 Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us at the Marquette University 2021 Mission Week Ignition Peacemaking Lecture. My name is Pat Kennelly and I have the pleasure of serving as the Director of the Center for Peacemaking. I appreciate you making the time to spend part of your evening with us. Tonight's program is sponsored by the Marquette University Center for Peacemaking, the Office of Mission and Ministry and the Peace Studies major. As this year's Mission Week theme is open to hope, we're excited to have Dr. Maria Teresa M.T. Devella with us this evening to share how we can be bearers of hope for one another. Dr. Devella is a visiting associate professor of practice at Merrimack College who focuses on racial and migrant justice, public theology and the ethics of the use of force. With Agnes Brazil, she is co-editor of Living Without, and I should note the Without is in parentheses, border theological ethics and peoples on the move. She is a regular contributor to theology in La Plaza which is published in the National Catholic Reporter. It's the first Latina column in a National Catholic newspaper. Her work also appears in syndicate and political theology today. Since 2016, she has been a consultant for the Science for Seminars program, an initiative to enable seminaries to include sciences in the training of pastors and faith leaders. After Dr. Devella's lecture, my colleague, Prisa Shirazi will moderate a panel. So please submit your questions using the Q&A feature at the bottom of your screen or in the chat. Please join me in welcoming our distinguished speaker. Well, good evening. Actually, I was watching all of the names and all the people who are gathered here today. So I just wanted to take a pause and first say thank you to Marquette, thank you to the Center for Peacemaking and Patrick Kennelly and especially Prisa Shirazi for all the technology help and all the logistical help and also all the thinking that went into what topic would be best for Eurignation Mission Week. I also wanna say hello to my Merrimack College friends, students, colleagues, some of them who have joined us tonight as well if they were able to pay attention to the time difference between Milwaukee and Boston, which I mentioned a few times, but I think that some of my students are here as well. So welcome to them and especially welcome to greater Milwaukee market friends and family from the area that alumni and area people that joined in these conversations. It's good to have a mixed audience and a lot of people. So today I'm going to speak with you about the possibility of being bearers of hope in a broken world, bearers of hope and counters of love and justice in a broken world. Next slide, please. I wanna speak to you about how I came up with this topic and why I've been studying this material for so long. A few years back, I was at the Festival of Homiletics in Washington, DC, and I was speaking about culture wars and polarization. It's a topic that has dedicated a lot of time and energy into researching. And I spoke about preaching. I spoke about the role of the church and at the very, very end in the conversation I had somewhat their attention. There was a room full of around 200, 300 people. I brought up the question in terms of the culture wars and polarization, when things are so disparate, when we are so polarized, how do we love the bearer of an unlovable idea? And that seemed to be the one topic, even though I mentioned it at the very, very end, that got the most attention and people were asking lots of questions. They became much more engaged. That notion that even in a polarized world, we are called to love other folks who are not like us. I'm particularly, I'm put to quote here on what grounds me in this kind of work. Why do I feel called to sort of live in some sort of middle in these very polarized discussions of the culture wars, especially around election time, presidential elections and other times like that? First quote is my favorite quote by St. Augustine and it's a quote on friendship. And so he says, friendship should not be founded by narrow limits, for it embraces all to whom we owe affection and love. It extends even to enemies for whom we are also commanded to pray. Thus, there is no one in the human race to whom we do not owe love, even if not out of mutual love, at least on account of our sharing in a common nature. And a quote from Augustine, we must love them both. Those whose opinions we share, excuse me, St. Aquinas attributed to the wrong person, we must love them both. Those whose opinion we share and those whose opinions we reject for both have labored in the search for truth and both have helped us in the finding of it. And these, really these two quotes and this sentiment of how to love all, even those with whom we profoundly disagree, even those for whom that disagreement is actually the source of violence where we feel that their position might be doing violence to us, violence to the common good. I am called to think about how to love them. I am called to think about and act on a common shared love. So today my focus on the culture wars is coming from that experience and that focus on my studies, but also witnessing the increasing political polarization in this country driven by Christians in the public square. There's a particular role that Christians have played in this constant culture wars in the deepening of the polarization, political, ideological polarization in the nation. And I find that unique. If Christians are called to love, such as these quotes and others that we'll talk about later, if Christians are called to love one another, why in this particular time, and I'm thinking of the last 40, 50 years, why is it that we have fed and fuel these kinds of polarizations? And then second, I wanna try to identify the ways that polarization driven by the culture wars makes people of faith define themselves solely by the ideological or political extremes to which they subscribe. So increasingly, and this has been proven in both psychology, but also sociology, increasingly Christians in the public square are presenting themselves as being in one particular position or the other. It's not just one thing among the things that make up our identity, it has kind of become our sole identity. And we're gonna talk about the harm that that does to our ability to love the other. Such a flat and stifled public identity becomes an obstacle to be bearers of hope in the world as we give priority to a warlike or battle mentality and activity rather than living into the best of the Christian tradition, key principles of Catholic social teaching, such as human dignity, solidarity and the option for the poor. Today's proposal is simple and twofold. The polarization among Christians of the past 40 and especially