 Good evening, everyone. Thank you for being here. Thank you for attending this event, this 25th Christopher F. Mooney Lecture on Religion, Church, and Society. My name is Paul Lakeland. I direct the Center for Catholic Studies here, and I am so happy to be able to introduce to you, or in many cases, I think reintroduce to you Sister Simone Campbell. She's actually not a stranger to Fairfield University. She was here, I think, four years ago as the keynote speaker for the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the first women to graduate from the undergraduate program here at Fairfield, and we're very happy to have her back. She has served, as most of you know, as Executive Director of Network Lobby for Catholic Social Justice since 2004. Those of you who don't know, it's a lobbying organization in Washington, DC. It was founded by religious sisters, and it is now staffed predominantly by laypeople, but there are still some religious sisters involved, including Sister Simone. She is, I think, a religious leader. No question about that. She's an attorney. She's a poet. She has lots of experience in working for policy change and advocating for systemic change in American society. She, during the 2010 congressional debate about health care reform, she wrote the famous Nuns Letter supporting the reform bill, and she organized 59 leaders of Catholic sisters, and you don't mess with 59 leaders of Catholic sisters, including the Leadership Conference of Women Religious to sign on, and this really, people rightly think this was critically important in getting the Affordable Care Act passed under the Obama Administration. She was thanked by President Obama, and she was at the ceremony when they signed the document. Other people might know her better for the organizing the very first Nuns on the Bus tour, and she's now led, I think, six cross-country trips. Focused on tax justice, health care, economic justice, comprehensive immigration reform, voter turnout, all the good issues that we care about. She has received numerous, well, by the way, there are bumpers, there are little stickers to put in your car for Nuns on the Bus at the back if you want one on the way out, so show your support. She's received lots of awards. A couple I didn't know about, the Franklin D. Roosevelt for Freedoms Award, and the Defender of Democracy Award from the International Parliamentarians for Global Action, and some of you may have seen her speaking at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. She's been an attorney for many years. She worked for the Community Law Center in Oakland, California for 18 years, and she is the author of a book which is at the back there, and you can purchase on the way out if you wish, and if you want to buy it, she'll be happy to sign it for you, which will, of course, reduce its value immediately by 25%. The book is called A Nun on the Bus, How All of Us Can Create Hope, Change, and Community, published a couple of years back now. Sister Simone, she's a delightful person, and she's someone who gives us, I think, some hope, even in times when hope politically and ecclesiastically is not that easy to come across. So please join me in giving her a rousing fair feel welcome as she addresses us on the theme, The Church and Power, Recognizing Jesus in the 21st Century. Sister Simone. Oh, there we go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. It is not my usual subject to discuss the church. I have made it my life's work to avoid that topic. Tonight is an unusual piece, and so I've got something I've prepared that we can talk about, and then we'll have questions and answers, and questions and maybe some answers, or at least a lot of questions. During that part, please, if you want to know about politics, ask me that then, and I'll feel much more comfortable. Okay, cool. Because we got famous at network because of an exercise of Vatican power. Now, Paul mentioned that the letter I wrote was a tipping point in the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Really exciting. Not a perfect bill, but way better than what we had before. But the other piece that you have to remember is that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had come out opposing the bill because their very conservative staff had, I believe misled, I don't know if it was intentional or not, and told the bishops that there was federal funding of abortion in the Affordable Care Act. Well, my various student academic analysis was liar, liars, pants on fire, because what the two federal courts have found is a matter of law, meaning there's no question, is there is no federal funding of abortion in the Affordable Care Act, period. And now nobody says that. So finally, the bishops staff changed their website to say, well, the bishops feared that there was federal funding of abortion in the Affordable Care Act. So I say to them what Jesus says all the time in the scriptures is, fear not, fear not, be not afraid, but they still are. But what happened was that was in 2010. In 2012, the Vatican issued a censure of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, Catholic Sisters, the leadership of Catholic Sisters, saying they'd gone off the reservation that was really suspect, and they named our little organization who at the time had nine full-time staff as being a bad influence on Catholic Sisters because we promoted radical feminist themes incompatible with the gospel. Well, I don't know what gospel they were reading, but did they notice that Mary Magdalene was the first apostle about the resurrection? Did they notice that Mary the Mother of Jesus and Salome and a whole bunch of other women traveled with Jesus regularly as an apostle? Did they notice the role of women? Apparently not. Because the leadership from Rome said that we weren't properly deferential, that we had obviously gone above our pay grade and had opinions that were different than the bishops. And the bishops were really upset because they're the authoritative teachers of the church. And we said they were wrong on healthcare. And so I remember doing a 60 minutes interview and they said, well, how did you know that? I mean, how did you know that about what was in the bill? And it was, I read it. Of course I knew what was in the bill. It wasn't like rocket science. Yeah, you had to read 1600 pages, but it was pretty clear. So the piece that I came to realize is how the misperception on the part of some leaders about their role when faith and our ordinary life intersect, there is some feeling of privilege that some have that they should be followed even if they're wrong. And so tonight I want to talk about what's happening in our world and in our church