Faith Feeds Guide: Journeying in Faith Amid Polarization - Voices

Having a faith conversation with old and new friends is as easy as setting the table.

JOURNEYING IN FAITH AMID POLARIZATION VOICES

CONTENTS

Introduction to FAITH FEEDS 3

Conversation Starters 6

• Voices & Views: Thinking About Polarization by Joan Chittster, O.S.B., Hosffman Ospino, Christine Emba, and Fr. Aaron Wessman, G.H.M. 7

Conversation Starters 9

• Authentic Communion and the Way Out of Polarization by Sam Sawyer, S.J. 10

Conversation Starters 12

• A Catholic Response to Polarization by Pope Francis 13

• Gathering Prayer 14

The C21 Center Presents

The FAITH FEEDS program is designed for individuals who are hungry for opportunities to talk about their faith with others who share it. Participants gather over coffee or a potluck lunch or dinner, and a host facilitates conversation using the C21 Center’s biannual magazine, C21 Resources.

The FAITH FEEDS GUIDE offers easy, step-by-step instructions for planning, as well as materials to guide the conversation. It’s as simple as deciding to host the gathering wherever your community is found and spreading the word.

All selected articles have been taken from material produced by the C21 Center.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Who should host a FAITH FEEDS?

Anyone who has a heart for facilitating conversations about faith is perfect to host a FAITH FEEDS.

Where do I host a FAITH FEEDS?

You can host a FAITH FEEDS in-person or virtually through video conference software. FAITH FEEDS conversations are meant for small groups of 10-12 people.

What is the host’s commitment?

The host is responsible for coordinating meeting times, sending out materials and video conference links, and facilitating conversation during the FAITH FEEDS.

What is the guest’s commitment?

Guests are asked to read the articles that will be discussed and be open to faith-filled conversation.

Still have more questions? No problem! Email karen.kiefer@bc.edu and we’ll help you get set up.

READY TO GET STARTED?

STEP ONE

Decide to host a FAITH FEEDS. Coordinate a date, time, location, and guest list. An hour is enough time to allocate for the virtual or in-person gathering.

STEP TWO

Interested participants are asked to RSVP directly to you, the host. Once you have your list of attendees, confirm with everyone via email. That would be the appropriate time to ask in-person guests to commit to bringing a potluck dish or drink to the gathering. For virtual FAITH FEEDS, send out your video conference link.

STEP THREE

Review the selected articles from your FAITH FEEDS Guide and the questions that will serve as a starter for your FAITH FEEDS discussion. Hosts should send their guests a link to the guide, which can be found on bc.edu/FAITHFEEDS.

STEP FOUR

Send out a confirmation email a week before the FAITH FEEDS gathering. Hosts should arrive early for in-person or virtual set up. Begin with the Gathering Prayer found on the last page of this guide. Hosts can open the discussion by using the suggested questions. The conversation should grow organically from there. Enjoy this gathering of new friends, knowing the Lord is with YOU!

STEP FIVE

Make plans for another FAITH FEEDS. We would love to hear about your FAITH FEEDS experience. You can find contact information on the last page of this guide.

CONVERSATION STARTERS

Here are three articles to guide your FAITH FEEDS conversation. We suggest that you select two that will work best for your group, and if time permits, add in a third. In addition to the original article, you will find a relevant quotation, summary, and suggested questions for discussion. We offer these as tools for your use, but feel free to go where the Holy Spirit leads. Conversations should respect and ensure confidentiality between participants.

This guide’s theme is: Journeying in Faith Amid Polarization - Voices

VOICES & VIEWS: THINKING ABOUT POLARIZATION

By Joan D. Chittister, O.S.B., Hosffman Ospino, Christine Emba, and Fr. Aaron Wessman, G.H.M.

JOAN D. CHITTISTER, O.S.B.

As a people, we are at a crossover moment. It is a call to all of us to be our best, our least superficial, our most serious about what it means to be a Christian as well as a citizen.…Where in the midst of such polarization and national disunity is even the hope…of integrating the social with what we say are our spiritual selves?...