the last 10 years or so is not who we are meant to be as people of the gospel in the world. First, I'm gonna offer the principle of subsidiarity from Catholic social teaching. Differently understood or a renewed understanding of that principle as potentially breaking us out of a public role or identity as culture warriors, mainly seeing our roles in the world as being against certain issues or practices by having us work together as communities to immediately to address immediate needs and challenges that impact the common good locally. The activity of subsidiarity can defy divisions driven by political ideologies and polarization. Perhaps we can think of subsidiarity as a practice or virtue that attends to a central dimension of the person, our social nature and the human need to organize, to make friends and to build diverse structures of social bonding that are beyond the family unit and kin and doesn't necessarily acknowledge or depend on larger political structures where polarization and battleground attitudes might play out. The second piece or solution or avenue that I wanna explore with you is Pope Francis' emphasis on encounter as a mode of being in the world guided by a vision of God as always coming out to our encounter in the world. This offers us a way of moving forward from polarization into relationships of true friendship. In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis' most recent encyclical, he promotes encounter and building a friendship centered on the parable of the good Samaritan. At the heart of the parable is an encounter with the suffering of another that moves the passing Samaritan to focus his attention on assisting the victim on the side of the road rather than walking by. By attending to the victim's suffering, this Samaritan becomes the bearer of hope and friendship in that story. There is no focus on identities, no checking of ideologies, political parties or positions on key social and cultural issues. The only label Jesus uses are to note that in fact, according to the culture wars of Jesus' time, others ought to have paid attention to the victim on the side of the road, but it was this Samaritan who broke through these polarizations to act out of his and the victim's humanity. By doing this, Pope Francis grounds our encounter with another, the question of who is my neighbor on human suffering. So we'll deal with that piece toward the end of my talk. Next slide, please. So what I'm gonna do, hopefully briefly and maybe a little too quick is give us some grounding because we didn't arrive in this system of polarization. We didn't arrive at this place in the culture wars out of nowhere. There's a long history of how we're here and I've studied this previously, so you're just getting snippets of what I've looked at in the past. But we can point to around 50 years of culture wars and even before, right? So recovering from World War II, there was a sense that in order to recover from the war, America needed to imagine a return to a homogeneous nation and that idea was promoted even though it never existed, but that sense that the nation, especially if it was gonna fight off communism, which was sort of the enemy that remained out of World War II, that it was going to regain this power as a homogeneous society, Christian white society. In the 1960s, we see a rise of different struggles for recognition and rights with the civil rights movement, with the rights of women, with the rights of Native Americans, migrants and Chicano movement. And these were labeled as identity politics. These were labeled as politics that presented sort of a rupture or a division to that homogeneous idea of what America was. But ultimately the term culture wars and culture warrior is something that emerges in 1992 at the Republican National Convention when Pat Buchanan in one of his many, in one of his speeches at the Republican National Convention on that election cycle spoke about being in a war for the soul of the nation. So that language of a battle, that language that these differences in identities and these differences that were percolating and emerging. And for some people felt frightening because it's not the idea they had of the United States that this was an actual war. And what happens is that then the language is important. The culture wars then are not just about being passionate on particular issues such as abortion, immigration, same sex marriage or healthcare for all, but rather about a group's position in the public square that becomes and is decidedly antagonistic to or even aggressive against other's positions. So that metaphor of culture war actually becomes war-like. Next slide please. So some of the consequences of this and the ways that this has been studied is by this notion of in-group out-group dynamics and in-group out-group dynamics, and I am gonna go a little fast here, what it's trying to determine is that you so shape the identity with the in-group and that in-group position that the out-group becomes de-legitimized, that is your group or one's group, the in-group, sees their own position as sacred perhaps as the way God intends things to be, as patriotic, as what needs to be in order for the nation to thrive, while the out-group, that other position, that other side of the ideological or political polarization is seen as not valid outside of God's will or against God's will for a nation or anti-patriotic. And this, I'm not making a claim of who's on what side of the current polarizations in the US, I'm actually just explaining what those in-group out-group dynamics are. And if you examine social media a lot and news media a lot, you'll notice that it's on all sides, right? This kind of dynamic is on all sides. And what happens in the end is that by de-legitimizing the other side, making them not legitimate, not rational, we begin to disenfranchise them. We begin to say, well, these other groups that have this other position ought not to have a say in politics. They ought not to be elected. They ought not to have the right to vote. That's some of the way the conversation goes. Next slide, please. Now, a particular scholar whose work I've examined on this is Aaron Cassacy. He wrote on the culture wars before that has focused on other work on different cultural polarizations since. List up the notion of anger, the way that ideological and political polarization, especially that which is attached to the culture wars, gets imbued with a sense of anger, the emotion of anger toward or against that ideological or other. And so you have the quote in front of you. Anger is an emotional reaction thought to characterize nearly all intergroup conflicts, whether the conflicts are realistic or symbolic in nature. The experience of anger or in intergroup context has been linked to mobilization, aggression