Cardinal Robert McElroy champions justice, peace, life, and the dignity of the human person.
I am delighted that Washington, DC, is receiving a new archbishop this year who has a focus on justice. Pope Francis selected Cardinal Robert McElroy, previously bishop of San Diego, to serve the Archdiocese of Washington beginning March 11.
We have been blessed to have Cardinal Wilton Gregory as our archbishop for the past 6 years. He brought a new vitality to the African American parishes of our archdiocese and a steady hand to all of us.
Now, God and Pope Francis have given us a new gift. And Cardinal McElroy has not been shy about speaking out for justice.
In his statement following the announcement of his appointment, he called us to work for a “unity in society rooted in God’s justice, which cares especially for the unborn, the poor, the marginalized, and the dispossessed.”
I dug further and discovered that he has chosen to highlight justice on his coat of arms.
Cardinal McElroy’s coat of arms: life, peace, justice, and human dignity
Every Catholic bishop and cardinal has a coat of arms. Many of the features on the coat of arms are dictated by custom, often representing their diocese or position. But some symbols are selected specifically to reflect the officeholder’s personal background or interests.
Cardinal McElroy’s coat of arms is shown above. The elements in the green field at the lower right are a dove, which symbolizes peace; an oak leaf, which symbolizes life; and scales, which symbolize justice.
An explanation of Cardinal McElroy’s cost arms says, “These three virtues are important to the life, work, and ministry of the cardinal.”
Furthermore, Cardinal McElroy’s motto, which is shown at the bottom of his coat of arms, is “Dignitatis Humanae.” The dignity of the human person is a principle that undergirds all of Catholic social teaching.
Putting Catholic social teaching about justice into action
On February 18, 2017, then-bishop McElroy spoke at a gathering of faith and social justice leaders from across the country, in Modesto, CA. He called on these leaders to use the technique known as “see, judge, act”: see the truth of what is going on in the present situation, judge or discern how Catholic social teaching principles apply to the situation, and act to put those principles into action in the concrete circumstances of the time.
Speaking with measured tone but prophetic tenor, he said:
The fundamental political question of our age is whether our economic structures and systems in the United States will enjoy ever greater freedom or whether they will . . . safeguard the dignity of the human person and the common good of our nation.
In that battle, the tradition of Catholic social teaching is unequivocally on the side of strong governmental and societal protections for the powerless, the worker, the homeless, the hungry, those without decent medical care, the unemployed. . . .
In Catholic teaching, the very rights which . . . are being denied in our society to large numbers of those who live in our nation are intrinsic human rights in Catholic teaching: The right to medical care; to decent housing; to the protection of human life, from conception to natural death; of the right to food; of the right to work. Catholic teaching sees these rights not merely as points for negotiation, provided only if there is an excess in society after the workings of the free market system accomplished their distribution of the nation’s wealth. Rather, these rights are basic claims which every man, woman, and family has upon our nation as a whole.
He then noted that President Trump had been known in the 2016 presidential election as the “disruptor,” and observed:
Well now, we must all become disruptors. We must disrupt those who would seek to send troops into our streets to deport the undocumented, to rip mothers and fathers from their families. We must disrupt those who portray refugees as enemies rather than our brothers and sisters in terrible need. We must disrupt those who train us to see Muslim men, women, and children as forces of fear rather than as children of God. We must disrupt those who seek to rob our medical care, especially from the poor. We must disrupt those who would take even food stamps and nutrition assistance from the mouths of children. . . .
But we, as people of faith, . . . we cannot merely be disruptors, we also have to be rebuilders. We have to rebuild this nation so that we place at its heart the service to the dignity of the human person and assert what that flag behinds us asserts is our heritage: Every man, woman and child is equal in this nation and called to be equal.
We must rebuild a nation in solidarity, what Catholic teaching calls the sense that all of us are the children of the one God, there are no children of a lesser god in our midst. That all of us are called to be cohesive and embrace one another and see ourselves as graced by God. We are called to rebuild [a] nation which does pay $15 an hour in wages, and provides decent housing, clothing, and food for those who are poorest. And we need to rebuild our Earth, which is so much in danger by our own industries.
So let us see and judge and act.
Let us disrupt and rebuild.
And let us do God’s work.
Amen!
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