Letter by Letter, Keeping a Catholic Outpost Alive

[cbayer]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/us/working-to-keep-a-catholic-outpost-alive.html?_r=0


Brother Norbert Karpfinger has witnessed the economic decline of East St. Louis, Ill.

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
Published: March 22, 2013

EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. — On a raw and windswept day in this forsaken place, as the rest of the world’s eyes turned to the cardinals assembling amid Vatican grandeur to select a new pope, Brother Norbert Karpfinger sat down to write a letter. It was late February, two weeks into Lent, a busy time for the correspondence that is his mission.

Each year, he writes hundreds of letters seeking donations for the Catholic Daycare center.
Eighty years old, more than a half-century in the Marianist order, Brother Norbert bent over the dining room table in the convent house next to a vacant lot that once held the St. Adalbert Church. Across the street, the Catholic Daycare center pulsed with life, young life.

The day care center is one of the handful of outposts of the Roman Catholic Church left in the city, where Catholic social teaching about service and the preferential option for the poor can still be enacted. That center was the subject every time Brother Norbert set pen to paper.

“Dear Kim,” he wrote, addressing a middle-age man who had been his student 40 years ago in Colorado. “As in recent years I write with the hope of support for this wonderful work of charity for little children. Please help this important place for little ones by sending a donation. God bless you and all those dear to you.”

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[Cleita]

1. With all the pedophile scandal and medieval ideas the Church needs

to address and modernize, people forget about Catholics like Brother Norbert, who dedicate their lives to making the world a better place. I really think that those charities should be a collective responsibility of all of society, but until all of society steps up to the plate, I laud the work these dedicated people do.

[cbayer]

2. I know. I really feel for these people.

They live quietly, simply and must be so sad to see what is going on in the hierarchy of the church at times. There are many like him.

[okasha]

3. Without Catholic chatities

my city would have:

No battered women's shelter

No three-meals-a-day no-questions-asked hunger program

No free legal clinic for low-income homeowners with property tax issues

No homeless shelter

No effective rent and utility assistance for low-income persons (The secular government program that is supposed to do this has been corrupt since its inception.)

No home for children removed from their parents but not fostered

Significantly fewer food pantries

Significantly fewer neighborhood recreation centers.

Of course society as a whole should step up. But that isn't going to happen.

[Cleita]

4. What city, or if you are uncomfortable answering that, what state?

I'm curious about just how much churches and charities have to step in to make up for what states and cities should be taking care of. I always think of the needs of charities to help out in third world countries, not this one.

[okasha]

6. I'm on the Texas-Mexico border

in a six county area that is one of the half-dozen poorest in the United States.

[Cleita]

7. Yes and I think the problem is because there are so many brown,

Spanish speaking people in that area, (been there) Texans don't want to give government services to them. Thank God, at least the churches step up to fill the gap.

[okasha]

8. It got exponentially worse

with Bush as Governor and President, and now with Perry. Our Representative is good at bringing in federal dollars, but not always where they're needed most. Dragging in yet more «Border Protection» agents who damage the environment, kill ranchers' dogs and harrass their families doesn't feed the hungry or house the homeless.

[cbayer]

5. When I worked with people with addictive disorders, some of the only resources

available came through catholic charities.

Until the government or other secular agencies begin to fill the gaps, the services provided are critical for the most marginalized in this country.

[okasha]

9. We do have a couple

non-church-affiliated treatment facilities, which recruit a lot of part-time staff from churches. There are also churches and ministries that have licensed counselors on staff.

But the for-profit prisons invited into the area by local governmemt have more beds.