and intolerance in intergroup settings. Next slide. So what ends up happening is that the higher the level of in-group, out-group dynamic of the higher the level of polarization, the higher it, the more likely it is to erode or corrode democracy and democratic processes. Because again, the goal then becomes to shut down the other's position or even to shut them down as participants in the public. And therefore, you will see democratic institutions and processes erode from this phenomenon. Next slide, please. One thing that I wanna pause and I know I went very fast through all these different observations about these in-group, out-group dynamics. I wanna pause here and mention the attacks on the Capitol on January 6th. Very clearly, and I hope, I mean, I see it because I've been studying this for a long time. But I hope that what I've mentioned helps you to frame those attacks on a particular set of dynamics that were already happening in the United States for a long time. Some people will mention racial justice, racism and white supremacy as part of what was happening in the January 6th attacks. Those actually come into play in the culture wars. They come into play in ideological studies of ideological polarizations as well. I think it would be just unjust for us not to take a pause and think about when these kinds of polarizations on one side or another lead to actual violence because that is actually embedded in these dynamics. Remember that point about anger and delegitimizing the other, making them, seeing them as less rational, seeing them as outside of the norm, outside of the purview of what ought to be part of a nation's common good. So in light of the current levels of polarization and intergroup conflict, we have to ask whether we can find, where can we find a place for true encounter with others? Especially if we're going to look at and take seriously not just Pope Francis's invitation for a culture of encounter, as we see here in this quote, but also our own identities for those of us who claim to be Christian, that we are grounded in love of neighbor, that we are grounded in love of another, that we are grounded in encounter. So how do we do that in such a broken culture? Simple calls for unity with no real project for engaging the other are incapable of plumbing the deaths of human dignity, the complexity of how to build a life together in diverse contexts in ways that promote justice. When there are profound polarizations and factions, these calls do not encourage the encounter necessary for promoting justice and the common good. And I know that after the elections in November, after the attacks on January 6th, there was this sense of call to unity, call to unity. And it's a very valid goal, but it's simply not enough, especially when you consider the kinds of emotions and deep and profound commitment that people make to these positions. Point number three, polarization and ideological division, sometimes violence, factionalism might make our position expedient, but it forecloses the possibility of encounter. In these cases, the call to unity might make the situation tolerable, but it does not promote encounter. In fact, it thrives on keeping a certain kind of distance from the other. So calls to unity are necessary, but they do not build the friendship that we are talking about in order for there to be true acts of justice and to be true bearers of hope to one another. Only encounter, subsidiarity and friendship that leads to solidarity prompt mercy and more importantly, instantiate practices that at their core tether our humanity to that of others. Next slide. So what does Pope Francis mean by friendship? And especially in this document of Fratelli Tuzzi, we have a few quotes here from the document. Obviously the document is full of this notion of friendship as a political virtue, as a social virtue, as a cultural virtue and that notion of humanity being brothers and sisters to all. So not the friendship, but this friendship that calls the other a brother or a sister. Pope Francis says, as couples or friends, we find that our hearts expand as we step out of ourselves and embrace others, closed groups and self-absorbed couples that define themselves in opposition to others. So again, that's at the core of the culture words, right? To define yourself in opposition to something. Tend to be expressions of selfishness and mere self-preservation. Next quote, a love capable of transcending borders is the basis of what in every city and country can be called social friendship. Genuine social friendship within a society makes true universal openness possible. Each of us can learn something from others. No one is useless and no one is expendable at the key of Pope Francis' reading on friendship. To be honest with our own humanity, we must recognize with the essential fact that we are made to be in relationship with others. So we must come to terms with that fact. The kind of polarization we have been witnessing and have been participants of in the past few years cannot be accepted as the natural condition of the human family. To be clear, many of the differences and ruptures that we experienced are real and profound differences in visions of what is best for the common good of the nation. However, these have been in many ways exacerbated by social media algorithms and online ideological echo chambers that don't promote the type of encounter that Pope Francis is talking about here. Next slide. So let me suggest what would be possibilities for sort of breaking out of that and maybe we can then afterwards have a conversation about whether you think this is a good idea or not. But I'm gonna tell you how I come up with the possibility of subsidiarity as being one social and political virtue that can overcome polarization. A recent effort to develop a community farm in the town where my college is located prompted me to think about subsidiarity as the principle or social and political virtue that might offer a public space for encounter that is not corroded by political brokenness and polarization. After a number of meetings in the planning stages, I described the project to my husband. We both thought the same thing. There must be folks from all sorts of political affiliations and factions in these conversations that include other faculty from my institution, local town officials, volunteers in local community projects and community leaders from neighboring cities and towns. But so far and even in the midst of a very tumultuous election cycle, none of that have surfaced in our conversation. Values at the heart of what we're trying to do is care for the land and care for creation, teaching both college students and area elementary and high school students, especially those living in more urban settings nearby about farming and