World Day of Social Justice: An Interview with Sister Carol Zinn
Carol Zinn, a Sister of St. Joseph from Chestnut Hill, outside Philadelphia, is a member of CMMB’s board of directors. Sister Carol has taught at all levels, from pre-kindergarten through post-graduate, and has worked in educational leadership and religious education. She has also worked with international grassroots movements as a consultant and facilitator, as well as with multi-sector and multi-issue groups to help deepen members’ understanding of global realities.
Sister Carol served as the main representative for the Congregations of St. Joseph, an NGO in general consultative status with the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council, representing more than 15,000 Sisters of St. Joseph from 57 countries. She is currently a senior vice president, mission integration, at Plante Moran CRESA.
Social justice is an underlying principle for peaceful and prosperous communities worldwide and this year, Tuesday, February 20th is designated as World Day of Social Justice. We asked Sister Carol to share her thoughts on Catholic social teaching, inequality, and CMMB’s mission to promote human dignity.
How do you define social justice?
Social justice is both simple and complex. Simply, it is really doing what is right, being respectful, and honoring each person as he or she is, as an image and likeness of God.
On a more complicated level, the concept of social justice has been around for nearly four hundred years. It is a philosophical construct that Pope Leo and the Catholic Church adopted from its application to workers at that time. Social justice has many parts and it’s kind of a balancing act. Participative justice is the idea of “no decision without me.” That means that if something is going to affect people all the way at the grassroots level, then people at the grassroots level need to be involved in the process. Distributive justice means that “right justice” is distributed equally across all people. Social justice is the mechanism that is used to make sure that the participation and distribution are fair and just. It is a bit of a misnomer to say that social justice is an entity in and of itself. It is actually the term that is used to identify a result, which is everybody participating in the life conditions that affect them, and everybody receiving the goods that make their life conditions meaningful and purposeful.
It is a concept, similar to the common good. Everybody has what they need to have a meaningful and purposeful life, both at the system level and across all the sectors of a culture.
Let’s take the hospital that CMMB built in Haiti – the Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan Center for Health. Our teams worked closely with the community in Côtes-de-Fer and saw that the majority of people living there were on the periphery of care. It took over three hours to get to the nearest hospital. There was a desperate need for expanded access to skilled healthcare. How is this project an example of social justice in action?
CMMB didn’t go into a board room with a bunch of wealthy people and decide they were going to build a hospital. This is how a lot of good charitable work is done, but it is not participative justice. CMMB made sure that everyone was involved. Our teams talked to the people on the ground, the people who were going to be served by this healthcare center. They talked to the health service workers, pharmaceutical partners around the world, corporations, construction companies, and the donors. So, everybody that was going to participate in this project was involved in the conversation. CMMB practiced participatory justice in the way they got local constituencies to participate. Participatory justice is how CMMB went about building the hospital. CMMB practiced distributive justice by making sure everybody from the grassroots level who was going to be served, especially women and children, not only had a say, but saw that the resources were distributed equally.
The result was a hospital dedication ceremony that was a picture of social justice because everyone who participated in the whole process, from the donors to the pharmaceutical companies, all the way through to the people who walked five hours to get to that ceremony, were represented there.
What a celebration. CMMB’s country director, Dr. Dianne Jean-François speaks to the crowd that gathered to celebrate the official opening of the Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan Center
The distribution of the hospital was everywhere. When I talked to one of the staff at the hospital she said, “Yes. This is our hospital.” So I saw the personification of participatory justice. CMMB saw that the balance between participation and distribution was unbalanced in Côtes-de-Fer. We used the mechanism of social justice as the methodology to actually build the hospital. Everyone is included in the participation, and everyone is included in the distribution.
Partnerships like these are really challenging and partnerships are constantly tweaked to make sure that everyone who is “at the table” is there not for themselves, but for something larger than themselves, that no one at the table alone would be able to address. Examples like this show how CMMB is trying to keep that relationship of social justice really valid, and let it become the template for how it does its work.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges to social justice today? What are your recommendations to overcome them
First and foremost, the challenges to social justice depend on where you are in the world. A major challenge are the groups who benefit disproportionately, not seeing that there is a problem. If you are participating big time in the decision making across political, economic, education, and healthcare sectors, then you are pretty blind as to whether or not resources are being distributed across all sectors. Many people do not understand the relationship between participating and distributing.
In some ways, people confuse charity with justice.
