Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Cosmos The In Lost

Home
Catholic
On a Middle Class Pilgrimage

On a Middle Class Pilgrimage

Last updated on: July 23, 2015 at 5:53 am by Artur Rosman

On a Middle Class Pilgrimage 2015-07-23T00:08:38-07:00 Artur Rosman

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Dorothy Day went on pilgrimage from what Robert Coles called a “solid, patriotic, and middle class” background (Cover of On Pilgrimage published by Eerdmans).

Kevin L. Hughes is Chair of the Humanities Department at Villanova University. He is the author of Constructing Antichrist: Paul, Biblical Commentary, and the Development of Doctrine in the Early Middle Ages and Church History: Faith Handed On, along with articles appearing in journals such as Modern Theology, Theological Studies, Franciscan Studies, and the Heythrop Journal. His recent work on Henri de Lubac will appear in Reading Scripture as a Political Act and the T&T Clark Companion to Henri de Lubac, and he is working on a book on Saint Bonaventure. He lives in Media, PA with his wife Bridget, a ceramic artist, and their three daughters.

This is a guest post.
=============

On July 12, returning from his dynamic trip to South American, Pope Francis bowed his head and thanked a journalist for encouraging him to think about the middle class. Pope Francis’s plane pressers have become “a thing,” as my daughters might say. That is, they have taken on a life and character of their own. From the infamous ‘Who am I to judge?” Francis has stunned the world audience with his casual and perhaps even incautious turns of phrase as he chats amiably with the press on his plane. “It’s a good correction, thanks. You are right. It’s an error of mine not to think about this,” he said. His papacy has been marked by constant reminders to the church and the world to attend to the poor, to be present to them. His speeches in South America repeated this strong resistance to the exploitation of the poor by “a new colonialism,” and his recent encyclical Laudato Si decries the exploitation of the environment, among other reasons, because the environmental crisis is felt most acutely by the poor who depend more immediately upon the natural world for their subsistence. But what about us?

Perhaps one cannot blame middle class people like us for feeling a bit beat up, for wanting to hear a consoling word, directed to us and the lives we live. Elizabeth Scalia, editor of PatheosCatholic and author of the popular Anchoress blog says it very well:

But sometimes, when I read Pope Francis exhorting us again about the poor, or the environment, and urging people once again, to take action, to go out into the world and fix-all-of-the-things, because Jesus wants it (and yes, I’m sure Jesus does) I can’t help thinking, “but Holy Father, have mercy! Do you not know that many of us are already doing the best we can? Some of us are doing all we can to keep the family together, keep food on the table, and maybe go out to a movie once in a while.

Pope Francis has heard that cry, and he has promised to spend some time thinking about it. I am very interested in what he has to say.

But I do worry that, if we insist on hearing Francis’s call through an “us and them” framework, if we insist on a little appreciation for us, the middle class, the non-poor, “doing the best we can,” we might give ourselves a pass a little too easily. Yes, we middle class folks do struggle in the day-to-day trenches of everyday life, and many of us feel utterly powerless to do any more than we are doing. But that very powerlessness that we feel is itself a symptom of the much deeper problem. It may be that we are all entwined in a global lifestyle-system that feels like fate and inevitability, and the assurance that “doing the best we can” is all we can do might be just the kind of soma we crave to make our claustrophobic middle class life bearable.

Previous Post

July 17, 2015

Capitalists Should Be Nervous: A Response to Fr. Robert Barron on Laudato Si'

Next Post

July 24, 2015 The Anti-Abortion Supermajority: Beyond the Abortion Wars

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category #WhyRemainCatholic Abortion Advent Anti-Catholicism Arts Atheism Beauty Benedict XVI Bible Book Review Catholic Cinema Comedy Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey Czesław Miłosz Dariusz Karłowicz Devil Easter Eastern Orthodoxy Economics Environment Family Famous Atheists Who Weren't Atheists Guest Post Hans Urs von Balthasar HHS Mandate History Imagination Interview Islam Jean-Luc Marion John Paul II Judaism Just War Lent Literature Little Sisters of the Poor Liturgy Martyrdom Music News Paganism Patristics Phenomenology Philosophy Pierre Hadot Poetry Poland Pop Culture Pope Francis Poverty Prayer Protestantism Rabelais Race Remi Brague Rene Girard Russia Sam Rocha Science & Religion SCOTUS Secularization Sexual Abuse Sexuality Silence Solidarity Stratford Caldecott Synod14 Terrorism Top 10 Uncategorized Walker Percy War Weakened Edition World War II World Youth Day WYD Krakow

Select a Month July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who said, "The joy of the Lord is your strength"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Paul Nehemiah Solomon David