5/12/08

The following was a paper that I wrote for a class on the Common Good as part of Viterbo’s Masters in Servant Leadership. It was meant as a reflection on Plato’s Crito, and details a small part of my transformative experience as part of the response team at St. Bridget last summer.

In Plato’s Crito, Socrates’ friend comes to visit him in jail days before he is to die. Crito does not come empty handed. He and other of Socrates’ friends have arranged for Socrates to slip away from captivity to freedom, apparently by paying off the guards where he is imprisoned. When Socrates respectfully declines the offer, Crito does not understand. He pleads with Socrates, “I will be deprived of a friend” (44, b), “you are betraying your sons by going away and leaving them” (45, c-d), “I do not think that what you are doing is just, to give up your life when you can save it” (45, c). However it appears that his biggest concern is what others will think of Crito and his compatriots- “many people will think that I could have saved you if I were willing to spend money, but that I did not care to do so. Surely there can be no worse reputation than to be thought to value money more highly than one’s friends, for the majority will not believe that you yourself were not willing to leave prison while we were eager for you to do so” (44, b-c). Crito even tries to take this one step further by trying to guilt Socrates into coming with them- “ I feel ashamed on your behalf and on behalf of us, your friends, lest all that has happened to you be thought due to cowardice on our part” (45, e).

Socrates’ response to the pleas was blunt, “why should we care so much for what the majority think?” (44,c). “We should not then think so much of what the majority will say about us, but what he will say who understands justice and injustice” (48, a). He asks Crito to think about the arguments made by Socrates in his trial and how an escape might make it look as though everything Socrates said there was “play and nonsense” (46, d). He builds upon the idea of paying attention to justice or injustice of the actions when he points out that it is quite possible that if he were to escape, the consequences might be grave for anyone who helped and remained behind. While escaping might seem the good thing for Socrates to do to save his life, doing so would not only prove to others that his ardent defense at trial was bluster, but many others would suffer as a consequence. For Socrates, this meant that staying and putting his life on the line served the greater good, no matter what the masses thought about the decision.

This idea of sacrificing for justice no matter the cost was illustrated quite clearly over the summer. I live in Postville, IA. It is a small, rural town that became the center of the country’s contentious immigration debate on May 12 when almost 400 people, about 1/5 of the town’s population, was arrested in the country’s largest ever immigration raid. In the days immediately following the raid my home parish, St. Bridget, became the center for a humanitarian response to the chaos created. Catholics and non-Catholics alike took refuge in the Church as they worried about what had happened to their friends and family members. While I was not able to be a part of this initial response by St. Bridget, I was struck by the significance of my parish being able to live out in a concrete fashion the Gospel ideals of mercy, hospitality and love especially of the poor and outcast.

I wrote an article in the Archdiocesan paper about what I had witnessed. After its publication I received many complements from those who agreed with what St. Bridget was doing, and uncomfortable smiles and silence from those who didn’t. I felt pretty good about myself and the article, although at this point in time, writing this article and donating money to the cause was all that I had done. Then, as May turned into June, the Pastoral Administrator, Sr. Mary McCauley, asked me to become a part of the response team as a Volunteer Coordinator for the summer.  She actually had to ask me three times. The first time she asked was in the sacristy before a Mass at which I was a reader. My first reaction, solely to myself, was “but what about my summer?” As educators, both my wife and I enjoy time off during the summer and I, despite the words of support I had written, thought about this relaxing time together and wanted only to protect it. While my insides were saying no way, I think I politely said something like, “That sounds interesting”, or something else to that effect aimed mostly at getting away from the situation at hand without “ruining” my summer. After Mass, I went home with the hope that maybe sister would forget about her offer or, better yet, someone else would come forward to take the job and I would be off the hook. After working with Sister Mary for about 5 years, I should have known she doesn’t forget about much, and will not easily take no for an answer, especially if she sees something in you that needs to called forth. The second time she asked me, she left a message on the machine at home-“Mike, I want you to know that I was serious about that offer we talked about at Church. Call me.” Still convinced that I could escape this by avoiding, I didn’t call back. The third time was by email and by now I realized that I was probably being called by a higher power than Sr. Mary to be a part of this. So I called and accepted the position, now somewhat eager to help, but still hesitant at the prospect of having to sacrifice some of my valuable time.

That hesitancy was still there as I started the position. I was to be in charge of making sure that we had enough volunteers at the Church to take care of the things that were being done. I figured that couldn’t be too tough and wouldn’t take too much time, so I started with a very minimalist view of what I was supposed to be doing.

That minimalist view changed the second day I was there. I was asked to make a phone call to a jail on behalf of a woman who was concerned about the health of her husband, who was being detained at this jail. Her husband had a tape worm for which he was being treated with medication, a medication that was not with him when he had been arrested and taken away. Without the medication, he was in intense pain and the wife very understandably wanted him to receive his medication. Fighting my inner voice telling me that this call didn’t really fit into my minimalist worldview, I dialed the phone.

The resulting conversation changed this worldview and helped me see just how much these people were forced to go through. I was calling thinking that the person would say, “Oh, yes. What is the medication? We’ll be sure he gets it. Thank you.” Instead, the person at the jail, just a woman doing her job, informed me that this wasn’t their responsibility and that I needed to call the US Marshall’s office and gave me a number to call. The number she gave me was not functional. I did an internet search and came up with a different number. When I called I got the Marshall’s answering service and was told that no one would be around until the following week. I explained the problem and told them this was something that needed to be addressed but they still stated that someone would call the following week. SO this man had to sit in jail, in agony for a weekend until it was finally resolved by faxing a dr. order to the jail, something I had volunteered to do up front.

This is but one instance of what was a pattern of passing the buck and a lack of communication and respect as those at St. Bridget tried to provide for everyone involved, many of whom were children. When you look into the eyes of someone worried about their family member like the woman mentioned, and when do it day after day, you cannot help but feel compassion and the need to give more of yourself, no matter your opinions on immigration.

All of this was done within the larger cultural context of the debate taking place in the country about “illegal” immigration.  While I knew that there were people that disagreed with what was going on at St. Bridget, I was taken aback at the depth of the anger, even hatred focused on the Church and those working so hard for the welfare of “the least of these” (Mt 25:40). While I found myself amazed at the sacrifice of so many there, many educators like me who obviously had not shared my compunction with sacrificing their summer, I was also inspired by their calm and merciful responses to some of the hate calls received by them. While they understood that others disagreed, the anger expressed to them did not sway them one bit from their stated mission of helping those in need. It became such a common part of the day at St. Bridget, that when I took my first such call, they joked that now I was really one of them.

My mind had played the role of Crito, trying to give me excuses to not live up to some of the virtues I had written about in the Archdiocesan paper. I spent too much time protecting my free time and not enough time trying to live the justice I had so admired in others. My time at St. Bridget was truly a transformative experience and made me look at the importance of sacrificing for those in need, even in the midst of a society that doesn’t understand.