Abundance, not Scarcity: Another Invitation to Read and Listen Along

by Dan Masterton

In my first year of teaching, I remember hearing about a lot of Twitter beefs – keep in mind, my juniors and seniors in 2012-13 were either really young Millennials or the oldest Z’ers, and this was the pinnacle of social media buzz at the moment. As I prepared to take my first job in campus ministry the following year, I was dead set on creating social media accounts.

Watching them showed me the negativity they wrought over these apps, but I could also see how they were building community and creating additional connections. And while I didn’t want to endorse the downsides, I wanted to infiltrate the sphere.

My goal was to get students to follow the campus ministry account and then infuse their feeds with some faith. Leaning heavily on pictures of their friends doing ministry and service and creating beautiful things for our community, I wanted to make students double-take, mid-scroll, and acknowledge their faith while treading in an area where it previously had perhaps been absent.

I was able to follow through on my part, sharing early and often and creating a steady engagement with the school community; I was never prouder than when I finally laid down after directing a four-day Kairos and had the pleasure of liking and retweeting post-Kairos love tweets from students, rebroadcasting them out into everyone’s feeds – one fleeting but potent reflection of the way faith could and would seep into these arenas.

I have written over the years about the importance of showing up, about how even if I’m not the best network-builder or the wisest, most eloquent writer, I am steady. When I have an idea and a marked desire to be present, I can and do follow through to make it happen. I always hope that, in some strange or goofy way, that my relentless practice of writing is continually sharpening my soul and perhaps providing a bit of flint by which another may sharpen theirs in turn.

It’s in this same vein that I once again dove into the NaNoWriMo challenge in 2021.

In 2020, as the pandemic dragged on, I decided to take a first swing at fiction writing, approaching it, as always, as another way to try to bring faith into something. As the calendar flipped to 2021, I took my draft off the shelf and had a lot of fun writing and editing, and then goofing around with recording the story, and writing silly ads for the audiobook podcast. What There Is to Be Done was an honest, slightly idealistic, definitely based-on-experience reflection on some of the realities of educational and campus ministry, and young adult discernment overall.

As I prepped to write in NaNoWriMo 2021, the threads of discernment kept spinning. I found myself stewing on the breadth of multipotentiality. I was looking at the graces of my own marriage and family, of my own ministry and career, and thinking about capacities versus passions, about “soulmates” versus choices. And seeing the increased social understanding of mental health, and the growing comfort with naming and discussing it, I thought about how often (Millennials especially) end up trying to discern in times of drought and famine, when we’re down or tired, rather than in the midst of joy and stability. The result this time is a bit different.

Abundance, not Scarcity is a story of someone who realizes their stagnation and complacency, and turns to prayer to recognize unrealized capacities and unexplored passions and desires, all of which helps him toward a new decisiveness.

Once again, I’ll be offering an audiobook podcast, sharing one chapter a week over Apple, Spotify, Google, and my blog. But what’s more, I’ve also formatted the book not just as a paperback you can order but also as a free eBook, optimized for reading in the Books app on iPhone or iPad. (Or visit my LinkTree for these links collected in one list.)

My hope now, as it was then early in my career, is that you’ll invite my work to infiltrate your feed. Follow my Twitter or Facebook Page for alerts on new episodes (each Tuesday), and follow the podcast in your preferred app. I don’t think my story will change your life, but I think listening to it might be a welcome break and a potential improvement over the quagmires of doom-scrolling, the excesses of political immersion, or even the infinity of listening to playlists.

Add it to your feed or save it to your Books app – and next time you’re riding the train or sitting in the terminal or waiting to see the doctor, or even winding down to relax before bed, open this up instead of a social app or a streaming service. And see how reflecting might draw you toward the Spirit moving in you.

Fewer, not More

by Dan Masterton

When I discussed gun rights and gun violence with my high school students, I would often ask a big question: do you think gun violence is more likely to decrease with more guns or fewer guns?

Students’ answers varied, and I, as always, would reserve my personal opinions until the end, if I shared them at all. Some look to disarmament for peace while others seek to carry and self-ensure their own sense of protection. In this discussion, I would eventually share that I thought the solution to gun violence rested in decreasing the amount of guns in our society.

In an effort to bust American kids out of a narrow mindset, I would describe my year living abroad in Ireland. There, the police equivalent is the Garda Siochana, an Irish phrase that means “guardian of the peace.” Your typical beat cops and visible officers carried no guns, just a nightstick and pepper spray among their belt’s worth of equipment. In an extreme situation, they could call in tactical support with weaponry, but it was far from the default action, and a rare occurrence. Typically, this story was met with a combination of disbelief and skepticism.

We as Americans have an inherited deep entitlement to gun rights. Because of the context of our country’s founding, our early leaders enshrined a right to bear arms in our Bill of Rights. In the centuries since, I believe that concept has been warped, extrapolated, and placed on an undue pedestal.

