Video Transcript

Edmund Mitchell: Hi everyone, and welcome back to The Real and True Podcast. I’m one of your co-hosts, Edmund Mitchell, and I’m very excited for today’s episode. We have special guest Nick Sawicki, who is the Associate Director of Development for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, and he’s also a member of CAPP-USA, which is an America branch of a Vatican foundation that promotes Catholic social teaching. So we’re gonna be talking about Catholic social teaching today. He also writes for America Magazine and is a graduate with a law degree from Fordham University. So, really excited to be talking about the 7th and 10th Commandments and the unit videos and the topics of this unit with Nick. Nick, thanks so much for being here.

Nick Sawicki: It’s great to be here, Edmund, and thanks for having me.

Edmund Mitchell: So, my first question that I would love to hear you explain is what the heck do you do? What is your job? Because I have a rough idea of what your job is, but I’m afraid that there may be parts I misunderstand. I’m really fascinated by your background. I read some of your articles, your interests, your specialties, and then your job. And I’m trying to understand, what do you do in your day job?

Nick Sawicki: Sure. So I work for the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston full time as the Associate Director of Development. And what that means is I work with our 154 parishes, our 55 schools, our 64 ministries, and about 20 other organizations to really make sure that each of these ministries in each of these organizations have the means to do the mission work that they’re meant to do to more effectively live out the Gospel here in the Galveston-Houston area. I’m a New Yorker originally. Being a Northeasterner, the dioceses are very compact; they’re very tight. And then I get here and next thing I know, our Archdiocese is the size of New Jersey.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Nick Sawicki: And we have almost 2 million Catholics. We’re rapidly growing. We need to open more parishes. It’s a very different dynamic. I left the Diocese of Buffalo when I was 18. It was still a very different situation than it is now. But it’s still a very interesting transition for me personally, to move from a church that has been built and is kind of sustaining to a church that is rapidly growing. And so my work is to help facilitate that.

Edmund Mitchell: That’s awesome. And how did you get into the work that you’re doing? And in particular, what is kind of your background and experience in Catholic social teaching, including your involvement in CAAP?

Nick Sawicki: Yeah. You know, Edmund, it really goes back to my home parish. So my home parish in LaJuana New York was built by a man who’s up for canonization.

Edmund Mitchell: Oh, wow.

Nick Sawicki: Yeah. Venerable Nelson Baker. And I highly recommend reading about his life. This man is so dynamic.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Nick Sawicki: As a young man, he goes and fights in the Civil War. He comes back to Buffalo. He builds one of the most successful feeding-grain businesses. And then he gets this calling and he gets this urge, and he enters the priesthood, and he has a vision in Paris of our Lady of Victory. And he comes back to Buffalo and takes on a fledgling orphanage. And over the next 60 years of his priesthood—in really dynamic and unique ways—builds what ends up being called the City of Charity. It has hospitals, orphanages, schools. The parish itself is the second basilica in the United States. He invented direct mail to help feed the orphans.

Edmund Mitchell: Oh, wow.

Nick Sawicki: Yeah. And that sort of dynamism was where my faith began, in the parish, because we had this local figure who took his faith and enacted it in a really powerful way.

Edmund Mitchell: What time frame did he live?

Nick Sawicki: He died in 1936. He was born in 1842.

Edmund Mitchell: Okay.

