Hello and welcome to the Providence College podcast. I'm Liz Kay. We hope you've been enjoying the second annual summer series on racial equity and justice presented by Providence College's Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Inclusion on Campus Partners.

These weekly webinars highlight the lived experiences of those marginalized members of our community in the ways that the pandemic has affected vulnerable people in groups. This week on the podcast, we are sharing the summer series presentation on the Catholic Foundations of Racial Justice by Dr Dana Dillon of the Department of Theology and the Department of Public and

Community Service Studies. And Pam Tremblay, Campus Ministries Director of Service, Immersion and Social Justice for recordings of past webinars. And to register for future talks, go to institutional diversity. Dot Providence that edu.

Thanks, Aaron. And today in Mission Colleagues for inviting me to moderate today's conversation. The dialog between faith, justice, religion and works of service has marked my tenure in higher education, and I'm grateful to moderate to this talk. In 2016, the Catholic bishops published a document entitled Everyday Christianity to Hunger and Thirst for Justice.

They began their document with a series of questions. I touch back to what you're saying around the challenge for Christians to connect faith and justice. They wrote, One of the great challenges for Christians is as old as our faith, but it's a take on special urgency today as we approach the third Christian millennium.

How do we connect worship on Sunday to work on Monday? How is the gospel proclaim not only in the pulpits in our parishes, but also in the everyday lives of Catholic people? The bishops go on to make clear that every believers call to serve the least of these and to hunger and thirst for justice to be peacemakers

. And that Catholics are called by God to protect human life, to promote human dignity, to defend the poor, and to seek the common good that the social mission of the church belongs to all of us. And it is a central part of what we do as believers.

With that being said, I'm grateful to introduce our speaker for today, Dr Dana Dillon, who embodies much of what this tension in the document of the Catholic bishops put forth, and who's going to unpack for us key principles that mark our identity as a Catholic college and how these principles provide for us a map as we seek

to bring about the beloved community here on campus. Dr Dana Dillon is an associate professor here at Providence College and holds a joint appointment in both theology and public and community service studies. She received her Ph.D. from Duke University after earning her B.A. and DivX from the University of Notre Dame.

Most of her current teaching centers around Catholic social teaching, community service and engagement in racial justice. And her early research centered around action theory and virtue ethics. In addition to the professional side, Dana also brings a wealth of volunteer experience, including with the National Alliance for Mental Illness, where she has served both as a family for family

program teacher and trainer, as well as president, past president and current board member. Dr. DeLand, your willingness to have us tap into your wisdom last year and this year again and your expertize as it comes to Catholic social teaching, virtue ethics and the embodiment of what it means to hunger and thirst for justice is something myself and

our college as a whole are continually grateful for. So thank you for joining us today.

Thanks so much, Pam and Erin, and offer by the Sicard for all the words that started us off here, and I dropped a link. Hopefully you're able to access that through one drive SharePoint and see the handout. If there's a problem with that, let because Aaron and Pam both have access to that.

So one of them can troubleshoot that. So put it in the Q&A, but I'm going to assume everybody has it and dove right in. So in this handout, what I've put together is I actually was going to start with what is now page two.

That's something that I've put together in the past to sort of compile from the compendium of the social doctrine of the church. Really, these foundational principles, they foreground the dignity of the human person and then the common good subsidiarity and solidarity.

Those key concepts follow from that. And there's other concepts under that. And so you can see that I'm not actually going to talk through that part of it, because as I thought about our limited time together, because I do want to keep this relatively brief so that we can have time for further Q&A.

I decided to put some of those principles together in this this handout that I'm going to page one that I'm going to walk you through with Catholic foundations for four. I work these nine things, and these are nine things that I put together.

In fact, I was kind of aiming for 10. I realized 10 wouldn't fit on the page. So we stopped at nine. And these are just things that I put together that I thought would be helpful for us to talk through.

Many of them are rooted in the concepts on page two. So we'll talk through that a little bit as we go. The other thing that I want to say about this, just some of the context of Catholic social thought.

Many of you know, if we have any graduates of the DWC program here, the Catholic social thought really gets its start in the modern era from in 1891 with Leo the 13th Pope, Leo, the 13th encyclical, Ram Novarro, Rerum Novarum, which is on the condition of labor or the working classes.

