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Nuns on the Bus work to bridge division in politics

Sisters dialogue with Arkansans in Fayetteville, Little Rock Sept. 13-14

Published: September 17, 2015         

By Aprille Hanson
Associate Editor

Aprille Hanson

Sister Simone Campbell, SSS, the executive director of Network and organizer of Nuns on the Bus, talks to the crowd outside the 12th Street Empowerment Center in Little Rock about the need for community.

Aprille Hanson

Sister Simone Campbell, SSS, the executive director of Network and organizer of Nuns on the Bus, talks to the crowd outside the 12th Street Empowerment Center in Little Rock about the need for community.

For Catholics and Christians everywhere, we are all a part of the body of Christ. As for Sister Simone Campbell, SSS, the executive director of Network and organizer of the Nuns on the Bus tour, she is the “stomach acid.”

“It’s very important — it metabolizes food, it generates energy, it’s toxic in large quantities and needs to be a bit contained in a room like this,” Sister Simone said to a laughing crowd in Little Rock Sept. 13. “The fact is I’m doing my part … that’s how we make progress, that’s how we make change, that’s how we recover our nation.”

The fourth annual tour, titled “Bridge the Divides: Transform Politics,” made stops in Fayetteville and Little Rock to preach the message that the nation must get back to “we the people.”

“My prayer is often telling God how God ought to fix things,” Sister Simone said. “I have a hunch that God is telling us that we ought to be engaged.”

The tour is a project of Network, a national Catholic social justice lobby that began in 1971.

The project, which consists of more than a dozen nuns traveling in a bus, gained national attention in 2012 during its first tour “Faith, Family and Fairness” which lobbied against then-vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s proposed budget plan. Since then, the sisters have lobbied for other social issues including immigration and voting.

This year’s seven-state tour is in response to Pope Francis’ call for more economic inclusion, which can be changed by political ideals. It was scheduled to end Sept. 22 in Washington, D.C., where the sisters will host a rally to welcome the pope on his first trip to the United States.

The sisters will lobby Congress to raise spending caps to make sure human needs programs stay fully funded and to make permanent improvements and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit.

The town hall meetings were held at St. Paul Episcopal Church in Fayetteville Sept. 13 where Bishop Anthony B. Taylor was in attendance. Sister Simone praised Bishop Taylor for being only the sixth Catholic bishop to attend a meeting on their tours.

In a room of more than 75 attendees at the First United Methodist Church in Little Rock, the nuns shared stories on societal issues, including Sister Richelle Friedman, PBVM, who met a 15-year-old Hispanic girl on this tour who is now a parent to her six younger siblings along with her grandmother because her parents were deported after her father went to pay a traffic ticket. Sister Simone later told Arkansas Catholic the girl’s 12-year-old sister had contemplated suicide to not be a “burden.”

“There’s a level of intolerance I’ve never experienced before,” in recent years in regard to immigrants, said Sister Margaret McGuirk, OP. “For me it seems that the struggle is invisible to other people.”

Attendees were encouraged to discuss divides in Little Rock, which included education, racism, the criminal “injustice” system, hunger and the need for better acceptance of groups like the LGBT community and immigrants.

All the solutions proposed focused on building relationships and being open to another’s view.

“As long as we’re afraid of each other, we promote individualism. Individualism is what’s keeping us separate from each other,” Sister Simone said.

She explained that individualism and how everyone should be able to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” was not how the country was founded. She went on to explain that Christians should follow Jesus’ example of coming together.

“You know Jesus was smart — he didn’t send the doofus apostles out by themselves expecting them to get anything done. He sent them out two by two,” Sister Simone said. “We need to be together to make the changes happen.”

Sister Simone said the nation needs to revamp politics, telling Arkansas Catholic that “many politicians use fear to generate support.”

“Politics is not a spectator sport,” she said.

Sister Simone left the crowd with her three virtues of the 21st century to follow:

• Holy curiosity, to inquire about the social injustices around you
• Sacred gossip, sharing what you find out about untold issues in society
• Listening to where you are being called to act

In addition to the town hall meeting, the sisters also visited the 12th Street Empowerment Center in Little Rock.

“I totally agree with this. We need to get the conversation started and bring everyone to the table,” said Margaret Zakrzewski, parish religious education coordinator at Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, who attended the press conference at the Empowerment Center Monday. “I may not agree with you, but I understand where you’re coming from.”

Sister Simone told Arkansas Catholic that for Catholics and people of all faith, it is key to accept diversity.

“We’ve got to have the courage and the faith to deal with complex issues in complex times in a diverse society and know that I can’t force my faith on everybody else,” Sister Simone said. “It’s an adult way forward and it’s very hard. But we’ve got to do it if we’re going to be faithful to the gospel.”

For more information on the Nuns on the Bus movement, visit networklobby.org.

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