The heat is on!

Greetings folks. We hope you're having an excellent summer.

We also hope that month one of Phase 1 of Beacons of Light has gone as smoothly as possible for your family of parishes. Please know that we (and the whole Life, Human Dignity, and Charity department) have been praying for you all and stand ready to support you, walking in solidarity on this journey and working as your family discerns how you will commit to Love in Action.

If you're wondering how your family might go about engaging in this principle, we encourage you to check out the Love in Action page on the Pathways platform - https://pathway.catholicaoc.org/love-in-action. There you'll find a great introductory video (thanks Esperanza and Sr. Christine!), as well as further explanation of the breadth of the principle. Over time, you'll find more resources and support, and of course you know you can always reach out to our office for support. If you're looking for the first tool we created - the parish inventory - you can find it here (along with the inventories from the other principles) - https://pathway.catholicaoc.org/pathway-tools.

We hold in prayer all of those who continue to be affected by violence, especially in Ukraine; disease, especially those affected by COVID-19 and monkey pox; and natural (human-exacerbated) disasters, especially flooding in St. Louis and E. KY, drought out west, and extreme temperatures around the world. God grant us the strength to stand up for peace, health, and all of your creation.

Please know that we continue to pray for and support you, and we humbly ask that you continue to pray for us.

If there's anything that we can do to support the work happening in your community, please let us know. We're trying to be more present to parishes, especially during the Beacons of Light process, and we'd love to (re)connect with you and work to build up God's kingdom of peace, justice, and kinship.

We will continue to send out Regional Updates with time-sensitive reminders and Action Alerts encouraging everyone to bring their voice and power to bear on important issues.

We wish you a wonderful rest of summer and start of the school year, and - as always - we look forward to seeing you soon as we continue to stand up for justice, solidarity, and equity.

Peace,

Sara, Tammie, Sr. Christine, & Andrew

Living Out Our Baptismal Call

In Deus Caritas Est (God is Love), Pope Benedict XVI named the three essential elements of Church – proclaiming the Word of God, celebrating the sacraments, and exercising the ministry of charity – and declared that they “inseparable.” (#25) In other words, there is an essential connection between our faith and the way we put our love into action in the world. Drawing from the USCCB’s “Sacraments and Social Mission,” over the upcoming months I’m going to highlight how each of the sacraments faithfully draws us into acts of mercy and charity.

Naturally, we will start with baptism, that beautiful sacrament that initiates us into the Community of the Church resulting in, as St. John Paul II says, a “mystical unity” (Christifideles Laici, #12) between Christ and His disciples. It makes us members of one another and reveals the equality and dignity of every person. In baptism, we profess our commitment to the Church’s teachings and reject sin, re-assessing our values, decisions, and lifestyles. Through baptism we are invited into a vocation of holiness and the practice of charity which is intimately connected to our membership in the “Communion of Saints.” (#17) At a baptism, the whole community joins in the profession of faith, which shows our connection across generations, time, and space. We are all incorporated into the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the world and led to imitate Christ – healing the wounds of sin, practicing the Beatitudes, and loving God and neighbor. We share a responsibility for the Church’s mission by caring for the sick, the oppressed, the marginalized, and the forgotten. Baptized Christians, in the end, are called to contribute to the sanctification of the world, protecting the life and dignity of all people and caring for God’s creation here on Earth.

How are you living out your baptismal call?

Festival of Faiths

This week - July 31 to August 7 - we are celebrating Cincinnati's 5th annual festival, titled this year "Compassion through Action: Working for the Common Good." Hopefully you've been able to attend some of the virtual sessions that have already occurred, and you can check out this site to see what is still to come.

Most notably, the in-person portion of the event is happening this Sunday, 8/7, at the Cintas Center on Xavier University's campus. Please come join us between 12:00pm and 5:00pm for a wonderful celebration of the rich and beautiful faith traditions that make up our community. For more information, click here.

Breaking Open the Sin of Racism

Engage your community in dialogue

The 8-part video series and discussion guide were prepared for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati for use by organizations in a 4-part workshop. The videos feature presentations by scholars and professionals at the University of Dayton. The series begins with a macro global and historical examination of race and racism, and progresses to a micro examination of the interpersonal impact of race and racism. Check out the Breaking Open the Sin of Racism site to see how your parish, school, or organization can host workshops.

Questions? Contact Sara Seligmann | 513-546-3143

Anti-Racism Certification Class

Greater Dayton Christian Connections is offering its' second Anti-Racism Congregant Certification class. Classes will begin on Monday, July 25th and end on Friday, September 9, 2022. Classes meet by Zoom on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings from 7pm-8pm. This class is designed to teach you how to be anti-racist and take your learnings to help change your community for the betterment of Dayton. Classes are $99.00 for the entire 7-week course and are limited to 10 people. Enroll today by emailing your interest to drcrystal1@yahoo.com.

