Catholic Social Thought by Fr. Matthew Hawkins
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Catholic Education: A Ministry of Liberation and LoveAugust 24, 2025
Education has long served as the pathway to liberation in African American communities. As Catholics, we believe true liberation is found in Jesus Christ, and Catholic education has played a crucial role in the lives of most of the six African American candidates for sainthood.
Saints Who Championed Education
Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange encountered a stark reality: African American children were deprived of education and languishing in societal neglect. She opened a school in her home, providing free education to black children in Baltimore—a radical act of defiance and compassion that laid the groundwork for a revolution in African American education.
Henriette DeLille founded the Sisters of the Holy Family, dedicating themselves to serving New Orleans' African American community through schools, care for the elderly and infirm, and homes for orphans.
Sister Thea Bowman bridged racial and cultural divides through education, music, and the spoken word. She earned a Ph.D. in English literature and advocated for inclusive curricula that reflected the diverse heritage of our Catholic faith and American society.
Our Mission Today
As a personal parish dedicated to the inculturation and evangelization of the African American community, we have both a particular interest and moral obligation regarding Catholic education for African American students. This stems not from any desire to proselytize, but from our conviction that their God-given dignity demands our complete commitment to their flourishing. To educate a child is to serve the family. To serve the family is to uphold human dignity. To affirm human dignity is to advance the Gospel itself.
Our Parish’s Stake in Catholic Education
Throughout nearly 150 years of transformation, education has remained constant in our parish story. From our earliest days, St. Benedict operated a parish school, understanding that faith and learning walk hand in hand. Today, St. Benedict the Moor School continues serving the Hill District under diocesan administration, welcoming a predominantly non-Catholic student body while maintaining its strong Catholic identity.
This unique blend of Catholic identity and African American heritage is our strength. The school provides families from the City of Pittsburgh and beyond with the opportunity to send their children to a learning environment that integrates Christian values with African American culture and traditions. Catholic education, from pre-school to graduate school, goes beyond workforce preparation—it nurtures the whole person through physical, intellectual, and spiritual growth.
Excellence and Accessibility
Catholic elementary, middle, and high schools are renowned for academic excellence, consistently surpassing national averages while providing quality education grounded in moral values. They emphasize knowledge, character, integrity, and ethical decision-making rooted in the Gospel. Open to students of all faiths and backgrounds, these schools foster welcoming, respectful environments that work closely with families.
Thanks to generous financial support from the Extra Mile Foundation, St. Benedict the Moor School keeps tuition affordable for families in need, ensuring Catholic education remains accessible. Few investments compare to providing children with a strong educational foundation and a brighter future.
Our Vision Going Forward
We envision St. Benedict the Moor School thriving in the coming years with a growing student body, an upgraded cafeteria for on-site meal preparation, and a full gymnasium supporting physical education and athletics. We also envision expanded pastoral and spiritual ministry enriched by clergy and lay volunteer involvement. We envision our high schools embracing evangelization through inculturation to deepen and broaden non-Catholic students’ experiences of the Catholic Church.
Take Action
Love without action remains incomplete. True love incarnates itself in thoughtful curricula, consistent discipline, genuine care, and deep cultural understanding. We encourage parents, grandparents, and guardians to visit St. Benedict the Moor and other Catholic schools as educational options for the children in your lives.
As a parish dedicated to education, we are committed to making this vision a reality through collaboration with our schools and local funders. Together, we can continue this ministry of liberation and love.
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A Reflection on Our Algorithmic AgeAugust 17, 2025
Today’s Town Square
There was a time when the town square was a physical place where neighbors gathered, where ideas were tested not by algorithms but by the patience of human conversation, where reputations were built slowly, over decades, through the accumulated weight of small kindnesses and consistent character.
Today, we carry the town square in our pockets. It never sleeps, never closes, and never forgets. And from a Christian perspective, this presents us with what may be the most profound spiritual challenge of our digital age: How do we remain faithful to the slow work of the soul in a world that rewards the quick gesture, the viral moment, the carefully curated self?
The Promise of Connection
The promise of social media was connection—and indeed, it has delivered on that promise in ways both miraculous and mundane. Families separated by oceans can share a grandchild's first steps. Churches can extend their reach beyond sanctuary walls. The lonely can find community, the voiceless can find their voice, and bearing witness to both suffering and joy has never been more immediate or more global.
But promises, as any student of human nature knows, often carry within them the seeds of their own corruption. The very mechanisms that make connection possible—the algorithms that determine what we see, the metrics that measure engagement, the economic engines that turn attention into profit—these same mechanisms have transformed the digital town square into something more akin to a carnival midway, where the loudest barker draws the biggest crowd, and authenticity becomes just another performance.