sustainability, growing food, addressing food insecurity and providing opportunities for many sectors of the community to simply be outdoors and be more active. It occurred to me that this little project might be making friends of people who in the larger scale of the US political landscape might not see eye to eye or would be on different sides of a protest or political action, let alone in the voting booth. This led me to look at the principle of subsidiarity differently. Subsidiarity is a frequently misunderstood principle of Catholic social teaching. To lay it out in its classical definition, subsidiarity means that decisions should be made at the lowest level possible and the highest level necessary. It is usually a principle of Catholic social teaching that is paired with the proper role of government. Because it's essentially talking about which level of government is needed in order to provide for the common good of the people. For many, this has stood for a promotion of small government in Catholic social teaching. The belief that what is best for the common good is to reduce the size of government in the interest of letting folk at the local level make the decisions that will impact their daily lives and the destiny of their communities. The principle of subsidiarity recognizes the different levels of political action and government intervention in the life of a state or nation. But this is only partly the case and it's not really true that what it does is advocate for small government. Subsidiarity is rather an anthropological virtue. That is, it tells us more about people than it does about government. By recognizing that there are different levels of social organization and government oversight that are needed to build and sustain the common good, subsidiarity is also recognizing that the person in the community have many levels and forms of social and economic involvement. Some of which have to do more with the immediate needs of our communities rather than the ideological battles being waged at the national level. A recent article in The Scientific American speaks to the fact that the current phenomenon of polarization is unique in that partisan politics, quote, partisan politics in the US is increasingly becoming a matter of us versus them. While the issues themselves haven't necessarily become more polarized, our identities have become more tied to our politics. In other words, current levels of polarization have seeped into the consciousness of who we are in our communities and who we are to each other, leaving little room for encountering others with whom we disagree. The principle of subsidiarity, however, demands that we dislodge from the national arguments important as they are, and I don't want to minimize what's at stake in some of these polar ideologies and become grounded in multiple levels of community action. A new or perhaps renewed emphasis on subsidiarity in Catholic social teaching demands that we see ourselves as not just Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, Bernie Crats or Trumpists to use some of the more divisive terms from recent years. A renewed understanding of subsidiarity asks that each and every one of us examine the levels in which we are called to be actors in society and reach out and enter into relationships with those who are also concerned with key questions of the common good around us, food security, a better environment, access to education, childcare for working families of all kinds, addressing needs brought on by the pandemic such as online or virtual school, loss of jobs and homes, and social isolation for children and the elderly. Could it be that in seeing our roles in society in this more modest and immediate way guided by the principle of subsidiarity, we might begin to disengage from our ideological polarities and encounter each other as human beings, friends even, working toward the common good? Inevitably, however, and just as important is the fact that we might legitimately feel that the other's position with respect to culture wars issues or current forms of polarization may lead them to vote or side with forces and powers in the national and international sphere that represent real harm to the national and the global common good and particular groups of people and the natural environment within. I am not asking us to bracket this very important call of justice. This is why all the principles of Catholic social teaching must function in concert as they represent an interconnected web of values directing how best to live life in community. Human dignity, care for the environment, the preferential option for the poor, solidarity, the dignity of labor and workers, and workers' rights, care for the family, peacemaking, participation, and yes, subsidiarity. All of these together work to promote the fullness of every human person, a fullness woefully hampered when we yield our identity and our public role to profound forms of polarization. However, subsidiarity, when reconsidered, not as advocating small government, which it never really has, but as respect for the different levels of social and political action that constitute life in community, invites us to dismantle or overlook for a moment or proactive kinds of culture wars and polarization for the sake of common action. Most importantly, in a broken world, it can be, it can serve to facilitate building friendships across ideological lines for the sake of addressing urgent needs and bearing hope to others. Next slide. This brings me to my final set of comments on building friendships that bear hope and work towards building justice in a broken world. In his most recent encyclical, Padelli Tutti Pope Francis speaks about the difficulties of establishing a culture of encounter in a highly polarized world. To counter this and to offer a place to start that will take us beyond business as usual in a post-pandemic world, he emphasizes the concept of our shared humanity through the notion of friendship. Next slide. But the model of friendship he offers is different than merely sharing in a common interest. He begins his reflection on the experience of the Good Samaritan, a story about encounter, a connection, and friendship that begins with an encounter with the suffering of another. I found myself asking after the elections in November, where we could go and the level of, seeing the level of polarization around this election cycle. At that time, I proposed that perhaps that suffering is in fact, the one place where I recognize another's humanity. In the loss of a child, perhaps, or losing one's home to a fire or foreclosure, losing a job, or recovering from addiction, for example. Suffering is the experience that binds our realities in a profoundly honest way. And I have to say, I hold on to this understanding