Even the ghost of an answer makes serious spiritual demands on us all: To heal such division means that we are obliged to search out and identify our own personal value system. It requires us to admit to ourselves what it is that really drives our individual social decisions, our votes, our political alliances. Is it the need to look powerful? The desire for personal control?...Do we have the courage to confront the debased with the ideal—even in the face of ridicule and recrimination— or is cowardice our secret spiritual sickness? In that case, our national health can only get worse.

A national cure also surely demands that we begin to see tradition as a call to return to the best of the past, not a burden to be overcome in order to secure the best of the present. It is the sense of a commonly held tradition of the common good—once a strong part of the American past—that we clearly lack in the present…

[We must] make “Love one another as I have loved you” (see John 13:34) the foundation of national respect, the standard of our national discernment, the bedrock of both our personal relationships and a civilized society…

To be one, we don’t need one party, one program, one set of policies. What could be duller, more stagnant, more destructive of the soulfulness it takes to create and preserve the best of the human enterprise than such a narrow-minded view of planetary life?

What we need is one heart for the world at large, a single-minded commitment to this “more perfect union,” and one national soul, large enough to listen to one another for the sake of the planet—for the sake of us all.

HOSFFMAN OSPINO

Many of our conversations in the Church today echo those of earlier Christians. The tensions are similar, as are the values at stake. The difference is that we have these conversations in the particularity of our own sociohistorical location. The acknowledgment of this reality should bring peace to our minds, reminding us that this is part of what it means to be human and Christian. We discuss and debate our faith because we care about it. And just as those Catholic sisters and brothers before us chose to work toward forms of communion rooted in the truth and the best of the Gospel, we have a responsibility to do likewise. Among the most painful moments in the history of Christianity have been those that led to the brokenness of ecclesial communion, leaving the entire body of believers longing for healing and peace among sisters and brothers. American Catholics, regardless of our race and social location, live, practice, and debate our faith in the particular context of the United States sociocultural matrix. We are both American and Catholic. We must be constantly attentive to how much influence this context has on our own perceptions and how it shapes our language and interactions. Most importantly, we must beware of embracing forms of ideological polarization that are devoid of Christian charity in a deep sense of ecclesial communion.

CHRISTINE EMBA

I still consider myself a comparatively new Catholic. I’m a convert…[and] as I become more familiar with the Church and its teachings, I find that Catholic Social

Teaching is one of the great gifts of the Church. It’s instruction for life. It is both moral and instructional, an active way of living.

While it’s always been around, it seems to be gaining more attention and consideration in our modern age, especially among younger people. It’s clear that we need it more than ever, both because, as someone said, it is Catholic, [and] it is accessible and relatable to almost anyone “of good will.”

One thing that I find to be true and delightful about Catholic Social Teaching is how clear and how relevant it is to people who approach the world in extremely different ways….It has much to say to different groups, whether religious or non-religious, whether Catholic or of a different faith. [All people] can come together and attest to the need for a preferential option for the poor, in finding dignity in work, and a need to respect the individual will.

And I think that we know inherently that all of these principles, confined as they are under the sort of large banner of Catholic Social Teaching, have to fit together, and they have to rely upon each other. They can’t be taken apart. You can’t have one piece without the rest of them. And if they rely on each other, I think that means that we must do so as well, as Catholics who believe in this faith, who believe in these teachings, who believe that this all fits together and works toward a larger good.

To that end, the idea of coming together, relying on something together, bringing two sides together, ending polarization or partisanship, I think it’s our duty as individuals in society to take Catholic Social Teaching into our own hands, to devolve these larger principles into something that we each deal with. And that means that we have to deal with each other as individuals at the lowest possible level. You know we can talk about structural problems, structural issues, political cases. What is immigration? How do we deal with racism?…[But] the structures don’t change unless the people, the individuals living under those laws, believe that they should change and are willing individually to stand up for those changes.

