Baltimore-area Catholic school students take active role in Ignatian Teach-In

ARLINGTON, Va. – The annual Ignatian Family Teach-in for Justice, which focuses on social justice and issue advocacy for Catholic high school and college students, drew about 1,800 participants to an Arlington, Va., hotel Nov. 15-16.

But it’s not a single mass of people. The event can be better described as something woven from more than 100 student groups. Each sticks together all weekend during the sessions, but at the same time, they’re eager to network.

That networking is one of the goals, said Tannae Ruffin, a junior at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Fells Point, who was attending her second Teach-In. She told the Catholic Review thåat one of the highlights is meeting people her age interested in social justice. Her school sent 16 students, and she has found “friends from all over the country,” she said.

Conlan Heiser-Corrato, a senior at Loyola Blakefield in Towson, which also sent 16 to the Teach-In, said one of his goals for his third event was to “try to get connected with as many people as I can.”

He said he admired “all these people (who) are never afraid to reach out for others. At last year’s breakout session on gun violence, “the message was about building a coalition together in order to counteract a problem.”

This year, breakout sessions on immigration and climate were on the top of his list.

“It’s impossible not to learn,” Heiser-Corrato observed. “It is an environment where you have to learn to be open.”

Sarah Flores, a sophomore at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore, which brought more than 20 students, said she wanted the event to give her “a sense of hope.” Attending for a second year, was also a scheduled speaker at the Monday “Public Witness” event at the U.S. Capitol.

Her goal was “to talk about my experience in advocacy. We have to acknowledge when we are tired. Because we’re going to have hard days to make the world a better place.”

Breakout sessions included discussions of the future of women in a synodal church, developing advocacy skills, the use of hip-hop music in Catholic social action, stories of asylum seekers at the southern border of the United States and resistance by entrenched industries to curbing pollution of water and air.

The central message – serving the needy, dignity for the marginalized, opposition to capital punishment, help for refugees and inclusion for all in the Catholic Church – has not changed since the first gathering in 1997. From impressions of the weekend, the Teach-In provided a venue where the terms diversity, equity and inclusion were spoken of as aspirational goals, and not in hushed tones or sneered at as political buzzwords.

The rapid changes in domestic politics and Customs Enforcement agents are now a daily occurrence, so when Mike Libunao-Macalintal, the Catholic lay minister at Regis High School in New York, laid out the weekend’s theme, “Pressing On,” he did not have to invoke any politician’s name.

“We look at how our government and our leaders took apart and dismantled protections for the most vulnerable in our society,” he said. “How language dehumanizes our siblings (and) has become the norm. How people have been purposely denied SNAP payments. And how we have treated the abduction of parents, spouses, siblings, children, all under the guise of safety and security.”

To press on, Libunao-Macalintal cited the 10th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus sent out 72 disciples as “lambs among wolves” to prepare towns for his visits. “They knew what it was like to be rejected.”

“How often have we found ourselves speaking truth to power and find ourselves stonewalled? And yet – and yet – you are still here.”

His words mirrored the Nov. 12 “Special Message” from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: “We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care.

“We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones,” the bishops’ statement said.

Jesuit Father Greg Boyle, a keynote speaker, said the four main lessons to learn at the Teach-In were “inclusion, nonviolence, unconditional loving kindness and compassionate acceptance. He called on those gathered to “stand with the disposable, so the day will come in which we’re not throwing people away.”

“We don’t want our God to be puny,” he said. “We don’t want a partial God.”

Ansel Augustine, director of African American Affairs in the USCCB, told the gathering Nov. 16, “We are called to have authentic encounters with all. Black and brown folks are more than faces for promotional material, but we have gifts to share.”

Maryvale Preparatory School in Lutherville was among the area’s Catholic schools to send delegations to the event.

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