Nick Sawicki: So a good long life. He was 94 when he died. And he was an inspiration to me. And I said, “My faith is important to me. How can I live it out like that?” And then I had the Jesuits in high school and in college, and they encouraged me to get more involved in a lot of different ways. And then I was encouraged to go work at America Magazine, where I was the Special Assistant and Chief-of-Staff for several years. And it really just tied me to the international Church in ways I had never even imagined; this kid from the Rust Belt being broken into a very different world. It gave me an education, it gave me a foundation; it gave me a way to look out on life. And then it just collides with Catholic social teaching. Because Catholic social teaching is what we do when the Gospel hits the road.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Nick Sawicki: When the rubber meets the road. One of the founders here in the U.S. of CAAP was another guy from Buffalo. Another good Polish guy with an unpronounceable name who just brought me into this organization because it has such a unique mission So in 1993, John Paul II issues the encyclical Centesimus Annus a hundred years after Rerum Novarum, the real foundation of Catholic social teaching for the 20th century from Leo the 13th. And when he issues that encyclical in 1993, that hundred year mark, he also establishes CAAP as the evangelizing tool to the leadership class of society to say, “You understand the faith, you know the faith, but we have to live it. And this is how we do it, and this is what it means to live it out.”  And so that’s really how I came to understand Catholic social teaching. It started in my parish, started with examples, and it started with education. And from there, it all just kind of built up in my life in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

Edmund Mitchell: That’s amazing. I cannot wait to look into this Nelson Baker. I cannot wait to look into him because I think those figures who have such a balance of this activism for their fellow man and those who are poor or weak, or the less, the needy, but who also have such a strong faith are really fascinating and inspiring. I would love to hear your thoughts on this because a little bit on my experience—I’m sure some parish ministers are familiar with this experience—is that I entered parish ministry in the early 2000s, and there were even stories of decades prior and the decades after Vatican II of coming across people who were in the Church who maybe had a little too much of an emphasis on this social activism with a lack of an evangelistic heart or a mentioning of Jesus.

I remember one of my professors at Franciscan—one of the friars—he said, “I get a lot of cards and letters asking for money for these different religious organizations that are doing social justice work.” And he said, “If I don’t see the word “Jesus” or “prayer” anywhere in the literature or on the paper, I put it right in the trash. I don’t even think about it again.” And I think that’s a good example of this kind of dynamic. I know that there’s people that write probably more eloquently about that dynamic between orthodoxy and ortho-practice or those kind of things. So I’m wondering your thoughts on that, because when it’s done right, when you see someone doing social justice work and you’re like, “Man, why is someone like Nelson Baker doing this?”

And it’s very clear that it’s because of this love of Jesus and his fellow man. It’s such a powerful thing. And I’m thinking about parish ministers who might be listening to this who—I used to be this way where I kind of shied away from what I thought was just community service in my mind. I was like, “This is just community service work. This is busy work. I want to be talking about Jesus and a personal relationship with Jesus. I don’t want to spend my time going out to soup kitchens during my ministry because I’m not sure that is as effective right now in evangelizing a parish.”  Anyways, all that to say, your thoughts on that kind of balance and dynamic because I’m sure you’d be able to talk more eloquently about that.

Nick Sawicki: Well, I don’t know about that. 

Edmund Mitchell: That some parish ministers—maybe wrongly as a reaction to this time—swung too far in the opposite direction. They’re a little more shy to get involved with the social teachings of the Church.

Nick Sawicki: And I think that’s a mistake. I think that I can paint two pictures for you. One is, I’m going to head back to Nelson Baker real quick. So when the Depression hits in 1929 he’s 85 years old—I’m sorry, 87 years old. And what do you expect an 87-year-old to do to help the afflicted millions, right? Every day, he marshaled his institutions to have bread lines and shoe repair and heating repair and clothing, free education, free healthcare. But men would line up to get food from him to take home to their families. And along the way, all the sisters and brothers engaged in the work would hand out money to the men; nickels and dimes. But if you could get to Father Baker, you’d get a dollar.

And so men, realizing Father Baker was half blind, half deaf, and a little senile at this point, would get to the front of the line, get a dollar, run to the back of the line, and try to get $2 out of him. Finally, all the assistants—after this had happened a few times—said, “Father, don’t you realize what’s happening? These men are taking advantage of you.” Here he is engaged in the actual corporal works of mercy, and these men are taking advantage of him. And his response, supposedly—what history tells us was, “You think I don’t know what they’re doing? But when I die, I won’t be judged on whether or not I thought they deserved it. I’ll be judged on whether or not I gave.”

