It was mind boggling. We were sitting in this beautiful dining room meeting one gracious woman after another, all bright blue-eyed and all asking about our work.
Sister Loyola Hegerty, former Mother Superior, made a point of introducing us to all these Sisters of Charity and bragging on us, how we have served thousands of immigrants over the years.
We in turn bragged on Sr. Loyola and the Sisters of Charity, who helped us make a great start fifteen years ago by paying off the property of our present women’s center and later helped with many others to construct the fireproof building we now have. The ability to help so many so soon was possible through this generosity. The bragging on each other stopped. There was a silence.
Then, solemnly, as if before a judge and jury, Sister Loyola said that she had something to say. She proclaimed solemnly: “I am an immigrant.”
Our mouths dropped open. It was the aura that surrounded Damien the Leper, who upon discovery that he had contacted leprosy from the lepers, announced, “My fellow lepers.”
We gasped: Sister Loyola is an immigrant! Much worse, all those beautiful people we met were immigrants. This convent is another Casa Juan Diego!
Fifty-four percent of Americans, according to Newsweek (April 8 ) feel that immigrants have done harm to their communities and forty three percent fear immigrants and see them as criminals.
What crime have these Sisters committed?
– opening the San José clinic decades ago to serve poor immigrants and continuing to serve those who pay on a sliding scale according to income.
– opening hospitals, sixteen of them, in the Southwest to serve the sick.
– teaching in Catholic schools of the poor.
– going to still other countries to serve the poor in Africa, in Guatemala.
We asked Sister Loyola if immigration came to the convent to check on them or to their clinic and hospitals?
Or if the police came busting into the convent as they do at Casa Juan Diego with guns drawn looking for criminals?
Sister Loyola said they hadn’t come yet, but if xenophobia (fear of foreigners) continues, they probably will–“but we’ll be ready for them,” she added.
Other “Criminals”
Juan is another one of those criminals like the Sisters. His boss has not paid him in over a month–i.e., not a penny for six weeks, which means no funds for rent, food, utilities. His boss did promise–as he talked to Juan from his beautiful, expensive home in Sugarland, that he would pay him someday.
Two of Juan’s friends have not been paid, either. Someone is ahead $10,000 or so. The boss could vacation in Acapulco or Cancún for quite awhile on this amount. The boss thinks this would make up for his robbing the men. If they have Mexican relatives who work in these vacation spots, this would make up for his not paying them. After all, Mexicans are still getting the money.
Robbing men of their pay is a common occurrence among a percentage of workers at Casa Juan Diego and at other locations. Millions of dollars are gained by Americans in this way–quite a contribution to the economy. Maybe this is reason enough for turning a blind eye with respect to immigration. It pays.
One wonders how many houses have been built, how many new roofs put on, how many ditches dug, how many houses painted by these “volunteers.”
Juan, although unpaid, didn’t suffer as badly as Gonzalo, who, when he demanded his pay, was beaten to a bloody pulp because he didn’t know his place.
Rita the Thief
Rita, like all the immigrants, wants to work, to get any kind of work. An American couple asked her to work with the children and offered to pay her $100 per week.
She was happy to have work and have money to send to her mother, who was caring for her children. Her husband was deceased and her family was really poor.
The hitch in this job was that the husband stayed home some days and insisted on having sex with Rita. She was uncomfortable with his offers and refused. “We may be poor wetbacks,” she said, “but we are decent.” She threatened to tell the spouse, but the husband was relentless. Rita told the spouse and was fired for being a thief. No proofs given. Rita found refuge at Casa Juan Diego.
Rosa the Prostitute and her Friend
Rosa fared no better than Rita. She was hired by a woman who was fronting for a divorced man who had two little girls. She was told the job was with a married couple. She was to be a live-in babysitter, since the couple worked different shifts in their jobs.
The hitch was that it was not a couple, but a single man who actually employed her. When it was time to go to bed, the man said that she would have to sleep with him, since there was only one bed. She refused. She was fired by the man, who accused her of being a prostitute.
Rosa’s friend, a live-in maid, didn’t have a bed, either. She slept in the bedroom of the baby so she could care for her. There was a crib, but no bed for Rosa. There was carpet, however.
Mario the Crook
Mario does not fit the image of the other “criminals.” He is 14 years old, but looks older. He is light-skinned, dresses nicely and is, to say the least, handsome with his wiry hair. He is young, but most young men his age in Guatemala are expected to work.
Like most immigrants, he is dying to work, so goes to the street corners in the neighborhood.
However, Mario cannot find work, as he keeps getting accosted by older men wanting to pay him for sex, even waving money at him. They offer sandwiches or used clothing or offer to help him take a shower. When he refuses, they call him a crook and lazy. Others in the neighborhood keep trying to line up a place for him to live with an older man.
Mario is upset. He wants to work for money, not sex, and even the thought of making money this way drives him crazy. But it is so difficult when your family is hungry.
The older men don’t feel that they are breaking the law by employing “illegal aliens” for sex.
