In our polarized society today, the need for civil dialogue is great. So how do we approach that dialogue as Catholics? And what are some of the tools from our faith tradition that we can use in overcoming polarization?  

This episode of “The Gloria Purvis Podcast” features a panel discussion between Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego, Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minn., and Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Tex. The conversation includes reflections on their roles as shepherds and leaders in their dioceses and in the U.S. church, and on important topics such as the Synod on Synodality, a spirit of encounter and where to find hope amid polarization. 

This conversation originally aired as a virtual event co-sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic Charities USA, Glenmary Home Missioners and the Jesuit Conference. It’s part of “Civilize It,” a U.S.C.C.B. initiative in response to Pope Francis’ invitation to a better kind of politics, in which Catholics are called to seek the truth, build bridges and find solutions for the common good together.  

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Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, we’re releasing a mini-season that covers the importance of forming our consciences and voting, what to do when you don’t feel you entirely belong to either party, polarization in the church, racial justice and recognition of human dignity in our society. 

On this episode of “The Gloria Purvis Podcast,” Gloria speaks with Sam Sawyer, S.J., the editor in chief of America Magazine. In early September 2024, Pope Francis was asked what advice he would give to Catholics in the United States for the upcoming presidential election. Pope Francis responded with an assessment of both candidates, saying: “Both are against life: the one that throws out migrants and the one that kills children. Both are against life.” He added that Catholics have a duty to “vote, and one has to choose the lesser evil.” The pope refused to speculate about which was the lesser evil, saying, “Each person must think and decide according to their own conscience.”

Gloria and Sam discuss the Catholic imperative to form and obey one’s conscience, especially around two key voting issues: abortion and racism.

Links: 

Pope Francis told American Catholics to vote their conscience. What did he mean?

Pope Francis: Trump and Harris are ‘both against life’ but Catholics must vote and choose ‘lesser evil’

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What is a Christian understanding of forgiveness? And does it necessarily involve reconciliation or the abatement of anger? 

On the final episode of this season, Gloria welcomes Reverend Matthew Ichihashi Potts on “The Gloria Purvis Podcast” to discuss the subject of forgiveness.

Reverend Potts is an Episcopalian minister and professor of Christian Morals at Harvard University. He is also the author of the new book, Forgiveness: An Alternative Account, a probing study that draws upon theology, philosophy, social ethics and even literature to reexamine or rediscover forgiveness.

The conversation centers primarily on whether forgiveness is possible especially with grave violations of human dignity, such as slavery, genocide, and mass shootings. Too often, Matthew says, we hurry to dress the wounds of trauma with the bandage of cheap forgiveness. We mistakenly believe that anger must fully subside in order for forgiveness to become possible. But is that what Jesus means when he urges us to forgive seven times seventy times? 

Matthew offers an alternative definition of forgiveness, which is simply put, non-retaliation. However, choosing to forgive someone who has caused immense harm does not mean that the victims of violence must sweep feelings of anger under the rug or rush to reconciliation.  

“If your question is where does our discomfort around anger come from?” says Matthew, “it comes from things like structural violence, like white supremacy. I think that if you are a person in power, it's really good if your victim is not angry anymore. Because if they're not angry anymore, then there's no wrong to fix. And so I think we should be suspicious of a white, European Christian theological tradition that has come to associate the abatement of anger with forgiveness, because who does that bear out on? It bears out on people who have traditionally been marginalized- women and people of color.”

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If there’s one thing that pro-life and pro-choice advocates can agree upon, its that the cost of having a baby is significant, and often a deterrent for mothers carrying to term. 

“So the average privately-insured person pays about $2,800 to give birth out of pocket,” says Kristen Day, the Executive Director of Democrats For Life of America. “And one in six new parents pay over $5,000. But those women without insurance pay thousands more, up to $20,000.”

For the penultimate episode of the second season, Gloria is joined once more by Kristen Day, the Executive Director of Democrats For Life of America. Kristen is the author of the book “Democrats For Life: Pro-Life Politics and the Silenced Majority.” Recently, Kristen co-authored a paper “Make Birth Free” and the two discuss the merits of this cause, along with the challenges to making this vision a reality. 

“I think from the pro-life side if you're serious about ending abortion this is one way that we need to do it.” says Kristen, “And from the pro-choice side, if you really are pro-choice, then we need to support choice. And alleviating the cost of childbirth, instead of funding abortion, should be a priority for both sides.”

Related articles

Elizabeth Bruenig’s article “Make Birth Free”

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Gloria speaks with Dr. Laura Masur, an assistant professor in the department of anthropology at The Catholic University of America. Dr. Masur has been one of the archeologists excavating enslaved communities on former plantations owned by the Society of Jesus in Maryland. They ask if and how we can reconcile the early American missionary work, especially of the Jesuits, with the grave sin of slavery.

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Conversations around sex and gender today are rife with acrimony and seemingly irreconcilable viewpoints. It can be hard to find places of agreement or even commonly held definitions. But Elizabeth Sweeny Block and Abigail Favale are two Catholic scholars who have modeled civil debate around sex and gender in the pages of America and do so again this week on “The Gloria Purvis Podcast.”

Dr. Elizabeth Sweeny Block is an associate professor of Christian ethics at Saint Louis University, and Dr. Abigail Favale is a professor at the University of Notre Dame. Together, Elizabeth and Abigail co-authored two articles in America: “How should Catholics think about gender identity and transgender persons?” and “What Does God Reveal in Transgender Bodies?: A Conversation on Catholic Teaching and Gender.”

Animating much of their conversation is Gloria’s question, “How do we come to understand the truth of a person?” And, in light of that truth, how do we foster authentic human flourishing? For instance, what should we make of gender-affirming care, which may include taking cross-sex hormones and surgeries? 