Social justice is a systems analysis. It is not about giving out a bowl of soup. It is in fact about tending to the grassroots needs. Social justice would demand that if you give out a bowl of soup, without understanding why you have to give out a bowl of soup, and don’t try to change why you need to give out a bowl of soup, you are just going to have to keep on giving out bowls of soup. My premise is that most people do not understand social justice, so the obstacle and the challenge is ignorance.
I see the very blurry line between social justice and doing good for people who need a lot of help. We can’t walk away and say, “Well, I’m sorry you’re hungry, but I am working at the system’s piece.” That is grossly inadequate. But we also can’t limit our work to the grassroots level. So while many people feel good—and I mean that in a good way, they feel good that they have helped people to not feel hungry for just one day, they volunteer at a shelter for a day, or they write a check—they are not fixing the system which is the root of the problem.
For those of us in the global world, overcoming these obstacles and challenges is going to be an uphill climb. And Pope Francis is aware of this because is it part of his Jesuit training and it is part of the Gospel. I think that one of the first things people need to be aware of, is that those who benefit most by an unjust system are the least willing to do an analysis of an unjust system. So, there needs to be a lot of education and a lot of consciousness raising. This is why Catholic social teaching is so helpful and why it is also called the Catholic Church’s best kept secret.
Catholic social teaching is called the Catholic Church’s best kept secret.
Many of the principles of Catholic social teaching are the definition of social justice; they address participation and distribution. Even in my own faith tradition, and perhaps in some of yours, people don’t want to become educated about Catholic social teaching because it puts a mirror up in front of you. Parts of the world are benefiting from the lopsided systemic approach that is distributing the world’s goods so that some have more than what they need, while three out of five children go to bed hungry somewhere else. The people who are not going to bed hungry every night do not want to be disturbed by that mirror.
We must raise the consciousness of people whose hearts are good. We must educate people whose hearts break when they see hungry children. We thank them for the wonderful work they are doing and acknowledge, “I know your heart is moved.” CMMB does a good job of this. We tell our donors, “Your heart is moved by the plight of these women and children, let us invite you to really help them. While you are giving a child a school uniform and some food, let us help you understand how you can really change the system for them.” CMMB is very very good at taking people where they are, at the heart level. We want these compassionate people to know that while they want to address a specific need, it is just the beginning.
Why is it important to take the remedies for inequality into our own hands, and not wait for government agencies to respond?
We are living in a time when many of the institutions and systems that the world has in place right now, are really going through an incredible moment of transformation. There is incredible breakdown all over the world in government systems and many agencies. And so, they need to be called out by the people at the grassroot level, which answers the question of “how can we take this into our own hands?” Everything is really in our own hands. There is no system without individuals. And, systems are simply patterns of relationships that are kind of codified at an organized level. But, those patterns of relationships wouldn’t exist, and those systems wouldn’t exist, unless there were those kind of relationships at the grassroots level.
So when people take inequalities into their own hands, they are actually helping to reshape the whole system. That’s a good thing. It is not an either/or, it is both. Everybody taking an inch in their own hands is going to be like everyone giving soup and a coat to someone who is hungry and cold. And, we will just have to keep doing that until the end of the world, because there are going to be more people who are hungry and cold. But, without doing that at the grassroots level—where people are hungry and cold—there is no way that the pattern of relationship is going to be able to rise up to the systems level of governments and agencies. So it’s not either/or, it is both.
Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” – Matthew 25:40, 45
Social justice is about recognizing human dignity which is a key component of the Catholic faith. In today’s secular world, is it important to preserve social justice as a christian concept?
Quite honestly, social justice is in all world religions. The concept of social justice based on human dignity is in every sacred text that I know of. It’s the human dignity piece really. Human dignity is found in the gospel and found in the sacred texts, it really is the driver of social justice. In a world where the human dignity piece is so often left out of the conversation or the decision making process, there needs to be a concerted effort to speak up for those who are too often silenced.
The world is witnessing a critical refugee crisis. We’re used to helping people who live “over there” but those people are now “right here” at our doorstep. How do you believe that we can or should respond to the challenges of refugees, here in the US, and in the developing world?
This is a challenging situation. It requires a big and very difficult conversation. First of all, we need to change the question from, “Why are they coming?” to “Why are they leaving?” I mean imagine yourself, leaving your homeland and taking nothing with you but the clothes on your back. Many even leave their family behind. Why would someone do that? What is the trigger? The motivation?
