The Diocesan Service Corps
By Victoria Kearns - Staff Reporter
The Diocesan Service Corps is a kind of urban Peace Corps, much like the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and was initiated by Bishop Henry J. Mansell in the diocese a year ago. It is a powerful lifestyle experience designed to allow volunteers a unique opportunity to live on cutting edge Christianity.
The four volunteers who have embraced a simple lifestyle will find this one intentional year a life-changing, eye-opening experience. They are asked to commit to four tenets - simplicity, social justice, spiritual growth and community living, the integration of which is at the heart of the corps' mission.
"We ask volunteers to make a one-year commitment to full time service work in Buffalo. They need to be over 21 and have had some college experience," said Amy Fleischauer, Diocesan Service Corps director, who has a bachelor's degree in psychology and special education from LeMoyne College, Syracuse, and a master's in social work from Columbia University, New York.
The four volunteers, who arrived in Buffalo for orientation in early September, live in community in a house rented by the Diocesan Volunteer Corps from St. Elizabeth's Parish in the Riverside/Black Rock area. They are between 21 and 23 years of age and have all recently graduated from college.
"We provide them with housing, health insurance, bus passes and $200 for food and personal needs each month," Fleischauer said. "The point of the simplicity is to help people live in solidarity with the poor and marginalized."
"It is imperative to understand that simplicity is much more than attempting to survive one year with less income. It is a shift in attitude that compels volunteers to examine what material things may have prevented them from fully valuing relationships and being conscious of the poor," Fleischauer wrote in the CCSC mission statement.
Specifically, cable television, radio, Internet and other media outlets promote a consumer culture, prioritizing affluence. That consciousness leaves the poor and marginalized voiceless and powerless.
"Our dependence on electrical devices really gets in the way of creating relationships with people," Fleischauer said, adding most people are unaware of their privilege. " Living simply gives you a glimpse into what life is like for the marginalized and how limited their resources may be. It forces you to focus on relationships more than material things."
The Diocesan Service Corps offers young adults an opportunity to make a culture shift away from the status quo espoused by a materialistic, capitalist and violent culture into another, a sub-culture, comprised of those who either cannot or will not participate in the white middle class. It was to those people, in His time and place, that Jesus came.
"After a while, you become different because of it. Society doesn't understand a choice to be downwardly mobile, so it's certainly a challenge. But, hopefully, one begins to see the concept of success and getting paid in a broader and more meaningful sense," Fleischauer said.
Fleischauer grew up in Buffalo, attended Sacred Heart Academy, Eggertsville, sang in the choir at St. Joseph's Collegiate Institute, and then attended LeMoyne College. Until then, everything about her life seemed "normal," she admitted. While she always had a social conscience and a Catholic spirituality, it was after college, when she signed up for a year in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, that her life changed forever. She has become an advocate for the voiceless and powerless when she was assigned to Santa Rosa, Calif.
"I didn't know what I was getting into," she said.
"Looking back, I was really thrown into a situation with no resources, living with four people I'd never met. All I could do was keep on going. But I struggled through that year, and learned to lean on my community members and strengthen my relationship with God," she said. "The CCSC values community living because it provides a support system to challenge one another while struggling through an experience that will inevitably lead one to understand their own special call to service."
She worked with adolescents who were recovering from the drug and gang lifestyle, and as she heard their stories, one after another, any sense of judgment melted away.
"Hearing their stories, you view things differently. It's a lot harder to judge when you understand your privilege. A lot of my success was because of the family I was born into. Growing up, there was always a huge emphasis on identifying your talents and realizing that you are responsible to use them," she said, grateful for her upbringing and education but aware it gave her an advantage.
"The main focus of the CCSC is to have the opportunity to experience one intentional year of infusing your faith in every aspect of your life. Many people compartmentalize their faith," she said, adding that often Christians attend church on Sunday, but live unexamined lives.
The experience of living among the poor and beginning to see the world through their eyes, naturally prompts the volunteers to examine their own viewpoint and how it has developed. For many, they begin to see that they too often blindly accept what they see in the media, what the government says, or the overt messages of the dominant culture.
"As the volunteers begin to view the world through a 'faith lens,' they often begin to discover contradictions between Jesus' teachings and what mainstream society supports through their behavior or apathy," Fleischauer says.
Recent issues such as America's response to Iraq or the death penalty are prime examples.
"Through a Christian lens, social justice becomes a deeply felt consciousness and spirituality. Once one feels personally the plight of those suffering, then capital punishment, racism, corporate exploitation and any military posture begins to feel anti-Christian," Fleischauer said.
That one year in Santa Rosa changed Fleischauer's life forever. She went on to earn a MSW at Columbia University and then on to Chicago to work in prison ministry. She came out of that experience with an acute sense of social justice and solidarity with the poor. A year ago, she was called by Bishop Mansell to initiate and develop the Diocesan Service Corps.
The four volunteers are working at Providence Community/Friend of L'Arche, Catholic Charities Parish Outreach Program for Inner City Programs, Compeer West Intensive Mentoring Program and Catholic Central School, an inner city elementary school.
For information on the CCSC call 847-8384.
Western New York Catholic - October 2002