even after the events of January 6th. Building common projects for the common good across ideological lines, or that put aside political polarization in order to accomplish something together is an important first step to becoming bearers of hope for others. But engaging in these projects to build friendship must give way to understanding the suffering of others, perceived as radically different from us, precisely because they are beloved by God, a notion deeply embedded in the parable of the good Samaritan. And these snippets that you see in front of you besides the image of the good Samaritan is from a National Catholic Reporter piece that I wrote called, I'll Meet You at the Cross, a Post-Election Theology of Encounter. So I wanna finish with a quote from that Scientific American article I mentioned earlier. Interestingly enough, it does a much better job than I could in showing you the balance between the role that subsidiarity and attention to other suffering can play in overcoming the profound polarization in which we find ourselves today. The article tries to address whether developing a higher level of empathy, it's written by a psychologist, so he's focusing on the emotion of empathy, would be useful to overcome ideological and political polarization. The writer presents his observations thusly, and I quote, what we need is a stronger motivation for out-group and passive care, all right? So now he's bringing in this research of in-group and out-group dynamics, right? He continues, the best way for that to happen is not by decreasing one's general disposition toward caring for the suffering of others, but by increasing one's contact with members of the out-group and focusing on common experiences and concerns that we all share, which can be the role of subsidiarity, I'm adding that here, that's I think the role that subsidiarity might play. He continues, the good news is that those with higher levels of empathic concerns are more likely to be comfortable with contact with members of the opposite party, but that's only a start. Simply reporting that one is high in empathic concern, either through a psychology test or on social media, is not enough, especially when we are ideologically blinded to see the suffering of those whose political views are different than ours. I think this fellow and Pope Francis would get along famously, like they're speaking in one more scientific language, and obviously the other one in more theological language, but we're saying the same thing here. The only way out of this mess is not to treat political affiliation as a zero-sum game that requires seeking out stories of suffering from as many different walks of life as possible. I remain optimistic that we can get past this, but only if we can broaden our spotlight of empathic concern to extend to as many members of the human base as is humanly possible and quote, and I'm gonna leave it there because his words are just fantastic. Thank you, and I look forward to our conversation. Thank you so much, Dr. Javila. Hi, everyone. I am Parisa, I'm the program associate with the Center for Peacemaking. It's so exciting to see so many of you all here today with us. We are going to begin the moderated panel portion right now. So if you have not had the chance to do so, I see many of you all have. Please use the Q&A or the chat box, whichever you're comfortable with, to submit your questions and we'll have the opportunity to answer them at the same moment. So before we take some audience questions, I'm going to start with introducing our two panelists who are joining Dr. Javila tonight. And the first is Dr. Karen Ratz. She is a visiting assistant professor of theology and a program director for the MA in Christian Doctrine and Marquette. Her research and teaching interests include Catholic feminist theology, sexual ethics and theology, liberation theologies. Our second panelist is Dr. Alexander Martins, who is an assistant professor in joint position in Marquette's Department of Theology and College of Nursing. Dr. Martins is a theologian and bioethicist from Brazil who specializes in healthcare and social ethics, especially in the areas of public and global health and Catholic social teaching. So we'll go ahead and let Dr. Ratz start off with her first question for Dr. Javila. And then we'll have Dr. Martins go after her and then we'll open it up to the audience. Dr. Ratz. M.T., it's so good to hear this powerful lecture and this powerful message of radical solidarity and encounter. I have so many questions, but I'll limit it to one. I'm wondering how do we create brave spaces or how have you created brave spaces in your classroom that promote these cultures of encounter, but at the same time still holding the preferential option for the poor and vulnerable? So I'm thinking about my work with sexual violence and survivors of sexual violence and how we can keep the most vulnerable safe while encouraging this encounter with the person with the unlovable action or unlovable idea. It's just something that I've been wrestling with as how do we balance these two very important principles while not encouraging survivors to put themselves in positions where they will be hurt further or to dismiss that the power dynamic. Right. And so I think if I can blend that question with a question that's sent along, which is how do we encounter people who fundamentally believe in the inferiority of others who believe others do not deserve bodily autonomy just as the right to exist, right? That's part of these divisions is that sometimes at the core of the division is either a profound hurt that has happened. There has been violence, such as a sexual assault or some other form of violence, or there's an ideology or a political position that wants to essentially eliminate right for an entire right for an entire group of people. We can't balance that, right? So I'm not asking for balance what I am calling for or thinking about, not even calling for, but thinking about is the possibility that there can be certain projects in which we can safely engage a completely other goal that is not necessarily reconciliation. Notice I didn't even use that word in my talk, right? Reconciliation is a whole other monster and that has implied a lot of different tools. And I like referring folks to Ellen Ott Marshall's introduction to Christian ethics, a conflict, something approach, but at the core of that, she examines how Christian ethics is essentially a tool for handling human conflict. And one of the human conflicts, she looks at one of the case studies, she looks at is sexual violence and also nationalistic violence, like in cases in Africa and other places like that where you have truth and reconciliation commissions. I'm not talking at that level because that has to operate at a completely