“The newspaper…comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable,” Finley Peter Dunne, a Chicago humorist, wrote in 1902. Until recently, I mistakenly thought that these words originated from Dorothy Day—and that she was speaking about people of faith, followers and lovers of Jesus, not newspapers. The statement seemed in perfect keeping with Catholic social justice tenets. It still does. As someone who is Catholic and also writes for a newspaper, though, I take this quote to heart.
In light of this year’s presidential election, I have been confronting the comfort of my own life. I am a straight white American citizen, a privileged Boomer. In light of the threatened policies of the incoming administration, I am about as comfy as I can get without adding “male” to my description. I would like to keep my Medicare, but I suspect the collective fury of a lot of old people who vote (like me, a card-carrying A.A.R.P. member) will keep that program off the chopping block for a while. I will not be deported, unlike many other grandmas and dreamers. I am not a prominent enough writer for my columns to be investigated by the Department of Justice under some corrupt flunky. I can probably bury my head in the sands of my comfortable circumstances and turn to gardening as I mourn the demise of decency in government.
Indeed, that was my inclination on that sleepless election night, when I realized that white women, among other supposedly sane voting groups, were not going to save democracy, that a lot of American voters were not even going to bother to vote. I have long been a political junkie, but I considered never watching the news again. I considered unsubscribing from all pertinent podcasts and social media. I considered staying in my lovely safe home in a small town and abandoning all concern for anyone else. Then I remembered that I do not have that luxury.
I am a Catholic.
I am called—commanded, really—to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, care for the sick, visit the prisoner and welcome the stranger. This call comes directly from Jesus Christ. See Matthew 25. It is non-negotiable.
I confess I suffered a vile dose of déjà vu on election night, or some version of George W. Bush’s mangled interpretation of “fool me twice,” but here we are: We have again elected a MAGA ticket, this time on steroids. I am thinking of some of their desired and intended social policies, apart from tax cuts for the rich, which we know from the last time we elected this guy:
When I was hungry you cut off my access to food stamps.
When I was thirsty you left the lead in my drinking water.
When I was naked you made sleeping outside illegal.
When I was sick you defunded my health insurance.
When I was in prison you sped up the schedule for federal executions.
When I was a stranger you separated me from my family and caged me.
I cannot be comfortable with this cruel agenda and still call myself a person of faith. I cannot withdraw from participation in protecting our common home. I cannot sit at home and do nothing on behalf of the people I love. I have a trans adult child who is fearful of the threatened violence to their health care and to their person, and I am fearful for them. I have tiny grandkids who are counting on living happy long lives on an inhabitable planet. I have friends who rely on Medicare and Social Security to stay housed and alive. I have acquaintances who were brought to the United States as babies and who may be deported to a country where they have never lived and don’t speak the language. And even if I didn’t know any of these people personally, I am still called to love everyone and to do everything I can to mitigate any harm that may befall anyone. I am called to comfort the afflicted.
We people of faith don’t get to remove ourselves from the public square and live out our days in comfortable oblivion, although it is tempting. “If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?” asked St. James in his letter. “So faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (2:15-17). Our calling to a living faith, then, is visceral as well as spiritual. It demands our hands and our heart, our time and our money, our prayer and our presence. I’m talking to myself.
“You’re not allowed to give up,” the anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny said before being jailed and martyred by Russia’s despot and his system of injustice. We older Catholics may not be leading an international movement, but our work is clear. Wherever we find ourselves, in whatever small way, we are to stand up for the oppressed, the poor, the disadvantaged, the folks on the margins. We are to do whatever we are good at for the good of others. Our Catholic mandate is not to turn a blind eye to racism or misogyny or hatred or persecution, but to embrace the victims of those systemic injustices wherever we find them. Maybe we even have to leave our nice, safe neighborhoods and go look for them. I’m talking to myself.
Dorothy Day would be ashamed of many of us for tolerating the harm done to the afflicted, for basking in our blind comfort, for ignoring all the faces of Jesus among us. The election of someone who promises actions that contradict our Catholic social justice principles—mass deportations, for starters—should spur us to reassert our mission of care and concern for humanity and creation. By the grace of God, we who are comfortable need to start afflicting.
I’m talking to myself. And perhaps to you.