Consider the curious alchemy by which human worth is now measured. Followers become a form of social currency. Likes serve as digital sacraments of approval. The viral moment becomes our modern equivalent of fifteen minutes of fame—except that fifteen minutes can now stretch into internet immortality, or collapse into forgotten obscurity within hours. We have created a system that rewards not wisdom, but wit; not depth, but cleverness; not truth, but whatever version of truth generates the most engagement.
The Christian Alternative: The Question and the Choice
This is where the Christian vision offers both critique and alternative. The Gospel speaks of a different kind of influence—not the influence of the celebrity or the brand, but the influence of salt and light. Salt, after all, works invisibly, preserving and flavoring without drawing attention to itself. Light illuminates not to be seen, but so that others might see. The Christian is called to be an influencer, yes—but an influencer in the truest sense, one who shapes the world not through the accumulation of followers, but through the patient practice of love, the humble pursuit of truth, and the quiet fruits of faithfulness that may never trend, never go viral, never generate a single measurable metric of digital success.
The deeper challenge lies in what social media does to our understanding of the self. The platforms encourage—indeed, require—us to present ourselves as products to be consumed, brands to be marketed, personas to be perfected. We learn to speak not as we are, but as we wish to be perceived. We curate our lives like museum exhibitions, displaying our best moments while hiding our struggles, our doubts, our ordinary Tuesday afternoons when nothing remarkable happens and grace arrives, if at all, in the form of small mercies and quiet recognitions.
This performance of the self stands in stark contrast to the Incarnation—God's ultimate act of authentic self-revelation. Jesus does not manage His image or craft His message for maximum engagement. He speaks truth to power knowing it will cost Him followers. He reveals Himself fully, vulnerably, lovingly—not despite the fact that it will lead to suffering, but because love requires nothing less than complete honesty.
The early Church understood something about communication that our digital age has largely forgotten: that the most powerful messages are often passed not through mass broadcasting, but through intimate conversation. Paul's letters, which have shaped Western civilization, were written not to generate clicks or shares, but to nurture specific communities in specific places facing specific challenges. The Gospel spread not through viral marketing campaigns, but through lives so transformed by grace that neighbors couldn't help but notice.
This is not to say that Christians should abandon social media—any more than early Christians should have abandoned the Roman roads that carried their message across the empire. But it is to say that if we are to be present in the digital realm, we must be present as Christians first, social media users second. We must remember that we are not here to win the algorithm, but to bear witness to a truth that transcends any platform's terms of service.
The Question and the Choice
What would it look like to approach social media with a Christian understanding of communication? Perhaps it would mean choosing depth over virality, dialogue over monologue, listening over broadcasting. Perhaps it would mean using our digital voices not to promote ourselves, but to lift up others; not to win arguments, but to model how disagreement can be conducted with grace; not to curate perfect lives, but to honestly wrestle with the questions that keep us awake at 3 AM and somehow still believe that morning will come.
The digital world needs what every human community has always needed: not more noise, but more wisdom; not more performance, but more presence; not more reaction, but more reflection. It needs people who understand that the most important conversations often happen not in public forums, but in private messages of encouragement, in comments that offer genuine insight rather than clever quips, in the decision to remain silent when silence serves love better than speech.
In the end, the question is not whether social media is good or evil—like most human creations, it is neither, and both. The question is whether we will sanctify the medium or be shaped by it; whether we will use these tools in service of our deepest values or allow them to slowly erode those values through a thousand small compromises we barely notice we're making.
The choice, as always, is ours. And like all meaningful choices, it will be made not once, but daily, in a hundred small decisions about how we present ourselves, how we engage with others, and what we choose to amplify with our attention and our approval. The stakes could not be higher: nothing less than our souls, and the soul of the culture we are creating together, one post at a time.
