|
Greetings!
Like many of you, I read the statement released on Monday by Cardinals Cupich, McElroy, and Tobin. I appreciated its moral clarity and also felt some unease at how directly it names the moment we are living through. In a world where war is increasingly treated as normal, the statement reminds us that peace is not simply “won,” but is meant to be sought as a gift and a good in itself, rooted in human dignity and the common good.
Fittingly, as we celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Monday’s Gospel offered Jesus’ image of new wine and new wineskins. New wine cannot be poured into old skins without loss. Jesus’ point is simple and challenging: real renewal requires change, not just in our words or intentions, but in the ways we live and organize ourselves.
Dr. King understood this well. He challenged a society that spoke often about peace and order while resisting the deeper changes needed to make justice possible. His call to nonviolence was not passive or sentimental; it demanded courage, sacrifice, and new ways of living together.
The cardinals’ statement places a similar question before us. It invites us to examine whether our commitments to life, peace, and human dignity are shaping how we think, act, and engage the world, or whether we are trying to hold new convictions in old containers.
For me, the question is not simply whether I agree, but where I am being invited to change. In our Catholic schools, new wine is not abstract. It shows up in what we teach, what we tolerate, and what we model as we accompany young people in a fractured world. The invitation is to ensure that our ways of teaching, leading, and forming young people are worthy of the peace and dignity we proclaim.
With gratitude,
NICHOLAS FORD | Superintendent
Office for Catholic Schools | Archdiocese of Seattle
| 