And so it really is this engagement of what are what are in this moment of what we're facing. In 1891, it was the the new crisis for labor as a result of the industrial revolution. And he he in that moment, he said, well, what does our Catholic tradition speak to in this moment?

And Catholic social thought has continued to do that same thing. And so I tried to put some of this together for the work. But the other thing to know about this is Catholic social teaching is pretty pretty much always pitched so that anyone of goodwill, whether they are a believing Catholic, a believing Christian, who's not Catholic, a

member of another faith tradition entirely or no faith at all, but people of goodwill who are interested in justice can engage this work. So that's one of the things that that you'll see in this. I try to mostly pitch it in that way.

But also, just as a reminder to everybody, everything about this, including including really every aspect of this is rooted in a sense of of Christ, of a God who became so loved the world to become human, to walk among us.

And what that does for our understanding, for instance, of the human person and what we owe one another. And so just so so that, you know, that this is kind of pitched for for all to engage, but it's also really deeply rooted in the person and the work of Christ.

So with that, let me dove in and walk us through these. And again, I encourage you, Pam is going to be paying attention to the Q&A. So if at any point throughout this, you have you want to drop a question into the Q&A and will bring us back to those.

When I when I wrap up, so first and most absolutely most central is the dignity and sacredness of every human person, beloved child of God, and created in God's own image. And I thought it was important to point this out.

This dignity is irrevocable, inviolable, and in no way conditional on any identity status, action or choice. I think that that's really crucial, too. You don't get more human dignity for being Christian or Catholic or good or smart or pretty or anything.

And this is this dignity is so inviolable that also when you become a serial killer, you still have this dignity. We can talk in sensible ways about the ways that you're not living up to your dignity when you're a serial killer or all the other little things that many of us engage in.

We can talk about. The ways that acting as a sinner in whatever way or acting in evil ways is is contrary to our dignity. That's that's a very sensible way to think about it. But it doesn't it doesn't diminish the dignity.

And I will say, just to pull some of these threads for, for instance, racism in particular, we want to talk about somebody who acts as a racist again. They don't act in accord with their dignity and they don't act in accord with the dignity of their neighbor.

But they they don't actually diminish their dignity in doing that. It's a key point here. The next point really follows from the dignity of the human person and a very Catholic understanding of the human person, which is the intrinsically social nature of the human person made in the image and likeness of a God who is, in fact

, persons in communion. Right. We believe in a trinity. And this is something that I think we get wrong all the time, because we're so used to a very liberal, individualistic culture where my rights and my responsibilities are my own, my own alone.

And we act as though our communal, political, social engagements are something that are added on that if I choose them, I can choose to be in relationship with these other people in the world. The Catholic understanding is very different than that.

We are made always already in relationship with one another. We are made for relationship with God and with one another. And this really reshapes a lot of the things that we might as well are the claims that we might make on one another.

So, again, to use an example around race relations. Many people report. Well, of course, I'm not a racist. And I don't tend to encounter people of other races in my particular my particular life, whatever that is. But think about I like to invite people to think about what would it mean if when we think about the communion

of persons, that is the Trinity. If they were kind of friendly at a distance and never ran into each other like this, this is not how we should be thinking about our community life. If we're thinking from a Catholic theological perspective and again, that that idea deeply informs all these claims that run throughout Catholic social thought.

The third point here is the understanding of the common good as the ordering of communities for the flourishing of all persons and of each person. And that's paired with this idea that each person has both the right and the responsibility to work towards this flourishing again, all in each right and the conditions that will promote it.

So just to break this down a little further, we do not as Catholics, when we talk about the common good, we are not talking about the greatest good for the greatest number. That's utilitarianism. That's right. That's that's another thing.

We are actually aiming for a world where the person who is worst off is still flourishing in the best way that they can. So and again, part of this is I have both the right and the responsibility to work towards those conditions.

So the way I put this sometimes is I'm you know, I, I have responsibility for my own flourishing, my own happiness. But I also have a responsibility for yours. And even more so. And I think this is this is this will get flushed out with the next point, even more so the person that I never noticed or

never thought about and I haven't been thinking about their flourishing at all. I didn't even realize that they exist because in whatever way they're on the margin, I'm actually responsible for promoting their flourishing, too. And of course, they have a right to participate and work for that, that flourishing in the midst of the community as well.

