En Nomine Patris — Notes from an East LA Parish

There is a rectangle on the shirt. Black-and-white speckle, the kind that looks like static or cheap marble. A dark binding strip runs down the left side. Inside the white ruled label, the word COMPOSITION sits at the top, and beneath it an outlined ghost and an outlined pumpkin share the space. That is the whole design. It is a printed notebook cover, not a physical notebook, and the listing calls it a teacher group Halloween costume.

I keep looking at the label. In a real composition notebook, that label is where a child writes their name, subject, and room number. The label is the part that makes the book yours. On this shirt, the label is already filled — with a ghost and a pumpkin, two shapes that belong to October and to no one in particular. The name line is occupied by the season itself.

That is a small joke, but it is a precise one. A group costume works only if everyone agrees to be the same thing without becoming identical. The notebook cover does that. It is a surface everyone in a classroom already knows, and it carries no slogan, no mascot, no team name. The ghost and pumpkin are drawn in outline, not filled in, which means the shirt does not shout. It waits to be read.

I have spent enough time around parish halls to know that the best group costumes are the ones that do not require a speech. You put on the shirt, you stand next to the other teachers, and the joke lands because the object is familiar. The composition notebook is one of the few school supplies that has not changed much in forty years. The speckle, the binding, the ruled label — they are a visual shorthand for school itself. Wearing it is a way of saying: I am at work, and I am also at a party. Both things are true.

The design does not claim that teachers are notebooks. It does not claim that Halloween is about school. It simply puts a school object on a body and lets the contradiction sit there. That is what a costume is: a visible argument between what you are and what you appear to be. The ghost and pumpkin keep the argument light. They are the only Halloween elements, and they are small. The rest is just the cover.

If you are organizing a group, the shirt does one practical thing well: it is easy to match. You do not need to coordinate colors beyond black and white. You do not need to agree on a character. The notebook cover is the character. The composition notebook shirt is the object itself, printed on a standard t-shirt, and the listing presents it as a group costume for teachers. That is the whole offer. It is not a political statement, not a mascot, not a licensed character. It is a school supply that has been promoted to a costume.

I think about the label again. In a real notebook, the label is where you write your name so the book does not get lost. On this shirt, the label is printed with a ghost and a pumpkin, which means the book is already lost — or rather, it belongs to the season. That is a small piece of theology, if you want it: the things we label as ours are often just borrowed for a while. The ghost and pumpkin will come off when the shirt is washed enough, or they will not. Either way, the label was never really about ownership. It was about recognition.

For a teacher group, recognition is the point. You want the students to see you in the hallway and know that you are in on the joke. You want the other teachers to see you and know that you agreed to do this together. The shirt does not need to be clever beyond that. It needs to be legible from across the room. The black-and-white speckle is legible. The dark binding strip is legible. The word COMPOSITION is legible. The ghost and pumpkin are legible. That is enough.

What I appreciate most is what the design refuses to do. It does not add a pun. It does not add a slogan about teaching being a work of heart. It does not add a coffee cup or an apple. It trusts the notebook cover to carry the idea. That restraint is rare in costume shirts, which often pile on text until the original object disappears. Here, the object is the text. The notebook cover is the message.

If you are the one organizing the group, the practical step is simple: decide how many people are in, order the sizes, and agree on a day to wear them. The shirt does not require a meeting. It does not require a budget beyond the shirts themselves. It requires only that everyone shows up in the same rectangle. That is the assignment. The rest is Halloween.

Editorial note: This publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner.

There is a shirt on Amazon right now with one word on it, and the word is set in large, bold, white lowercase letters on a dark ground. The word is meh. — with the period. No animal. No slogan stacked underneath. No flag, no arrow, no second line of type to soften it. Just the four letters and the dot, sized as if it were a headline, printed as if it had something to announce.

That is the whole design. I want to sit with it for a minute, because the visual decision is doing more work than the word is.

If you have ever seen a parish bulletin, you know what small type looks like. The announcements that matter — the funeral, the quinceañera, the rent-assistance workshop on Saturday — are usually set in the smallest font on the page, squeezed between a used-car ad and a schedule of Masses. The things that get big type are the things somebody paid for. Size is a claim. When a designer takes a word as flat as meh and sets it at headline scale, they are borrowing the authority of big type and spending it on a shrug. That mismatch is the joke, and it is also the argument.

