Anger propelled Sister of Social Services Maribeth Larkin onto a path of organising people of different faiths and communities to work with each other towards attaining social
justice. Sr Maribeth, who is from the United States, was in Wellington and Auckland in late August and early September to train Catholic leaders in building broad-based organisations
that can work together to push social justice issues.
She belongs to a religious institute called the Sisters of Social Service, which has adopted the social mission of the Catholic Church and practises Benedictine spirituality with a special
devotion to the Holy Spirit.
Sr Maribeth entered religious life in the 1970s. Her job in the poor, mostly Spanish-speaking Dolores mission parish in East Los Angeles was to help desperate people.
Her job was two-fold. The first aspect was to screen people.
“One job was to verify their legitimacy to make sure they weren’t trying to scam the system,” she said.
“I found that very hard because my experience was people who came to the parish needing emergency food or clothing came out of great humility and shame,” she said.
The second job was to help them navigate the public system whether it was legal, welfare, housing or health.
“The story will always be the same,” she said.
“People are waiting and waiting and waiting. I show up and because I’m white and from the Church and a professionally-trained social worker, guess what? I wasn’t asked to go sit down and take my turn. Right away, I was asked, ‘how can I help you?’” she said.
Sr Maribeth said the people she was helping were both grateful that she was able to help and resentful that they don’t get the same kind of respect and attention.
Soon, she was getting angry herself for the people she was helping and embarrassed that she was getting priority due to the colour of her skin.
“I started to get angry. And as I knew more about organising, I learned anger is not a bad thing, even though I was taught that it was. Anger is a virtue,” she said.
Anger, as explained by theologian John Casey in his book Pagan Virtues, is grief over what we sense is wrong in society, said Sr Maribeth.
“We have deep down in our guts a sense when things are wrong or things are not as they should be,” she said.
She said this deep anger allowed her to hear conversations going on in East Los Angeles
about building a broad-based organisation comprised of people of different faiths, labour unions and community organisations.
“What I kept hearing was the power that we have as churches, schools, labour unions [and] institutions in society needs to be exercised, not just to give out charity,” she said.
That power needed to be “intentionally put together. Then [we can] begin to act on the structures and systems in our world that are causing these kinds of disrespect and marginalisation in our society”, she said.
Power, she said, is another word that she was taught to fear.
“Power, literally, means the ability to act. Power in itself is neither good nor bad. We exercise it on our own behalf. It gets problematic when our behalf becomes more important than
somebody else’s,” she explained.
Building broad-based organisations needs a lot of one-on-one conversations and trust, said Sr Maribeth.
“Part of our problem is that we are reluctant sometimes to build across race, economic status and culture and language differences,” she said.
“It’s really important that we build the trust and the capacity to work together across the many things that divide us in society,” she said.
Sr Maribeth said she is helping form such organisations here in New Zealand. The Living Wage Movement is one that the Church had put its weight behind.
“The movement is called the Living Wage movement but it is transitioning into a broad-based organising strategy. We identify issues that we agree on and work on those issues together,” she said.
“From the perspective of our Catholic Faith, part of our work is to help transform society and make it more just and fair for everybody.”
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