…To get other people who may disagree with us on methods, or morals, or teaching to believe that those things should change, believe in the beauty of Catholic Social Teaching, the beauty of the principle of the dignity of every human, for instance, we have to convince them. And you convince people by being faceto-face, by being in the trenches with them, engaging on that lowest, smallest, closest level with each other….I think that is something we want to think about

going forward, not just the huge principles, the grand declarations of what we believe, but also how we live those individually with each other in community, in society, under one nation, and hopefully with love for each other.

FR. AARON WESSMAN

How can we avoid falling into an “us vs. them” mentality? I think we need to begin to cross over. For example, if I feel more comfortable in a “progressive” ecclesial environment, I should consider attending the “traditional” parish in my city or town at least once in a while.

If I am more comfortable reading right-of-center Christian commentary or news, I should read perspectives from the left-of-center. Or, better yet, I should find podcasts and articles that attempt to bring together different voices and do so in a way that is charitable, seeking out the truth in each opinion.

Ultimately, for Christians, I think we should return to the saintly figures of our own tradition….I reflect on the lives of people like Thomas Aquinas, Dorothy Day, and Damien of Molokai to show how they can guide us today.

Finally, I think we need to approach the world, and the “other,” in a truly Catholic way: cross over to them, engage them through curiosity, ask a lot of questions, listen, and be open to learn. The Spirit can slowly work with each of us, deepening the unity that Jesus has already placed in his Church.

…In a practical way, this means identifying those groups or people for whom we know we have negative feelings and thoughts, and choosing to be around them. The effects of crossing over can truly change the polarized climate.

For more information on these excerpts, visit: bc.edu/ c21polarization.

Joan D. Chittister, O.S.B., is an American Benedictine nun, theologian, author, and speaker.

Hosffman Ospino is Associate Professor of Hispanic Ministry and Religious Education and the Chair of the Department of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry.

Christine Emba is an opinion columnist and author based in Washington, DC.

Fr. Aaron Wessman, G.H.M., is the vicar general and director of formation for the Glenmary Home Missioners.

VOICES & VIEWS: THINKING ABOUT POLARIZATION

“In our times a special obligation binds us to make ourselves the neighbor of every person without exception and of actively helping him when he comes across our path, whether he be an old person abandoned by all, a foreign laborer unjustly looked down upon, a refugee...or a hungry person who disturbs our conscience by recalling the voice of the Lord, ‘As long as you did it for one of these the least of my brethren, you did it for me’ (Matt. 25:4).”

Lumen Gentium, 27

Summary

Joan Chittister calls us to face polarization with “one heart for the world at large” to begin healing division in our world. Hosffman Ospino suggests that we explore how today’s polarization echoes the tensions of earlier Christians and their struggles for communion. Christine Emba identifies the beauty of Catholic Social Teaching, imagining how it might unite people across differences for the common good. Lastly, Fr. Aaron Wessman invites us to “cross over” to those with whom we disagree to avoid the “us vs. them mentality” on which polarization thrives.

Questions for Conversation

1. Joan Chittister and Hosffman Ospino discuss the tradition and its application today. How can we see tradition help us “work toward forms of communion rooted in the truth and best of the Gospel?” What can the past teach us as we engage our particular contexts?

2. Christine Emba believes that Catholic Social Teaching can help connect differing people for the betterment of society. How do you think Catholic Social Teaching can unite Catholics and non-Catholics alike?

3. Aaron Wessman discusses “crossing over” to those with whom we might disagree or avoid. What is challenging about crossing over in your life? What possibilities and growth experiences might doing so offer?

AUTHENTIC COMMUNION AND THE WAY OUT OF POLARIZATION

By Sam Sawyer, S.J.

In response to polarization, many have noted the importance of civil discourse. While necessary, however, civility alone is not sufficient. The fuller remedy for polarization is the practice of communion. We need to learn and relearn that we are bound together in the life of the Church at a level deeper than our own agreement. This unity, which arises from our common baptism, makes it possible to sustain the experience of being cross-pressured without succumbing to polarization and making enemies of one another.