I keep thinking about how often the most honest thing a person can say in a meeting is the least impressive one. Not no. Not yes. Not a speech. Just: this does not move me, and I am not going to pretend it does. I have sat in enough tenant meetings on the Whittier Boulevard corridor to know the rhythm. A landlord’s attorney spends forty minutes explaining a relocation package, and then someone says one sentence that ends the whole performance. It is rarely eloquent. It is usually closer to meh than to anything you would put on a banner.

The shirt is not making a political claim. I want to be careful here. The artwork does not name a cause, a candidate, a neighborhood, or a movement. It is a piece of dry-humor apparel from a brand called Quirky Cotton Collective, listed under a title that strings together funny, sarcastic, introvert, and dry humor — retail language, not printed language. What is actually on the garment, as far as the preview shows, is the word and the period. Everything else is my reading of it, and I will say so plainly.

Here is the reading. meh. in lowercase is not a refusal. A refusal has edges. A refusal commits you to an alternative. meh. is the sound a person makes when they have been asked to care about something that does not deserve the care, and they have decided not to spend the energy pretending otherwise. It is a boundary drawn in the softest possible pencil. And the period is what makes it final. Without the period, meh is a hesitation. With the period, it is a verdict.

I think that is why the design works as a shirt and not just as a caption. A shirt is a public surface. You wear it into a grocery line, a waiting room, a school pickup, a pew. Most graphic tees on that surface are trying to start something — a laugh, a compliment, a conversation. This one is trying to end something. It is pre-emptive. It says, before you ask me how I am, before you pitch me your thing, before you hand me the flyer: I have already considered it, and the answer is the dot.

There is a spiritual discipline in that, and I do not mean it as a joke. The tradition I serve has a long history of people who said very little and meant all of it. The desert fathers were not chatty. The nunc dimittis is one sentence. The short word, the flat tone, the refusal to decorate — these are old tools in the pastoral kit, even when they show up on a t-shirt.

I am not claiming the shirt is about any of that. The shirt is about being tired of being asked to perform enthusiasm. But the two things share a grammar: the short word, the flat tone, the refusal to decorate.

If you want to look at the object itself, it is here: Meh Funny Sarcastic Saying Introvert Dry Humor. The listing shows the large bold lowercase meh. on a dark shirt, and that is the design. There is no animal illustration, no pride variant, no second graphic. What you see is what is printed.

What I would ask a reader to do with this is not buy it. It is to notice how often you have said something longer than meh. when meh. was the truth. In a building meeting, in a family conversation, in a committee that has met eleven times and produced nothing. The long version costs you something. It costs you the hour, and it costs you a little of your own honesty, because you are performing interest you do not have. The short version is a gift to the room. It lets everyone stop pretending.

There is a place for the long version. When a tenant is three days from a lockout, you do not shrug. You file. You show up. You bring the notice and the case number and the date. Meh. is not a strategy for the things that matter. It is a strategy for the things that do not, and the discipline is knowing the difference.

So the shirt is funny, and it is also a small instruction. It says: you are allowed to have a floor. You are allowed to look at the eleventh invitation to care about something that has never once cared about you, and answer with four letters and a period. The word is loud on the shirt because the feeling is usually quiet in the person. That is the whole design, and it is enough.

Editorial note: This publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner.

Note: This publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner.

On the shirt, the words I HAD POTENTIAL sit in white capitals above a white curved ramp that descends from left to right. At the upper left ledge, where the ramp begins, there is a dashed empty circle. At the lower right, where the ramp flattens, a solid white ball rests. The ramp is curved, not a straight diagonal. That is the whole drawing. It is also, if you sit with it for a minute, a small essay about what happens to a person between the top of the ramp and the bottom.

The joke lands because the diagram is a physics diagram, or close enough to one. A ball at the top of a curved incline has gravitational potential energy. The dashed circle marks where it started. The solid ball marks where it ended up. The caption says I had potential, past tense, as if the ball is filing a report on its own life. The humor is dry, self-deprecating, and slightly cruel to the speaker. It is the kind of line a person wears when they want to say something true about themselves without asking for sympathy.