in this evolutionary moment. Because we are at an intersection that is extremely challenging. Because our leadership, our designated leaders within the church, the priests and the bishops, most of them have been raised what I call with an old math mind. And we have new math becoming the dominant story in our society. Ilya Dileo, who's a Franciscan sister theologian. Did anybody know Ilya? She's fabulous. Anyway, she is the most petite person you could ever imagine and she has the tenuous little head. But she has the biggest brain I have ever encountered. So her analysis is that we're in the midst of this huge shift in our society and in our church. She says within the church the first 300 years of Christianity following Jesus' death was all about intimate house churches. They were persecuted people. They knew each other. They met in secret. They had secret signs. They knew what it was to share all in common. It was about being the body of Christ continuing to live in the world. It was intimate. It was powerful. And it was a total identity. And then we have Constantine, the Battle of Melvia Bridge, 313. I don't know, odd things I remember from fifth grade history. But that was good news and bad news. The good news we always learned was the church was no longer persecuted. The bad news was everybody had to become Christian. And in that process it became no longer that intimate body connected where you knew everyone. The issue became what do you believe? And so we have all the fights about the creeds. My beloved community, I'm a sister of social service. My beloved community sort of gets the Apostles' Creed and the Nice Creed kind of mixed up periodically. And one of our elderly sisters wanted to have a rosary as her memorial. And we felt really bad because we messed up the Apostles' Creed right at the beginning. So the problem was for those Christians from about 300 to about 14-1500 was the only way you knew who was authentic was by what you believe, what you said your faith was. Then Elias says what happened with the scientific revolution, with the discovery of the laws of the universe. You know they discovered the earth was no longer the center of the universe. Well that was very earth-shattering for folks who had built a whole theology around that. So what happened was in that shift it was no longer when you got the laws of the universe, it was no longer what you believe. It became the laws of God, became the mirror of the laws of the universe. And so just the way there was systematic earth moving around the sun and the moon around the earth and everything was that mechanistic view, then she says what happens within the church is church becomes then the laws of God. And the question is no longer what do you believe, it's what do you do. So it's mass on Sunday, no meat on Friday. It's doing your Easter duty, which included going to confession. It's a checklist of performances of actions that showed who were true Catholics. And we still see vestiges of this when folks will refer to themselves, well I'm not a very observant Catholic or I'm a lapsed Catholic or I'm sort of Catholic sometimes. But it's about what you do, not what you believe. And Ilya says the challenge we're in the midst of right now is a shift from the static laws of the universe to absorbing quantum physics into our being. And she says, she has a whole chapter on quantum physics in this book, Making All Things New. I've read it three times and I sort of understand it. But as I understand it, what it is, is that it's no longer just time and space. But rather it, there are places, black holes, where time and space merge and blend, so things can be different, where the spirit, the energy is released and matter and energy are two forms of the same thing. And so what she says is that in the Christian view then death, the moment of death is the movement from matter to energy. And that we are called to this more inspirited place where it is about the spirit of God alive in our midst. Now here's our trouble. Most of the leadership grew up with the laws of the universe style and are terrified about the more what I would call contemplative truth of the spirit alive in our midst. So here's the problem. We need to be missionaries. We need to be missionaries to the poor pumpkins that are fearful that they are not doing their job because they can't enforce the laws. Because the law is no longer work. And that's the power dynamic right now I believe within our beloved church. It is leadership that many leaders who think that they just have to enforce the law, that's how it is, and they've got followers who say, it doesn't beat my life. That's a little odd. It's nuts. Let's talk about the spirit alive and applied in my life and here I am a student or here I am retired or here I am working or let's talk about the spirit in that moment. The spirit of God, the spirit of Jesus among us now. And in some ways I think it's a return more to the very earliest Christian experience of being the body of Christ. But what it means is if we are going to move into this new world, I believe we are called to have a strong contemplative practices. It's only the contemplative reality that's going to free us to be both communal and troublemakers. What do you think? Sounds like a great idea to me. I don't know, students over here are kind of taking this down. Communal and troublemakers, got it? We need you, we need you. So what we have to see differently is that it is no longer about what you do, what it is in how you are. How do we listen? Listening is the most important key to power I believe in the church at this point. We need to be great listeners to the needs of our time, to the movement of the spirit and to each other. Even those folks that want to enforce the law that annoy us deeply, it's tough, but it's called for. Because listening is really what the contemplative life is about. In my experience, it is the deep listening and being silent, still, waiting. And after a while what I found is something sometimes bubbles up and a new idea will come. This happened to me a while ago. I was thinking about where our nation is suffering and what's going on. And what I discovered in meditation in this contemplative listening was that rural America is crying out and no one's paying attention. And a lot of the anger that exists in our land is coming from rural communities. And so what we did at Network because of that is we've gone around the country holding roundtable discussions in rural communities. We've done 15 of them. We'll do 18 by the end of the year. But it's deep listening to realities that are not my own. For me, I think, this is the quality of church leadership that is being called for in