We have talked to these perpetrators. One of them said openly that he only hires (for sex) teenagers over 18 and added, “I’ve checked with my lawyer and the police and they tell me there is no problem. I’m Catholic, you know.” We suggested that they try other areas where they may find adults, since prostitution is not good for teenagers.
Pedro the Fake
Pedro’s hand was swollen out of all proportion and looked more like a melon than a hand. Pedro was in great pain and burning up with fever. He had been injured on the job, he said. His boss dropped him off at Casa Juan Diego.
When we asked Pedro’s boss why he didn’t get medical help for him, he said there wasn’t anything wrong with him. “Pedro is a fake and doesn’t want to work. He is not getting my money!” The boss refused to pay him for two weeks of work that was due. Pedro sought assistance at Casa Juan Diego. The doctors at Ben Taub told us that he just about lost his hand.
Isabel and her Enterprise
Isabel, a new immigrant, had been sold to an enterprise that specialized in providing prostitutes for businesses. She was told that if she worked hard, she could buy her way out.
Originally, the people told her she was to work as a secretary. Unfortunately, Isabel was very pregnant, so the enterprise decided to spend some money on their commodity for the first time. They took her to an abortion clinic, where an abortion would be performed on her child of six months. Isabel was very upset. She had many reasons to be.
Someone in front of the abortion clinic asked why she was crying. She explained the enterprise and asked help in escaping. The people in front of the clinic arranged the escape of both.
Immigrant women are vulnerable target for exploitation–a way of increasing capital.
Marta the Wetback
Marta married a citizen from the United States. They were “well married” both in church and civil court. Her cousin was a priest. Her husband Julio, an American, wanted a humble woman, and for this reason he went to Mexico to look for a wife.
Marta came to the States. She tried to be humble, but Julio was dissatisfied and no amount of humility would satisfy him. He beat her up constantly. “What was she doing wrong?”
Julio kept saying he was going to call Immigration on her, since she was illegal, but he never used the word illegal undocumented. The only words he used were “dumb wetback.” He told her, “You wetbacks are all the same. You don’t appreciate anything. I am going to have the Migra (Immigration) come and deport you if you don’t behave.”
The “Migra” didn’t come, but what did come were awful blows and kicks in the face. (It would have been better if Immigration or the police did come.)
Marta came to Casa Juan Diego. Her face was a mass of black and blue and her jaw was broken.
Crucifixion I
The immigrants experience crucifixion, first on their journey to the United States when they are robbed or raped in various countries in which they pass through and during which they spend days without eating, many hours without drinking water, exposure to all kinds of insects and mosquitoes, wild animals and snakes. Some never arrive, but are killed or drown on the way.
The crucifixion is a crucifixion of a people caught between dying of poverty in their own countries or dying trying to get here or being treated in about the same way that mules are treated once arrived. Once here immigrants cannot be treated like a pound of flesh. They are not animals.
Of course it would be better to stay home, but one cannot expect people to live a life of destitution without enough to feed their children or send them to school. With the new global economy, with the multinational companies taking advantage of cheap labor in their countries, people cannot earn enough to simply live. And with the requirements of the World Bank for readjusting their economies, Third World countries have had to redirect all agriculture for export and cut social and educational services. Many are forced to emigrate.
And then when they arrive in the U.S. they are often victims of exploitation with experiences similar to those true stories recounted above. And then they can even feel the hatred some people here have for them. They ask us why do these people hate them so much?
Crucifixion II: Is our Work Easy?
Please don’t thank us for our help. We don’t want to romanticize our work with the poor. Our work is not lovey dovey in the least. We’re no Dorothy Day or Mother Teresa. It is very hard.
People sometimes praise us for perseverance in our work after sixteen years of giving hospitality, but it is often more like a crucifixion also for us and our fellow Catholic Workers, who give their lives to the service of the poor.
The vast majority of our guests are a joy. But there are a few who have been through too much or who have learned to manipulate and hate others in order to survive.
Our guests, immigrants, battered Spanish-speaking women, pregnant women, homeless immigrant women with children, injured men, are just like any other people in their responses. People respond to our generosity (and to being dependent, totally dependent) by either resentment or gratitude. Many only stay a few days and are able to get on their feet.
Others may have to stay a long time, especially women and children or injured men. Battered or pregnant women with several small children need more time to make a life for themselves. Guests may become dependent and over-dependency is not healthy.
Sometimes the reality of being dependent for a lengthy period of time triggers an incredible hostile reaction and rage.
A few guests who have had many failures in their lives or problem relationships with their parents place their frustrations or anger at life on those with whom they find hospitality.
The broken person cries out, sometimes in rage: “Heal me! Fix my problems!” (or worse)
And we Catholic Workers can help, but we are not God and we cannot solve all the problems. We sometimes lose patience with quarrels among guests and undisciplined, difficult children, or intoxicated, threatening men. Other guests do not meet all the expectations of some other guests, to put it mildly, and conflicts begin.
When people arrive at Casa Juan Diego they are ecstatic with delight and gratitude in finding an oasis of peace and protection and cannot thank us enough.