What makes the design work is that it does not explain the joke. It trusts you to read the diagram. The dashed circle is the key. A dashed line in a technical drawing usually means something is absent, projected, or no longer there. So the circle at the top is not the ball. It is the place the ball used to be. The ball itself is down at the bottom, solid, resting. The shirt is not saying the ball disappeared. It is saying the ball moved, and the place it left is now only an outline.

That is a more interesting statement than the usual sarcastic tee. Most joke shirts about failure or laziness stop at the punchline. This one has a second layer: the diagram is accurate. A ball on a curved ramp really does trade height for speed, and then it stops. The physics is not wrong. The self-deprecation is not fake. The shirt is funny because it is true, and it is true because the drawing is honest about how energy works.

I keep thinking about the dashed circle. In a parish, we spend a lot of time with people who feel like that circle. They had a job, a marriage, a lease, a body that worked a certain way. Now they are the outline of where they used to be. The temptation is to treat that as a tragedy, or to rush in with a speech about resurrection before the person has finished telling you what they lost. The shirt does not do that. It just shows the circle and the ball and lets you draw your own conclusion.

There is a kind of pastoral care that consists mostly of not interrupting. You sit with someone who is describing the top of their ramp. You do not tell them the ball is fine. You do not tell them the ramp was never that high. You just look at the diagram with them. The shirt, worn by the right person on the right day, can do that work. It says: I know where I am. I am not asking you to fix it. I am telling you the truth.

That is also why the design resists being mean. A lesser version of this joke would mock the person wearing it. This one does not. The ball is not broken. The ramp is not a trap. The dashed circle is not a grave. It is just a diagram of a thing that happened. The wearer is in on the joke, and the joke is on all of us who thought we would be further along by now.

If you want to see the exact artwork, the listing is here: I Had Potential Funny Physics Pun Sarcastic Minimalist Quote. The shirt is a standard tee, and the design is printed in white on the front. The visual observation above is from the retail garment image, not from a wearing experience. I have not put it on. I am reading the drawing.

What I appreciate most is the restraint. The shirt does not add a second caption. It does not include a stick figure crying at the bottom. It does not say relatable. It gives you the ramp, the circle, the ball, and four words. That is enough. In a culture that explains every joke until it dies, a design that trusts the viewer is a small mercy.

So here is the assignment, if you want one. The next time someone tells you they had potential, do not argue with them. Do not hand them a pamphlet about God’s plan. Ask them what the top of the ramp looked like. Ask them what the ball was doing before it rolled. Then listen. The diagram on the shirt is not a confession of failure. It is an invitation to be seen without being corrected. That is a harder thing to offer than it sounds, and it is the whole point of the drawing.

Four root vegetables are smiling. A carrot, a radish, a beet, an onion. Their roots hang visible in the soil, drawn as thin lines below the surface, and the words LET’S ROOT FOR EACH OTHER AND WATCH EACH OTHER GROW wrap around them in a ring. That is the whole design. I have looked at it for a while now, and the longer I look, the more I think the ring is the point.

Editor’s note: This publication and Quirky Cotton Collective share an owner.

The phrase is doing two things at once, and the artwork knows it. Root for is the easy reading — the bleacher sense, the sense of a neighbor on the sidewalk yelling for a kid running bases at Evergreen Park. But the vegetables are not cheering. They are underground. Their roots are the subject. So the second reading is the botanical one: to root is to put down roots, to take hold in soil, to become anchored somewhere. The design holds both meanings in the same word and does not resolve them. That is a better joke than it first appears, because the two meanings are not actually the same wish.

To root for someone is to want them to win. It costs nothing and asks nothing back. To root, intransitively, is to stay. It is the slow work of a thing that has decided where it lives. The shirt’s pun works because the vegetables are doing both — they are smiling at each other, and they are also, plainly, planted. The cheer and the commitment are in the same frame.

I want to be careful about the second half of the sentence, though, because it is where the design gets more interesting than it lets on. And watch each other grow. Growth is the part we usually say without thinking. In a garden it means something specific: the beet swells, the onion pushes up its green, the carrot thickens under the soil where you cannot see it. None of that is fast, and none of if it is under anyone’s control. You water and you wait. The watching is the whole job.

But growth is also the word we use when we mean something else — when we mean a neighborhood changing, a block getting better, a corridor being revitalized. Anyone who has sat through a land-use hearing on First Street knows how that word gets used. Growth, in the mouth of a developer’s attorney, is not a beet swelling in place. It is a beet pulled up and replaced with something the market prefers. The shirt is not making that argument. It is a gardening pun. But the pun sits close enough to the real thing that I notice it, and I think the design is sturdier for it.