this moment. There is power in listening, but it's not about control. It's about welcoming, healing, and communal building. Now, I hope that makes some sense. If not, write a note and we'll make sure that we deal with it. But the thing that we experienced the strongest or the first time that this was most clear was in what I call the unpleasantness when the Vatican censure came out against the leadership conference of women religious. And they said we were a bad influence. Nine of us made the Vatican nervous because we did these radical feminist themes. Well, actually it was because we won on healthcare, but as one of the sisters who signed the letter said, oh, Simone, don't worry about it, what happened in the letter was the girls played the boys and for once the girls won. And the boys are upset. So you can understand that. But in this, when we got called out by the Vatican, it was very clear that the leadership conference that's created by the Vatican couldn't respond. Well, my contemplative prayer became, how do we use this moment for mission? How do we use this moment for mission? And what turned out was, none's under us. Because what came to me was to ask for help. That it was bigger, we needed a bigger imagination than the imagination we had with just the nine of us. We needed a bigger imagination so we invited our secular colleagues to come together and help us. And nothing ever happens in an hour and a half meeting, ever. Except that day, May 14th, 2012, in our office, we had 36 people from various secular organizations together and they said, oh, you've been pushing back against Ryan Budget, you've got to keep doing that. You need to go on the road, you should go on a wrapped bus. Oh yeah, go on a wrapped bus. I was so afraid that a wrapped bus meant wrapped music, and I don't like it. But it was the bus with all that wallpaper on it. And then they said, well, and then you have to lift up the works of Catholic sisters. That's what you have to do. I was like, oh yeah, there's a great idea. Oh, but we can't do it unless we have the money pledged because money had been really tight. And somebody says, I'll send you a budget tomorrow. She did. And then I sent it around, you know, like where are we going to get money? Because money had been really tight. You know in ten days, we had the money pledged. And I thought, oh my dear, we've got to do it. And then it was, how are we going to advertise this? And one of the women who had been at this meeting goes to this dinner hosted by the bishops at the Ritz Carlton to explain to the press how, the bishops were explaining to the press how the Obama administration was persecuting the bishops. Now I think by definition, if you're having a dinner at the Ritz Carlton, you're not terribly persecuted. But don't take my word for it. But what happened was that Sally sat next to Laurie Goodstein, the religion reporter then for the New York Times. And Sally whispers to Laurie, the nuns are going on the road and Laurie gets all excited. And so Sally calls me and says, you've got to call her, you've got to call her. So I call Laurie, who I didn't know then, but I do now. And Laurie says, well, will you give the New York Times an exclusive? Oh, what have you done recently? What do you think? Oh, of course I said yes. But I mean, and it ran on the front page of the New York Times. It was below the fold, I understand that was a lower price. But it was on the front page with a picture. When does the New York Times publish an announcement of people going on a bus door? But what I realized in that experience as I've reflected on it is that there was the power of control of domination of the laws of the universe, that strict approach. And then there's the approach of being open to the mission that we're given that is more in the open contemplative stance and that if you come at it from the contemplative stance, lightning can happen. It was not about us. It was about everything. I mean, it was just all the Holy Spirit for me alive and well and making mischief. But it was because we were open. And here's the other gift that the bishops gave us. The bishops had issued a press release saying that the Ryan budget failed a basic moral test. But they issued that on a Friday afternoon so nobody would see it. Well, so I could say we stand with our bishops. And we handed out the press release to everybody we could find. But it's that not getting distracted by the personal pain, not taking the criticism and pushing back, not taking the hurt and getting even, but rather, I see it more as fighting for a vision, for a mission, for a direction that has very little to do with the effort at control or the effort at fulfilling how they see leadership as being following the rules. You got that? So that the challenge then becomes how are we stepping into a contemplative practice that frees us from the box but also mandates our faithfulness in a much more ambiguous and uncertain way. There are no guarantees in what we do and how we do it. There are days where I would like a box to check and I could say at the end of the day did that, did that, did that. God's happy with me. God, it covered. But it's way more demanding of a mature intellect, of study, of engagement and of deep prayer to be willing to accept our own authority and to share that authority in community together. Because holiness, which the church professes to be about on the good days, really is a communal virtue that we look for together. That's the challenge. So, nuns on the bus become for me the great example of authority without power over. None of the buses, all of us together, I mean, you know, it's silly. The nuns riding around on a bus is a big deal. But what we've added to the bus, since some of you were in Hartford when we had our kickoff in 2013, but what we've now added starting in 2014 is that if you sign up to be on our whatever our harebrained scheme is that year, you get to sign the bus. And so by the end of the road, it's no longer just nuns on the bus, but it's everybody on the bus. Because what we've realized is it's all about community. It's about that intimate knowledge that Jesus is alive and the spirit lives among us and we're together in that. It's the authority of a community that nurtures a prophetic imagination. Some days it'd be a lot easier just to have a checklist, but it doesn't work in the deeper call to be the messenger in this moment. Because I think we could all agree our nation's a bit of a mess and the world's a bit of a mess. And the challenge is we need new ways forward. And for me, it's only a contemplative practice that can get us there. Carl Ronner said that, you know, Carl Ronner, the theologian, big theologian, write