They would kiss our hands if we allowed it and call us Don and Doña if we permitted it. But for those who cannot handle dependency this changes quickly and they see us as the enemy within a short time.
Some guests call powerful people to report us. We regret that whatever powers that be that they have been able to find have never offered to house them.
We can see why Catholic Workers who serve white people soon abandon hospitality all together and refer to their early experience with housing as their “shelter” phase. They want hospitality behind them–way behind them.
A little better alternative is to hand-pick the people you accept in hospitality and limit it to only a few people. Small is beautiful if you don’t like hospitality. You have to be a nut to receive 100 or 200 in various houses each night–and that’s what we are, fools for Christ.
We can understand why it is almost impossible to get new people into the two major shelters for families in Houston (besides the great need) and why the Houston Area Women’s Center wants to focus on counseling rather than on housing, even though there is a serious shortage of places for battered women in Houston itself. We are sure they get tired of “shelter rage.”
The temptation is to avoid hospitality rage at any cost. Taking chance on this rage occurring is not worth it. After all, one does not want to be a masochist.
This work brings us to our knees. It seems that the Lord wants us to be broken like our guests, to realize that the seed and the Spirit bloom only in ploughed and cultivated, broken soil, not in the hard, smooth ground.
It’s not easy. Only faith can underwrite this work day after day, night after night, year after year with no future except today’s challenges. We don’t have much of a choice, either: go to our knees or collapse. We believe or we die.
Pious Bull
People have a little trouble with us after all these years of being at the Catholic Worker. They say: “You used to be nice liberals, talking about politics, books, movies and good wine. Now you have become so darn pious, talking about carrying the cross and the crucifixion and all that old pious stuff. Give us a break!”
Over the years we have served various cultures and ethnic groups in the United States. Our experiences with all of these cultures have confirmed what Dorothy Day quoted so often from Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov. In the story, a woman wants Fr. Zossima to tell her how she can have proof and be convinced of immortality.
William Miller tells us in his book about the Catholic Worker movement, A Harsh and Dreadful Love, that when the woman stated that she had to have gratitude as a repayment of the love she gave, Father Zossima responds with the Catholic Worker’s radical answer.
To the woman’s final demand of how she can have some proof of immortality, the monk replies: “By the experience of active love. In as far as you advance in love you will grow surer of the reality of God and of the immortality of your soul.”
And what was meant by “active love,” the woman asked. She loved humanity. Often she dreamed of a life of service to the unfortunate that filled her with warmth. She could nurse the afflicted; she would be ready to kiss their wounds. But sometimes she wondered how she would react if she were not repaid in gratitude for her service. What if the person “began abusing you and rudely commanding you, and complaining to the superior authorities of you (which often happens when people are in great suffering)–what then?” She could not bear ingratitude. “I expect my payment at once–that is praise, and the repayment of love with love. Otherwise I am incapable of loving anyone.”
Father Zossima answered in words that Dorothy Day has many times repeated: “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking and applauding as though on the stage. Active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people, too, perhaps a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting further from your goal instead of nearer to it–at that very moment you will reach and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.”
For Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day, and many others who have lived in the spirit of the Catholic Worker, the first mark of their desire to redeem the universe has been to live at the “harsh and dreadful” front of active love. In the early period of the movement, Dorothy Day wrote in the Catholic Worker an editorial on love, and much of it was based on the reflections of Dostoevsky’s monk. ‘Hell is Not to Love Any More’ was the editorial’s title. It was a statement of the Worker’s faith in love as the ultimate reality: “When one loves, there is at that time a correlation between the spiritual and the material. Even the flesh itself is energized , the human spirit is made strong. All sacrifice, all suffering is easy for the sake of love. This is the foundation stone of The Catholic Worker movement. It is on this that we build.”
Life is stronger than death. Love is stronger than fear and frustration and we must love our enemies or even those who tell the world we are terrible people. In Catholic Worker houses one must be prepared to live the folly of the Cross.
In Matthew 25 Our Lord asks us to care for him in the least ones.
The new immigrants are the least ones of today. They are ignored or despised by many Christians. We at Casa Juan Diego cannot abandon the most broken ones because a few of them respond in frustration and anger. We share in their crucifixion and hope in the Resurrection.
As Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger recently reminded us in the National Catholic Register:
“The victory of the Risen One is a victory we carry in our hearts, as John writes (I Jn 5,4): ‘The victory that conquers the world is our faith.’
And this is the proof we’re looking for. (In our work) we are tempted to consider death victorious rather than believe in the Resurrection. But the disciple who lets himself or herself be taken over by the power of the Risen One will henceforth no longer fear unhappiness and will be able to face all the threats of the world.
Why? Because from the tomb, Christ has emerged as conqueror of death and evil. He loves us–God our creator and redeemer–He who has sent us His son so that He would be our brother and our Savior. We have a part in His death and resurrection.
By the power of the Spirit, along with the entire Church, we are plunged into the joy of the Risen Lord, who invites us to follow Him into a life without end.”
Amen. Pray for us.
Houston Catholic Worker, Vol. XVI, No. 3, May-June 1996.