So so let's talk about preferential option for the poor, which is number four, the official Catholic social thought. This is usually talked about as specifically the preferential option for the poor, but it's often paired with this idea of the vulnerable, the marginalized, or sometimes the least of these because of because of Matthew 25, where Jesus talks about

whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me. But but this idea of a preferential option for the poor is really rooted in the exodus story, where God takes the side of the Israelites who are enslaved in Egypt and and sets them free, liberates them.

And there are so many other aspects of the Old Testament where God is caring for widows, orphans, strangers, foreigners, all these kinds of things. And then, of course, in the gospel, Jesus is always seeking table fellowship. Right. And care for the lepers, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, all these folks who are vulnerable and marginalized.

And the idea here is that if God keeps seeking out and choosing the side of the poor, the vulnerable and the marginalized, and if Christ says whatsoever, you do to the least of these, you do to me, then we who are who are seeking to be Christians were informed by by Catholic theology, are also called to make

a preferential option for the poor. And I always point out to my students, it's not an option. The word option is in there because we're talking about choosing the poor. Right, making it an option for the poor. But this is actually I think we can take it as a command of the gospel and as an invitation and

a key component of Catholic social thought. And again, I think the the implications for the work and racial justice are obvious in this one. I thought it was important to say this, too, that that it is the case in the Catholic tradition that and this is where I branch out maybe a little bit from Catholic social thought

per se, although this informs those those things as well. The Catholic tradition does understand there to be truths, including truths about the nature of the human person and the moral good that can be objectively known through reason, though, of course, faith is an important pairing with reason.

And I think one of the reasons it's really important to talk about this in terms of racial justice work and I work more generally, is that, you know, really from the point of view of Catholic theology, part of the reason why we need to be so committed to the human person is we believe that the dignity of

the person can be known objectively through reason and including the dignity. The idea that that dignity is not in any way lessened because of race or ethnicity or any of the identity, gender. Right. Any of the identities that we might that we might at what might be an aspect of our of any human person's identity that.

But there's an objective truth about. The good of the person and therefore also an object of truth to the wrong of racial injustice. And and I think that that's really important. This is not it's a good idea. There's an objective truth here that it's really important to to know and to acknowledge.

Number six here, I thought that this is really important to point out, because sin is a part of the tradition here. Right. So the understanding that no one is perfect, right. This is this biblical quote that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and that all are called to deeper growth.

Holiness and conversion. Growth and holiness. And I, I don't even I can't really see the list of who's out there right now. But whoever the very best person on this call is, I'm certain it's not me. Whoever the very best person is, that person has room to grow and get better room to to move towards holiness.

And whoever the very worst person is on this call. I'm tempted to name it. No, I won't do that. I'm completely. It's probably me also. You know, I still have that dignity that we were talking about with with no one up above.

And and so but there is a particular obligation, I think, those of us who aim to be followers of Christ. Right. We're supposed to form our consciences to really discern and think through and learn what what justice should look like, what holiness should look like, and see the ways that we're falling short and really work on on

moving ourselves forward and be in moving one another forward in community together. And again, there's there's a deep sense here of the part of the way we grow in in virtue is by engaging, whether we're talking about lives of the saints or lives of moral exemplars, but also engaging with other people in community who are both aiming

to be better. Right. And discerning the forms of sin and injustice that are operating on us. And one of the reasons I think that this is this is really important to note here is the one of thing I want to note on this is with virtue, there's a long, long tradition of one of the quotes that just

comes to mind is that the courageous man has fears that the coward can't imagine. There's a sense here that in any virtue, courage being one of the courage or fortitude being one of the cardinal virtues, the more you grow on it, the more you grow in that virtue, the more you can see how much room you do

have to grow and the kinds of things that you need to reject. And one of the reasons I point this out is there can be unevenness in our development in these virtues. And and I think especially when we're talking about aiming for something like racial justice, we have such a diversity of experience and history and engagement with

that from everybody in our community, that it's really, really important that we're willing to learn from one another. And again, it's not that I have less dignity that I haven't learned and grown as much as Pam has. Right.

It's it's actually that we're in this together, working towards a greater understanding of virtue, love, truth, faithfulness, et cetera. So that's something we can talk about more. Also in Catholic Social thought, really important idea here, although although there's in Catholic moral theology generally, we talk so much about personal sin.