him down, Google him, you'll see it. Okay. Carl Ronner said that in the future, Christians will all be contemplatives or mystics, or they won't be at all. Because it's beyond the bounds, it's beyond the edges, it's beyond the tried and true. It's about living a holistic life in a way that's integrated into who we are. So what we learned from the bus is that staying focused on mission, being aware of the needs of others, lifting up the folks who are most stressed and marginalized in our society creates community and a fair amount of joy. Now on the bus, we do morning prayer every morning. We have a contemplative practice. We do 15, 20 minutes of contemplative prayer in about equal time of shared prayer. But on the first bus trip, after about three or four days, we didn't pray because we were up late and we had to get up early and we were tired and I thought we'd do it on the bus and we didn't do it on the bus. And do you know, by the end of that day, we were like, we couldn't stand each other. You know, we were in a small bus doing all this stuff and it was like, wow. So I swore we would never go a day without the morning prayer. And it's made all the difference. It's made all the difference. Now that is our experience on the bus. But at the beginning of October, I went to Rome to lobby, as I say, to lobby the monarchy, to lobby the pope, to give Catholic sisters the vote at the Synod. This was my attempt to enter into the formal power of the church, not the people power of the mission of the spirit. So I found it rather amusing. It was kind of fun. So this group, Voices of Faith, Shantel Goetz, who's from Lichtenstein, has put together this international group and I mean, she's amazing. But anyway, we had sisters from 12 countries, come. And I was from the U.S., Shalini's from India, Madeline from Austria, Mary John from the Philippines, Beatriz from Senegal, Juanita from Bolivia. Who am I leaving out? This whole, did I say Sweden? Oh shoot, I wrote them down because I knew I'd forget them. Australia, Germany, and Poland. I think that's it. And the, I was talking with Shalini from India and she has this beautiful sari on, a gorgeous orange. Of course I was totally jealous. But she said their community in renewal after Vatican II chose to no longer wear the European dress, but to inculturate into their culture and wear as witness the sari. But some of the Indian bishops found this offensive and wouldn't give communion to sisters wearing the sari because it didn't match the box. I'm sorry, sisters look like Europeans in big habits. So that was Shalini's community breaking out. But then there's this Cistercian group of sisters, cloistered sisters from Switzerland who voted to come to Rome. All of them came to Rome and they brought their cloister with them. They thought if they were all there they were bringing the cloister with them so they didn't break cloister. Which is like thinking in a very innovative way about a very structured rule. Contemplative sisters, cloistered sisters, you're all supposed to stay in one place all the time and never leave the walls. Well they decided that the walls could move with them if they all came. Nobody stayed home and they all came so the cloister traveled with them. It was really amazing to see these elderly women who had been in the cloister for 50, 60 years choosing to come to get women's voice into the Senate. Isn't that wonderful? And what we discovered was the key for all of us was that each sister who wanted the sister representatives to have a vote was because the sisters knew the experience of ordinary people in a way that leadership doesn't. And it was that motivation because the sisters have a prayer practice for their near Zurich and apparently there's a real women's of the street as well as refugees in the area and they're a haven for these women so they know that these women's voices need to be heard and that's why they chose to come. And what we discovered together as women, one as women were more inclined to enter into other people's pain but the other piece was that the formal leadership, the folks that are described as authority are busy with the institution and our work is to be busy with the people and it's that different view that made the difference that we thought needed a voice at the Senate. So we weren't successful but it enlarged my view of what Catholic sisters are doing all around the world. That here we are sharing this commitment of bringing the message of the people of God. We were being missionaries to the leadership. We have to do it. We have to do it. But it also then means for me that we can't turn our backs on our leaders here. This is the corollary that I found uncomfortable. It also means that I need to speak of my experience and engage our leadership so that they know the deeper story of service, of the needs of people, of being engaged. The contemplative life means I can leave no one out of my care. I hate that. I have a long list in my head of people that I think are mistakes of God. People that should just be left off the island. But the challenge is the challenge of faith is that we're called to love everyone and that in that love, in a heart that can be broken open, then we need to communicate and care about those in structured leadership that is so out of date and out of touch. They're being expected to do a style of leadership that doesn't fit. And part of the dislocation is that they kind of know it but they don't know what else to do. Therein lies the challenge. So what do we do? Well, I would like to propose that we need to make sure that we exercise the power of engagement and encounter coming out of a contemplative stance and if we meet people anywhere that then we have a responsibility to tell the story, to tell the story to others, to let people know and to let our designated leaders within the church know the story. I avoid bishops at all costs. They haven't been too nice to me. Some of them vote me off their island. But what I've come to realize in pondering this is I should be, if I'm going to follow in the path of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and all of the great women apostles I need to be willing to engage the leadership as well. I currently lobby on Capitol Hill. It's way easier for me to lobby on Capitol Hill than it is to lobby in the Chancery office. That's the office for the diocese of the church. So I've got a stretch. This is the stretch that we need to do. And Pope Francis says that the evidence for 21st century holiness is what we ought to be about. And he has this exhortation on holiness. So I want to share with you the pieces that I think are key to leadership in this way to exercising authority in this