2022 CATHOLIC IMMIGRANT INTEGRATION INITIATIVE CONFERENCE

On Sept. 13-14, the Center for Migration Studies of New York is hosting this Catholic immigration conference at Marquette University and online. Check out the website for more information and to register.

Laudato Si’ Action Platform

In May last year the Vatican launched the 7-year Laudato Si’ Action Platform (laudatosiactionplatform.org). Archbishop Schnurr has announced that the Archdiocese of Cincinnati will be joining the platform as an official partner.

As a reminder, the Laudato Si’ Action Platform focuses on seven sectors: families, parishes, schools, hospitals, businesses, organizations, and religious orders. It has seven goals: the response to the cry of the earth, the response to the cry of the poor, ecological economics, adoption of simple lifestyles, ecological education, ecological spirituality, and community involvement.

We're very happy to welcome Liliana Sierra, our Care for Creation intern for '22-'23. She'll be reaching out to folks in the coming weeks and months to build partnerships and engage a broad collection of folks in our work on the LSAP.

Our Care for Creation Task Force is looking for people to join the ad hoc committees we're forming (one for each of the seven constituencies: families, parishes, schools, hospitals, businesses, organizations, and religious orders) to promulgate these ideas. If you're interested in joining this effort (or know someone who might be), please contact Andrew.

Su Casa Hispanic Center

Annual Gala

On Friday, Sept. 16, Su Casa Hispanic Center of Cincinnati (a program of Catholic Charities Southwest Ohio) will host it's annual gala at TQL Stadium to celebrate a quarter century of service. Come join us for a night of fun, food, friendship, and frivolity that supports the premier Hispanic-servicing agency in Cincinnati.

For more information, check out their website.

A Mighty Stream

EquaSion, the parent organization of the Festival of Faiths, has launched a new interfaith educational and action initiative to address racism. It is called 'A Mighty Stream' and the Social Action has signed on as one of the initial partners. You can click here to learn more, and if your parish is interested in joining this wonderful effort, please let Andrew know.

From the Respect Life Office

Hopefully by now, you have heard of the USCCB program Walking with Moms in Need. With Roe and Casey overturned and abortion now illegal in Ohio at the detection of a heartbeat, it is more important than ever to be as ready as we can to support women in need who find themselves in an unexpected pregnancy.

As your parish heads more fully into the Beacons process, one of the things that we will all need to do is form a Love in Action core team for your Family of Parishes. Each family will have different starting points and work at different speeds, but part of each Love in Action team should be a person or subgroup that works on Respect Life issues. That makes this the perfect time to get the USCCB Walking With Moms program up and running at the parish level. The more parishes in your family, the more likely it is that your family will need to take more time to get this Love in Action core team up and running. Taking time with that process can be a good and necessary thing. But the work of Walking With Moms in Need at the parish level does not need to wait.

First, check out the page we put together at www.catholicaoc.org/walkingwithmoms. There, you will find the Resources for Moms page we put together on local resources for women in need. Underneath that you will find the Resources for Parishes link we made to help you navigate the Walking with Moms initiative. Thankfully, you will find that most of the work in the inventory or local resources page is already done for you, listed at the l0cal resources link for moms already mentioned.

As we have mentioned before, this isn’t about turning your parish into a crisis pregnancy center. This is about learning what resources are out there to help women in need, making a plan on how the parish might support these agencies, communicating that to everyone in your parish, and enlisting everyone’s help to work together to aid these agencies in appropriate ways in their charitable work. As Pope Francis reminded us in a 2015 address, “…our parishes and communities [should] become islands of mercy in the midst of the sea of indifference.” With many hands come light work, and we can really make a difference in not only helping women, but helping the culture understand that Catholics are not only for saving the lives of the unborn, but also equipping mothers with what they need to make better choices for themselves and their babies. Let us change the false narrative that being pro-life is exclusively about the unborn, and show the world that we have always also been about offering real help for women in need.

From the Office for Persons with Disabilities

American with Disabilities Act turned 32 on July 26^th

^{We are a single flock under the care of a single shepherd. There can be no separate Church for persons with disabilities.}

^{Welcome and Justice for Persons with Disabilities, UCCB 1998}

The mission statement for Office for Persons with Disabilities states that it serves the Archdiocese of Cincinnati by working to create a culture of inclusion and meaningful participation for persons with disabilities and their families. We organize and provide consistent support, advocacy, and awareness for our parishes while also implementing practices and policies within the Archdiocese to assist parishes in their role of offering the fullness of the faith to all people.

Our office provides resources and opportunities to foster, support, and advocate for our brothers and sisters in Christ. We celebrate everyone’s abilities to serve and be served as Missionary Disciples.

Follow the Office for Persons with Disabilities on social media and share some of our upcoming posts to raise awareness here in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.

https://www.usccb.org/_cs_upload/8104_1.pdf

Twitter: @AoCincinnatiCsa

Instagram: @aocincinnati_csa

YouTube: @CatholicSocialActionAOC

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