Category Archives: ethic of resistance

Inhumane Profits

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Imagine this scenario. Your daughter is a newlywed. While she is not a US citizen, her husband is, and she is trying to navigate the legal system to adjust her own status. She shows up at the immigration office for her regularly scheduled appointment, from which she does not return home. You finally make contact to learn that she is being held in immigration detention at Delaney Hall, a private for-profit prison run by GEO Group under a 15 year contract granted by the Trump Administration in February worth $1 Billion. You call the detention center to learn about visiting hours, yet the phone number listed on the website is disconnected. The GEO website and the ICE website both say that there are daily visiting hours, but when you make your way to the warehouse-like building where your daughter is detained, located on a highway with a nearby sewage plant and industrial estates spewing toxic smells while tractor trailers barrel by, you learn that daily visitation has been cancelled and you can only visit now on Saturday and Sunday. So you manage to come back on Saturday morning, only to be barred entry again because you are wearing open toe shoes on this summer day.

This is not a made up scenario, but the story I cobbled together this morning after greeting this mother outside the gates of Delaney Hall after she had been denied entry. In the end she was able to visit her daughter because I lent her a pair of shoes that Sister Sheena and I had brought with us for this very situation. The guards are able to bar visitors if they judge that they don’t meet the dress code, which in addition to open toe shoes can include sleeveless tops or shorts/skirts that are deemed to be too short. Other visitors who lined up outside the gates this morning to lay eyes on their loved ones were turned away for other reasons. Some thankfully were able to enter the facility to see their loved ones. About an hour later I saw these folks leave the facility, their faces showing a mix of emotion as they rushed back to their cars. I held each of them in prayer as they walked by.

I was able to greet the woman whose story I tell above to return her shoes. She and her son-in-law told us that her daughter is doing ok. They were holding back tears as they thanked us for the loan of shoes and more importantly for our kindness. They told us how much it meant to them that those detained at Delaney hall are not forgotten. I promised to pray for both of them and her daughter.

My friends, horrible things are not only happening in our name, but corporations are making a profit, paid by our tax dollars, on this inhuman treatment of our immigrant brothers and sisters. This attack on human dignity is incentivized. We cannot be silent. We must pay attention. We must listen to and tell the story. That is why I held aloft a sign that I made during my prayer time this morning – “History has its eyes on you.” Sheena held a sign that said “For Profit Prisons are Immoral.”

For the past ten weeks a faithful group of ordinary folks, including Pax Christi New Jersey, have been standing witness outside Delaney Hall to keep “Eyes on ICE” and provide support to the families attempting to visit their loved ones. They offer clothing when needed to pass the dress code, water and snacks for those who have travelled far to stand in line outside in the heat, and information sheets with helpline numbers for immigrant aid organizations. Perhaps most importantly they show that there are good people who are watching, standing witness, and calling out this social sin with real life consequences and who want to offer support. I hope to join them whenever I can. Sadly, this inhumanity for profit is happening just a twenty minute drive from my home.

This for profit prison is convenient for the immigration industrial complex because of its proximity to Newark Airport. “The location near an international airport streamlines logistics, and helps facilitate the timely processing of individuals in our custody as we pursue President Trump’s mandate to arrest, detain and remove illegal aliens from our communities,” said acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello when GEO was awarded the contract in February.

While we were there this morning, we witnessed a van full of immigrants leave the facility, escorted by unmarked vehicles, presumably on their way to a deportation flight at the airport. We were able to just see the men inside through the tinted windows. Hopefully they could see us outside as I held up a sign saying: “Fathers, we see you. We are fighting for you and your families. Stay strong!”

Agency Amid Anxiety

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Friends, it might be an understatement to say that we are living in an overwhelming time. What is one person who might be anxious or worried about the common good do in this moment? I recently had the opportunity to be interviewed by Jeff Renner on the program Challenge 2.0. The entire 30 minute interview is available on the Paths to Understanding YouTube Channel, which was mostly focused on shareholder advocacy.

Below is a 3 minute clip where I try to answer the question on what ordinary folks can do in this moment, drawing from the tradition of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and my research on the ethics of resistance.

Life, Death and US

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As a Bernardin Scholar at Catholic Theological Union (MA in Theology 2015)  I have the honor of carrying the name of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, perhaps most recognized for his articulation of the consistent ethic of life. Simply put, human dignity and the right to life extend from the beginning of life to natural death.