What the artwork actually asks, if you read the ring of words as a single instruction, is not grow. It is watch. The verb doing the work is the watching. Root for each other, yes — but then stay long enough to see what happens. That is a harder assignment than encouragement. Encouragement is a moment. Watching is a season. You have to be there in March when nothing is up yet, and in July when the radish has already bolted and gone to seed, and in October when the onion tops fall over and you finally know what you have.

I think about the people on my block who have watched each other for decades. Doña Marta on the porch with her coffee, who knows which car belongs to which apartment and which one does not. The men who sit on the folding chairs outside the body shop on Whittier and have watched the same corner since before I was assigned here. They are not optimists, most of them. They have watched too much to be optimists. But they have watched, which is different, and which is the thing the shirt is actually about.

There is a temptation, when a design is this gentle, to treat it as decoration and move on. I do not think that is right. The gentleness is the argument. Four vegetables with faces, roots showing, arranged in a circle with a sentence around them — the whole composition is a small claim that mutual care is not sentimental but structural. Roots hold soil. Soil holds roots. The beet does not grow the carrot, but the beet and the carrot are in the same ground, and the ground is what they share. That is not a metaphor I am imposing. It is what the drawing shows: the roots are all in the same dark band at the bottom of the image, tangled together, and the smiling faces are all above it.

If you want the object itself, it is the Let’s Root For Each Other And Watch Each Other Grow Garden shirt from Quirky Cotton Collective. I am not going to tell you it will change your life or your block. It is a shirt with a pun on it. But I will say this: the pun is load-bearing, and the drawing is honest about where growth actually happens — underground, slowly, in company, out of sight of anyone who is only watching the tops.

So here is the assignment, and it is small enough to do this week. Pick one person you have been rooting for from a distance — someone whose name you say in prayer, whose struggle you know about, whose win you would celebrate if it came. Then do the second half of the sentence. Watch them grow. Not check in once. Watch. Notice what changes over a month. Notice what does not. Notice what they need that you have not offered because you assumed they did not need it. The carrot does not announce itself. Neither do most of the people we are supposed to be tending.

The vegetables in the drawing are smiling because they are together in the soil. That is the whole theology of the thing, and it does not need a footnote. Root for each other. Then stay in the ground long enough to see what comes up.

There is a particular silence that falls over a sacristy when two people who receive Communion from the same ciborium are in a rent dispute. It is not the silence of prayer. It is the silence of people who have not yet decided whether they can look at each other at the Sign of Peace.

The parish is not a courthouse. But the parish is also not a place where we pretend that money, repairs, and eviction notices do not exist. They exist. They sit in the third pew. They put money in the second collection.

This is about what a peacemaking circle can do when a landlord and a tenant in the same parish are in a rent dispute — and, more importantly, what it cannot do. The boundary is not a lack of compassion. The boundary is the compassion.

The Circle Is Not a Rent Tribunal

A peacemaking circle is a pastoral instrument. Its authority is baptismal and relational. It can name harm, elicit confession, and accompany two baptized people toward restitution. It cannot determine rent owed, habitability, or the lawfulness of an eviction. It has no subpoena power, no escrow account, no enforcement mechanism, and no business pretending otherwise.

When a parish blurs that line, the tenant is exposed to pressure to accept a relational resolution in place of a legal remedy. The landlord is exposed to a quasi-judicial process with no due process. And the parish is exposed as an institution that promised more than it could deliver. That is not peacemaking. That is a small claims court with incense, and it harms everyone it touches.

The circle’s warrant is not legal. It is the fact that these two people already share a body. They are already members of one another. The circle does not create that bond; it tries to keep the bond from being severed while the civic process runs its course.

Why the Parish Has Standing at All

The Catholic social teaching tradition is clear that the commitment to the poor is not a program we add to the parish calendar. As the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has written, “Catholic social teaching is built on a commitment to the poor. This commitment arises from our experiences of Christ in the eucharist.” The same resource quotes the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “To receive in truth the Body and Blood of Christ given up for us, we must recognize Christ in the poorest, his brethren” (no. 1397).