different set of principles of justice and principles of fairness, the protection of the vulnerable and what vision of restorative justice you might have or not have, right? But there are ways in which we can engage in a project that its ultimate goal is not reconciliation. The ultimate goal is to tutor at risk use. Or to open up a public library in a neighborhood that needs a public library or to build a community farm in a neighborhood and regional area that needs a community farm. And there you can establish common goal and begin to build friendships that then can talk about in the future some of these more high-level ideological differences. I think what I wanna point out with some subsidiarity and this is very new to me. Like I'm just like, oh, wow, this is what maybe what subsidiarity really means as a virtue is that we can understand that the human being is very complex. The human being, our soul identities are not tied to one political idea. That is really killing our humanity but it has been the dominant way of Christians to be in the public square for the past 15 years or so. So how do we begin to claim these other spaces for social action, for social life that begin to build different kinds of friendship? And so what can happen with particularly vulnerable communities, so say victims groups, particularly children or adults or whatnot, the elderly, for example, is to really tailor those projects for that group, taking their vulnerabilities into account so that it's not exposing them to further harm but then you have differences available. Different positions are able to participate. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your question, Dr. Ross, Dr. Martins. Wow. Thank you, the Bismarck Center for hosting this event and thank you and take for your great talk and caring for your question. I don't know how to answer. I think it's very tough, very hard question. Make me remember when a few years ago, a long time ago, actually I worked with people victim of sexual violence in Brazil and when I met a girl, he was raped and was pregnant. And then he was a person from the family. The anyways, it's tough. I just want to say that it's an important question. It's hard to answer. MT, well, we have friends. Sorry, I don't call you Dr. Davila. We are friends. I think a few years now, people listen to us. Well, my question, what I have thinking, I like the market is bring the topic of hope to us reflecting because hope is very important. I is a Christian virtue, is a cardinal virtue. I have hope, but I live in a moment where I am not optimistic. No, I don't know. Sometimes people miss hope with optimism. I think that totally different things because I am very pessimistic. And for a long time now, and my pessimism has became even bigger. And I would have been optimistic person. I'm saying that because my question is go to issue of friendship. As you mentioned a lot, I would like to refer to Pope Francis and friendship. Friendship and dialogue, sorry. Those two things, the friendship, dialogue, and counter. And friendship, it's a very interesting element because in political philosophy, is that have so many texts and books about friendship for politics, for ethical society, Aristotle, or Ed said, really true ethical, political society is a society where all the cities are friend from each other. When you don't get that level, we always will be in a broke society trying to deal. Then there is another philosophy that I like to study. She adds her name, Simone Vail, that said friendship is also, is the absence of something or a person or a friend, but that the presence is still influenced our way to operate even when that person is not with us. And that became meaningful, our ethical life in the political society. And then Francis, as you said, friendship is a good Samaritan would simple, is the service I serve my neighbor. I'll think and then think about his perspective of dialogue, go to encounter to the other, especially in the good Samaritan perspective, I go to encounter those who are suffering to serve and to be friend of that one by serving and talking through my service. But incident is what I just said, my element and you said we are in call to love, even those who think differently than us. And I would say to love them is not hard. When they are not close to you, it's hard to love when we have to dialogue and they don't want to dialogue with us. And then my question I have is thinking that come my source of pessimism. How can I, I don't think it's became harder and harder for us to dialogue and create an encounter when our interlocutor went our end, when we don't exist. And then we cannot be only dialogue, as you said, in my perspective only with common parts where you've been in activism, now we are together, but they then don't talk to or have activism to build a public library, but then we don't have friendship or don't talk to each other. Because if we start to talk, we fight. And then that library never will be built. So that's the thing I have is that we, the solution is just became activism and the empty and everyone being in your bubbles. And then where the friendship is all happened, the bubble. And then, so how I can engage and dialogue and encounter if the other doesn't want. And when they want, the dialogue means, yes, I change and I think you're right. And we became more and more in our society that way that's scared me to engage with people. Totally, even to do things together. So, and that's the source of my pessimism. In the sense that is that friendship possible outside of our bubbles. Yeah, I mean, so thank you. And I think I agree with a lot of what you're saying and especially I agree with the force of your pessimism, right? The more and more I look at this, I'm not talking about, I don't have much optimism of breaking down the polarization. I do have optimism that we can understand ourselves as much more complex than one position in the public. And really use that as an entry point because when you begin to encounter someone else, whether it is in a common project for a particular neighborhood or a particular, they seem that I'm thinking in Spanish, but like neighborhood or borough, right? Whether it's that kind of project or whether, and this is why I'm pairing it with being able to see other people suffering. The key is how are we able to humanize? Each other, ourselves included, and that's at the heart of Fertile Tutti, it's not just that there are forces that are trying to dehumanize others, especially the poor, the impoverished, the marginalized, but that in fact those culture wars, those forces of polarization have been dehumanizing us, have been flattening who we are to the public in so many ways. And the way in which I see myself, whether it's family members who disagree with me or with whom