As I read the news this morning, especially this article detailing the deaths that will be caused by the US backing out of its commitments to share our abundant resources with those most in need of life saving assistance across the globe, I remembered these words from an address Cardinal Bernardin gave in 1984:

“It is clearly simply inadequate simply to say that human life is sacred and to explain why this is so. It is also necessary to examine and respond to the challenges to the unique dignity and sacredness of human life today. Human life has always been sacred, and there have always been threats to it. However, we live in a period of history when we have produced, sometimes with the best of intentions, a technology and a capacity to threaten and diminish human life which previous generations could not even imagine.”

I find it tragic, indeed sinful, that those with the power of my nation today who have the capacity to protect and save life are instead taking swift, rash, and devastating actions to withhold resources from those most in need for ideological purposes. Millions of people will literally die in the coming months and years, and in our globalized society we in this country will not be immune.

One child who becomes paralyzed because we let Polio vaccines expire in a warehouse is too much. 200,000 will be paralyzed without US assistance.

One child starving is unacceptable, and these cuts mean one million children will not receive life saving malnutrition treatment.

Some of the contracts that were ended by a terse email claiming these good works were no longer convenient for the US government included:

-TB treatment for one million people including 300,000 children

-The only source of water for 250,000 people in a refugee camp in Democratic Republic of the Congo

-Malaria tests, nets and treatments for 93 million people

-A grant to UNICEF’s polio immunization program, which paid for planning, logistics and delivery of vaccines to millions of children.

-HIV treatment  350,000 people in Lesotho, Tanzania and Eswatini, including 10,000 children and 10,000 pregnant women who were receiving care so that they would not transmit the virus to their babies at birth.

The list goes on and on and we, the American people whose “convenience” was named as the reason why, will be complicit in the deaths that will result if we do not speak up and call this what it is … sinful.

I for one will not and cannot be silent.

I will pray, especially this morning for the intercession of Cardinal Bernardin.

I will act by speaking out and advocating for what is right.

I will stay informed and raise consciousness so that we can all form our conscience.

It is literally a matter of life and death.

Resistance – Episode 4: Layers of Resistance Model

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See Episode 1 – Introduction

See Episode 2 – Holocaust: Resisting Extreme Social Sin

See Episode 3 – Resistance in Everyday Actions

In the first three episodes of this series, I have been publishing research from my 2015 MA theology Thesis on resistance to social sin. Today I am sharing the Layers of Resistance model I developed, with some updated thinking from a recent presentation I gave to a community of Catholic Sisters last autumn.

Drawing from the Church’s understanding of social sin and insights from feminist theology, the model urges us to resist the supposed impossibility of changing the world. We can resist the globalization of indifference by acts of resistance, big or small, that seek to heal distorted relationships. Our individual actions can and will influence our the collective – in fact we can coordinate our individual actions into collective ones. Resistance is not futile. It is the way of love.

Unpacking Social Sin

First of all, before we talk about how to resist social sin , it’s important to have some common understanding of what we mean by social sin in the first place. Social sin is a relative late comer to the field of Catholic moral theology, reflecting a major shift in understanding in later part of the 20th Century.  Two major influences were the renewed inter-religious dialogue during and after the Second Vatican Council on questions of racism, poverty, war and peace and Latin American liberation theology.

This category of social sin was picked up by global church in 1971 synod of bishops – Justice in the World. The Synod recognized that we are indissolubly linked and responsible.  The Bishops also recognized the inability to overcome social sin by our own strength and the need to forge new paths towards action in the cause of justice in the world. This document was instrumental in my own congregation’s reclaiming of our charism of peace through justice during the renewal period.

Social sin is a broad term that “encompasses the unjust structures, distorted consciousness, and collective actions and inaction that facilitate injustice and dehumanization.” (Heyer, 415) The Church understand social sin to be both personal and collective in its source, which implies that resisting social sin must also be personal and collective. “Every sin is personal under a certain aspect; under another, every sin is social, insofar as and because it also has social consequences.” (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 117) It is a both/and reality, and this understanding must frame our response.

