3 Things Non-Catholics Can Think About While Preparing for the Pope’s Visit to Philadelphia
As a non-Catholic and current resident of Philadelphia, the Pope’s visit has seemed nothing short of an utter inconvenience. Thoughts of street crowding, transportation halts, business closings, and high Uber rates led me to planning a mini-vacation during the Pope’s stay. Even with a plan to escape the city, I couldn’t get away from conversations about the politics surrounding the World Meeting of Families’ first gathering in the United States. My contemplation of a few key things has lead seeking more information and may even have me stick around to see how this whole thing plays out.
Here are 3 things I’m thinking about...
1 - Family. The World Meeting of Families focuses on the family as an institution. While I don’t necessarily share the values of the Catholic Church, I like the idea of thinking through and articulating a set of values that define family. It’s so easy to take “family” for granted and to like or dislike the groups of people we’re born into. What if the family had a playbook, roles, positions, and responsibilities to support each other? What if there was a written process for communicating and mediating family disputes and solving problems? Should we non-Catholics be taking our families more seriously?
2- Organizing. With representatives from over 100 countries in Philadelphia during the Papal visit, there had to have been some very skilled organizers involved. If I wanted to organize something that involved over 100 countries, where would I start and what issues, ideas or themes would be worthy of such an effort? Okay. That’s huge. But if we wanted to organize anything, even locally, could we use the methods employed for this visit to bring people together? What groups and institutions are we aligned with? Which email lists can be combined? What specific work are we doing that might deem itself worthy of a commitment to organize people around it?
3- Global Mindset. Local residents will have cultures, languages and issues from around the world in arms reach. How will this add to or deflect away from the current issues related to police brutality in the African American community? How will having access to a global base of stories and ideologies shift things? While the USA is often looked at as a leader, we all know there are some problems here. How are these problems perceived internationally? Will having opportunities to interact with those perspectives contribute to progress at all?
So, we’ll see how this whole thing goes down. I’m anticipating another blog post, post-Pope.
