Catholic Lobby Day gave more than 900 Catholics from around the state a chance to lobby their lawmakers on behalf of pro-life issues and the poor and vulnerable in society.

The sixth annual event was sponsored by the California Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the state’s Catholic bishops, on April 27 at the Crest Theater in Sacramento.

To begin the day, representatives from each diocese shared why they came and what they wanted to accomplish.

Judy Barrett, respect life coordinator for the Diocese of Santa Rosa, came “inspired by Jesus to start a fire.”

“He is still speaking to us. It’s up to us to be that fireÖfor the poor and marginalized,” she said.

Jondell Wright from the Diocese of Monterey spoke about the need to “walk the walk” as people of faith concerned about carrying out Catholic social teaching.

“We’re concerned not only about life from natural birth to natural death, but the quality of that life,” she said. “That life needs to be fed, that life needs to be sheltered, that life needs to be educated.”

For Bill Hallerman from the Diocese of Sacramento, Lobby Day was an opportunity to move from his involvement in the grassroots ministry of the St. Vincent de Paul Society to help the poor to public advocacy with state lawmakers.

“We want our state legislators to hear the Catholic position on issues that affect the less fortunate — whether children, adults, immigrants or prisoners,” said Hallerman, president of the St. Vincent de Paul’s Sacramento District Council. “Legislators need to be sure our state government does not further reduce funding of programs that help them.”

In a welcome message, Sacramento Bishop William K. Weigand challenged the Catholic advocates to make themselves heard on issues “that touch the dignity of the human person and help build up the common good.”

The bishop then presided at a bilingual Mass for participants. Beth White, a member of the Lobby Day planning committee and associate director of social service ministry for the Sacramento Diocese, said the hope was that the liturgy would be “an awakening at a faith level of who we are and what we’re called to do.”

“We have responsibilities as the body of Christ to go out and act on behalf of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society,” she said.

Jesuit Father Greg Boyle, who has worked with gangs in East Los Angeles since 1986, in a homily during the Mass said, “Here’s the problem. We always think the stiff-necked people are someone else.”

Father Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, which provides employment for gang members, pointed out state residents tend to forget “the 622 people sitting on death row are our sisters and brothers, that service cuts to the disabled matter, and that thousands of children passing through our criminal justice system are ours.”

When he was pastor of Dolores Mission, the poorest church in Los Angeles, he saw thousands of people receive hot meals, gang members and drug addicts welcomed, and a place where “everybody who was nobody was...made to feel they were part of the community.”

“We’ve forgotten we belong to each other,” he said. “We stand today together to march against forgetting...to build a community of kinship that God might recognize it.”

During a noontime rally at the state Capitol, participants spoke against state budget proposals capping or eliminating services for immigrants and transitional food stamps and reducing CalWORKs grants.

Daniel Guzman, a teacher at Notre Dame High School in Riverside, opposes capping enrollment in California Children’s Services programs which provide managed health care for children with special health care needs. He talked about his son Daniel, born with an uncommon congenital condition, who died at the age of six months.

“Yes, Daniel was a burden to the state. The state is a burden to me,” he said. “I’m speaking out for other dads to not limit the number of Californians who can receive this kind of health care.”

During the afternoon Lobby Day session, 100 participants from the Sacramento Diocese gathered at the office building of the Secretary of State for scheduled visits from legislators. Activities included an interactive discussion and social drama presented by Holy Names Sister Cecilia Calva, northern California community organizer for the Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights.

Sister Calva, whose work is as much about teaching people to speak for themselves as being a voice for the voiceless, believes giving people the tools to talk to legislators effectively can be a life-altering experience.

A case in point was the eight-member delegation of students from Our Lady of Lourdes School in Colusa, who attended Lobby Day with their teacher, Kasia Heinert. The eighth graders, all student council members, learned something new about state budget issues they had discussed in class when Assemblyman Doug Lamalfa (R-Richvale) from Colusa County spoke to them.

“I thought it was a really cool opportunity to be able to talk to our legislators and learn about bills coming up right now, so we can be informed and know what’s happening,” said Davi Schmidt. “Being able to talk to (Assemblyman) Lamalfa and learning he’s basically a farmer like everyone else was awesome.”

Another student, Kendra Carter, talked to the Lamalfa about her concern for a worker on her family’s ranch who had been trying for three years to bring his family to the United States from Mexico.

Alyssa Sankey asked if anything could be done about the high unemployment in Colusa County.

“There are a lot of people in the county who can’t get food to their families and might not have a home,” Sankey said. “I learned there are some solutions.”

Sister Calva, who was impressed at the number of high school students present during lunch at the Capitol, expects the youths will be incorporating what they learned into their lives.

“They will be looking at the (news) paper in a different way, doing their liturgies in a different way, doing dinners at home in a different way,” she said. “They really are the voice of the future.”

Ned Dolejsi, executive director of the California Catholic Conference, in an interview with The Herald prior to Lobby Day, said the dominent issue this year is entering the debate over solutions to the state’s estimated $14 billion budget deficit from the perspective of Catholic social teaching.

“The cuts people are proposing are so severe and potentially so draconian we have to enter that mix,” he said.

Dolejsi was he was optimistic that the concerns of Catholic advocates about the proposed budget cuts would be taken seriously by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“The governor is fully aware of the financial challenges the state has but he is also, I think, a compassionate realist,” he said. “He will find a way to make sure those who are most poor don’t take the brunt of the cuts.”

Dolejsi acknowledged that the credibility of the Catholic Conference’s efforts with lawmakers has been impacted by church’s clergy sex abuse crisis during the past two years.

“It was difficult because there were Catholic legislators frustrated and confused about what was happening in the church, people who were angry that clergy would violate their special relationship with people in such an egregious way,” he said.

He explained that members of his staff spent the first three months of the current legislative session making personal visits to Catholic legislators and their staff members.

During the meetings, CCC staff shared information about what action the state’s 12 dioceses had taken to comply with the U.S. bishops’ national policy to protect children and respond to clergy sexual abuse of minors, including outreach programs providing assistance to victims of clergy sexual abuse.

“It’s been a good process,” said Dolejsi, who believes the credibility of the Catholic Church remains strong in large part because of the work of statewide organizations such as Catholic Charities and the Catholic school system. “That anger and confusion needs to be honored and addressed and we’ve spent the last year and a half doing that.”

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