This talk, titled Healing our Wounded American Culture, was livestreamed from Our Lady of Lourdes in Minneapolis this past Sunday, May 3rd. Having been on sabbatical for three months from January – March, my prayer and study focused on the harm that is wrought, respectively, by ecclesial and American culture that needs to reformed for the good of the communities that each culture is called to serve. I had a fair amount of material to cover, so some of my analysis is not as nuanced or thorough as I would like. The idea of examining the current state of both Church and nation was inspired by a national convening on lay leadership in which I participated last June at Georgetown University. I thank the good folks at the Initiative for Catholic Social Thought and Public Life for their vital leadership and inspiration.
To bridge the crises currently experienced in the Catholic Church and the United States, I plan for a final talk in May that will present many corollaries between ecclesial and American culture. I will also present a roadmap to restoration for both Church and American culture that include necessary building blocks to cultural health and human flourishing. No, I am not advocating for a theocracy in my thoughts regarding the United States, but the hope to communicate that many similar wounds experienced in the Church and the nation arise from similar dynamics and cultural deficiencies. The path forward toward healing and restoration requires naming the harm and confronting the dimensions of ecclesial and American culture that require conversion.
This link will take you to the Our Lady of Lourdes website where you will also find several resources that were referenced in my talk as well as a bibliography of works cited or relied on for my talk. I would like to thank Julie Craven for her invaluable help in launching and maintaining this blog since I began writing last August. One correction in the talk below – philosophical liberalism as described by Patrick Deneen, results in a pincer movement not pincher movement as I inadvertently said.
Faith, Justice & Flourishing 