But Catholic social thought has also turned attention to simple social structures. This is kind of this is the idea. And you know this, right, that there are all kinds of institutions that develop in societies and cultures that embody not justice, but injustice.

And these need to be approached by social analysis and change. Right. And this I made a reference to this idea of see judge act. This is this idea that runs through a lot of Catholic teaching, Catholic social thought kinds of literature of you really.

And actually the way I teach this in Catholic social thought here at Providence College, students have a project where they research project and they have to name an injustice. They have to actually rely on social science sources for some social analysis.

Then they rely on Catholic social thought for value judgment. And then they have to have a plan, a strategy for changing it. So this is then this is just an approach that often is taken in terms of Catholic social thought.

I wanted to take a moment here and talk a little bit about Catholic universities and this. If you haven't read excogitate Ecclesia, which is John Paul, the second encyclical on on Catholics, on Catholic universities, it's really important. But just to draw a few key things from that, these universities are understood to Catholic universities and understood to be

places where truth is thought in the context of community and dialog, including dialog among different disciplines, but also dialog between faith and reason and dialog between the gospel and cultures and dialog between the Christian tradition and modern society.

These are all concepts that are named in excogitate ecclesia. And the idea here is that really Catholic universities have have an advantage in presenting our students with an integrated understanding of the world, what it means to be human and God, because we're aiming to integrate these these disciplines and these perspectives.

And I think that's a really important thing. One other thing related to racial justice that I want to name explicitly, I think I talked about this last year, so I didn't want to repeat myself too much. But insofar as you think about us as a as a Catholic university here in the United States of America in this

moment, I think one of the important things as we talk about dialog between gospel and culture is our is the importance of bringing the gospel in line with our cultures, in dialog, with our cultures, values, not in line with our cultures, values such that we can embrace aspects of it and also critique aspects of it.

I think one of the things that's been really important is that we've increasingly become able to dialog about basically critiquing all the some of these structural legacies of slavery and racism in in our society. But particularly because of our Catholic identity, we're really called to do more of that and again, continue to critique the society that we're

in, immersed in and engage it in terms of gospel values. And the final point here is to talk just a little bit about the idea of unity and diversity in the perspective of the church. The church really is committed to both, and I in a way that doesn't compromise on either, and I think that this sometimes almost

seems nonsensical, but it's really important. And I, I, I like to compare it actually to. We're going to talk about St. Paul and the body of Christ in just a moment here. But I also like to point out to people, or if you haven't thought about it lately, think about the ridiculousness of the church's claim that God

is a trinity. If God hadn't revealed it to us, it would be crazy talk. And because we're talking about a God who is at one time three and one, like everything else we know about the concept of three and the concept of one is that they're mutually exclusive.

You cannot be both three and one at once in the same way, I think we can think a little bit about unity and diversity. Is there a way that we can all truly be united and truly, truly united as one?

And also really celebrate genuine diversity in each and every unique identity that each one of us has of as a person. And the Catholic the Catholic Church is really, really committed to both and to both unity and diversity.

We talk a little bit about this image that St. Paul uses. Right? This is in First Corinthians. It's this idea that the the church is the body of Christ. It's one body. And yet the the uniqueness of all the different parts of the body, the multiplicity of roles and function don't undermine the body.

So the unity of the body. But in fact, serves it. We don't need 50 hands in the body. Right. We want the two hands. We want the two eyes. The two ears. Right. I won't get into all the details.

You know your body. But we need every part of the body in order to flourish. And each being itself in all its fullness and all its flourishing is what leads to the whole flourishing and and acting as one.

And so I think that that's a really important part of this. And just just to say one last thing that I thought I might have said before, but I had a note to make sure I didn't forget it.

So I think sometimes people also think about, well, the church says it wants a unity of cultures, but we all know that really, at the end of the day, they want us to all kind of look like the church from whatever year in, clearly somewhere in Europe, in the Middle Ages or something.

And I think that that that was true for a while. But really, since the Vatican to era, the church has really come a long way on the dignity and beauty of every culture in the world. And the idea that it's it's really, really crucial that that that the church is itself incarnated in each culture.

Right. As communities of Christians gather in each country, each place in the world. It's there's this real sense that just like we talk about Christ elevating each person. Right. So I'm the best, Dana, I can be in my fullness and flourishing when I'm when I'm in relationship with Christ.

