Ecumenical Advocacy Days

The Passionist JPIC Office sponsors the Ecumenical Advocacy Days held in Washington, D.C. This year, a delegation went to Washington on the weekend of March 16 and that Monday we visited our Congressional Legislators as constituents who offer a moral voice on social issues from the spirituality of being in solidarity with those who are suffering. In coalition with other religious communities this year’s Ecumenical Advocacy Days addressed the theme of bringing about a world with Enough for all Creation. With this theme we addressed the issues of poverty in the midst of the current economic crisis and in relation to social and environmental issues like migration and climate change.

Here is a PDF reflection of a Passionist delegate who participated with this lobby day.

The 2010 theme is:

A Place to Call Home: Immigrants, Refugees, and Displaced Peoples

That Passionist JPIC office will again co-sponsor this campaign and participate with our faith based colleagues in advocating for the issue of immigration.

As a Catholic religious community the issue of addressing human rights is one that flows from the sacred dignity of humanity. Our Catholic social teaching reminds us that the rights and dignity of the human person do not begin nor end with national borders:

Every human being has the right to freedom of movement and of residence within the confines of his/her country: and, when there are just reasons for it, the right to emigrate to other countries and take up residence there. The fact that one is a citizen of a particular State does not detract in any way from his/her membership in the human family as a whole, nor from his/her citizenship in the world community.
- John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, #25

Our own Passionist spirituality in the meantime will also have us consider the just plight of the immigrant community and to see how our nation can respond with compassion to these members of the human family.