That is the ground on which a parish peacemaking circle stands. Not a grant. Not a strategic plan. The Eucharist. And the same tradition insists that this work cannot be sustained by activism alone: “Our commitment to the Catholic social mission must be rooted in and strengthened by our spiritual lives. In our relationship with God, we experience the conversion of heart that is necessary to truly love one another as God has loved us.”

So the circle is not a substitute for the housing department. It is the place where the conversion of heart that the tradition describes is given a concrete, local, relational shape — while the legal claims go where legal claims belong.

What the Circle Actually Does

The practical shape matters. A circle that is vague about its own limits will be captured by whoever speaks loudest.

Who convenes it. A lay convener — not the pastor, not a staff member with supervisory authority over either party. Someone trained in restorative practice and accountable to the pastor, but not acting as his delegate in the room. If the pastor is in the circle, he is a participant, not the facilitator.

Who is present. The two parties. One or two support persons chosen by each. The convener. A note-taker only if both parties agree in writing. No spectators. No one from the parish council who has a stake in the outcome.

What is said aloud at the start. The convener states, before anything else: this circle will not decide rent, repairs, habitability, or the lawfulness of any eviction. Those questions belong to the civic process. This circle will address how these two baptized people speak to each other, treat each other, and live in the same parish while that process runs. If either party wants the circle to decide the money question, the circle ends here and the referral begins.

What is written down. The convener’s opening statement. The parties’ written agreement about what the circle will and will not address. Any concrete commitments each party makes about conduct — not about money. Nothing else. No transcript. No minutes. No file that could later be produced in a legal proceeding.

What is never written down. Anything either party says about the merits of the underlying dispute. Anything that could be read as an admission. Anything that could be subpoenaed.

Two Tracks, Named Out Loud

The single most important design decision is to separate the relational track from the civic track, and to say so in writing.

The relational track is the circle. It handles how two people who share a pew will speak to each other in the parking lot, at the grocery store on First Street, and at the Sign of Peace.

The civic track handles the legal and monetary dimensions. In the City of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Housing Department maintains the Rent Escrow Account Program (REAP), and the department has issued notices related to it. LAHD has also issued a Request for Proposals for Tenant Outreach and Education Services. These are the kinds of mechanisms that carry legal claims; the parish does not.

For county residents, the Los Angeles County Development Authority describes its Rent Cafe as available for Section 8 tenants and owners and Public Housing residents to assist with communication, receive notifications, and conduct transactions online. LACDA also states that its public housing site-based waiting lists are closed and applications are no longer being accepted — a fact worth knowing before anyone promises a parishioner that a waiting list will open.

What the parish can do is hand off cleanly. A written handoff script, agreed by both parties, might read: “The circle will not address the repair claim or the rent owed. [Tenant] will pursue that through the appropriate housing agency and legal aid. [Landlord] will respond through the same process. The circle will meet again on [date] to discuss only how the two of you will treat each other while that process is pending.”

That handoff protects the tenant from being talked out of a legal remedy. It protects the landlord from a process with no rules. It protects the parish from becoming a faction.

An Illustrative Example

This is not a case record. It is a hypothetical, offered to show the shape of the thing.

A tenant and a landlord in the same parish agree to a circle. The tenant’s actual claim is a habitability repair demand. The convener names at the outset that the circle will not decide the repair claim. The tenant is referred to the appropriate housing agency and to legal aid. The landlord is told plainly that the circle will not insulate him from that process. The circle’s work is then limited to how the two will speak to each other in the pews and in the parking lot while the civic process runs. That is a small thing. It is also the difference between a parish that holds and a parish that splits.

The Landlord in the Third Pew

It is tempting to make the landlord the villain. That temptation is a betrayal of the circle. Catholic social teaching holds that human dignity comes from God, not from any human quality or accomplishment. That applies to the landlord as much as to the tenant. A circle that treats the landlord as an enemy is not a peacemaking body. It is a faction with a prayer card.

It is equally tempting to make the tenant a project — someone to be managed, advocated for, spoken about. That is its own betrayal. The tenant is a baptized person with a claim, not a case study.

What repentance and restitution can look like between baptized people is not the same as what a court can order. It can look like a landlord who, without admitting liability, agrees to a repair timeline and shows up to the circle to say so. It can look like a tenant who, without dropping the claim, agrees not to turn the parking lot into a courtroom. It can look like both of them kneeling at the same rail on Guadalupe’s feast day, not because the dispute is resolved, but because they have refused to let it become the whole of who they are to each other.