Edmund Mitchell: Wow. Yeah.

Nick Sawicki: It breaks me up every time I think of that story. I mean, that is a right belief and a right practice.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Nick Sawicki: The one example.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Nick Sawicki: The other half of that is that we have to question “What types of poverty exist?” Because the Church recognizes multiple types of poverty. There is material poverty, which is the most obvious. It is the poor amongst us who we are called to serve and have a preferential option for. But there’s also, as Pope Benedict outlined, moral poverty. The moral poverty that builds the structures that keep the poor oppressed. And then there’s also spiritual poverty. Because if we are not spiritually full, if we’re not spiritually rich, the moral poverty takes over. And then the actual decay of society that causes the material poverty has just gross effects.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. I think I know a mistake that I fell into sometimes was there is this call in the new evangelization to be talking a lot more about personal relationship with Jesus and that it’s a living relationship. And I think wrongly sometimes; I feel bad that I would fall into this neglecting the preferential option for the poor. That it’s not just about your personal relationship with Jesus, it’s also about how you’re treating others and not just how you’re treating others from the perspective of doing as little harm as possible, but actually actively. I love that phrase “a preferential option for the poor” in the Church’s teachings. And in particular, starting to talk a little bit about this unit’ we’re covering the 7th and 10th Commandments. I think most average Catholics think, “Okay, just don’t steal from people.”

Maybe some people struggle with that, but there’s a lot of people that go, “I’m a grown adult. I don’t struggle with stealing. I think I’m fine. I don’t struggle with going into a store and stealing something.” But the Catechism explains that there’s so much more than just not stealing from Walmart or your neighbor. There are these other responsibilities that start touching on this Catholic social teaching. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that, like some of the surprising ways that these Commandments really start touching on Catholic social teaching and our responsibilities for the poor and for others.

Nick Sawicki: Yeah. It’s interesting reading through the Catechism on the Seventh Commandment, “not stealing,” to boil it down. They really logic-tree this one; it just has branches and branches and branches, and it’s really so majestically thought through. And when you look at it, it’s, “Why in the section on not stealing is there “Be kind to animals?”

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. Right.

Nick Sawicki: Why does it define the commutative nature of contracts? Why does it define the universal destination of goods, which is the preceding principle to the right of private property? Yeah. So John Paul II acknowledged this. The Church recognizes the right of private property and that it’s morally elicit to destroy both public and private property, but it’s not an absolute right.

John Paul II recognizes that there is the proceeding, right. That there is first the universal destination of goods, which are to be oriented toward achieving the common good. That all people are supposed to be able to take what is needed for them to thrive and be fulfilled as created in loved creatures of God.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Nick Sawicki: And so there’s this great tension that exists. The Seventh Commandment really is the external form. It’s what we see, it’s what we experience. It’s how the structures of society are built. And from Leo XIII addressing the Industrial Revolution onward, we see it really takes a different sense. Before the Industrial Revolution, there is greed. We see it in history; the courts of Europe, mercantilism and all this, which aren’t inherently bad things, but insofar as they exclude and oppress people from being able to access the creation that they are equal partners in. That’s really what we have to address. And the Industrial Revolution exacerbates that. Now, don’t get me wrong, the Industrial Revolution—and I’m going to use a phrase here that’s not often used—”fettered capitalism.” Capitalism with appropriate structures in it.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Nick Sawicki: And with the proper moral and spiritual foundations has lifted more people out of poverty than in all of human history. It has caused an immense amount of good. As Pius the XI reminds us, there’s this tension between libertarianism and communitarianism.

