Bending the Arc

Challenge Day is an interactive anti-bullying program featuring music, exercises, impactful encounters, and discussions over one entire school day. It will be held in the small gymnasium of Fond du Lac High School and led by two energetic, charismatic, and highly trained facilitators dispatched from California. Each day 100 students and 30 volunteers confront stereotypes and prejudices and other underlying causes of bullying. See www.challengeday.org for a short video on the home page which beautifully shows what happens in this powerful workshop.

Adult volunteers participate side-by-side with the 100 freshman students per day selected by the administration, staff, and teachers. The Challenge Day facilitators (from Oakley, CA) will provide the necessary training for volunteers on the selected day(s), prior to the students entering the small gym.

Thirty (30) adults are needed each of the four days, October 14-17, from 8:00 am - 3:45 pm. Volunteers are required to commit themselves to the whole day in order to provide the optimum support for students. Lunch is provided to volunteers without charge. You may sign up for one or multiple days. If more than one day, you might consider a rest day in between.

BACKGROUND CHECK: All volunteers are required to complete a background check per the Fond du Lac School District. This is standard procedure for involvement in student activities such as Challenge Day. All volunteers are required to complete this form, even those returning from previous years. After you have submitted this form, you will be sent an email to complete the background check process.

Challenge Day is an annual effort by United for Diversity. CSA is a membership partner of United for Diversity and a co-sponsor of Challenge Day.

Peter Makari, UCC Global Relations Minister for the Middle East and Europe will offer a Zoom presentation for churches and communities of faith on the crisis in the region. 

On Thursday, September 26, at 7 pm, Peter Makari, a leading specialist on the crisis in Gaza and the Middle East, will offer a Zoom presentation for churches and other communities of faith on the crisis in the region. Born in Egypt, Peter is the Global Relations Minister for the Middle East and Europe for the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ.)  A member of the Board of Churches for Middle East Peace, he is among the most well-informed Church leaders on developments in the Middle East, having spent much of his life studying and living in that part of the world.    

Interfaith Peace Working Group (IPWG) invites readers to join Peter in an hour-long discussion of the present crisis in Gaza and Israel. Mark your calendars now! No registration needed.Use this Zoom link on the 28th: https://UCC.zoom.us/j/83824972681?pwd=KNjOoQkkRV6b2KzXBzaNhMROMADVsL.1

Meeting ID: 838 2497 2681 and Passcode: 688763. 

For additional information, contact Jerry Folk at interfaithpeaceworkinggroup@gmail.com  
Tracy Abler, JPIC Coordinator for the Sisters of St Agnes, recently accepted an invitation to serve on the Interfaith Peace Working Group Steering Committee.    
 

Celebrate International Day of Peace (Sept 21) with screenings of a film that provides a look into the struggles and resilience of the Palestinian people.

The film, Where Olive Trees Weep, offers a searing window into the struggles and resilience of the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation. It explores themes of loss, trauma, and the quest for justice. View the film trailer and learn more at https://whereolivetreesweep.com/

The film will be screened on International Day of Peace - Saturday, September 21 @ 7:00 pm at Madison Friends (Quakers) Meeting House, 1704 Roberts Court, Madison WI. The screening will be preceded by a social gathering starting at 6:30 and a discussion session will follow the film. 

Can’t get to Madison? Use this link to privately view the film on your own or host your own small group: https://kinema.com/events/where-olive-trees-weep-hjpxh. Admission is free with this link, but only on September 21, 2024, courtesy of the Interfaith Peace Working Group of Wisconsin.

The Sisters of St. Agnes will also be offering a free screening of the film on Monday, September 23 at 5:30 pm at their Motherhouse in Founders Hall, County Road K, Fond du Lac. Please use this link to reserve your seat: https://forms.gle/R3Q21JmA9kjJXvwEA. Please share widely.

You can also:

• Show or view the film on another date: https://sand.thrivecart.com/where-olive-trees-weep/   A donation for that is welcome, but not necessary.
• Get ideas for ACTIONS to take now: https://whereolivetreesweep.com/resources/ 
• Contact Interfaithpeaceworkinggroup@gmail.com for a film discussion guide, media resources to promote your event, and any questions

On September 11, 6-8 pm CT, NETWORK will offer the virtual event, White Supremacy and American Christianity: We Choose Freedom. Participants will explore how, when we exercise our freedom to participate in our country’s public life, we ensure the future of all the freedoms that we enjoy in a vibrant democracy. This builds a future where every person can thrive, no exceptions.

This is the fifth conversation in a series of dialogues, where we will once more engage Fr. Bryan Massingale of Fordham University and Dr. Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute on what it means to choose freedom, especially through the practice of multi-issue voting.

Register here!
 

An 18-page report, released Aug. 28 by Network Advocates for Catholic Social Justice suggests that Project 2025 clashes with several principles of Catholic social teaching, particularly through its proposals that would benefit corporations and wealthy Americans at the expense of the poor and middle class. Learn more in this September 3, 2024, NCR online article.

