St. Thomas Aquinas Human Concerns Committee Meeting Minutes Februrary 26, 2008

Attendance:
Paul Chestnut, Mary Fong, Ruth Chippendale, George Chippendale, Carol Schaffer, Patricia Markee, Chris Lundin, Cliff Herndon

1. Faith-Sharing/Question of the Week - Carol
In the Little Black Book reading for last Sunday the author suggests that the same thing that happened to the Samaritan woman at the well can happen to us. Sometimes we miss the richness of all that is happening around us. The woman and the disciples were operating on a shallow, literal level while Jesus was speaking much more profoundly. We, too, can choose to live at a shallow level while the depth and richness of life, of other people, of God go unnoticed. Because life is meant to be rich and full, we need to savor everything around us. What are ways that you savor life?
Several members volunteered opinions.

2. The January minutes were approved.

OLD BUSINESS

3.  Volunteers needed: Tom Jaworowski served as parish liaison to the diocesan HCC and as parish representative to the deanery social justice group. These are both low-energy/ low-time-consuming jobs. No one volunteered.

4. Undie Sunday Report - Nancy
The underwear drive did very well. We delivered 689 packages to the Opportunity Center, plus $1282.

5. Death Penalty - Terry
Terry was not present, but he had sent a petition that is circulating. We passed the petition around and obtained several signatures. The petition was mailed back to Terry. Also, the Commission on the Fair Adminstration of Justice will be holding a hearing on the death penalty on March 28th at Santa Clara University.

6. Web Site Statistics - Paul
There were 126 hits on the HCC page during January.

7. Faithful Citizenship: new 2008 Faithful Citizenship Web Site (www.faithfulcitizenship.org)

8. Update on Lucio - Patricia
The decision regarding Lucio, the youth minister at St. Athanasius who was picked up by ICE, was put off until May.

9. Jane Bahr's February 3 presentation on the propositions - Patricia
Jane did a great job explaining the propositions. However, many of the attendees had already voted. Next time we should plan the event two weeks prior to the vote.

10. JustFaith plans - Patricia
The JustFaith group is just now coming out of a "sabbatical." They are in the process of defining some modules. One of these regards climate change. It will be eight weeks long, with two weeks between meetings.

NEW BUSINESS

12. Bread for the World's Offering of Letters - Paul
Paul passed around a summary of the campaign for 2008. This year, the purpose of the campaign is to appeal to our representatives to approve an additional $5 billion in poverty- focused development assistance for 2009. A second purpose is to ask our senators to take advantage of an additional opportunity to help by cosponsoring S. 2433, the Global Poverty Act.

13. Immigration issues - Patricia
We discussed the possibility of having immigration issues as a Burning Bush topic. Ruth suggested that immigrants' stories are a powerful way to get the message across.

14. Fr. Louis Vitale speaking tour - Kieran
Fr. Vitale will be in Palo Alto as part of a speaking tour. We decided to try to get him to speak at one of our locations. Chris will look into it.

15. What's On Your Mind?

16. Volunteer for Faith-sharing/Question of the Week
Patricia volunteered.

Next meeting - March 25