When we are the only country in the world that faces mass shootings on a regular basis – avoidable tragedies that often kill not just adults but children – the root causes must be examined. While mental health, racism and racial conflicts, and other exacerbating factors are at play, we have to apply Occam’s Razor: it’s the easy access to very dangerous guns with little to no oversight that is the simplest explanation and at the heart of the problem. Guns may not kill people, but people with guns certainly do kill people. And guns provide an easy avenue by which white supremacists, racists, and vigilantes turn evil thoughts into profoundly evil actions.

I have never been more struck by an editorial board than when America Magazine came out with a profound suggestion for the plague of gun violence: repeal the Second Amendment. I think this approach would not necessarily have to zero out all gun rights, but it may be one of the only ways that reasonable gun control can have a chance. Even the consensus built in the wake of mass shootings has not been sufficient to force legislative leaders to pass basic common-sense moves like requiring background checks, limiting assault-style and high-capacity weapons, and cracking down on interstate gun traffic. Stripping away this amendment would force a reset in the foundational legal arguments in favor of gun rights and perhaps create a fresh chance at a new baseline for more limited, sensible gun rights. Ideally, this would be led by ideologically conservative Americans who are responsible gun-owners and gun-users who would rather start from scratch with better societal norms than allow “bad apples” to keep skirting laws and using guns to wreak havoc. Unfortunately, this essay is nine years old, and little has changed legally while mass shootings continue barely checked.

Click the link above and read the whole essay.

On a grassroots, cultural level, an un-nuanced gun-obsession mentality is toxic. Violence is a downward spiral; if someone believes they must have a gun to protect themselves from other people who may have a gun, then we end up with a lot of guns, a much greater likelihood for gun accidents, thefts, and misuses, and a society that’s just about a powder keg. Peace can be an upward spiral; if people can shift their attitude toward disarmament and relationship building, and entrust weapon-driven protection to a reasonable police and military force, we can have fewer guns and a more sure shot at greater peace. That latter path surely sounds naive and rosy, but it's the core of the better way.

A society that insists upon unregulated gun ownership as a fundamental right is a failed experiment, indicative of excessive individualism and an aversion to becoming and being neighbors. The seamless garment of the dignity and value of life demands greater peace in society, and that can only come with common-sense gun control and a solidarity that dares to trust in things besides weapons and their veneers of false masculinity or contrived self-defense. Putting one’s faith in fewer guns may feel risky or dangerous, but it is a lesser danger and a brighter path than whatever the hell we are on now.

Still Hitting Closed to Home

by Dan Masterton

Ok, I’m still thinking about this school closure. So are other folks around here – local news reports, social media activism, a yard sign campaign, and now a letter from the superintendent with explanations for the closing and a townhall at which he’ll be available planned for school families tonight.

One of the interesting threads of my conversations is the variety of structures out there for Catholic elementary school tuition.

This school that closed, and another we looked at in the next town over, have a base rate of tuition and then a lower rate for registered parishioners. The definition isn’t formally listed, but I believe it just means that you’re registered at a school-sponsoring parish.

Our old parish in the city had a base rate of tuition and then a lower rate for “active parishioners.” These families were distinguished by being registered at the parish, logging a minimum hours of volunteer time at the service of the parish, and giving consistently to the Sunday collection.

Our old suburban parish had a base rate of tuition and then a lower rate for baptized Catholic students. Rather than distinguishing committed parishioners from nominal ones, or parishioners from non-parishioners, this structure just discounted tuition for Catholic kiddos who submitted a baptism certificate with enrollment.

Perhaps most radical and profoundly evangelical is the Catholic Diocese of Wichita, Kansas. Years ago, the diocese made Catholic schools tuition-free for active parish families. The expectation was that parishes would collectively take on the burden of funding Catholic education, not just families with school-aged children. The parishes then use their collections to fund the schools more widely.

Looking at Catholic high schools specifically, many have robust financial aid programs that lean on endowments, large gifts, and alumni donors to help defray the rising costs of high school tuition. Even more significant, some schools, like Regis Jesuit in New York, cover tuition for all accepted and enrolled students. There’s also the prophetic financial and work-study model of Cristo Rey Network high schools and the emerging efforts stemming from Arrupe College’s two-year higher ed model in Chicago.

People are trying to be creative, constructing different structures with varying levels of success. One reason I infer for the relative strength of stability in our neighboring town with their elementary school is the multi-parish approach, by which five parishes subsidize the school, which is located on its own separate campus. Yet, our closed school was a two-parish school our parish has never had its own school and thus we’ve never had to merge down), and not even two feeder parishes both sending subsidies could keep it afloat; in fact, our partner parish was struggling to afford the subsidy within its own operations.

As a former campus minister, it was always difficult to find a balance, or even a connection, between the high schools where I worked and our local parishes. Often, there was some basic health in the feeder connection, like bringing middle school kids on campus for Catholic Schools Week Mass and shadow days, but the ties largely ended when their parish kids became students at the high school. The families’ parishes were largely an afterthought, if we knew them at all.