way of being inclusive. And Pope Francis says that the very first characteristic of holiness or this exercise of a contemplative style in the 21st century is perseverance and meekness. He says we've got to persevere and continue on this path even though we want to quit. I don't know, I want to quit periodically. It's like, alright, the ring's off and so is the engagement. I'm not going back to that institution. I've had it. But he calls us to perseverance in the telling of the story and engagement. And he says meekness is the capacity to learn from others. And so I think that that idea of persevering and understanding different perspectives is at the heart of actual authority in the church. His second piece he says, which is my favorite. No, I guess it's my second favorite. The second piece he says is that we must come at this with joy and a sense of humor. He says to, well, no, I know this, too often those of us that care about this stuff, have you ever noticed? We get really serious, grim, upset, furious. Do you know what they did this time? And then we watch MSNBC or CNN or Fox News and we get all upset. And then we say to our friends, come join us. Be miserable. It's not a good advertisement. Just saying. Pope Francis says that in the 21st century, if we come from this contemplative stance, joy and a sense of humor is at the heart of our leadership, our authority, our style, our engagement. So I've added to my little examine of conscience periodically is like, what's made me laugh? What's made me smile? Did I make someone else smile? Did I cause a bit of joy to be bubble up someplace serious? Talking about authority in the church, maybe? So joy and a sense of humor is an essential element that goes along with perseverance. The third one he says is that we have to have passion and boldness. And this is where I think the contemplative life is really key so that we can listen deeply but then act, do it, do not be afraid, move out. So I have thought of some heretical things like, well anyway, you don't need to know all the things I thought about. But those of us who have opportune places to lead worship should lead worship. We should have prayer groups where it's possible to be together in intimate spaces. We need to have ways of talking to each other about what really matters to us. And women, oh women, step up and exercise the ministries of healing and caring and hospitality and leading of worship. We need to step into where we're being called without being afraid, I hope. So joy and a sense of humor, passion and boldness. And be not afraid in doing this, be not afraid. The fourth one he says is that we need to do this in community. And this is the critical piece and I think the most counter-cultural piece for the United States is we're all about individualism. In school you've got, what did my grade say? In our lives it's, you know, I've got my house and my car and my kindle and my this and we're not used to being in community. We've got to find ways where we care for everybody, include them in our care, in our worry, in our concern. Be attentive to others around us. Who's in my community? How do I support them? Because if we're trying to do this alone, then that's about power over. That's not about this movement of the spirit up. Perseverance, joy, boldness, in community. And the last one he says, if we're really going to exercise authority, a power that is beyond us, is to live in constant prayer. Now some people want you to think that that's in the chapel. It's not. Half the time my prayer is just help. I'll never forget being outside Paul Ryan's office the first time I was going to lobby him and I was like really nervous. And all I could think was help. And if you trust, if we live in faith, if we live the contemplative truth that the spirit is alive and with us, we're not left orphaned. Words are given and the needed response is there. That's my experience over and over. And you'd think I'd learn, but every day, every now and then, I get nervous and forget. It's called the human condition. But that leads me to the last piece where I think that authority in the church is really about all of us coming to recognize the risen Christ among us. The spirit of God is alive among us and in the struggle between hierarchy and lowerarchy and people engaged in creating small based communities and trying to love or people leaving the church but coming back because we miss it or finding other ways of community and other ways of prayer. That the whole journey is about learning to live in the spirit of God. And if we live in the spirit of God, love will be the key, not domination. Joy will be at the heart of it, not misery and division. And we will be able to listen to difference with the deepest reverence because we will know that this varied reality, divine reality has made us all. And if we're all made by the divine, how could any of us be a mistake? Isn't that what we hunger for? To know we belong. And so authority in the church in the 21st century, we need to break our minds open and know it's the contemplative truth that we are one body, one in Christ. People have different parts to play, but the fact is we're all united and we need to come to that discovery. So my friends, it is the deepest amazing honor to have the Vatican say we were wrong and to have the discovery of the people affirming we were right and to know that we created community and changed society and cared for people that were left out. So who had the authority? Who had the power? That was the Holy Spirit. Blame her. She's all about it. Thank you very much. Now we have time for questions and comments, and there's a couple of microphones going around. So if you have something you'd like to ask, raise your hand and take the mic. Oh, and you guys are leaving at the best part. Just telling you. Extra credit for students with a question. One of you. Somebody. Oh, I won't shame you going in. Hi, Sister Simone. Thank you so much. That was incredible. I think my question, which is not completely formatted is, is that many Catholics believe this narrative that we all belong, that we are a universal church. And yet people leave because that's not what they feel. And then that is further bolstered by loud voices that say, well, you don't really belong anyway because you're not ticking the boxes. How do we overcome that if we adopted contemplative stance in a non-contemplative world? Well, I know if we don't adopt a contemplative stance, we're not going to fix it. So also the other piece is in the contemplative letting go, it's not about me to fix everything. It's about me to be faithful to the wee small voice or the communal movement and to open my heart in deeper and bigger