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Why We Should Think About the Cultural Effects of Social MediaAugust 10, 2025
Are we worshipping Christ Crucified or the “Like” button?From a Christian perspective, the cultural effects of social media pose both an opportunity and a spiritual challenge. At its best, social media allows human beings to connect across distances, share insights, and bear witness to truth and beauty. But too often, the structure of these platforms—shaped by algorithms, monetization, and attention economies—tempts us into shallow forms of engagement that warp our understanding of self, truth, and community.The dominant goal on social media is self-promotion: the cultivation of a brand, the pursuit of followers, the hunger for viral recognition. These aims are not neutral; they subtly (and sometimes blatantly) reward the loudest voice, the most provocative opinion, the most curated image of a life well-lived. It becomes easy to mistake visibility for value, applause for authenticity. In contrast, the Christian vision prioritizes the humble pursuit of truth, the patient practice of love, and the quiet fruits of faithfulness. We are called not to become influencers, but to be witnesses. Not to be viral, but to be salt and light—pervasive, yes, but often invisible in effect.Similarly, social media's reward mechanisms—likes, shares, views, and follows—train us to seek quick affirmation rather than meaningful engagement. These digital sacraments of approval offer the appearance of connection but often lack substance. Christian tradition teaches that wisdom is slow, love is deliberate, and understanding takes time. The true reward of communication is not being echoed, but being understood—and, just as importantly, being challenged in love. The Spirit does not rush; it leads. The click-driven culture of social media resists this pace.Moreover, there is a difference between the performance of the self and the expression of the soul. Much of social media encourages us to perform—to carefully manage our image, tailor our voice, and craft a persona that gains attention. It is easy to become fragmented, caught between the “me” I present and the “me” I truly am. Christian identity, by contrast, is grounded in the Incarnation. Jesus does not curate himself to impress us. He reveals himself—fully, vulnerably, lovingly. Christian witness invites us to speak not as branded selves, but as dialogical selves, engaged in the messy, sacred task of mutual listening and discernment. We are not here to broadcast an image; we are here to have a voice—and to use that voice for communion, not competition.The early Church was built not on virality, but on deep conversation in homes, public squares, and letters passed hand to hand. Its growth was not due to clever branding but to the authenticity of lives transformed by grace. If Christians are to be present on social media, we must remember: we are not here to win the algorithm. We are here to bear witness—to truth, to love, to the dignity of dialogue. The digital world needs not more performance, but more presence—not more reaction, but more reflection. Only then can we sanctify the medium, rather than be shaped by it. -
The Theology of Work in the Era of Machine LaborAugust 3, 2025
There is an old and persistent question that has followed humanity through every age of invention and discovery: What does it mean to be human when the tools we create begin to eclipse the hands that made them? Today, as we stand at the threshold of an age where machines think, calculate, and even seem to create, that question takes on a weight our ancestors could scarcely have imagined.In the beginning, we are told, God worked. The Genesis account speaks not of divine leisure but of divine labor—the separation of light from darkness, the formation of land and sea, the breath of life into clay. And when Scripture tells us we are made in God's image, it suggests that we, too, are called to this work. Not the drudgery of survival, mind you, but something more profound: participation in the ongoing act of creation itself.But what are we to make of this ancient calling when our newest creations—these silicon minds and automated systems—begin to shoulder the burden of human toil? When the fields are harvested by machines that never tire, when calculations are performed by processors that never err, when even the written word flows from algorithms that never pause to doubt or wonder—what then becomes of the human worker?The easy answer, the one that comforts and troubles in equal measure, is that we are being rendered obsolete. That progress has finally outpaced its makers. But I suspect this misses something essential about the nature of work itself, something that goes beyond mere productivity or even necessity.Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical on human labor, made a distinction that bears remembering: "Man is the subject of work." Not its object, not its casualty, but its subject. The value of work, he argued, lies not in what it produces but in who does the producing. The human being does not exist to serve the machine; the machine exists to serve human flourishing. In our current moment, it seems we are in danger of forgetting which is which.I think of the data centers humming quietly in our post-industrial cities, processing more information in a day than entire civilizations once managed in lifetimes. They employ few, yet they shape much. Around them, communities ask the inevitable question: "What is left for us to do?" But perhaps that is the wrong question. Perhaps we should ask instead: "What are we being called to become?"The theology of work was never really about the work itself. It was about the worker. It was about the dignity that comes not from what we produce but from how we serve one another. It was about the sacred act of tending and keeping, of building relationships, of nurturing what is fragile and protecting what is precious.These are tasks that require not just intelligence but wisdom. Not just efficiency but compassion. Not just processing power but presence. They require, in short, the irreplaceable capacity to love. And whatever else our machines may accomplish, they cannot do that.There is a danger here that we must acknowledge. In our age of endless optimization, we risk making an idol of our own ingenuity. We risk believing that salvation lies in the next algorithm, the next breakthrough, the next solution that promises to solve all problems and answer all questions. But the theology of work reminds us that meaning cannot be manufactured. Purpose cannot be processed. These are gifts that only persons can give and receive.So work remains, even in this age of automation. Not always in the factories or fields where our grandfathers labored, but in the more subtle and essential work of building just societies, raising children with wisdom, healing the wounded, creating beauty, and yes, tending the world itself. This is work that cannot be delegated to machines because it springs from the human heart, which is the one place where no algorithm can venture.The question before us is not whether we will continue to work, but whether we will remember what work is truly for. Whether we will recall that while machines can build, only humans can bless. While computers can calculate, only people can care. While artificial intelligence can process, only human intelligence can truly understand.In the end, the theology of work is not about work at all. It is about the worker. It is about the dignity and calling of every human being to participate in the grand project of creation, to add their unique voice to the great conversation of existence. And in that calling, no machine—however sophisticated—can take our place.That is the deeper truth we must hold onto as we navigate this new age. Not that we are obsolete, but that we are irreplaceable. Not that we are no longer needed, but that we are needed now more than ever. For in a world increasingly run by machines, the work of being human becomes not less important, but more so.