Ironically, both the tendency for hypervigilance against heterodoxy and the tendency to treat doctrine as easily revisable suffer from reducing communion to a kind of social contract. For the latter, doctrine has only as much binding force as we are willing to grant it and can be revised again if our willingness to consent to it changes. For the former, any specter of change in teaching is tantamount to a crisis, the social contract demands full and unquestioning assent, and those who do not offer it must be aggressively quarantined lest the contagion spread.

But ecclesial communion is neither malleable according to our opinions nor so fragile as to collapse when the tradition is examined critically and the possibility of doctrinal development is recognized as a part of God’s ongoing preservation and guidance of the Church in history. More importantly, communion is not a product of our consensus, but a cooperation in God’s grace as members of the body of Christ.

The reality of being in communion, in other words, does not cease when Catholics disagree with one another, nor do our obligations to one another as members of that communion. We are still members of the same body of Christ, called to the one table of the Mass—even when, as is often tragically the case, our approaches to the Mass itself are points of division and rancor.

When the dynamics of polarization take over, we start to treat other Catholics as enemies or even as traitors who are dangerous to the life of the Church. Disagreement leads to suspicion that our interlocutor does

not really believe in the same faith as we do. This is poisonous to charity, and because it destroys trust, it also works against any hope of helping brothers and sisters in Christ to grow in faith. Worse yet, these internal divisions in the Church are ripe for exploitation by other forms of polarization, especially by partisan political divisions.

What is necessary for us to begin to find our way out of polarization is a deliberate practice of cultivating and valuing communion, especially in the midst of disagreement. Rather than demonstrating how another Catholic has betrayed or undermined the faith, we ought first to look for evidence, even in what we disagree with, of the faith we hold in common, and celebrate that evidence when we find it.

This idea is not my invention. It is simply an application of the “Presupposition” from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola to the situation of polarization. In order that a retreatant and retreat director may be “of greater help and benefit to each other,” Ignatius counseled:

“It should be presupposed that every good Christian ought to be more eager to put a good interpretation on a neighbor’s statement than to condemn it. Further, if one cannot interpret it favorably, one should ask how the other means it. If that meaning is wrong, one should correct the person with love; and if this is not enough, one should search out every appropriate means through which, by understanding the statement in a good way, it may be saved.”

It is striking how much effort and desire Ignatius calls for. We are to be “more eager” to find a good interpretation than a bad one and to ask how to interpret what we cannot readily accept. If that does not succeed, we should correct “with love” and “if this is not enough”—having already made the previous three attempts to reach agreement—we are to “search out every appropriate means” to save the statement we are tempted to condemn. Disagreement and condemnation among Christians are envisioned more as a failure of love than as a principled defense of the truth against a subversive enemy.

Ignatius’s advice might be rejected as idealistic, or perhaps criticized for having as much potential to be exhausting as does the very polarization that it might help us avoid. But this is precisely the effort that is necessary to sustain communion in a cross-pressured and polarized world. And it is also the kind of effort necessary for a new evangelization in the context of pluralism and secularity where all claims to ultimate meaning are contestable and even devout believers need help and community to keep opting in to the possibility of faith.

At its best, the way of seeing recommended by the “Presupposition” involves an enlargement of our own imagination of another’s motives. We are asked to see how they might be trying to say something we can agree with, even when we cannot agree with what they have actually said. To put it somewhat more theologically, we are asked to see—and to want to see—how something we are inclined to reject might proceed from a desire for the good, and a desire for God, in which we already share.

This is a deeply hopeful vision, and it is one all Catholics are called to put into practice.

The gift of communion—of being bound together in a common life by something deeper than our own agreement—is a gift not only for the Church but also for a divided and polarized world. Communion reveals that polarization is not an automatic consequence of difference and exposes it as a lie that deceives us into fearing each other instead of recognizing what we hold in common. Catholics ought to aspire to show our neighbors who are exhausted by polarization and division that there is a way out of this trap, and that it starts by choosing to love those we are tempted to view as enemies.