What the Parish Owes the Corridor

The parish does not owe Boyle Heights, City Terrace, Belvedere, or the Whittier Boulevard corridor a parallel legal system. It owes the corridor a place where the Eucharist and the rent dispute are held in the same room without collapsing one into the other.

That means the circle must be bounded. It must be honest about what it cannot do. It must hand off legal claims to the agencies that carry them. And it must keep doing the one thing no agency can do: keep two baptized people in the same body while the law does its work.

The landlord will still sit three pews back. The tenant will still sit up front with the children. The circle does not change that geography. It only decides whether the geography becomes a wound or a witness.

Questions Readers Ask

Can a parish peacemaking circle decide who owes rent? No. The circle has no adjudicative authority. Rent, habitability, and eviction lawfulness belong to the civic process. A circle that tries to decide these things harms both parties.

What if the landlord refuses to participate? The circle proceeds only with both parties’ consent. If the landlord declines, the tenant should be referred to the appropriate housing agency and legal aid, and the parish’s pastoral care continues separately with each person.

Is the circle confidential? The convener should state clearly, at the start, what is and is not confidential, and should avoid creating any written record that could be produced in a legal proceeding. Confidentiality in a parish circle is a pastoral commitment, not a legal privilege, and the parties should be told the difference.

Where does a tenant go for the legal side? In the City of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Housing Department maintains the Rent Escrow Account Program (REAP) and has issued notices related to it. For county residents, the Los Angeles County Development Authority describes its Rent Cafe as available for Section 8 tenants and owners and Public Housing residents. LACDA also states that its public housing site-based waiting lists are closed and applications are no longer being accepted. A parish referral should point to the agency that actually carries the claim, not to the circle.

Does Catholic social teaching require the parish to take the tenant’s side? Catholic social teaching describes its commitment to the poor as arising from the experience of Christ in the Eucharist, and it insists that this commitment be rooted in spiritual life and the conversion of heart. That commitment does not mean the parish becomes a party to the dispute. It means the parish refuses to abandon either baptized person to the dispute.

When the Food Pantry Becomes the Whole Gospel

On the first Saturday of every month, the parking lot behind our parish on Whittier Boulevard fills with folding tables, boxes of rice, cans of beans, and the quiet shuffle of neighbors who know the line. We hand out food. We hand out diapers. We hand out a kind word. And then, on Monday, the same families walk past the same code enforcement notices taped to the same doors, the same rent increases slipped under the same thresholds, the same Ellis Act filings that turn a building into a business decision. The food pantry did not cause that. But the food pantry, by itself, cannot stop it.

This is the problem I want to name plainly: charity is not a substitute for justice. Charity is a response to a wound. Justice is a response to the knife. When a parish in Boyle Heights, City Terrace, Belvedere, or unincorporated East Los Angeles treats charity as the whole Gospel, we risk becoming a kind of spiritual triage unit — good at bandaging, silent about the blade. The people in our pews deserve better than that. So do the people who are not in our pews yet.

I am not against charity. I have blessed more quinceañeras than I can count and buried more parishioners than I want to remember, often on the same block, sometimes in the same week. I have stood in the Posadas procession in December and watched a child carry a candle past a building where the rent just went up again. Charity is real. Charity is necessary. But charity without justice is a cup of water handed to a man who is being pushed into a fire.

What Justice Looks Like on a Named Street

Justice is not an abstraction. It has an address. It has a case number. It has a hearing date. In our neighborhood, justice often looks like a tenant meeting in a church hall on a Tuesday night, with a Spanish-language lease on the table and a rent stabilization ordinance printed out and highlighted. It looks like a code enforcement complaint filed with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works or the City of Los Angeles Housing Department, depending on which side of the jurisdictional line the building sits. It looks like a rent escrow account, a habitability report, a notice to vacate that gets challenged instead of obeyed.

I have learned that the line between charity and justice is often a line between relief and rights. Relief says: here is a bag of groceries. Rights say: why is the grocery store three miles away and the bus line cut? Relief says: here is a motel voucher. Rights say: why did the landlord let the plumbing fail for six months while collecting rent? Relief says: here is a prayer. Rights say: here is a tenant organizing committee and here is the just cause ordinance that protects you from a retaliatory eviction.