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The Theology of ListeningJuly 27, 2025
There was a time, not so very long ago, when Americans gathered in actual places—town squares, church halls, corner drugstores—to argue about things that mattered. The arguments were no less fierce then than they are today, but they were conducted face to face, with consequences, and with the understanding that tomorrow you might need to borrow a cup of sugar from the very person whose politics you'd just denounced.
That time has passed, and something essential has passed with it.
We now live in what theologians might call a crisis of listening, although I suspect most of us wouldn't recognize it as such. We mistake the endless chatter of our digital age for conversation, the way a man dying of thirst might mistake a mirage for water. We have more ways to communicate than any generation in human history, and yet we seem to have forgotten how to hear one another.
This is not merely a social problem or a political one, though it is certainly both. It is, at its core, a theological crisis—a crisis of the spirit that touches the very heart of what it means to be human in relationship with the divine and with one another.
The Christian tradition has always understood listening as something more than good manners or social courtesy. It is, in the deepest sense, a sacred act. The God of the Hebrew scriptures is not a distant deity but one who "hears the cry of the afflicted," who bends an ear to the widow and the orphan. When the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, He came not as a conquering orator but as one who listened to the hemorrhaging woman who touched his garment, to the Roman centurion who sought healing for his servant, to the thief hanging beside him on Calvary.
This is the God who listens, and in listening, redeems.
St. Benedict, that wise old monk who understood something about the human condition, began his Rule with a simple command: "Listen, my son, with the ear of your heart." Not with the ear of your intellect, or the ear of your ideology, but with the ear of your heart. He understood that true listening requires a kind of spiritual discipline, a willingness to set aside one's own agenda long enough to receive the gift of another's presence.
But such listening has become a radical act in our time, perhaps even a revolutionary one. Our public spaces—those places where citizens once encountered difference and learned to navigate it—have largely vanished, replaced by the artificial commons of social media platforms that promise connection but deliver isolation. We retreat into our algorithmic echo chambers, where every voice confirms what we already believe and every dissenting opinion can be blocked, muted, or simply ignored.
The result is not conversation but parallel monologue, not dialogue but tribal warfare conducted at a safe digital distance. We have mistaken the broadcasting of our opinions for the sharing of our humanity, and in doing so, we have lost something precious—the capacity to be surprised by one another, to be changed by encounter, to discover God in the stranger.
This is what the French mystic Simone Weil meant when she wrote that "attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." True listening requires attention, and attention requires a kind of dying to self that our culture finds deeply threatening. It demands that we become vulnerable, that we risk being wrong, that we allow ourselves to be changed by what we hear.
But this is precisely what the Gospel demands of us. The act of listening, properly understood, is a Eucharistic act—a breaking of bread, a sharing of life. When we truly listen to another, we offer not merely our time or our politeness but our very presence. We say, in effect, "This is my body, given for you. This is my attention, poured out for you."
It is an act of hospitality that welcomes not only words but wounds, not only ideas but the whole messy reality of human existence. It refuses the false comfort of ideological certainty and chooses instead the harder path of understanding. It breaks down the walls we build between us and them, between liberal and conservative, between sacred and secular, and reminds us that we are all created in the image of God.
To listen in this way is to resist the liturgies of polarization that have captured our public life. It is to reclaim the sacred space where the Word becomes flesh anew—not in arguments won but in relationships restored, not in enemies defeated but in neighbors discovered.
In an age of diminished public space and digital simulacra, such listening may be one of the last remaining sacraments of human dignity. It is a practice as ancient as the Psalms and as urgent as tomorrow's headlines, a way of being in the world that honors both the God who listens and the people made in God's image.
