YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD WHAT IS GOOD,
AND WHAT THE LORD REQUIRES OF YOU:
ONLY TO DO JUSTICE AND TO LOVE GOODNESS,
AND TO WALK HUMBLY WITH YOUR GOD.
Micah 6:8
Old St. Patrick’s Social Action Ministry channels the Spirit to form and support disciples as we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. We commit to the principles of Catholic Social Teaching and living the Gospel through direct service, community development and organizing, and political advocacy.
Our Social Action ministry has three expressions, and we invite you to give and receive the graces of service and justice work. Your gifts, your story, your passion has a place with us in our collective effort to create spaces of justice and healing and to build right relationships among our one human family.
As we go out as disciples and agents of change for a better world, let us take to heart the words of Pope Benedict XVI from his encyclical Caritas in Veritate:
“To love someone is to desire that person’s good and to take effective steps to secure it. Besides the good of the individual, there is a good that is linked to living in society: the common good…It is a good that is sought not for its own sake, but for the people who belong to the social community and who can only really and effectively pursue their good within it. To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity…The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbors, the more effectively we love them.”
Our Social Action ministry has three expressions, and we invite you to give and receive the graces of service and justice work. Your gifts, your story, your passion has a place with us in our collective effort to create spaces of justice and healing and to build right relationships among our one human family.
- Outreach Opportunities: direct services that provide for basic needs and critical resources through our local and international non-profit partner organizations. This includes the Bill & Mary Aronin Center for Social Concerns located on our campus (703 W. Monroe).
- North Lawndale Kinship Initiative: a community development partnership between the North Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago’s West Side and Old St. Patrick’s Church to foster friendships, sharing, justice, opportunity and transformation for both communities.
- Social Justice in Action: organizing and political advocacy to build leaders and address systemic injustices facing our communities. Opportunities for justice education, faith-sharing, training, leadership development, and public action.
As we go out as disciples and agents of change for a better world, let us take to heart the words of Pope Benedict XVI from his encyclical Caritas in Veritate:
“To love someone is to desire that person’s good and to take effective steps to secure it. Besides the good of the individual, there is a good that is linked to living in society: the common good…It is a good that is sought not for its own sake, but for the people who belong to the social community and who can only really and effectively pursue their good within it. To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity…The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbors, the more effectively we love them.”