So to each culture, as it's put in relation is it's embodied in the lives of Christians who who are in and of that culture comes to its its fullness and its flourishing. And that that actually just kind of takes us back to the beginning.

In a way, it is when you're really thinking about the dignity of each person, each culture, it's it's about each of us having the access and the ability to participate in building our own flourishing and the flourishing of those around us.

And so that's why it's so crucial for us to do this work. And it's so deeply rooted in our mission and our identity as a Catholic school. And with that, I'm going to wrap up here now and Pam's going to tell me what questions you've been putting into the chat.

Yeah. Dr. Drew, Olympique, you so much for inviting us. These foundational principles that come up light our path in DYI, work out of Catholic and Dominican College for all of our participants, Dr.. And covered a lot of information in a short period.

So we invite you to put any. Questions you might have in the question box or in the chat feature or even places that you'd like Dr. Dillon to expand upon a little bit more, and we'll do our best to get to as many questions and areas of expansion that we can.

One of the questions that came in, Dr. Valena, is from Comfort. And you spoke you spoke about it and a lot of different plates about flourishing. So the common good is for the flourishing of people. You spoke about it at the end, about the flourishing of each body part in each member.

And maybe could you define for us a little more about what flourishing means? The question from Comfort was, what about the situations where flourishing is conflict? And so can Flaherty's conflict then and then some of the nitty gritty of like, OK, well, if we're responsible for flourishing, how do we do it?

Yeah, those are great questions and hard questions, to be honest, but I mean, I so I, I actually especially when I talk with students, I actually talk about like for a minute, don't think about the common good, you know, like all over the world.

Think about a family who really love one another. Right. And I mean, I think this happens all the time, right? When a parent says, hey, kid, you're you're flourishing to me. Looks like going to this school or at will start really easy.

You don't see it right now, but you're flourishing and includes you need to brush your teeth right now. Right. These these you need to study. You need to. So part part of that is, is that is that kind of a thing of sometimes somebody really does know better than than the other person.

And and again, part of what I meant to suggest a little bit before when I talked about the different levels of of a virtue is I do think sometimes that like one way to look at this is when the person who doesn't let's just say, doesn't have housing or doesn't have health care or what have you, is

talking to you about what they need in order to flourish. Right. Listen to the ones on on the margins who are expressing the need that I think that that's that's a big part of it. But I think the other thing, as your kids get older, right.

And you begin to talk about, well, you know, I don't think this is this this relationship is not the best relationship for you. Right. There's. How do we discern that together so that somebody who really cares about me can say, look, here are the ways where I think this relationship you're in is not actually contributing to your

flourishing. And I think that at the at the end of the day, interpersonally. Right. We all we often come to this point with someone we love, where we find a way to say, I love you. I don't have the right to insist on you doing this my way.

And and and not your way. Right. And so we try to, you know, bring ourselves to embrace their flourishing on their own terms. I I think there's another question. I mean, I'm actually going to but many of you know this there in my in my intro as well.

I do a lot of work with the National Alliance on Mental Mental Illness, and I do that in part because I have a family member who has a mental illness. And one of the things that that has gone on in my family throughout the years of of this with my my brother, who's now in his 40s, and

there have been times when the members of our family who lived with him had to draw a line. Right. Because, I mean, this was an issue where your long term flourishing includes you being on these medications and also the flourishing of the whole household.

If you're in it and not on your meds, it doesn't work well. So, I mean, what I'm basically saying is there was a time when for the good of everyone, my parents kicked my brother out of our house.

He was a young adult at that time. And that actually was an important part of him getting the help that he needed. So, I mean, this is the real complexity of how we engage long term flourishing and the short term.

You know, what I think I need to flourish is this. And what I'm kind of segueing to here is I do think that there's another there's an institutional question here. Right. How do we as an institution say what kinds of support we can give when people say, I need this to flourish here?

And are there are there moments where we need to say actually no, for the good of the whole community we can't sustain? I mean, we could talk about all kinds of things related to this. Right. But there's a certain I mean, I think Covid showed.

Right. We can't sustain people who are going to flout these these requirements at a certain point in order for us all to flourish. So it's I I don't know if that hopefully that helps a little and thinking it through, but I'm sure there's much more we can talk about with regards to that.