In his 1987 social encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, Pope John Paul II* boldly claimed that “one cannot easily gain a profound understanding of the reality that confronts us unless we give a name to the roots of the evils which afflict us,” that is, structural sin. Over time, these structures of sin “grow stronger, spread, and become the source of other sins, and so influence people’s behavior.” (36)

Three years earlier, in his 1984 apostolic exhortation, Reconciliatio et paenitentia, Pope John Paul II reflected on the role of the individual in social sin and the relationship to the structural elements. I find this passage especially challenging:

“It is a case of the very personal sins of those who cause and support social evil or who exploit it, of those who are in a position to avoid, eliminate, or at least limit certain social evils but who fail to do so out of laziness, fear, or the conspiracy of silence, through secret complicity or indifference, of those who take refuge in the supposed impossibility of changing the world, and also of those who sidestep the effort and sacrifice required, producing specious reasons of a higher order.”

Pope Francis adds another element to the dynamic of social sin, which I think is critical in the present (mis)information age to understand and engage, namely the Globalization of Indifference which is playing out hourly on our current geopolitical stage.

“In today’s world, the sense of belonging to a single human family is fading, and the dream of working together for justice and peace seems an outdated utopia. What reigns instead is a cool, comfortable and globalized indifference, born of deep disillusionment concealed behind a deceptive illusion: thinking that we are all-powerful, while failing to realize that we are all in the same boat. This illusion, unmindful of the great fraternal values, leads to a sort of cynicism. For that is the temptation we face if we go down the road of disenchantment and disappointment.” (Fratelli Tutti, 30)

So we need to resist the temptation of taking refuge in the supposed impossibility of changing the world. We need to resist the illusion of isolation, the temptation of cynicsm, and being comfortable with the globalization of indifference. Reading the signs of our current times, lives depend on our ability to resist. How? That’s where I offer the Layers of Resistance Model for your reflection and action.

Layers of Resistance

Social sin is inherently relational – the sum of individual and collective acts. Therefore, our resistance to social sin must also be relational.

Layer 1 – Responsibility and Consciousness

Each of us is born into and lives in a social context. We are enmeshed in unjust structures beyond our control, some of which we derive benefit from, others which might burden us. The first layer of resistance calls us to develop a critical conciousness of our own connections to social sin, and to raise the awareness of others.

In the Latin American theological understanding of social sin, this is called conscientization. In order to accept responsibility for social sin, we must  be awake to sin embodied in structures which affront human dignity/creation. Salvadoran theologian Jon Sobrino notes that “[e]vil has its own dynamic and requires concealment and lying.” He observes that “the problem is not ‘seeing,’ but ‘wanting to see.’ If people do not want to see the reality in front of them, there is no solution.” (Sobrino 38, 41)

Layer 2 – Lamentation

Note, THIS IS NOT GUILT.  “Guilt,” writes Gregory Baum, “is not a useful theological concept for understanding the situation of the great majority of persons, caught as they are in the inherited structures and in the corresponding legitimating ideologies.” (Baum 119) Instead, he points us to the power of the biblical tradition of lament.

Bryan Massingale also calls us to lament our connection to social sin. Lament “entails a hard acknowledgement that one has benefited from another’s burden and that one’s social advantages have been purchased at a high cost to others. Here lament takes the form of a forthright confession of human wrongdoing in the light of God’s mercy. It is a form of truth-telling and contrition that acknowledges both the harms that have been done to others and one’s personal and communal culpability for them.” (Massingale 111)

One of Massingale’s key insights is that this lament feels visceral. We feel it in our gut. It makes us comfortable, and this is as it should be.  This compels us forward to action.

Layer 3 – Healing Distorted Relationships

The third step draws from the wisdom of both magisterial teaching (see discussion of Popes John Paull II and Francis above) and feminist theology. Because social sin is just that, social or relational, then the path towards resistance must heal the relationships that have been distorted by the social sin. Indeed, feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether asserts that “there is no evil that is not relational.” The historical or systemic nature of sin does not absolve us of personal responsibility. (Ruether 181)

Looking specifically at the social sin of sexism, Ruether notes that on the one hand, the system of sexism was started by human beings and continues today through the cooperative actions of human beings of both genders. Yet, she believes that if we were to stop our “many sided cooperation with it, it could not continue to stand.” (182)

Just as the social sin of sexism had its beginning in the actions and choices of human persons, we can also choose to “make a beginning” toward conversion. “In making a beginning, we can discover that the power of sexism has already been disenchanted. It has begun to be defeated ‘spiritually’, that is, it has lost its authority over our lives.” (183) This beginning is situated in our own relationships and spheres of influence.