I disagree, someone brought, again that notion of what about those who truly do not wish to see me as a human, do not wish to see me teaching at an institution, right? Because I'm Puerto Rican or I'm a woman or whatever ideas they may have, what the Good Samaritan says, and that last bit, there's one piece in there where Pope Francis says sooner or later, we all will come across someone who is suffering. And not only that, at another point in his analysis of the Good Samaritan, again he says, every one of us has been all the people. Every one of us has been the victim, everyone has suffered, every one of us has been this American and every one of us has been the robber, the victimizer, the perpetrator in some way, right? And every one of us has been the people, the two people who pass by and do nothing. So the richness of this vision is that we don't necessarily need to convince the other at this point. And yes, there are programs and projects, again projects of reconciliation and God bless them, they feel that they're called to do that, that's perfect. Right now at my level and from what I'm seeing in my perspective and sort of where do I find the hope? I find hope in suffering. I find hope in knowing that suffering is a common human experience. It is the experience that binds us as a human creature and that the tears of another, even if the tears of that person are someone who does not want me to be a human being or recognize me as a human being, I am moved by that suffering, right? That's at the core of the gospel that claims me. So being able to balance that with common projects, common projects for the common good. And I appreciate someone asked, some people don't agree on what the common good is. Fine, we don't use that word. Maybe we just talk about food security. I think we all can agree that everyone should eat. So what does that mean? How do we address that? How do we address food desert? Without at that moment, asking really important political questions about justice of why there is such a thing as a food desert anyway, in particular neighborhoods, usually neighborhoods where black and brown folk live in the US, right? But we're not, at some point, like Martin Luther King Jr. always said about the Good Samaritan parable, at some point we're gonna have to ask, why are there victims on the side of the road? Yes, that's the call to justice, ultimately. But in a much more humble way, we can focus on the parable itself and ask the question, what does it tell us about our own humanity and what we can bring to the public? And what I'm trying to do is, in what ways have the culture wars, where Christians have participated primarily, in what ways has that misshapen that call to humanity? Thank you so much, the both of you. I do see that we're almost at 7.30. I just wanna say thank you to everyone who has joined. We will give ourselves a little bit more time to get through the rest of the questions that were submitted. For those who need to log off, thank you so much for being at our opening evening event for Mission Week. If you go to the Mission Week website, you'll be able to see the wide range of opportunities throughout the week. The Center for Peacemaking will also be hosting another event on Wednesday at noon with Sister Kathy Sherman, and we hope to see you there. And I am going to continue with questions now. I see a lot of great ones came in. I know M.T. touched on a few of them. One from Jennifer, she says that she really appreciates the discussion on the strategy to mitigate polarization. How does a propensity to respond with violence on either side impact the ability to try to utilize empathy skills to encounter? That's always, again, a huge question because in fact, for some people, when they think about hire the national picture or they think about specific goals, their way of identifying themselves with those goals and achieving those goals is to do violence. And again, that needs to be a different set, a different work, a different tool set and a different practice. Justice and a legal system ask us to hold them accountable. But are there ways in which we can also, sorry, I mean, jumping into different discussions, but one of the discussions that came after the January, the 6th attacks was the need to look at the process of programming literature, like literature that has been written about cults and sex in the US. And a lot of that literature is literature from the 70s and 80s. So it's not even up to date literature, but people felt that actually some of the dynamics that we're seeing on January the 6th are dynamics that those who study cults and sex would identify. So in that sense, empathy, my love of neighbor would call me to think, this person, are they really violent? Is that really who they are? Or are they responding to something else? Are they responding to that anger? Remember the slides that we talked about in group, out group dynamics? We talked about anger, right? So culture wars and polarization don't foster empathy. They foster in group, out group boundaries. And the more sacred or the more religiously affiliated those boundaries, the more anger is felt by the people on either side. So that empathy becomes difficult. And again, Christian churches, Christian leaders were participants in this. They were complicit in fueling these kinds of positions. So we need to also hold them accountable as to why the faithful are not as prepared to be agents of empathy and care and hope in the public because we've privileged being bearers of a polarized idea. And in Christianity, that's called idolatry, essentially. Any time that an idea is brought to the level of doing violence for it, that's an idol, right? So it begs the question, and again, this is the other kind of work and there's other kinds of literature on it, but it does beg the question of how do the church, how do churches and church leadership promote a different kind of being in the public? Thank you, Dr. Davila. A question that I see that Father John T.D. posted is, how much does the polarization play a factor in the Trump administration's response to Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico? Was this polarization ideological or both? Do you feel like there was a racial element present or was it more political? There might have, I think there are a few things. I think there was a racial dimension. There was also a colonial dimension, right? It's Puerto Rico is a colony of the United States. It's the only case in the United Nations decolonization committee, which hasn't seen a case for decades except the place of Puerto Rico. But at the same time, it was also lack of attention to environmental catastrophe, which is a culture war issue, right? This polarization between climate change proponents and climate change deniers. And so at the