love. I mean, that's my experience. So folks that leave, leave because of pain. So how do we connect with them in the pain? How can we be a receptacle for the pain? It doesn't mean they'll come back, but how do we hold them? Or where do you find, I mean, I have a good friend who's just had it left, has finally found a home in the Unitarian community at this point. And I'm so glad she finally found a home because her pain was so deep that she couldn't, her anger was intense. Her pain led to anger and it was very divisive and destructive of her. And unless you find a way, and then I keep thinking, well, maybe she'll come back. She misses sacraments, she misses sacraments. So, but if we stay loving enough, could we welcome folks home? Or the other part is that sometimes parishes are horrible. I understand that there's some really good ones around here. And so you can go to a good parish. That's great. But if that's not available, then what do we do as alternatives? I sometimes feel responsible for that. We have, you know, have a Sunday gathering at my place. I'm not home all the time. That's my problem. But what do we do as the alternative? It doesn't mean if we leave that we don't need anything. But I think we have to get more creative about where we're being called, stepping into the call, into the opportunity. One of the things I've discovered is that I've become kind of a pastor for all my secular colleagues who are advocates in D.C. They never admit to being religious. Oh my God, that's like a rash. But the being, but I've listened to a lot of stories. We did a blessing of our new office. We had the secular folks there. We had a couple of people from EWTN, the very conservative. The EWTN folks left when they found out a priest wasn't blessing it. We were all going to bless it. But what happened was that we did a blessing and we did this whole little ritual thing and it was really nice and all my secular friends were like, and then I asked everybody as they left the office to take a little bit of the water that we'd blessed and just bless the door that are going out and are coming in might be blessed. And so this is one guy who's just super secular, super tough, you know, I'm an atheist. Come on, it'll be great. Well, I just happened to see him when he was leaving and he put his hand in the water and he put it on the door. And it was like a caress. It was like a physical prayer that bubbled up. And it made me realize that in my relationships, not in any formal way, but it becomes like a ministry in and of itself and that I don't see it, but it's experienced. So that I think we just have to be worried about being in relationship and letting our hearts be open and listening and acting on what we hear. Said she authoritatively as if I knew anything. It's my idea. This could be a heresy. You can all note possible heresy. I don't think it's heresy. It's what Jesus said. So I think it's okay. Somebody else, somebody asked me a political question. Oh, back over there. Oh, good. So how long will it take for the bishops and priests to learn the new math? It's going to take a really long time to learn new math. But the thing that Pope Francis is trying so hard to model it, and while he is a 80-some-year-old Argentinian guy and kind of macho and limited in his view of women, he's learning, he's trying. But what he's really trying to do, he talked about enjoy the gospel, is make peace. And he's got these four characteristics for peace-building. But the first one is time is more important than space. And what he says is if you're just trying to defend your turf, you're never going to get any place. But what you have to do is take the time for engagement. And so while I want it changed yesterday or the day before, I have to relax and know that the spirit works in this very diverse community to move us all forward in some fashion, or move us around. I don't even know if it's forward. The engagement takes time. And I think if we maybe, I don't know if it's my job to do this, but maybe if we engage our designated leaders with a bit more compassion and invite them to a more contemplative stance, they may be able to break open sooner. Maybe they're just like little eggs, you know, they've got a nourishment with a little heat, a little warmth, chicken soup, I don't know, but to let them hatch. Because it's got to be awful. It's got to be awful. The only trouble is they think they're right. So it's a little hard to... But they must have doubt someplace. I'm a big proponent of holy doubt. I think you can't have faith unless you have... You can't have holy faith unless you have holy doubt. Because otherwise you've got certitude. So there's heresy for you. It's also truth. Somebody asked me real... Yes? Oh, wait, wait, wait. We've got to get you a microphone. This isn't a question, but it just happens to be an experience of something that happened to me yesterday. I had lunch with two old friends, friends of long, deep friendship, and they've both left the church. And they sat around our lunch table talking about how painful it was to leave and how people were mad at them. They were angry at them for leaving. And, you know, what you said about listening, I just sat there and listened and listened, and they had that space to really talk about that experience. And it was really sacred. I think it's what you're talking about. It was that deep listening. Absolutely, absolutely. And it's when you really receive the other that any healing can begin. And I wasn't trying to bring them back. No, no. But healing can happen, but it doesn't mean they're going to end up bad. Sister, thank you. I must say that the communal troublemaker really struck me very nicely. It made me think of Thomas Merton. And I think you mentioned the whole contemplative thing that we need is to integrate. Right now we're in a time in history where it's about extremism, it's about tribal. And so the notion of integrating is the medicine to that. Your point, your point. You mentioned a woman, Ilya, that I had heard. D-I-L-E-O, Ilya Dileo. And this book that I was referring to is Making All Things New. Okay, Making All Things New. Is there someone else in Dileo and anyone else that you tend to read now or you think is a thinker that we ought to pay attention to? Oh, that's my most recent one. Let me think, who else? I read all the Pope Francis stuff, quite frankly. Who else do I read? Oh, Joan Chiddister's New Thing on Courage. That's the one I'm reading now. There's a reading one on... Oh, who's the mystic? Juliet of Norwich. There's a commentary on her writing. They all sit on my coffee table in my apartment. I'm trying to think what's there. But those are the ones I'm currently engaged