Sam Sawyer, S.J., ’00, M.Div. ’14, is the editor-in-chief of America Media.

This article excerpt was originally published online on March 16, 2023, and became the cover story, “The Call to Communion: How the Church Can Combat Polarization,” of the April 2023 America print issue.

AUTHENTIC COMMUNION AND THE WAY OUT OF POLARIZATION

“As a response to God’s self-communication in Christ, hope is distinct from self-help; hope always involves ‘the other’....Hope expresses the recognition that we depend on one another, that we are called to solidarity with one another. Hope, then, underpins human communion.” Richard Lennan, “Hope and the Church: A Trilogy”

Summary

As Sam Sawyer, S.J., writes, St. Ignatius’ “Presupposition to Charity” offers a hopeful vision for Catholics experiencing polarization. The “Presupposition” challenges Catholics to live out the communion that is central to Catholic life by seeing how even our differences might “proceed from a desire for the good, and a desire for God.” We are bound together in communion as the body of Christ—something that Sawyer argues the Church can exemplify as a way through polarization.

Questions for Conversation

1. Sawyer writes that polarization in the Church makes us “start to treat other Catholics as enemies,” yet communion means that our obligations and belonging to one another “[do] not cease when Catholics disagree.” What do you find is hopeful in this view of communion? How can communion challenge us to grow in and through experiences of polarization?

2. The “Presupposition to Charity” entails effort and desire to see “how something we are inclined to reject might proceed from…a desire for God.” How can you cultivate a practice of loving charity that expresses communion? How might the “Presupposition” help you to grow in communion with others?

3. How does communion welcome us into deeper forms of relationship? Does this bring unique challenges? If so, how?

A CATHOLIC RESPONSE TO POLARIZATION

By Pope Francis

Polarization is not Catholic. A Catholic cannot think either-or (aut-aut) and reduce everything to polarization. The essence of what is Catholic is both-and (etet). The Catholic unites the good and the not so good. There is only one people of God. When there is polarization, a divisive mentality arises, which privileges some and leaves others behind. The Catholic always harmonizes differences. If we see how the Holy Spirit acts, it first causes disorder: think of the morning of Pentecost, and the confusion and mess (lío) it created there, and then it brings about harmony. The Holy Spirit in the Church does not reduce everything to just one value; rather, it harmonizes opposing differences. That is the Catholic spirit. The more harmony there is between the differences and the opposites the more Catholic it is. The more polarization there is, the more one loses the Catholic spirit and falls into a sectarian spirit. This [saying] is not mine, but I repeat it: what is Catholic is not either-or, but is both-and, combining differences. And this is how we understand the Catholic way of dealing with sin, which is not puritanical:

saints and sinners, both together. [And] it is interesting to search for the roots of what is Catholic in the choices that Jesus made. Jesus had four possibilities: either to be a Pharisee, or to be a Sadducee, or to be an Essene, or to be a Zealot. These were the four parties, the four options at that time. And Jesus was not a Pharisee, nor a Sadducee, nor an Essene, nor a Zealot. He was something different. And if we look at the deviations in the history of the Church, we can see that they are always on the side of the Pharisees, of the Sadducees, of the Essenes, of the Zealots. Jesus went beyond all this by proposing the Beatitudes, which are also something different.

Pope Francis is the 266th pope, the Bishop of Rome. He was elected to the papacy on March 13, 2013; previously, Francis served as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, from 1998–2013.

This article is excerpted from an interview with America (November 22, 2022).

GATHERING PRAYER

Prayer for Charity

Adapted from the Collect for Charity

Set our hearts aflame, O Lord, with the Spirit of your charity, that we may always think thoughts worthy and pleasing to your majesty, so as to love you and all whom we encounter.

Amen.

For more information about Faith Feeds, visit bc.edu/c21faithfeeds

This program is sponsored by Boston College’s Church in the 21st Century Center, a catalyst and a resource for the renewal of the Catholic Church.

(617)552-0470 • church21@bc.edu • bc.edu/c21