Either once suppresses the individual to a certain extent, because total freedom is no freedom, as Augustine reminds us. And that’s the first part of it. But collectivism suppresses the dignity of the individual. And so we have to learn how to exist in these structures that don’t do that essentially. We have to inherently respect the dignity of the person while ensuring that the universal destination of goods is shared. It reminds me of that line from Virgil’s Sic Vos Non Vobis, “for you, but not yours.”

Edmund Mitchell: Oh, I love that.

Nick Sawicki: It’s a great line, isn’t it?

Edmund Mitchell: This unit in particular, and these Commandments, are such a great example of how understanding…the Catechism describes very precisely the teaching of the deposit of faith. But this is why it is helpful to go to other Church teachings to kind of understand why certain words are chosen and that there are some of these ideas like universal destination of goods or the right of personal property that kind of unlock. And then you read it again and you go, “Oh, it’s right there.” And I think for parish ministers, those two things, “it’s for you but not yours,” really unlock this, especially if you’re catechizing or teaching about this topic. And I would love for you to comment a little more on the right to private property.

I have five kids; they’re fairly young. I didn’t grow up with a lot of brothers and sisters. I just had a sister, so I didn’t have to share my clothes or anything. But having five kids, it is overwhelming making sure that everyone is clothed. And there are times where it’s just like, “Just find a pair of shorts that fit you!” But I remember one time there was this big argument that I couldn’t understand, and one of my sons was getting his feelings really hurt because he said, “No, but this is MY shirt!” And I realized that for a while, I just hadn’t been acknowledging that; I was just treating them like little babies.

I was like, “Oh, they don’t care what’s theirs. They all just wear different shirts.” And he was like, “No, this is my shirt. I like wearing this shirt. I don’t want to see someone else use it.” Because I was like, “Well, you have a shirt.” And he’s like, “No, but this is mine.” And I felt like I was coming up against that idea that sure, he’s not wearing this shirt now, but he does have a right to at least feeling there is some human need to own property, even though there is the universal destination of all the clothes in my house. So anyways, I just would love for you to talk a little more about that. It’s true to say, right? That there is dignity in owning property and the right to own property is not just because we want to own stuff, but there’s something kind of deeper— isn’t there—spiritually going on? Even if it’s just a piece of paper, there’s something happening spiritually maybe, or something deeper about the fact that something changes from a common piece of paper to MY piece of paper, but not in a bad way necessarily.

Nick Sawicki: Yeah. No, I think it’s part of our fulfillment. The common good is oriented around the flourishing and fulfillment of the individual and the recognition of their dignity. That which is familiar to us and which we are emotionally attached to and comforted by. That’s part of our fulfillment. And that’s understandable, so long as it’s tempered and prudential. And it’s a hard thing for a kid to learn, too. Because who hasn’t seen or been a little convinced like, “No, that’s mine.” But it’s also understandable sometimes because they’re learning to moderate that emotional attachment to things. We can’t all be St. Ignatius and be totally indifferent to what happens with certain things and be detached from the world. As nice as that might be. And as little as I think he actually might’ve been at times because we are humans and we have a lived experience. And again, it really is that emotional attachment. And if it is tied to the fulfillment, there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, it’s a question of when it’s appropriate. And I think we have more than enough means to mediate and understand that.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Nick Sawicki: There’s nothing wrong with a 7-year-old going and saying, “This is my shirt.”  I’m guessing how old he is. It’s not like he’s depriving someone else of a shirt by having that shirt.

Edmund Mitchell: That’s such a good dynamic. I think there is some writings or I’m remembering this conversation where you could take a vow of poverty and have nothing, but even with what tiny little bit you have, have a disordered relationship with the one thing you do have. And you could have a whole lot and be very, very wealthy, but still live a saintly life and be detached from your possessions and be providing for others. So it’s not like a formula where having lots of things equals “bad” and having nothing equals “good.” And so I think that’s a really healthy distinction for parish ministers to be understanding. What is something that you wish more parish ministers either knew or a way of helping others understand the Church’s way of viewing the world? Are there any ways you found—shorthand, or stories, or ways of explaining some of these things that really help—that a parish minister could retell or say that would help a group of your everyday Church, Catholic, pew-sitter understand the way the Church views property and the world?

