Melissa: Liturgies for an Ethic of Solidarity

Cardinal Blase Cupich on the Signs of the Times

Witnessing to a Consistent Ethic of Solidarity (May 17, 2017

Bernardin was guided by three convictions:

1) that there was a need to read the signs of the times;

2)that the church’s social teaching had a role not just in deciding issues,

 but also in shaping and defining them; and 

3) that the church was uniquely positioned institutionally to promote the common good in society

It was the integrity of its teaching—that is, a consistent ethic of life, that set the church apart. As a result, Catholic social teaching would not and could not be fitted into the partisan political framework that governs American public life, then or now

Yet this also explains the hostility to the consistent-ethic-of-life approach. It asserts that the integrity of Catholic social teaching cannot be contoured to political divides. It asserts that Catholics are called to allegiance to their faith before allegiance to their partisan worldview.

The final principle that guided him was that the church should recognize that it is well positioned as an institution to implement a reshaping of public policy. Our worship, pastoral life, ministries of health care, and education all provide a platform of lived experience where the integrity of Catholic social teaching is on display.

Ethic and Rituals of Solidarity

we need in our day to mine the church’s social teaching on solidarity, as a means of uniting humanity through a reawakening of our interdependence as a human family, which Pope John Paul II called for in his groundbreaking encyclical Sollicitudo rei socialis, and which Pope Francis is advocating in his writings. Solidarity needs to be applied consistently to all our human interactions, John Paul II wrote three decades ago, calling us to “see the ‘other’—whether a person, people or nation...as our ‘neighbor,’ a ‘helper’...a sharer, on a par with ourselves, in the banquet of life to which all are equally invited by God.” “World leaders,” he continued, likewise need “to recognize that interdependence in itself demands the abandonment of the politics of blocs, the sacrifice of all forms of economic, military, or political imperialism, and the transformation of mutual distrust into collaboration. 

Book of Solidarity

Stories like that posted by Tom.

Kept in a place of honor in the sanctuary like the Book of Gospels.
Held up solemnly during the Prayers of the Faithful

Lamentations of Solidarity

Services with readings from the Book of Solidarity

Analogous to the reading of names of victims of 911

Stations of Solidarity

Stations of the Cross interpolated with readings from the Book of Solidarity

Processions of Solidarity

Processions go from church to church caring the Book of Solidarity

They stop in the church for readings, lamentations, and prayers

Walls, Gardens, and Chapels of Solidarity

Analogous to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
Traveling walls
Walls located in or next to churches
e.g. an enclosed garden or chapel for prayer and recollection
perhaps with various pictures and images of solidarity.