To learn more about NETWORK’s 2024 nonpartisan voter education campaign, “Vote Our Future,” and the issues at stake in the upcoming election, visit networkadvocates.org/election-2024 

Take the Pope Francis Voter Pledge: https://www.mobilize.us/network/event/614667/ 

Follow the 2024 Nuns on the Bus (and friends) tour here: https://www.nunsonthebus.org/ 

Nuclear weapons offer an illusion of security. By allowing the U.S. nuclear posture to shift from deterrence to employment, there will be a scenario where the U.S. will use nuclear weapons.

Successive U.S. administrations have eschewed arms control in favor of maintaining American strategic advantage over real and/or imagined adversaries.

This is accomplished by embracing nuclear weapons employment strategies that deviate from simple deterrence into war-fighting at every level of conflict, including scenarios that don’t involve a nuclear threat.

At a time when the U.S. advocates policies exacerbating already high levels of tension with nuclear-armed adversaries Russia and China, the Biden administration has signed off on a new nuclear employment plan that increases, rather than decreases, the probability of nuclear conflict.

Left unchecked, this policy can have only one possible outcome — total nuclear annihilation of humanity and the world we live in.

Read more in this recent article by writer, Scott Ritter, in Consortium News - an independent investigative journalism and political review.

According to a 2021 petition by Change.org, “The threat of nuclear annihilation is greater than it has ever been… A nuclear war must never be fought, because everyone will lose," said several presidents, including Joe Biden. The leaders of every major religion call for abolishing nuclear weapons. Pope Francis says it's immoral to possess them.

It's not only immoral. It's illegal to possess nukes, since the International Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was signed and ratified by the majority of world nations and became law in January 2021.

Yet the U.S. possesses thousands of nuclear bombs. About 1,750 of them are deployed on missiles (aimed and on hair trigger alert), and another 3,500 are in reserve. Consider the horror of the bomb that destroyed the city of Hiroshima in 1945. Today’s nukes are, on average, 20 times more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb. In other words, the US has enough nukes to incinerate 100,000 Hiroshimas and let the remaining living beings die a slow death from radiation poisoning.”

Learn more and Speak Up here: https://www.change.org/p/stop-making-nukes 

Open this article as a PDF

The dense shrubbery behind these CSA maintenance workers, Jack Mohr and Jimmer Immel, is created by buckthorn, an invasive species, which is a tall shrub or small tree.

What is the meaning of invasive species?

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, “An invasive species is an introduced, nonnative organism (disease, parasite, plant, or animal) that begins to spread or expand its range from the site of its original introduction and that has the potential to cause harm to the environment, the economy, or to human health”.

Jack and Jimmer demonstrate how to remove the invasive buckthorn at the root.   

Jeff Atkinson, supervisor and land manager, states that buckthorn is a non-native plant, which threatens the future of forests, wetlands, prairies, and other natural habitats.   Buckthorn competes with other trees and overwhelms them.  Buckthorn spreads quickly through seeds distributed by birds and wildlife. “Harmful, non-native species can be found in all ecosystems across the United States. These species can cause costly economic and ecological damage each year including crop decimation, clogging of water facilities and waterways, wildlife and human disease transmission, threats to fisheries, increased fire vulnerability, and adverse effects for ranchers and farmers.”  Buckthorn can be difficult to remove in sections over the course of several years.  
(Reference:  https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-invasive-species-and-why-are-they-a-problem)

Learn more: 

USGS Invasive Species Program

U.S. Department of Agriculture

National Invasive Species Information Identification Center

Friends of the Mississippi River explain how buckthorn harms the ecosystem: click here to read the article.

Let Us Sow Hope: 2024 Feast of St. Francis

This year’s program by Catholic Climate Covenant is designed to assist you, your family, parish, school, diocese, religious community, or other Catholic institution celebrate the Feast of St. Francis (October 4th or another date that works for you and your community), become instruments of God’s peace, and commit to climate actions to avoid climate despair, and sow climate hope.  

Hold your own prayer service for the Feast of St. Francis using the document here.

Acknowledgments:

S. Patricia Weidman, CSA, Laudato Si’ Animator, guest writer
Special thank you to Chelsea Koenigs, Laudato Si’ Animator,
S. Julie Ann Krahl, S. Patricia Bogenschuetz.

Pax Christi USA’s virtual conference is September 6-7, 2024 (Friday 6-8pm CT, Saturday 11am - 4:30 CT).

Being a prophetic church in a time of polarization and conflict is the theme for this year’s conference. 

As we witness unprecedented divisions in our world and even our own Catholic family, this Pax Christi USA virtual gathering on Zoom will examine the root causes of the growing polarization with speakers who are actively working in the fields of church politics, nonviolence, and religious nationalism. We will look for ways in which we can be prophetic — working together in dialogue for a better understanding and offering nonviolent solutions that can give all of us hope.

Click here to see more information as well as a link to the registration form.