Nick Sawicki: That’s a good question. It’s a difficult question.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. Sorry.

Nick Sawicki: In law school, they tell you all these horror stories relating to property and that sort of thing. And that would not be appropriate for me to share here.

Edmund Mitchell: I mean, the Nelson Baker one that you just led with. Saint stories really make it incarnatial; the principles lived out.

Nick Sawicki: Yeah. So for example, this is an early controversy in the Church in the 13th century when you have the Mendicant orders coming up, right? You have the Franciscan and the Dominicans principally,—but really the Franciscans were at the locus of this incident—in which they had started to accrue wealth, but as an order. And so the question was, “Well, is that really poverty?”

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Nick Sawicki: And the Church determined that so long as no individual owns the material, the order can own it so long as it’s disposed towards the work of the Church, and that they have sufficient means to support themselves. And that’s the model basically every major religious order has followed over the last 800 years. I think of the Jesuits, who I know particularly well. Sometimes you’ll be surprised if they have five bucks because everything they have goes back to supporting the community.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Nick Sawicki: And so we have to ask ourselves, “What is our relationship to these goods? What is our relationship to the property that we hold? And how are we using it?” Because that’s the big thing the Catechism brings up. It’s not just that we have received these goods or attained them in a morally licit and proper manner and legal manner, but what are we doing with them?

“We have two cloaks. Are we sharing the other?” I think Saint John Chrysostom asked that question. It really comes to the practice. And that’s what Catholic social teaching is all about. It’s what happens once we either have the goods or in a position to assist or recognize that there’s an issue in society that needs to be addressed. Because really, Catholic social teaching itself revolves around the three basic principles. Subsidiarity: What is the lowest competent level that can make a decision out of respect for the community and for the human dignity of persons? Human dignity itself, that people are loved and cherished, but as created creatures of God. And solidarity: How are we in communion with those who are being oppressed, and what are we doing about it? Those are the three cores. So again, the question is “What happens when we’re there, when we have what we need, when we have the ability to do something?” It’s very basic. And it gets very complicated very fast because we kept having a lot of Popes who were poets at heart. Which is a good thing. Benedict’s sentiments and a number of encyclicals are just gorgeous. It’s really beautiful. John Paul II, of course. Paul the VI is a little more blunt.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Nick Sawicki: As is Pius the XI.

Edmund Mitchell: And JP II, literal poet.

Nick Sawicki: Who could blunt theologically poetic philosophically.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Nick Sawicki: And now we have Francis, who is very direct.

Edmund Mitchell: That’s a good point too. Because I’ve heard other people refer to Francis as more of the “Catholic social teaching Pope” or more of the “charitable works in action” kind of scene. Especially when he first became Pope, some of his more radical decisions, and it caused a lot of really good conversations with people about things like, “Why did the Pope choose this over this tradition?” Not tradition, but instead of a palace, this thing, or instead of this fancy car or this thing. Training ourselves with God’s grace to have the same heart He does for other people and for property, it’s a lifelong thing.

Are there any small, daily practices or regular practices that you’ve found help either yourself or others? Kind of like little things that help kind of either remind you to think in this way or help you kind of orient yourself or reorient yourself? I’m trying to think of little practices. It doesn’t have to be an actual action. It could even be just reminding yourself of something or a little prayer or liturgy of some type that you find helps people start—especially people who might be struggling with this aversion to Catholic social teaching or the demands and responsibilities for others. Are there any little, tiny things that come to mind?

Nick Sawicki: Sure. And this actually really takes me in my mind to the 10th Commandment about coveting and envy and jealousy. Because that’s more internal form.

Edmund Mitchell: Mm-Hmm.

Nick Sawicki: And that’s where we have to start; the internal form, in order to externalize these actions.

