This article orginally appeared in the September 2003 Boost-A-Month Club Newsletter.

Justice at Center of Commission’s Work

Director Marcus Keyes, center, with Glenmary Commission on Justice co-convenors Father Bob Dalton, left, and Brother Larry Johnson.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

Archbishop Oscar Romero wrote these words as part of the longer prayer, “Creating the Church of Tomorrow,” which closed the Glenmary Commission on Justice meeting on Aug. 18 at Nazareth, Ky. The prayer sent Glenmary missioners back to their respective areas to continue “doing something” to help the poor and oppressed and to care for the earth.

Marcus Keyes, the director of the Commission on Justice, knows they can’t solve the world’s problems, and that isn’t their goal. They intend to raise awareness and to walk in solidarity with those Father Bishop described as the “most neglected.”

For about 25 years, the Glenmary Commission on Justice has walked in solidarity with those struggling for justice in the home missions and has fostered action to facilitate change. The commission is a network of persons and groups—Glenmarians, coworkers, regional committees, and commissions as well as other interested individuals—which provides a forum for discussion and action.

“This project [justice] is not ours,” says Marcus. “It belongs to God, and our role in the Commission on Justice is to keep the issues of our time in front of people and to provide ways for people to take action to address those issues.” This action comes in many forms: a peaceful protest, prayer vigils, prayer support, lobbying, education.

“We’re not reinventing the wheel in the work we’re doing,” he continues. “We have to listen carefully to what’s going on in the world and see where God is already at work as people struggle for love, life and justice. It’s in those places where God asks us to join in the struggle.”

In the past year, the commission has joined in the struggle by:

• Sponsoring an Undoing Racism Workshop for Glenmarians, coworkers and people from mission communities. Follow-up sessions within Glenmary districts are being coordinated by the commission.

• Bringing together 38 people for two days to discuss and discover specific progress towards greater justice for the people working in the poultry industry. This meeting was a follow-up to Voices and Choices, a pastoral letter released in 2000 by the Catholic bishops of the South to address environmental issues surrounding the poultry industry and, most especially, worker injustice. This was a rare opportunity for workers, growers, poultry company executives, environmentalists and community people to join together in dialogue.

• Beginning to raise awareness about for-profit prisons and those prisoners housed in the multitude of new prisons being built in Appalachia and the rural South. The growing number of prisons and the growing number of prisoners being imported from around the nation to fill them makes this a pressing issue for many Glenmary missions. These prisons have been called the fastest-growing home mission territory in the United States today. The commission is developing a resource kit for Glenmary missions and the dioceses of the South containing a video and workbook to educate and raise awareness.

• Becoming a clearinghouse for information and ideas regarding the inability of undocumented Hispanics to obtain driver’s licenses. States have different laws pertaining to this issue, most prohibiting those without a Social Security number from obtaining a driver’s license. The commission is networking with organizations to change these laws so undocumented workers can receive a driver’s license.

The commission’s work is not just limited to regional issues. The commission organizes a group to attend the annual gathering in Fort Benning, Ga., to protest the Army training facility formerly known as the School of the Americas. Another such group will attend this year’s protest Nov. 15-16.

And a new concern was presented to the Glenmary community this year: the Stop the Bombs Campaign of the Oak Ridge (Tenn.) Environmental Peace Alliance (OREPA). The campaign is geared towards ending nuclear weapons production/restoration at the Y12 Plant in Oak Ridge. This plant is the last full-scale operating nuclear weapons production plant in the United States. The Rev. Ralph Hutchinson, a Presbyterian minister from the Oak Ridge area and coordinator of OREPA, was the guest speaker during the Aug. 18 meeting.

“We’re just instruments of God in this world,” Marcus says. And together, as the Glenmary Commission on Justice, members continue to provide “a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.”