Unfortunately, we don’t ask this question. We turn it around. We don’t want to know why they are leaving. We just want to make sure they don’t come in. It is fear and uncertainty that creates this reaction. When a way of life is threatened, people go inwards. The people who “run” the systems are not ready to ask the question, why are you leaving because the the answer is very uncomfortable.
For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. – Luke 8:17
I think we are living in times right now where the light, because of globalization, is being shone on policies and practices all over the world that were done in the dark, and the consequence now is that people actually cannot sustain their lives in their own countries. It can feel insurmountable. But things can change. Look at the hospital in Haiti. Think about Pope Francis and what he is doing. He is finding a way to have the conversation without saying a word.
Pope Francis met with street children during his visit to the Philippines in 2015. Photo: ANSA LOsservatore Romano CNA
Like when he stepped off the plane with several refugees following behind him. When he did that he was taking a stand, he was saying something without opening his mouth. When he celebrated his birthday and invited children from the local hospital, or when he opens public showers right outside the Vatican for the homeless. In each of these actions he is saying something very profound. He is challenging the system.
I think that we can have a conversation through our words and our deeds that can make a contribution. It holds up a mirror that needs to be held up. That is basically what social justice is. It is a mirror held up in society that really helps us to understand who is making the rules here in this society and who benefits from those rules.
It is a simple conversation really, but it is very, very challenging, because it really talks to people’s mindsets, prejudices, and what they are used to. When you are doing social justice work you have to be ready to have a conversation at the deepest level, at the real heart of the matter, and at the largest level of consciousness. That is why I think social justice workers get so burnt out because they just get exhausted trying to help people understand what is all really going on. It is easier to just give out a bowl of soup.
You have already mentioned Pope Francis. Would you comment on the Pope as a Jesuit who takes the idea of loyal opposition to heart, shaking up the status quo? What are the pros and cons of leadership like this, right now?
I would not use shaking up the status quo as a goal. The intention is not to shake up the status quo. The intention is to be faithful.
It probably is best understood as a natural consequence, just as the life of Jesus. His intention was not to shake up the status quo, his intention was to be faithful, to do what God asked of him. His intention was to be faithful to the law in the old testament – to live among us and to experience all of the sorrow and suffering and to help us to know how to be with one another. That was his intention. His fidelity to that turned everything upside down.
I think that is what we are seeing in Francis. His intention, like all people of faith, no matter what the faith is, the intention is to be faithful. By being faithful to, in our case the scriptures, to the principles of God’s love of the world, and His greatest commandments, are to love God and love each other as neighbors.
To be faithful to that in a world that is skewed to a very different way of thinking and being, you are by very virtue of being faithful, going to shake yourself up (and hopefully others) to an increased consciousness. Awareness can lead to change.
‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ – Matthew 25:40
God loves the world with unconditional love and non-judgmental love, and we’re called to mirror that with others, how do we achieve and maintain that attitude in our work with the most vulnerable women and children?
I am going to quote Mother Teresa. She was once asked, “How do you maintain this attitude towards the poorest of the poor, to the people in the streets in Calcutta?” In response she said, “I always keeps in mind that I have the entire gospel at the end of my finger tips.” Then she finished with the last five words of Matthew 25:40,
“You did it to me.”
What I believe is important, is that you take your sacred text, be it the Bible, the Quran, the Torah, whatever your sacred text is, and identify what the message is for you. For Mother Theresa, it was “You did it to me.” When she looked at those vulnerable people on the streets she did not see dirty, sick people, she saw Jesus.
What’s the difference between dignity and a hand out?
In my mind, they are total opposites. The dignity piece is that this is a child of God laying on the street in front of me. These vulnerable women and children are my sisters and my brothers. We share the same Father. Treating that person like they are part of my family, that they are related to me, that is what protects the dignity piece. When we see them as less and we judge them, when we believe that they are where they are because of laziness or ignorance, then we slip into the insult of a handout.
A handout dishonors dignity. If you are honoring the dignity of somebody you are in fact walking with them in their situation. You are accompanying them in their suffering and whatever they need in that accompaniment, you are sharing it. To walk with someone in their need, to be a support through their struggle, is the difference of doing for rather than doing with. That is the whole relationship piece. When you do something with someone you are sharing their struggle, and you are being transformed, you are letting yourself be shaped by this relationship.
That is a huge component of CMMB’s work. That the partners and the donors and the volunteers actually get way more out of the experience than the people they are helping. This is something I have heard time and time again during my work with CMMB: “This changed my life to be a part of this.”
When human dignity and social justice are the goal, everyone gets transformed.