Welcome to Monday. Sisters say that solving homelessness is more complex than just providing adequate shelter. An NCR commentator says that although white Christians' support of President Donald Trump is waning, we should have higher expectations because of Catholic social teaching.
Grand Valley Catholic Outreach recently completed a handsome new 34-unit apartment building for youth experiencing homelessness in Grand Junction, Colorado.
Benedictine Sr. Karen Bland, the agency's executive director, is justifiably proud of the new facility, meant for people ages 18 to 24 and intended to ease a growing homelessness problem there. The area is experiencing growing population pressures in cities like Grand Junction, where about 60,000 people live.
But Bland said housing is only one solution to the problem of homelessness, an immensely complex issue. Each person's circumstances are so unique that the only way to solve the problem is, essentially, by doing so one person at a time.
"Yes, they need food, clothing and housing, but then they need resources," Bland told Global Sisters Report, citing the importance of education, job training, addiction treatment, mental health treatment or a host of other issues people made poor can and do face.
Read more of the story here.
More background:
- This story is part of a special series by Global Sisters Report called A Place to Call Home, which focuses on women religious helping people who are homeless or lack adequate shelter.
"After four years of watching President Donald Trump demonize Muslims, enact cruel policies that target migrants, refuse to clearly condemn white supremacists, and disparage the Black Lives Matter movement, white Christians stuck with Trump in large numbers," writes John Gehring, Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life, in a commentary for NCR.
According to preliminary data from AP Votecast, more than half of white Catholics (57%) voted for Trump, compared to 67% of Latino Catholics who supported Biden.
Trump's national support among white Catholics has declined from the 60% who supported him in 2016. And there is data that points to white Catholics grappling with systemic racism more than in the past. While seven in 10 white evangelicals say that the police killing of African American men are isolated incidents rather than part of a pattern, the proportion of white Catholics who agree dropped 13 percentage points — from 71% in 2015 to 56% in 2020.
"But we should have higher expectations for white Catholics who read the same gospels and have access to the same Catholic social teaching as our fellow Black and Latino Catholics," Gehring writes. "More than half of white Catholics still think police violence against people of color is simply about a few cops who are bad apples. More than half still voted for a president who consistently stoked race-based fear and white backlash."
You can read more of the commentary here.
More headlines
- Anyone who truly cares about the future of American democracy knows that we need a healthy Republican Party as well as a healthy Democratic Party, writes NCR political columnist Michael Sean Winters. But what is the best future for the Republican Party?
- NCR columnist Phyllis Zagano says that the stories of ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick and President Donald Trump are intertwined in the same problem of clericalism — clericalism of church and clericalism of politics.
Final thoughts
Forty years after their brutal murder on Dec. 2, 1980, the lives and tragic deaths of four American churchwomen murdered in El Salvador — Ursuline Sr. Dorothy Kazel, Maryknoll Srs. Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, and lay missioner Jean Donovan — will be commemorated in a number of prayer services, vigils and online events. Stay tuned at Global Sisters Report for coverage of the events.
Until Tuesday,
Stephanie Yeagle
NCR Production/Online Editor
[email protected]
Twitter: @ncrSLY
