By PATRICK O'NEILL
Columbus, Ga.
Thousands of Jesuit high school and college students gathered Friday and Saturday at the Columbus Convention Center for the 9th annual Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice, an event that draws students, faculty and alumni from throughout the nation on the anniversary of the 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador.
Some of the soldiers implicated in those murders were graduates of the infamous U.S. Army School of the Americas (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation).
The Ignatian Family Teach-In has become a significant component of the annual fall effort to close the school that trains Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency. The school's graduates have been implicated in numerous human rights violations and murders in their native countries.
Grounded in the non-violence of Jesus, Xavier senior Anne Feczko, and Loyola New Orleans senior Benjamin Clapper, were also pushing a pro-life agenda at a table for the "Ignatian Pro-Life Network," which has a mission statement that includes: "Because we recognize there are numerous justice issues threatening the dignity of human life we espouse a consistent ethic of life."
As she enthusiastically gave her spiel to passing students, Feczko said her ultimate goal was to get Jesuit students to make another trip for justice by attending January's March for Life in Washington, D.C.
Growing up in a Republican household Feczko, 22, a native of Canton, Ohio, said she felt called to oppose abortion and to embrace charity. But when she made her first trip to the SOA protest in 2003, Feczko said it was as if scales fell from her eyes.
The first time she walked down Ft. Benning Dr., the road leading to now-closed south gate, Feczko passed the scores of tables set up by various social justice and peace groups addressing myriad issues.
"It was like my vision of the world went from here to here," Feczko said, using her hands to demonstrate how her field of vision began to expand from myopic to panoramic. "I knew poverty was an issue. I knew homelessness was an issue, but I'm walking up and down here reading these stickers and I'm like, 'Oh, I never thought of that.' So it was kind of overwhelming in a way, but at the same time very empowering that I know I can find some way to positively change the world, and I love having a faith position that supports me in that, because if you get down to the nitty-gritty social justice teachings of the Catholic church, it's all there; it gives me a lot of hope.
"So, when people say, 'There's so many problems with our church today,' I'm like, 'You know, you're right, but look at this beautiful basis we have to work with.'"
This year is her third time coming to the SOA protest. When she graduates in May with a nursing degree, Feczko is not quite sure how she will proceed as a nurse and activist.
"It's kind of been a struggle because my education in nursing has been so micro-focused, and meanwhile all my activities outside of school are so macro, so I don't know how I'm going to reconcile that. I just feel like I'm always going to have that advocate mindset, so it might be difficult to be working one-on-one with patients everyday, but you can do both."
As a transition, Feczko is considering doing "at least a year" of volunteer work with the homeless at Christ House in Washington, D.C. where she can have a community to support her.
As she learns more, she has become more deeply committed, Feczko said.
"It's taken over my life," she said. "It starts to seep in to everything you do. I notice that the more I started learning about these broader issues, the more I couldn't do anything without connecting it to the broader picture. Suddenly you look at the food you're eating, and you're like, 'What's going into this? Who made this? What should I be thinking about that and how can change that if it's not where it should be?'
"(And) What kind of global change am I working for through my career? And what kind of things do I want to be involved with, whether I'm doing them every day and being paid for it or just on a volunteer basis or just individually or maybe as a family some day?
"Suddenly you realize that you can't really do anything that's not affecting someone else."
When she first became an activist, Feczko said she faced some resistance from her family and teasing from her two more conservative older brothers. She used to be on the defensive when she went home for breaks, but that's no longer the case.
"We've reached a really cool point where I know that they're not just attacking me," she said. "They just want to make sure that I'm getting all sides of a picture because no matter what source you're getting your news from or your information from, it's generally never unbiased.
"And they want to make sure that I'm educated so when I go to talk with other people about these things I don't sound like an idiot. They've just been wonderful for me over the last few years, helping me stay grounded, but allowing me to grow as well."
Last summer, Feczko said she felt frustrated during a conversation about the death penalty with her father, Greg Feczko, and she told him, "'Dad, I just feel like you're not listening to anything I'm saying,' and he's like, 'Do you know how much you've affected my view of the death penalty? Annie, you've had a huge impact on that, and I'm really grateful for that.' And I never thought it could work both ways. I always thought it was Dad teaching me, so that was really cool to hear him say that now I've reached the point where I can also start teaching him things too."
Feczko said she still pokes fun at her brothers for "wearing suits to work every day, and they can make fun of me for being the hippie sister," but her family is taking her commitment to activism more seriously.
"When you get down to it we have really good dialogues," she said.
[Patrick O'Neill is a freelance religion journalist living in Garner, N.C.]