, calling it a time of “this giant forced pause.”
Westby commented, “We need a reminder to be patient with ourselves” despite drastic changes that arrived overnight.
He asked Strafaci what she thinks God is doing now, although people can’t understand all of His ways.
Strafaci said that amid all the moments of chaos, they shouldn’t forget the times that go well, the time when they receive “a moment of grace” from God and are able to set aside the familiar busy-ness of life.

Real Encounters

Noting family dinners are more familiar now, Strafaci recalled that Thomas Olmsted, bishop of the Diocese of Phoenix, pointed out their importance in his 2018 apostolic exhortation to husbands and wives and mothers and fathers, Complete My Joy.
Olmsted wrote: “The regular meal together as a family has a certain grace to it, a spiritual gravity and ability to foster discovery of each other over time. One social study found this regular meal to be the number one family habit that led to children’s success in school. It is hard to imagine a more effective step toward family communion outside the sacraments.
“St. John Chrysostom, the first saint to teach the ‘little church’ of the home, in a homily speaking to Christian parents about their homes, advised two special places that parents should create,” Olmsted continued.
“One was a special prayer ‘table’ analogous to where the Scriptures are read in church. The other the family dinner table — analogous to the altar where the Eucharist is shared.
“The family meal, as unrushed as possible, is where real encounters happen between parents and children, between siblings and members outside the immediate family,” the bishop wrote.