“There’s not an objective physiological condition that is being treated by these medical interventions,” Abigail argues. “Instead, you have a healthy functioning, normally sexed, oftentimes fertile body that’s being disrupted and sterilized. And I think that’s at odds with human flourishing.” 

Elizabeth counters that this understanding of a “perfectly healthy, functioning, fertile body” at odds with a person’s interior psychology only reasserts a false dichotomy in which body and mind are separate. Instead, Elizabeth posits that “it’s not a healthy functioning body if this person is in distress in this body, if this body is causing pain to this person.”

While Abigail and Elizabeth offer differing perspectives on how to approach transgender medicalization and public policy around facilities like restrooms, they demonstrate great respect for the human person—body and soul—that is unshakably Catholic. 

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In honor of Black History Month, Cornel West and Robert George join the Gloria Purvis Podcast to talk about what Black joy and resistance mean to them. West and George are currently touring the country to speak at various universities about the centrality of truth-seeking to higher education. They are both prolific intellectual giants, who require very little introduction, but whose friendship is an inspiration.

Dr. Cornel West teaches on the works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as courses in Philosophy of Religion, African American Critical Thought, and a wide range of subjects at Union Theological Seminary. He has written 20 books and is best known for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and for his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. His most recent book, Black Prophetic Fire, offers an unflinching look at nineteenth and twentieth-century African American leaders and their visionary legacies.

Robert George is a professor of Jurisprudence and the Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, a program founded under his leadership in 2000. He has served as Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom as well as a presidential appointee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the President’s Council on Bioethics. In addition, Professor George has served as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology. He was also a Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, and the author of several books.

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When you think Mardi Gras, you might think king cake, colorful beads thrown from parades, and as much debauchery as one can manage before the Lenten season of repentance begins the following day. Maybe you’ve wondered whether Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is even a Catholic holiday given the day’s deluge of decadence. 

Mardi Gras is not only Catholic, it’s French, Creole, African-American, African and Native American. And there are layers to this ornate carnival that reveal a powerful history of Black joy, resistance and rebellion. So tells Nekisha Elise Williams, the author of Mardi Gras Indians, and today’s guest on The Gloria Purvis Podcast. 

“There are really two Mardi Gras,” says Nekisha, “and where Black people party and have Mardi Gras is not always the same as where white people party and have Mardi Gras.” For a long time, the segregation between white and Black Mardi Gras was policed by Jim Crow laws. And while there is growing curiosity about what happens at “Black Mardi Gras,” the impact of white supremacy culture still reinforces this historical segregation. 

One vibrant and distinct tradition that white mainstream Mardi Gras often misses is that of the Mardi Gras Indians, otherwise known as the Black-Masking Indians. They have a fascinating history that dates back to the 1800s, when Native Americans provided a safe refuge for enslaved Africans who had escaped bondage. This friendship between formerly enslaved Africans and various Native American tribes of the lower Mississippi River Valley helped birth one of the most colorful and unique cultural expressions of Mardi Gras. 

Nikesha has done extensive research on the Mardi Gras Indians and describes them as “a group of men, women, children, families, neighbors who at Carnival time in New Orleans mask Indian or mask as the Plains Indians, Native American indigenous people.” 

Masking as indigenous has served at least two important purposes. It’s a way to pay homage to their ancestors and their friendship with the Native American tribes that harbored them “while also paying tribute to the warrior culture of African tribes that were enslaved on the continent and brought over to the new world,” says Nikesha. 

“It's not just a parade [...] to go out, get drunk, have fun, and like say, ‘Hey, Mister, throw me some beads,’” Nikesha says. “For some of them, it really is a spiritual and religious experience. And that goes down to the songs that they sing, the hand signals that they throw, the dances that they do, and how they operate within their communities as well.”

To learn more about the colorful and defiant history of the Mardi Gras Indians, be sure to listen to this special Mardi Gras episode of The Gloria Purvis Podcast. 

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There’s an intellectual movement afoot called “Catholic Integralism.” It’s being discussed in academic colloquia, twitter, and lots of pockets of the church. But how should we understand this movement?

On the Gloria Purvis Podcast, Gloria speaks with Dr. Jason Blakely, a political scholar and professor at Pepperdine University, about this burgeoning trend of Catholic integralism. 

Integralism rejects liberalism in the broad sense as “an ideological tradition that holds that individual rights are the basis for the organization of political life,” explains Jason. In place of liberalism, integralism seeks to check individual licentiousness and advance a social order in which political powers are subordinate to the church.  

Jason shares Gloria’s skepticism with Catholic integralism, drawing from St. Augustine, who cautioned against uniting the church and state because it almost inevitably leads to a lust for domination and fratricide.  

Related links:

A better way to think about the debate about church, state and integralism

Jason Blakely’s article for Commonweal and Chronicle of Higher Education 

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Dr. Meg Chisolm is no stranger to mental illness. She’s suffered from several serious bouts of depression that brought her close to taking her own life. She was fortunate to get the help she needed and then went on to become a psychiatrist and professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr. Meg is an author of a psychiatric textbook and a book on psychiatric illness for patients and families, From Survive to Thrive: Living Your Best Life with Mental Illness.

In her conversation with Gloria, Dr. Meg outlines temperament and personality, along with different kinds of mental illness. While there is a disconcerting stigma still associated with “mental illness,” Dr. Meg says its best understood as “any time when the mind has gone awry, when there's been a problem, developed in your thoughts or in your behaviors, your actions or in your emotions, in your feelings [...] when mental life doesn't go as planned, when it goes awry.”

Dr. Meg provides an insightful mapping not only of a mind gone awry, but she also outlines the key factors in human flourishing, and what role religion can play in our happiness.

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