Yeah, I wonder if you could Comfort responded. Great response. Reminds me of mutual accommodation and the discourse for a preachin all cultural backgrounds in the classroom, which I think is a great point. Comfort takes comfort. One of the one of the things that is.

Related to this is that that idea of responsibility. So when you're speaking about the common good, you talked about rights and responsibility. Could you speak a little more about where the responsibility is on the individual and where the responsibility is on the institution?

Sorry. With regards to which in particular I.

Yeah. So your point on the common good. You talked about the rights and responsibility to work towards the flourishing. When is it the right, the responsibility of the individual to work towards the flourishing of the other individual? And when should it step in and be a larger institution to having the responsibility for it?

Oh, that's that's a really great question. And you caught me with one of my shortcuts in a way. So if if you look at that side, the second page of the handout, I skipped past the concept of subsidiarity, which is Roman numeral three on that.

And this I kind of tried to sneak it into the common good a little bit. But it's a subsidiarity basically covers this idea that the communities that were a part of our kind of loosely structured in such a way that any problem or discernment about the good ought to happen at the smallest level possible.

So in a way, it's first the well, really first the family right in in as the smallest community and then each higher institution. And really the idea is to support the participation and engagement of those smaller groups in fight and working towards their flourishing with.

And the idea here is without supplanting their initiative and their ability to participate and build it themselves. Of course, sometimes you have somebody I mean, whether you're talking about like a child or someone with a disability or something like that, who even as a as an individual needs extra help.

I mean, I talked about the issue in my family, so so that, you know, again, it's the family kind of discerning. It's good. Right. And then at each level, you kind of build it out from there. So even thinking at Providence College, you could talk about, again, these communities overlap, right?

It's not necessarily like government, like every cities in a county, every counties in the state, every state in the nation. But it's much more like, OK, is this is the student club, does it have what it needs to flourish?

And this this residence hall, have the restaurants of the floor have what they need to flourish. And so and again, it's to some extent flourishing. I mean, we're as human persons and subjects are flourishing is somewhat subjective, right.

In the sense. I mean, think about the artist who says, you know, I'm not flourishing unless I'm able to express myself in all my freedom. Right. And somebody else is like, I you know, I just I just want to do my thing right, like whatever it is.

So to some extent, it's self defining. But again, that the Catholic tradition does have these things like. You know, as soon as I'm telling a lie, I'm acting contrary to my human nature and I'm I'm not flourishing. Right.

As soon as I'm killing other people, right, I'm not. I'm also hurting their ability to flourish. So so this is where these negatives, the things that we want to rule out are a lot easier to do than to say, well, what does it look like positively for us to all flourish together?

Great, I think that leads into another question that I want to pose to you and speaking to the the truth, and you spoke about objective truth and truth, which is such an important part of our Providence College motto and virtue.

And my question that I want to pose to you is, how are some of these principles, objective truth that go beyond not just rules for Catholics to follow, but truth that people of all faiths can hold as truth?

So I think I hear a lot in my dialog of, oh, like, OK, that's great for those who identify as Catholic, but if you're not Catholic and you still participate in these, are these still guiding principles for those who are not practicing Catholics.

So it's I I thought you were going in a slightly different direction. So that's actually what's first in my mind is to say to remind people that in some ways, before we even talk about church or truth, I mean, we should remember that Jesus said, I am the way the truth and the life.

Right. And I do think maybe one of the ways that this is. And so one of the long moral traditions in the church is something called the natural law. Right. And and this is this group of moral teachings that the church has always kind of insisted are available on the basis of reason alone.

And they've included they've included things like. So people are often surprised to know that the prohibition against lying is actually a natural law prohibition. And the idea here is that speech and communication was given for the purpose of communicating the truth, the reality of, you know, whether it's the reality of what I feel or the reality of

two plus two is four. And as soon as I start using that natural power for something other than what is tendered and in fact, to manipulate what it was that or destroyed what it was intended to do, by its very nature, I'm in violation of that.