heart of the response to Puerto Rico was what was at stake at that moment that if we acknowledged the kind of catastrophe it really was, then we would have had to acknowledge the impact and the close relationship that there is between colonial relationships and climate change because they're very intimately connected. So cleverly, both were ignored by minimizing the impact and by minimizing the aid that was needed at the time and still is needed today. Thank you. So I guess what I wanted to say, the polarizations were multiple in that case, not just one racial, they were multiple. Thank you. So I want to thank everyone who submitted these great questions. I see based off time, I want to give one last question to all three panelists to wrap up, so many students right now on campus, both remotely and physically on campus are struggling with this question of how do we build friendships? How do we build community? How do we stay hopeful during this really polarized time? What's one piece of advice that all three of you would give to your students or arguing to your students in the classroom today around hope and being able to move forward during this time? That's a difficult question with, reflecting on my own areas of lack of hope some days. But I think ultimately I'm thinking of MT's article, I believe it's called Meet Me at the Cross or Theology of the Cross and when I encourage students to share moments of an Ignatian language, consolation and desolation, even if it's just a small moment, there's this shared understanding that they are not in it alone. Everyone has these moments of desolation and consolation and when students are able to share that with each other, there's a sense of unity even when we're apart. And so I think being vulnerable as much as you're comfortable and saying that this is hard, but also there are moments of connection there. Go ahead Alex. Yeah, you can conclude. You know, I teach at my cat my class in bioethics. And I address a lot of controversial issues like that sometimes is in the middle of the hurricane of the discussion like abortion, physician-assistant suicide, euthanasia, those kind of things. And I have a diverse students in terms of why do they think about the subject in front of me? And one thing I keep repeating in my class is I start the class with a text about love, written by one friend of our professor at BC and say that's the perspective of class. Here we go on love. And sometimes when we love, we disagree and you disagree hard. I disagree hard, but based on love. And then I keep saying to you, please you can dislike me of some of my ideas, but don't stop to talk to me and express who you are in the way you want to express. And expose my, like Karen said, my own vulnerability. As I don't know the answers, but I want to keep talking to you. And you don't know all the answers either. And I hope you can just keep talking and talk and have a coffee and disagree, but talking based on love. That's what I said. And I mentioned, empty mentioned field times, the empathy. I love that concept in the last few years I am studying the concept of empathy in the Catholic philosopher named Edith Stuy like the central Teresa, Benedict Cross, her name of as a religious nun. And I also mentioned like empathy is not only that person I like ring out, but that empathy for the fellow human being that I want to keep talking. Even we disagree or have different paths in life. And I think that is what I said in our world of disagreement. Keep talking to one another based on empathy and love. And show your fragility. I study for many years a philosopher just like female philosopher Simone Vale. She said about the strongest, the power of fragility. She wants to go in the middle of the Second World War in the battle field as a nurse to serve from both sides of the war. Crazy idea. Charles de Gaulle didn't allow her to go, but she believed the beauty of fragility can turn something around. As Karen said, be vulnerable. Let that we are fragile. And there is a beauty of that that can create empathy and dialogue. I believe that, that give me hope. I need to give, I know we're an Ignatian mission week for you, but I need to give the last words to that quote from Saint Augustine. Because I begin every class and I end every class the semester, begin it and end it, telling my students that I love them and that when they're in my classroom or as long as they're my students and beyond, they can, I can guarantee them that I will love them. And the source of that love is the command as expressed in that quote by Saint Augustine. There is no one in the human race to whom we do not owe love, even if not out of mutual love, at least an account of our sharing in a common nature. And there's a clarity of vision and a freedom afforded by being able to say that. Being able to enter into a classroom and say, understand that, like Alex said, the premise of why we're here is love. Let's just understand that from the first moment and slowly throughout the semester, hopefully I'm unfolding for them what that looks like, be of Christianity, what that looks like with respect to having to love enemy, having to love neighbor, what does love mean in government? What does love mean in conflict? What did love mean for Augustine who thought that out of love, we ought to stop our neighbors who believe in different things so that they don't sin anymore, right? So he grounded his ideas of just war against infidel on love of neighbor. So it's complicated and not always great, but it is the basis of conversation in my classroom. And it is the basis of conversation and action in my ambito, in my purview. So where is that quote, where is that command that frees us to meet others in a way that is radically different than what the social networks, the news media networks, the public square, even many sermons in our churches would have us meet each other. And to find that and to live into that. Thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Ross, Dr. Martens, and especially Dr. Davila for taking the time to be with us tonight. I feel really inspired. I hope that those who tuned in did as well from our students to our campus community to people who tuned in from all around the country. We appreciate it. We hope that we can continue to have these discussions that are so important as we go into the spring semester across college campuses. For those who are interested in learning more on the theme of hope for this week, please tune in to our Mission Week events. We hope to see you at other ones and we hope that you go with peace tonight and into your week. Thank you all. We really appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Karen. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Parisa, and Chris and Patrick. Well, thank you all. I appreciate it.