The 2015 Isaac Hecker Award for Social Justice

Event description: 


January 24, 2015
5pm

The Paulist Center
5 Park Street
Boston, MA 02108

http://www.paulistboston.com/calendar_details.asp?id=1043


Suzanne Belote Shanley and Brayton Shanley of the Agape Community have been chosen as the recipients of the 2015 Isaac Hecker Award for Social Justice and will accept the award not as individual recipients but on behalf of the hundreds of people who have contributed time, energy, financial support and prayer over the years. Suzanne and Brayton invite all who are interested in lay community, interfaith and ecumenical, to attend this Mass as a sign of solidarity with nonviolent aims and goals of the community.

Agape was co-founded in 1982 by the Shanleys and Fr. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy (Brockton, MA) and Steve and Nancy James of Haiti, when they decided they needed to live out their Catholicism according to the uncompromising dictates they understood from the Gospels.

The community, now located in Hardwick, MA, lives off the land, growing its own food, rather than support agribusiness; uses solar power to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels and minimize their contributions to energy companies; drives a vegetable grease-powered car so as not to feed the need for oil, which they believe leads the country to war.

Members lead workshops on nonviolence, teaching the lives of Christ, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day to college students and parish groups. In addition, the community is a constant presence at peace demonstrations and protests against torture, the death penalty and mass imprisonment. They spearheaded the Catholic Call to Peace, a nationwide petition against the war on Iraq and over the years have hosted people recently released from prison, established internships for homeless people and hosted women fleeing abuse.

Agape is an experiment in making the truth of God visible in the human world. Please join us on January 24th at our 5pm liturgy to celebrate this extraordinary community. Suzanne and Brayton are accepting the award in the names of all of the hundreds of people who live and work at Agape year after year and who continue to make Agape what it is and who are the reason it still exists.


The Paulist Center
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Boston, MA 02108
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