So I think I would hope that we're more and more getting to a place where we can see that racism. Right. Which which has been I believe I believe it was in maturate magistris that it was first included in a in a list of intrinsically evil acts like racism as something that is always wrong regardless of the

circumstances. I think I think I mean, I haven't really seen that done as a natural law argument, but it clearly is. Right. It's rooted in the nature of what the human person is in all our dignity. Right. So this is where I think that you don't hopefully you don't have to be Catholic or Christian to to see

that. But the thing that I would add, though, is for those of us who are Catholic and or Christian and are aiming to be just wholly virtuous people, it's just so, so imperative that we do this work. And again, ideally and this is, I think, part of the great gift of Catholic social thought.

It's always been pitched in such a way that, you know, people who share a passion for justice ought to be able to engage it, even if they're not going to agree that, oh, yes, and Jesus Christ himself is truth.

But I, I would also encourage, for what it's worth. Non non Christians and non Catholics on our campus to continue to invite and encourage the Christians on our campus to act as though we believe that the gospel that we that we preach.

I'm not always perfect at it myself, and I'm a little scared, inviting people to call to call me and others out like that, but there we go.

We'll provide data Dolans direct cell phone number for anyone who wants to call her in Colorado.

My God, help me.

You started off by speaking about our Catholic social teaching. Going back to the question of what does our Catholic teachings speak to us in this moment? How can when we look at the pandemic, we look at current issues, how do we respond to that question of using Catholic teaching to speak to us in this moment?

Maybe even some reflection questions of how to know or where Catholic teaching can guide us.

So I, I I'm having a little trouble wrapping my my mind around this because I can't think of. Any area of our lives that we shouldn't be turning to, you know, Catholic teaching to the gospel, et cetera, to guide us and reflect and shape our responses.

So, yeah, is. I don't know. Can you help me specify this a little bit better?

Maybe. Maybe it's the where. We had the where I always good analogies wrong, but where it comes to a point of like how are there certain principles and maybe you added it on the second page, answers a question for the person who's asking to help us guide to know how to live out preferential option for the poor

on our campus. How do we know who the poor are, I think is the question that it's getting to.

Oh, okay. So that's that is that is a great question. And I think, um, I, I, I think it's not. Always an easy answer. And here's what I mean, so on one hand, I'm tempted to say, well, first listen to people.

And if people tell you that they're feeling marginalized and excluded, then pay attention to that. And, you know, and again, I would invite that to be a little bit of discernment together. Right. Like, okay. Are there ways that, you know, you were welcome, but you didn't know it and it's actually not a failure of welcome so much

as a failure of communication or something like that. Right. So that we or that or were we welcoming you in a way that actually put you off? Right. So so, again, dialog together about that. But one reason why I hesitate to make, you know, listen to the voices be the only the only way to do that is

, of course, we all know that the squeaky wheel gets gets the oil, as my parents used to say. And I think sometimes one of the things we need to try to pay attention to is who are those who are who are marginalized but also invisible so that we don't even notice that we're leading them out.

And I will say, I mean, again, this is I, I, I keep bringing this up, but I will say because of my engagement with mental health work, I do think that this is a often invisible disability where people you don't know that the person in the room is struggling.

They're hiding it so well that they have their social anxiety issues. And so you don't know how deeply they're marginalized and vulnerable in that in that moment, for instance. And so I think I think there's a. The guidance is to pay attention to the voices who say that they're marginalized and also find ways to look for others

. And, you know, I, I will say I was at a workshop not too long ago, and somebody somebody said that with new members of their community, instead of asking, do you have a network of support? This person has had learned to ask, tell me, tell me three or four people who who are in your network of support

. Right. Because everybody's kind of especially if you're kind of trying to fake it a little bit. Right. You're going to say, oh, yeah, I'm fine. I, I, I, I have a network of support. But when somebody asks you that question and you don't you don't have anybody you can name if if if that person is paying attention

. Right. And I'm suggesting maybe we should be those people who ask this question. Right. And somebody doesn't have anybody they can name. Well, how can we put them in touch with somebody who would be a good network for them or start that network or maybe we'd be that person?

Yeah. Which greatly ties back to the responsibility question we were speaking about earlier of our responsibility on this campus now and what is the right and responsibility look like. Another question that came in, I'm going to read it right off, says the common gate consists of those conditions for flourishing.

It's also those communities, family, parish schools and ultimately God, the cosmos, and ultimately God we receive rather than builds. And that perfects us. How can this robust idea of the common good as something that we both work towards but also receive inform our notions of justice?