In Catholic social teaching, this distinction is not new. Rerum Novarum (1891) insisted that workers have rights that charity alone cannot secure. Quadragesimo Anno (1931) warned against treating social reform as a matter of private benevolence. Gaudium et Spes (1965) said that the Church must read the “signs of the times” and act on them. Caritas in Veritate (2009) put it sharply: charity without justice is not charity at all. These are not slogans. They are documents. They are part of the deposit of faith, and they belong on the same shelf as the Catechism and the Lectionary.

The Liturgical Calendar as a Justice Calendar

Our publishing rhythm here follows the liturgical year, because the liturgical year is a justice calendar if we let it be. Advent is not just a season of waiting for a baby; it is a season of waiting for a landlord to fix the heat. Lent is not just forty days of fasting; it is forty days of asking why the fast is forced on some and optional for others. Guadalupe on December 12 is not just a feast of roses; it is a feast of a woman who stood before power and spoke in her own language. Posadas is not just a procession; it is a ritual of people who know what it means to be turned away at the inn.

When we plan the parish year, we plan the justice year. In January, we train tenant leaders. In February, we review rent stabilization rules. In March, we prepare for Lent with a code enforcement workshop. In April, we walk the Whittier Boulevard corridor and document vacant storefronts and illegal conversions. In May, we honor Our Lady of Guadalupe with a housing rights novena. In June, we host a restorative conflict mediation circle for neighbors in dispute. In July, we publish a glossary of land-use terms in English and Spanish. In August, we rest. In September, we start again. This is not a program. It is a way of life.

Why Charity Alone Fails the Parish

Charity alone fails because it can become a substitute for the harder work of power analysis. It can become a way for the parish to feel good without asking who benefits from the current arrangement. It can become a way for the landlord to feel generous while raising the rent. It can become a way for the city to feel responsive while ignoring the general plan and the community plan that were supposed to protect the neighborhood. It can become a way for all of us to avoid the uncomfortable question: who is making the decisions, and who is bearing the cost?

I have seen this up close. A family comes to the rectory because the ceiling is leaking. We give them a tarp. We give them a prayer. We give them a phone number for code enforcement. But if we do not also help them file the complaint, follow up on the inspection, and connect them to a tenant rights organization, we have not done justice. We have done a kindness. Kindness is good. Justice is better. And justice, in this case, might mean the landlord is required to repair the roof, not just receive a tarp from us.

There is a temptation in parish life to treat charity as the safe option. Charity does not require us to name a landlord. Charity does not require us to attend a public hearing. Charity does not require us to read a zoning code or a rent stabilization ordinance. Charity is a warm meal. Justice is a cold room where you have to speak truth to power. But the Gospel does not call us to be safe. It calls us to be faithful.

The Difference Between a Food Pantry and a Tenant Union

A food pantry feeds a family for a week. A tenant union can keep a family in their home for a year. A food pantry is a response to hunger. A tenant union is a response to displacement. A food pantry is a ministry of mercy. A tenant union is a ministry of justice. Both are needed. But if we only have the pantry, we are treating the symptom and ignoring the disease.

In Boyle Heights, City Terrace, and unincorporated East LA, the disease is often speculation. A building sells. The new owner raises the rent. The old tenants leave. The new tenants pay more. The neighborhood changes. The parish changes. The food pantry gets busier. The cycle continues. Charity can soften the blow. Justice can break the cycle. That is why we need both — and why we cannot let charity become an excuse to avoid the harder work.

What a Parish Can Do Without Becoming a Nonprofit

We are a parish, not a nonprofit. We are not a community development corporation. We are not a legal aid clinic. We are a church. But that does not mean we are powerless. It means we have to be clear about our role. Our role is to accompany people, to educate them, to connect them to the right resources, and to speak when the moment calls for it. We do not have to do everything. We have to do our part.