The question is not whether we can afford to listen in such times. The question is whether we can afford not to.
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What Violence Reveals About UsJune 29, 2025
From a Christian theological standpoint, war is not merely the failure of diplomacy or the triumph of belligerence. It is, more deeply, a revelation—a kind of apocalypse, not in the sensationalist sense of catastrophe, but in its older biblical meaning: an unveiling of what is hidden. War strips away our cultural pretenses and civilizational cosmetics. It shows us not just what we do—but who we are.
We like to imagine ourselves as evolved, enlightened, and humane. But war drags us back to the mirror, and we recoil at what we see: our lust for power, our fear of powerlessness, our moral evasions, our theological evasions. War is not an anomaly in human history. It is a recurring sacrament of sin, a liturgy of death performed with technological precision and spiritual indifference. It is what happens when the myth of redemptive violence replaces the Gospel of the Crucified Christ.
We must consider what war reveals—not only about politics or international relations, but about the human soul. We must look at war theologically, not merely morally. We must not ask first whether war is justified or unjustified, but what war reveals about the state of fallen humanity in light of divine truth.I. War Reveals Original Sin with Terrifying Clarity
Human sin is often abstract until it is seen in its collective form: troops mobilized, bombs dropped, cities leveled. What we hide in our hearts—pride, wrath, greed—is suddenly institutionalized, celebrated, and liturgized in the theatre of war. Christian tradition teaches that sin distorts the soul; war broadcasts that distortion onto the world stage. The ancient prophet’s lament rings true in every age: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer 17:9). In this light, war is not a departure from human nature—it is its disfigured fulfillment.II. War Reveals the Collapse of the Moral Imagination
To wage war requires a failure of vision: the inability to see the enemy as neighbor, or even as human. Language shifts: children become "collateral damage," civilians are "combatants," and enemies are reduced to "targets." This linguistic numbing permits moral atrocities. But Christian anthropology insists otherwise: every person bears the image of God. Every bomb dropped on a city is dropped also on the divine likeness. War demands that we unsee what God commands us to remember.III. War Reveals Our Death Wish
Pope John Paul II described modern society as suffering under a “culture of death.” War is its darkest liturgy. From Cain and Abel to nuclear warheads, we have clung to the same twisted logic: if we eliminate them, we will be secure. But the Gospel shatters this delusion. Jesus becomes the victim of human violence and refuses to perpetuate the cycle. He unmasks the lie that peace can be secured by bloodshed—especially the blood of the innocent.IV. War Reveals Our Idolatry of Nation and Empire
What do we sacrifice for? What inspires our devotion, our loyalty, our willingness to kill? For many, it is not Christ, but the nation-state. Flags become icons. Borders become sacred. Soldiers become priests of national security. As St. Augustine warned, the “peace” of empires is often the silence of graves. And yet, many Christians continue to bow to Caesar while claiming to serve the Lamb. War reveals our true allegiances.V. War Reveals Our Rejection of the Cross
To choose peace is to risk being weak. To turn the other cheek is to invite scorn. But the Gospel declares: God became weak. Salvation came not by conquest but by crucifixion. War reveals how deeply we resist the path of the Cross. We prefer the lion to the Lamb. We would rather win than die faithfully.VI. War Reveals Our Theological Doubt
Do we really believe that “Blessed are the peacemakers” applies to nations? Or that “Love your enemies” applies to foreign policy? When Christians support violence as the only practical option, we reveal something deeper: we do not actually trust the Gospel to be politically viable. We fear the Sermon on the Mount might be beautiful nonsense. War reveals our theological lukewarmness.VII. War Reveals Our Ache for Redemption
And yet, even here—especially here—war reveals a wound that cries out for healing. Amid the rubble and horror, we sense our need for grace. In the orphan’s tears and the refugee’s flight, we glimpse not just human cruelty, but the world’s longing for another way. War reveals the urgent necessity of salvation, not just for individuals, but for humanity as a whole. In this way, war can function—ironically—as a confession: we have no idea how to save ourselves.Final Word:
War is not just a geopolitical event—it is a theological unveiling. It exposes the idols we bow to, the fears we hide behind, the blood we are willing to spill for false peace. And yet, it also reveals our need for the One who does not return violence for violence, who suffers rather than kills, who dies rather than dominates. In the ashes of war, the Christian does not look for vengeance, but for a cross-shaped hope.
“Father, forgive them—they know not what they do.”
This is not a sentimental excuse.
It is the most terrifying—and salvific—truth we dare to confess.
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