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's such a such a great idea, and I'm glad he brought that up, but because so this is something that comes back in Catholic social thought quite often, right? There is as much as we want to that we need to we're responsible to work together to build a more just world, the kind of

fullness of the common good. In fact, it's actually connected to the idea of peace in Catholic social thought. So that peace is actually what is realized when we finally totally realized the common good. And in the sense there is that that that ultimately that fullness of peace is something that we can only receive from God as a

gift. Right. It's it's crucial for us to keep working on it as much as we can. I think about the it was St. Ignatius of Loyola, sorry, Dominicans quoting a Jesuit founder here, but who said, we work like everything depends on you and pray like everything depends on God.

And I and I think that that that's an important idea here, too, to think about all the ways that communities are givens in our lives. And we have to and and we as much as we have to work within them towards greater justice.

Also, we have to recognize that that fullness of justice is always going to be on the other side of the horizon. It's not something we can do. So, I mean, the key thing is we've got to pair this with prayer.

And I think I, I, I, I said I wasn't paying attention to the questions, but I actually noticed another one. And I think this connects that, you know, so the questions about the demonization of those with whom we disagree.

And I think one of the things that that the prior question kind of points of to, I think very helpfully, is the idea that if we're imagining like, gosh, Pam, if I could just get you to see it rightly the way I see it, then Providence College would would be the utopia we need it to be.

Well, there's a there's a reminder here, I think that that that that fullness is a gift that is only going to come through through prayer, as well as hard work, but prayer. But also, in the meantime, I need to figure out how it is that I can understand that that the truth that I'm trying to help you

see my way and you're trying to help me see your way is also something that, again, it's a part of this Catholic's. We see it as a participation in Christ. And so there's that sense that the more that you and I can dialog together as.

Neighbors rather than enemies, and by the way, let me just remind anybody who's forgotten Jesus called us to love our neighbors and our enemies and also strangers and the least of these and all kinds of others. But it's important for us to remember not only that, we are called to love our enemies.

I think that's important because it's hard. That can be really hard sometimes. But also the people with whom we share a commitment to move a community towards justice. But with whom we have disagreements on what that justice looks like and includes are not enemies, their neighbors and their partners.

Right. Again, in building that. I mean, you might be so wrong to see it the wrong way, in my opinion. But we move together better by understanding ourselves as neighbors and partners who happen to disagree, but who share some greater goals together.

Actually, we're coming up at the end of our time, and I think we could go on. You and I have had those conversations around these topics and could go on all day. But I want to leave you with one final question to end us off.

Storytelling and lived experiences have been the thread between the series and the summer. Could you maybe share a name or two of a Catholic figure or saint or writer that you would share with us to know their story or further their story that maybe embodies some of the things you're speaking about today?

So, yeah, here's I'm going to suggest that you look up, if you don't know her, Chiara Lubich, who is the founder of the Focolare Movement, the Focolare movement, is actually they they see their central charism as the spirituality of unity and of movement emerged kind of during World War two and has grown throughout the last several years

. Chiara Lubich, the founders, just died in 2008. And her this this is a phenomenal story. The focal Focolare exists in pretty much every nation. There are there are people who who practice the spirituality of the Focolare, who are not Catholic, who are not Christian.

She's been in dialog with she she came in dialog with with Muslims in Harlem in the 1990s. So she's she's just an incredible figure thinking for those of us who want to think about working towards unity in the midst of differences.

I like that I would be remiss if I didn't say mine would be Martin Depor us, who is statues on all over campus, a Dominican and patron saint of racial justice and racial harmony and public health workers. So right now, a patron saint that's needed.

Well, you get the bonus points for naming a Catholic and a Dominican.

You know, that's what I'm here for. I thank you again, Dana, for being with us today and sharing us this wisdom. I look forward to continuing these conversations on campus and of the participants. So thank you for being with us.

Thank you. And I would just invite anybody on this call or anybody who watches the recording later. If you have questions and you want to be in touch. Drop me a line.

Thanks for listening to this presentation. As part of the summer series on racial equity and justice for the Providence College podcast. Remember, for recordings of past webinars and to register for future talks, go to institutional diversity to Providence.

dot EDU. Podcast episodes are available in all the usual places, as well as the college's YouTube channel. And on your smart speaker with producer Chris Judge. I'm Liz K. Until next time.