Father John Rausch named
Pax Christi’s Teacher of Peace By Beth Dotson Brown
STANTON, Ky. (CNS) — To some, he is the coordinator of the Commission for Justice and Peace for the Diocese of Lexington. Others know him as the director of the Catholic Committee of Appalachia. Still others call him a gourmet cook, a thought-provoking homilist or a caring visitor to those in prison. Mississippi Catholics know him as a columnist in Mississippi Catholic.
Now, everyone will know Glenmary Father John Rausch as a “teacher of peace.”
Pax Christi USA, the national Catholic peace movement, awarded Father Rausch its 2007 Teacher of Peace Award Sept. 12 in Washington.
Father Rausch dismisses the idea he already is a teacher of peace, saying, “I’m going to grow into a teacher of peace. I see this as a great moniker. I see this as a great goal.”
Past winners have included Catholic Worker Movement co-founder Dorothy Day; death penalty abolitionist Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille; and actor Martin Sheen.
In his nomination of Father Rausch, Lexington Bishop Ronald Gainer wrote: “Father John is a man who is truly concerned for the welfare and justice of others, especially the people of Appalachia.”
Father Rausch’s years of work demonstrate that. The Philadelphia native joined the Glenmary Home Missioners when he was just out of high school. He laughed when he remembered looking through a directory with listings about various religious orders in search of his future.
“It’s kind of like going through the Sears and Roebuck catalog,” he said, remembering that ads from two orders attracted him. “Both had adventurous photo displays. Glenmary had a guy pushing a jeep out of mud and one riding on a horse.”
Before he joined the order, the Catholic-educated young man thought logging hours in church and in prayer would make him a good Catholic. But during the novitiate, he was exposed to different ideas. One that became primary in the way he views his ministry is that Glenmarians are “relational.”
“I was taught you sit on people’s porches, you go in people’s homes,” Father Rausch said in an interview with Cross Roads, the Lexington diocesan newspaper, from his home in Stanton. “It’s people rather than rules, or ideas, or ethereal theories. It’s people.”
The other discovery was harder to define. It came from the only 30 minutes of television the novices were allowed to watch daily — the news. In 1965, that meant watching reports on the Vietnam War, the civil rights struggle and the Great Society domestic programs initiated by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Father Rausch combined what he observed there with what he learned from the novice master, Father Frank Korzinek. His rock-bottom spirituality and moral integrity, Father Rausch said, conveyed that “it’s not fair that we’re blowing people up, or beating people down, or not allowing people to get to the table.”
From there, social justice work continued to call Father Rausch.
“I see social justice as the ministry of inviting everybody to the table,” he said. “It’s a relational ministry with analysis.”
The ministry is multifaceted. In one week, Father Rausch might visit a death-row inmate, arrange the details of another Appalachian tour, or give a talk about the dangers of mountaintop removal mining. The commonality among each facet is that there are real people behind every story.
Father Rausch also spreads the word about peace and justice issues through his column on faith and economics, which is printed once a month in Mississippi Catholic, as well as other articles he writes.
While he has seen positive results from his work, Father Rausch believes there is much more still to be done.
“We’re stumbling along with how to creatively address violence. I think Jesus did that,” he said.
“I think a teacher of peace would be one who can help see through what we’re doing, see through the phoniness, question the frivolous consumption patterns, question the wastefulness we have, question how we are pursuing happiness with material things when in reality only relationships will satisfy,” he said.
“Only things of the spirit will ultimately satisfy our hunger and quench thirst,” he said..
