Advertisement Gathje and others lifted him into the shower and bathed him with the help of paramedics, who brought him to a hospital.
Afterward, Gathje said during an interview Friday at Viterbo University, he’d wondered whether Jesus had gagged when he encountered lepers.
So who was the courageous one here?
Was it Gathje and the helpers, who put themselves in a position to encounter immense suffering, and responded with compassion? Was it the homeless people who had brought the man to Manna House and who did not complain when they had to forgo showers because of the mess left behind by the man?
Or was it, as Gathje suggested, the man who had lost his legs in a car accident, become addicted to pain killers and ended up on the streets?
“The sacredness of it is here is this person who is hurting so badly and who is yet being so patient with us and our feeble attempts to help,” Gathje said. “And the way in which we’re helping is so inadequate to the need and yet the guy is saying, ‘Thank you.’”
On Friday morning, Gathje, 50, discussed his work with homeless people during a conference on courage sponsored by Viterbo’s D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership.
The conference is the second in a series of four annual conferences exploring the cardinal virtues. Justice was last year, temperance is next year and wisdom the final year.
Courage, said Rick Kyte, director of the institute, is the tendency to do what is good or necessary and not what is popular or desirable.
While this culture easily talks about courage in a military context, he said, it’s traditionally conceived of more broadly than that.
Take political leaders.
“Our political leaders need courage because they’re under so much pressure to be campaigning all the time,” Kyte said. “There’s always a pressure to say what is going to be agreeable to the electorate. And what we really need is people who will lead the electorate, not just follow the electorate. Tell us at some point what is good and what is right.”
Parents need courage to model it for children, he said, and children might need courage to stand up for someone being bullied.
As Gathje’s stories show, adults might need courage for the same reason.
In his lecture, Gathje, a professor of Christian ethics at Memphis Theological Seminary, described Manna House as a sacrament of God’s presence and also as a sign of sin, as a sign that our society is not compassionate or just in our response to the poor, but rather fearful and hateful.
People are homeless, he said, because there’s not affordable housing and because housing is a commodity instead of a right. People are homeless, he said, because public transportation is inefficient, which can make getting to work difficult. People are homeless, he said, because we spend our resources elsewhere.
“At $2 billion a week, (the war) has something to do with having homeless folks in this country,” he said.
When I asked Gathje to tell about courageous people he has encountered at Manna House, Gathje told the story of Pete, who saw his father kill his mother with a shotgun when he was 8 years old, with the blood of his mother splattering on his face. Pete’s family was poor. He ended up on alcohol and drugs and the street, but he recently has been sober.
“He is afraid he won’t be able to stay sober because the memory is too powerful, but he’s trying and that’s courage,” Gathje said.
He also told the story of Eddie, who has a mental illness, who was jailed for nine months after trespassing, who received his medication in jail and who came to Manna House after getting out of jail and asked for help getting medication, explaining he had only a day before his mental illness would grab hold of him again.
“These are people that should be honored rather than despised,” he said. “I love Manna House. I love the people who are there. I love what we do. But at another level, I hate it. I hate that Verna does not have a safe place to live and that she’s out on the streets and she gets raped.”
These are courageous people, Gathje said, living with immense burdens and yet continuing on, loving other people.
Joe Orso can be reached at jorso@lacrossetribune.com or (608) 791-8429.
