Disrupting the Disruptor

Last week, San Diego Roman Catholic Bishop Robert McElroy delivered a speech in Modesto to a gathering of 700 community organizers and social justice advocates at the U.S. Regional Meeting of Popular Movements.

The address, which captured national attention, calls on Americans to be "disruptors" and "rebuilders." Here are a few excerpts:

"In the United States we stand at a pivotal moment as a people and a nation, in which bitter divisions cleave our country and pollute our national dialogue. In our reflections in these days, here, we must identify the ways in which our very ability to see, judge and act on behalf of justice is being endangered by cultural currents which leave us isolated, embittered and angry. We must make the issues of jobs, housing, immigration, economic disparities and the environment, foundations for common efforts rather than of division. We must see prophetic words and prophetic actions which produce unity and cohesion and we must do so in the spirit of hope which is realistic."

"Never be afraid to speak the truth. Always find your foundation for reflection and action in the fullness of empirical reality. Design strategies for change upon ever fuller dissemination of truths, even when they seem inconvenient to the cause. This is an especially important anchor for us, in an age in which truth itself is under attack."

"In Catholic teaching, the very rights which are being denied in our society to large numbers of those who live in our nation are intrinsic human rights in Catholic teaching: The right to medical care; to decent housing; to the protection of human life from conception to natural death; of the right to food; of the right to work. Catholic teaching sees these rights not merely as points for negotiation, provided only if there is excess in society after the workings of the free market system accomplished their distribution of the nation’s wealth. Rather, these rights are basic claims which every man, woman and family has upon our nation as a whole."

"We have to rebuild this nation so that we place at its heart the service to the dignity of the human person and assert what the American flag behinds us asserts is our heritage: Every man, woman and child is equal in this nation and called to be equal."

Read the Bishop's full remarks here: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/religion/sd-me-mcelroy-speech-20170221-story.html

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