COMMENTARY ON COMMUNITY : There’s Another Bonds Crisis--One With Deeper Significance : We need to weigh how we relate to and care for one another. County fiscal problems should not overshadow that.

A pastor of one of the Santa Ana Catholic churches recently conveyed to me his experience of the Ash Wednesday services that took place about one month ago. He said to me, “The people were hungry.” It was clear he was not making a spiritual allusion.

During the distribution of ashes to the vast throngs of women, men and children who crossed the church’s threshold seeking the traditional Lenten blessing and admonition, the priest saw hungry eyes, particularly in the children. He regretfully noted, among the press of people, malnourished infants. In a sad irony for this Lent, a time set aside for voluntary fasting and abstinence, such had already been heartlessly imposed upon those least able to bear it.

Yet the startling testimony of preserving faith shown by those anxious, hungry families begging for a consoling blessing in the midst of travails that know no season makes one assess with a sober heart the virtue of one’s life lived alongside such misery.

As the Scriptures justly propose, Lent is a time to rend one’s heart. It is a time for assessment, a time to consider what is most important to us, putting aside what is trivial and assuming that which is worthy of the human heart.

In this tone, it seems more like providence than coincidence that as a county we presently find ourselves faced with a fiscal and social crisis that demands that the residents of Orange County weigh the moral quality and virtue of our lives asking ourselves: What are we worth to one another?

What exists, if anything, of a social covenant among the peoples of this county? While assessing the value of all other assets the county might barter to ease the current fiscal crunch, a thoughtful consideration might be given to the bonds of trust and mutual respect that give substance to the words “neighbor” and “friend.” What are those bonds worth to us today? Neither Moody’s nor Standard & Poor’s will tell us. This we must answer ourselves.

The grueling mechanics of salvaging the county from the bankruptcy are unavoidable and will exact a measure of commitment from all of us.

There is much made of the need to make county government smaller. In the process we cannot at the same time make the Orange County communities smaller. Under the layers of bureaucracy, whose utility should be examined, still lie some fundamental social covenants that must claim our attention.

We must stand with one another and pursue the well-being of one another, particularly those most vulnerable. Persons of good conscience may differ as to how those covenants are to be fulfilled-- but all must agree that we owe that to one another. If not, then our civic language will be bankrupt as well.

There exists a temptation that says that we once could attend to those who are in need out of a largess that no longer exists. Since the traditional resources are no longer available, then we no longer bear that obligation. We are absolved.

This is one of the unfortunate features of government social services that allows us to ignore the fundamental social covenants that bind us to one another. While government can and should in certain cases be the provider of essential public services, its role can often dilute the sense of solidarity and common good that should be the reason for its existence. It is we, the residents of this county, who must ultimately look to one another with a justified expectation that we are our sister’s and brother’s keeper. All the institutions we create, from the County Hall of Administration to the parish hall, must enable us to fulfill the neighborly, fraternal bonds that bestow on each of us a sense of dignity and worth.

The bankruptcy of Orange County has been a grave shock to the delivery of essential public services, but the ensuing debates have brought to the fore the chronic symptoms of a prevailing lack of trust in government and a failing resolve to care for one another.

As proposals are being developed from downsizing, privatization, to taxation, an essentially basic assumption must be a mutual regard for the well-being of all the county’s residents, particularly the most vulnerable.

In the weeks ahead there should be an earnest endeavor to identify the most responsive agencies--public, voluntary and private--to meet our obligations to one another and provide these agencies with a sufficient investment of resources to meet the ongoing social challenges of the county. This message must come as a clear signal from the county leaders, public, corporate and voluntary. Smaller government should not become the euphemism for small hearts and small minds.

Both Jews and Christians in the coming weeks will begin to celebrate their springtime religious rituals of passage from death to life and the enduring covenants that give meaning and flavor to our lives. The rich symbols of this time can be a fount of inspiration for all the county’s residents as we seek to bring to life the still bountiful moral and earthly resources of our communities for the sake of us all.