in. Thank you. I would second Joan Chiddister. Yes. She's fantastic. But I'm not sure if right now I'm taking a break from... And I have been, as you say, thinking about it. And I'm not sure if people who've left the church have left the church or whether they've grown beyond the hierarchy. And I don't think I've left the church, but I'm not filling out the boxes. Yeah. I totally get that. We had an experience at Network where we do these political ministry days every quarter where we try to root ourselves in why we do this political work. And one of the guys at Network has been feeling really bad because he doesn't go to math because it's a terrible experience for him. But he misses it, sort of. And so then he feels like he has to say he's elapsed Catholic. But that doesn't feel right either. Well, on our political ministry days we're doing the Catholic social teaching of the church. He realized that he practices Catholic every day of the week at work doing Catholic social teaching. And so he felt so freed up to know he was being faithful to Catholic social teaching. It's the context of the hierarchical little precious piece that doesn't fit his spiritual place. It's changed. And so who left whom? I have no idea. But he discovered he was faithful. And that, to me, was the biggest joy that the censure, the way he was beating himself up didn't need to be there because he is faithful. But it didn't fill the box. We've got to come to know this from that spiritual inside-out place because otherwise we're going to have a community. Challenge, challenge. Oh. Yes. Hi. Hi. I'd like to stop talking about the church if we can for a second. Oh, please God, thank you. And I'd like to talk about your work on the bus. Yes. With your sisters. For the few students we have left in the room in this place of great privilege and higher learning I think your time on the bus was about listening about bringing healing to our nation. So what could we tell them? What could we tell them about what you learned on the bus and what we need to do to listen to those who you're trying to bring a voice to in their position of great privilege in this world? I think the key is to know our privilege and to use it for others. So it is the question becomes then where can I be of service? Where is my community? How do I step in to service, to being related? And what happens in that relationship then is that we're saved because if I think it's just about me and I'm isolated, alone, depressed, spiraling down. But in service where I'm needed by somebody don't we flourish in the face of responding to need, to somebody else's need and we become self-forgetful. And in that process it's the ultimate experience of Jesus. Jesus' experience was becoming self-forgetful because he healed a guy on the Sabbath and he was like, oh, the guy was needed to be healed. What about the law? That's stupid. We've got to take care of this guy. And if we respond that way with the heart that's when community happens and that's meaning. And one of the things that's really scary about higher ed that I just heard when I was at Xavier is the level of depression, the anxiety, the tension, the pressure, you know, all that stuff all about individualism. Me, I have to do this and do it right in my family and blah, blah, blah, blah. No. It's about how are we of service? How are we connected? How can I use my gifts for the sake of others? Simple, hard to do. So, but it's critical. We're going to lose our future if we don't have young people engaged in better service for others. And it could be in a variety of places. I mean, wherever you are, there are people to talk to. On the airplane today, I was talking to somebody sitting next to me on the way to a funeral. It was really kind of hard, kind of sad. Ride a bus, go take a walk. There are people every place. Holy curiosity. Have holy curiosity. I talk to people in the grocery store. What do you care about? What are you worried about? I'm worried about wages. Are you worried about wages? What do you think? Be bold. Be a relationship. I have two directly political questions for you. Oh, fantastic, Paul. Thank you. Thank you. You can answer one or both. All right. So the first one, two weeks from today, we're going to have a little workshop here. And the title of the workshop is Which Political Party Should Catholics Support? So the question for you is, what do you hope they'll say? And the second question is, what's wrong with the Democrats that they don't find ways to have more alliances with more progressive Christians? More progressive, yeah, yeah. Amen. Amen. Amen. They're nuts. The challenge is, the challenge for the Democratic Party... Okay. Here's the deal. Okay, my book's back there. That would be really nice. I have a new book coming out where I'm trying to talk about some of this stuff. I'm trying to talk about the contemplative, the community that nurtures prophetic imagination and then applying it to social situations. And in it, I think one of our big troubles is that in the 70s and 80s, after the death of Dr. King, and the rise of the anti-abortion pressure, those of us, no, I'll disown it. I didn't, and I think a lot of others didn't, I didn't speak up as a person of faith. I didn't want to be identified with the far right. And so I went silent as a person of faith, but I spoke about what mattered to me. The being silent about the person of faith piece, I didn't want to be identified with the far right, then seated the whole ground of faith to the far right and shut down the Democrats having to deal with faith people. So they don't know how to do it, and we don't know how to talk about it. I'm trying to be better at this. And so the challenge that Dems have is trying to catch up and see it as a benefit. They like me a lot, but if I get too faithy, I make them really nervous, you know, because they just don't know what to do with it. But the thing is, was partly my fault that I was silent and seated that ground. So what I'm trying to do, we'll see what kind of little explosions happen with this, is talk about the beloved issue of abortion in a broader way than just criminalization. Because they're... And I'm following Pope Francis. Do you guys know what Pope Francis says about this? So cool, so cool. We gotta tap to it on our eyeballs. Okay, Pope Francis says, in his exhortation on holiness, and let's see, our defense of the unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm, passionate, for its stake is the dignity of human life, which is always sacred. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned, and the underprivileged, the vulnerable in firm, and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection. We cannot uphold an ideal of holiness that would ignore injustice in a world where some revel spend with abandon only for the latest consumer goods, even as others look on from afar, living with their entire lives in abject poverty. That's a big tattoo, but hey, man, I'm willing to have it. But the challenge is, the challenge in the political realm is that we haven't been... I haven't been bold and direct. So, there it is. Yeah? Yes? I'm not so sure that it was us conceding to the conservative movement when they started taking over our church, my church. You know, when you read the paper and find out some bishop refuses to give Joe Biden communion... It wasn't a bishop, it was a priest. A priest. But it hits the news. When I, in New Haven, couldn't have Rosa Dolora come to speak in my Catholic school that I'm teaching sixth grade social justice issues because she was a hot topic and the Catholic church wouldn't let me bring her into my school. I don't think I was conceding anything. I was trying. No, no, no. I'm talking about the Democratic Party. I'm talking about the Democratic Party. But I think it was the power of the authority of the church, that conservative movement. They are louder and stronger. Thank goodness I have a good parish so I have one of those wonderful welcoming spiritual places that I can go. But generally speaking, it's been co-opted by a very conservative... But within the Democratic Party, they're not the people in the Democratic Party. In the Democratic Party, there's a story about Tip O'Neill was campaigning with Jack Kennedy and he had two... he had little time, the story goes, Kennedy had little time and could either go to the bishops or go to the nuns. And Tip is encouraged... It was Speaker of the House at the time was encouraging Kennedy to go to the bishops because of the power issue. And Kennedy says, no, most of them are Republicans. I'm going to the nuns. They're the Democrats. And so the split in terms of leadership has been that way for a long period of time. The piece that's different is the Democrats not being used to people of faith speaking up in Democratic circles. And that's the piece that I regret that I didn't do for a while. I'll do it now. But to me, that's a big piece of it. Paul, what was the other piece? That was why the Democrats don't get on with it. Oh, what should they say? Who to vote for? When we have our session here two weeks from now, what political parties should Catholics support? What do you hope they'll say? It's by candidate by candidate. And you've got to look and see what the candidates are for. But what we're going to do, if I keep saying this and we absolutely have to do it, is to create a checklist with all those things in Pope Francis' list and then at the bottom say, so who's pro-life? You're opposed to abortion, but you want to cut food stamps, cut Medicaid, you want to, you know, not have housing vouchers and you want to do all these other things? Hello? So that's what we're going to try to do. But you have to look at the candidates. They're occasionally, even I think there's occasionally a good Republican. I'm more Democrat than I am a Republican. But it's, they're rare, but they're occasional. Lisa Murkowski from Alaska is a fine, fine Republican senator. She does really important work until Collins voted for Kavanaugh, I thought she was too. That was, that was, felt like betrayal. Um... Uh... Um... It was, I know some stuff about the vote, so it had nothing to do with Catholic. Had everything to do with politics. Um... Anyway, can I, are you going to end this? I am. Can I end with a poem? Yes, you can. Okay, let me borrow my book, because it's hard to read on my phone. Thank you. Um, the, I wanted to end with a poem because it feels like these are the times both within the church and in our beloved nation. And, uh, this poem was written in 2002 when we went to Iraq, that's a whole other story, but we came back, we drove from Baghdad back to Amman, Jordan, and we got caught in a sandstorm. And it was terrifying. It's like a whiteout, only it stinks and you sneeze. And it hits the window and it can crack the window. And our driver handed Rick who was sitting in the front seat a roll of scotch tape and said, if a crack starts to form in the windshield, just put tape on it. Because he had had the experience of windshield imploding. I have no idea if the tape would have worked, but we were all riveted on the, you know, on the windshield. And then, um, it got dark and light and dark and light and I thought it would never be over and it got in and you were sneezing and oh, it's just terrible. And then finally we hit like a 10 inch wide band of rain. And suddenly we were out into desert clear to look back and see the sandstorm. Later I learned that wild camels go towards the trailing edge of sandstorms because they know they'll find water there and in the rain. But anyway, but that's in case you're ever with a camel looking for rain. But this is a poem that was given as a result of that experience and I think it fits where we are now. It fit then with the war coming but it even, it fits even more now and it's called Compassion's Path. We walk a sandstorm of impotence, isolated dread, the demons of our day. We walk a sandstorm of half trues, lies of ochre, beige, tan, sepia confusion, pelted, buffeted by winds of war. We walk a sandstorm of drifting elusive truth, wandering ways and blind following. We walk a sandstorm eroded by demanding doubt, overwhelmed by the horror swirling round, invading lungs and lives. We walk a sandstorm of promised grief, aching temptation to hunker down, hide until a more propitious time. But in this time of alluring weakness, in this time of fearful groaning, cold, blind logic, anger rising, remember the clear eye to anchor of our resolve, remember the eyes of Mayata, Sarah, Rita, Asan, Abdullah, Makbullah and many more. We may be blinded in the outward journey but remember this inner core. May the eyes of family, terrors of family, set fire to our impotence, stoke our resolve, melt the cold stone of our hearts to yield, to tears. For like rain, tears shed, settle sandstorms. Like rain, tears shed, clear the air. Like rain, tears shed, reveal the path. So let us weep, let us embody healing tears, let us be copious tears to settle our country's storm. Thank you. Thank you, Sister Simone. Thank you all for being here. If you have a book bought or you want to have it signed, I'm sure she'll sit at the back table and sign it for you. This time next week, 7.30, but in the chapel, not here. We'll be hearing from Father Greg Boyle, another great speaker you do not want to miss. Yeah, he is good. Thank you all for being here and thanks one more time to Simone.