The future could be strengthened by stronger parish-school ties. We likely need to stop clinging to the one-to-one connection in which a single parish supports a namesake school (except maybe where it continues to work robustly, but maybe not even there) and look instead to pooling our communities more collaboratively.

The Diocese of Wichita offers a profound model for places where there is an appetite for massive, dynamic outreach and redesigned mission-forward ministry – another place where greater emphasis on mission-centered advancement, development, and marketing is likely much more valuable than narrow ministry offices. And the Church will likely have to reckon with a wider, deeper collective responsibility for Catholic education if we want it to have a future.

On a simpler basis, in a town like ours, now left with two parishes and no schools, we need to forge new ties with neighbors. It’s an invitation to look outside ourselves, beyond the historical status quo and a model that was weaker and more broken than we realized. It’s a chance to find new partners with whom we can try to start fresh and build more strongly. It’s also a place to start from prayer and discernment, so that cold calculations can be warmed by spirituality and hopeful optimism.

Sometimes, a clean slate, a rebrand, or a new start can reenergize a sleepy base. Based on the fits of activism in the past week, even if this is too little and too late, maybe there’s newly stirred energy that can be parlayed into what comes next. Hopefully this glass is half full.

When It Hits Closed to Home

by Dan Masterton

Over the last few months, my wife, Katherine, and I have been trying to decide what to do for our oldest daughter, Lucy, for kindergarten.

We serendipitously bought our house in 2019, a year sooner than we planned, while we were awaiting the arrival of our second kiddo, Cecilia. Not only did it spare us the insanity of this housing market, but it also put us five houses down the street from a public elementary school. The school grades out average by public standards, but the proximity, its feeding into a really strong middle school, and the diversity of our community are all easy marks in its favor.

On the other hand, we also are thinking about Catholic elementary school. We belong to a parish that jointly sponsors a school with the other parish in town, and as registered parishioners, we would be able to send Lucy there at the parishioner rate – still a significant cost nonetheless.

Going there would make her a part of a Catholic school community with daily religion class and prayer, Sacramental prep, and regular Mass. We also looked at a multi-parish school in the next town over that was a bit bigger, a bit more expensive, and offered more robust programs, but to receive their parishioner rate, we would need to re-register and re-establish ourselves in a new community – something I didn’t think we could do in time.

I could go on and on about the pros and cons, but this is the top-line discussion we were in the middle of having.

And then the diocese abruptly announced that our parish school was closing. At the end of this year. Period.

The usual criticisms certainly apply, as the diocese cited not just low, decreasing enrollment but also financial instability. The Church has had to divert tons of money addressing sexual abuse scandals with legal fees and settlements; the Church doesn’t do enough to manage and foster finances, sustain schools, and mobilize communities; the Church isn’t particularly transparent about these processes with ultimatums or deadlines before fairly suddenly announcing it is merging or closing schools.

I am not one to get particularly lathered up when these decisions come down, assuming generally that those who’ve rendered the decision do so with big-picture awareness and all the hard and gloomy facts. When people come out with rants and complaints or begin trying to stage rallies or hold fundraisers, I think it comes from a good place, but is an unfortunate case of too little, too late. That sort of support must come steadily, on a perennial basis, for a school to be sustained.

This all makes me feel somewhat implicated. We toured the school, and we led them on the way you do when you are trying to consider an open-ended decision. We didn’t update them on our process (we’ve been in a holding pattern while we consider job situations and budgeting). And we didn’t approach this decision as if we were very likely going to choose Catholic school – in fact, we perhaps most leaned toward using public schools K-8 and saving up for Catholic high school.

I wouldn’t say that I feel like I’m part of the problem. I follow the news from our school closely, knew the basic facts, and walked into our tour as an invested and supportive parishioner. However, I also have not been part of the solution. I didn’t consider using their Pre-K program for our preschool needs; I haven’t donated any time or money in the three years I’ve belonged to the school’s parish; I didn’t come into this gung-ho that my kids would go there. And now the option will be gone.

I don’t know how, over time, I will feel about my part – or, more broadly, my parish’s part – in how this came down. But it is another data point in a trend that worries me. If the mobility and flexibility of Millennials, and the informality and aversion to affiliation of GenZ behind us, continue in this way, then what other institutions will disintegrate before we have a chance to use them, to become a part of them, to help them evolve and grow anew?

Maybe there will yet be a new wave of Catholic education that proceeds from our generations’ unique approach. Could the later starts to our families and child-bearing mean stronger financial footing among families who do send their kids to Catholic schools? Could the contraction in schools prune away space for as yet unknown growth? Could the changes in how young adults approach training, early career, and trajectory mean a different model for staffing schools?

I like to think hopefully, and not see closure as an unmitigated bad. For now, the starkness of this reality stares us in the face rather unapologetically. Perhaps over time, different trends will sketch an arc toward something brighter.