An Ash Wednesday ‘mobilization’ showed us a way out of our country’s mess

An Ash Wednesday ‘mobilization’ showed us a way out of our country’s mess

(RNS) — The Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is nestled among the well-kept homes of the working-class Chicago suburb of Melrose Park. On Ash Wednesday (Feb. 18), an altar had been erected under a tent outside the church surrounded by a thick crush of 2,000 people who prayed, sang and jostled our way through the ritual. (Fifteen hundred more were somewhat more comfortably inside the church.) When it came time to distribute first ashes, then th…