Here is what that looks like in practice:

• Host tenant meetings in the parish hall. Provide a table, a microphone, and a translator. Let the tenants lead.
• Train a few parishioners in land-use literacy. Teach them how to read a zoning map, how to find a parcel number, how to file a public records request.
• Partner with trusted organizations. Groups like Tenants Together, LA Tenants Union, East LA Community Corporation, and Inquilinos Unidos have the expertise we lack. We can provide the space and the trust.
• Document what you see. Take photos of code violations. Write down dates and times. Keep a parish log of housing-related requests. This is cultural memory documentation as much as it is legal evidence.
• Preach on it. Not every Sunday. But when the readings allow it, name the reality. The prophets did. So can we.
• Pray on it. Adoration, rosary, novena, Posadas. The spiritual practice sustains the civic work. Without prayer, the work becomes a grind. With prayer, it becomes a vocation.

None of this requires a new budget line. It requires a decision. It requires a pastor and a parish council willing to say: we will not let charity become an alibi.

Restorative Conflict Mediation as a Justice Practice

Justice is not only about laws and codes. It is also about relationships. In a neighborhood where people live close together, conflict is inevitable. A landlord and a tenant. A homeowner and a renter. A business owner and a resident. A parishioner and a neighbor. Restorative conflict mediation is a way to address harm without simply punishing. It asks: what happened? who was harmed? what needs to happen to make it right? It is not a substitute for legal remedies. It is a complement to them. It is a way to build the kind of community where justice can take root.

I have seen mediation work in small ways. Two families on the same block, one playing music too loud, one calling the police. A restorative circle in the parish hall. A conversation. An agreement. A relationship restored. That is not a policy change. But it is a seed. And seeds matter.

The Spiritual Practice That Sustains the Work

I want to be honest: this work is heavy. It is heavy because the need is great. It is heavy because the systems are slow. It is heavy because sometimes you do everything right and the family still gets evicted. That is why we need the spiritual practices. Not as escape. As fuel.

Advent teaches us to wait with hope. Lent teaches us to fast from complicity. Guadalupe teaches us to stand with the marginalized. Posadas teaches us to keep knocking. Eucharist teaches us that broken things can become whole. These are not metaphors. They are disciplines. They are the practices that keep us from burning out and from selling out.

When I bury a parishioner, I am reminded that life is short. When I bless a quinceañera, I am reminded that life is beautiful. When I sit in a tenant meeting, I am reminded that life is political. All of it belongs to God. All of it belongs to the parish. All of it belongs to the neighborhood.

FAQ: Charity, Justice, and Parish Life

Is charity wrong?

No. Charity is a virtue. The problem is not charity. The problem is treating charity as a substitute for justice. Charity meets an immediate need. Justice changes the conditions that create the need. Both are necessary. Neither is sufficient alone.

What is the difference between charity and justice in a parish context?

Charity is a direct response to suffering: food, clothing, shelter, a kind word. Justice is a response to the systems that cause suffering: housing policy, land use, code enforcement, tenant rights. A parish can do both. It should do both. But it should not confuse one for the other.

How can a parish get involved in tenant organizing without overstepping?

Start by listening. Ask tenants what they need. Provide space. Connect them to trusted organizations. Train a few parishioners in land-use literacy. Do not lead. Accompany. The tenants are the experts on their own situation. The parish is a support, not a savior.

What are some concrete tools for land-use and code-enforcement literacy?

Learn how to read a zoning map. Find your parcel number on the Los Angeles County Assessor website. File a public records request. Attend a public hearing. Learn the difference between rent stabilization and just cause. Know your code enforcement agency. These are not secrets. They are public tools. They belong to the people.

How does the liturgical calendar connect to justice work?

The liturgical calendar is a justice calendar. Advent is about waiting for justice. Lent is about repentance from complicity. Guadalupe is about standing with the poor. Posadas is about refusing to be turned away. Every season has a justice dimension. Every feast has a call.

Next Steps for Our Parish and Yours

If you are in Boyle Heights, City Terrace, Belvedere, or unincorporated East LA, and you want to move from charity to justice, start small. Pick one street. Pick one building. Pick one issue. Learn the code. Learn the agency. Learn the process. Then teach someone else. That is how a parish becomes a community. That is how a community becomes a movement. That is how charity becomes justice.

And if you are not in East LA, the same principles apply. Find the named street. Find the agency. Find the document. Find the rite. Pair the civic mechanism with the spiritual practice. Do not let charity become an alibi. Let it become a doorway.

Father Tomás Guerrero writes from a working-class Catholic parish in East Los Angeles. This article is part of a continuing series on parish-grounded tenant organizing, land-use literacy, and cultural memory documentation.