Nick Sawicki: And for me personally, I make great use of the Jesuit tradition of the Examen; really taking a moment to reflect on not each and every decision, but on the day as a whole and recollecting about it, and thinking about my actions and what could be correct and what can be done. And when it comes to material goods in particular, sometimes I’ll do a little examination. “Well, why am I buying that? Do I need it? Am I doing it because they have it? I don’t need that. Am I buying that cookie because I feel bad and I need a cookie? Or is my blood sugar down and I need a cookie?” You got to figure these things out. Or is it, “Am I getting up to get coffee because I’m being lazy? Or is it because the baby was crying last night and I need a pick-me-up?”

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah.

Nick Sawicki: It’s all about moderating and managing the relationships we have with things. Because I find that if we can manage things first, we can often manage our relationships with people better.

Edmund Mitchell: Mhm.

Nick Sawicki: There’s an old joke in religious life that the superior manages people and that the number two of the house manages things

Edmund Mitchell: Mm-Hmm.

Nick Sawicki: And you don’t necessarily want to swap them.

Edmund Mitchell: Interesting. Yeah.

Nick Sawicki: But it’s an interesting dynamic because you want to foster that examination in all relationships to things, because it’s all part of the creation that we’re called to be a part of.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. That’s interesting. That reminds me of this common sentiment or topic that’s talked about a lot is this idea of experiencing a sudden urge to buy something on Amazon. So a box shows up and the short-term positive, emotional gain that comes from going, “Oh, a box showed up.” And it reminds me about taking some time to just go internally and say, “Where is this need coming from? Where is this desire coming from? Is everyone around me being taken care of first and foremost? Or is this something that I’m just doing because I’m coveting something I saw someone else have? What’s the desire for this thing? Where is the desire coming from?”

Nick Sawicki: So really when we get down to it, consumerism is a pathology of our destruction. It’s unfettered capitalism that’s consuming us in our process of trying to manage these relationships. We’re going for that dopamine hit, like you were just saying. We’re ordering from Amazon to get the box. We’re buying this to feel better about ourselves because we have some insecurity that’s perceived or real. And we’re trying to get that dopamine rush that makes us feel like we’re part of it. We’re keeping up with the world because the world says this is what we need to do to keep up with it. And so we’re being consumed by this pathology. And the Church rejects that. Carte blanche.

Edmund Mitchell: That’s awesome. Man, this is such a great conversation. I could talk about this for so much longer because there’s so many different areas I think that people would be surprised that this starts touching on. And I think that’s one of the beautiful things about the Catechism; the 10 Commandments, is that if we do actually just sit down and spend some time reflecting on it a little deeper, that there’s these surprising new areas where we can become inspired by God to start applying these things and living our lives differently, which is really beautiful. Are there any final thoughts or places you’d want to direct people to go? We’ll have links and stuff in the show notes.

Nick Sawicki: You know, Edmund, one thing I’d really recommend to people because it really is my go-to source—and I’m not just plugging it—if you have a question about Catholic social teaching or anything having to do with it and its practice, go to capp-usa.org. And that is the American branch of the FONDAZIONE CENTESIMUS ANNUS PRO PONTIFICE, which John Paul II specifically missioned with that evangelizing effect. And they walk you through different scenarios; they provide different resources. And it really is just a wonderful site that provides the authoritative Catholic social teaching for an American context.

Edmund Mitchell: That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. And again, I encourage people to go read some of your articles on America Magazine. Thank you so much. Thanks everyone for listening. This has been The Real and True Podcast. As you know, the mission of Real and True is to unlock the Catechism for the modern world and to unlock its truth and beauty, but also to help people encounter the pulsating heart of the Catechism, which is Jesus Christ. And so I just encourage you to comment below, if you’re watching this somewhere where you can comment or if you’re listening. We’ll see you in the next episode. And thank you so much for being here.