As we seek to heal relationships distorted by social sin, Pope Francis reminds us to look at the perfect model of relationship: the Trinity – a model of communion. “If we go to the ultimate source of that love which is the very life of the triune God, we encounter the community of three divine persons, the origin and perfect model of all life in society.” (Fratelli Tutti 85)

The model of divine love embodied in the Trinity–the root of our faith–calls us to recognize that we are all made in the image and likeness of God with inherent dignity. This truth of Trinitarian love challenges us to stand up for human dignity and to seek right relationship and heal distorted ones. These are the radical roots of our faith which ground us and bring forth life and goodness.

In his new encyclical, Dilexit Nos, Pope Francis tells us:  “All our actions need to be put under the ‘political rule’ of the heart. In this way, our aggressiveness and obsessive desires will find rest in the greater good that the heart proposes and in the power of the heart to resist evil.”  (13)

Resistance is the moral response to social sin – individual and collective resistance. Resistance must not only be grounded in love, it must be centered in our own spheres of influence. Think back to the example of the rescuers discussed in Episode 2. Their acts of resistance, no matter how small, made a difference in their spheres of influence. Grounded in their belief that they were connected to all people, integrating the value of human life in their world view, and that they were not powerless but that they had agency, they acted. This enabled them to resist the supposed impossibility of changing the world.

We too can resist this temptation, and the globalization of indifference or feeling overwhelmed by the sheer scope of social sin if we first peel away the layers and take action to resist social sin in our own lives.

Applying the Layers of Resistance Model

Choose one aspect of social sin that you feel called to resist. Focusing on one aspect can help us to avoid feeling overwhelmed as we seek ways to resist. Some questions to consider:

1st Layer of Resistance

  • What do you already know about the focus area.
  • How are you/we linked to, accepting of, complicit in the social sin of this focus area?
  • How are you, might you raise the awareness of others?

2nd Layer of Resistance

  • What truths need to be told about your/our complicity with the social sin of this focus area?
  • What risks might you/we be called to take?
  • What is this telling you about you/our moral identity?

3rd Layer of Resistance

  • Who are the persons and ecosystems you are related to through this focus area?
  • What relationships are being distorted through this social sin?
  • What concrete act(s) might you take within your sphere of influence to heal these distorted relationships?

*It is not surprising that Pope John Paul II addressed the reality of social sin, given his personal history, as noted in this memorial page on the US Holocaust Museum website: “With the passing of Pope John Paul II, the world has lost a moral leader fervently committed to fighting the prejudice and hatred that led to the Holocaust. His own personal experience of Nazi oppression and the persecution of Jews, including the deaths of his childhood Jewish friends and their families in the concentration camps, strongly influenced his leadership in Jewish-Christian relations.”

Sources

Gregory Baum, “Structures of Sin,” in The Logic of Solidarity: Commentaries on Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical “On Social Sin,” eds. Gregory Baum and Robert Ellsberg (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989)

Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Vatican. 2006

Kristin E. Heyer, “Social Sin and Immigration: Good Fences Make Bad Neighbors,” Theological Studies 71, no. 2 (Summer 2010)

JUSTICE IN THE WORLD – Justicia in Mundo, 1971 Synod of Bishops

Bryan N. Massingale, Racial Justice in the Catholic Church (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004)

Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti. Vatican. 2020.

Pope Francis, Dilexit Nos. Vatican. 2024.

Pope John Paul II, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia. Vatican. 1984

Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis. Vatican. 1987

Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993)

Jon Sobrino, Where is God? Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity, and Hope, trans. Margaret Wilde (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004)

Resistance in the Christian Tradition – Episode 3, Contemporary Resistance in Everyday Actions

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See Episode 1 – Introduction

See Episode 2 – Holocaust: Resisting Extreme Social Sin

I am sharing excerpts from my theological research on the Ethics of Resistance to Social Sin. In Episode 3, I explore how to resist social sin in everyday actions. Ten years ago, when I wrote this, I looked at resistance to the social sin of human trafficking. Re-reading what I wrote then, I see potential insights that might be helpful as we seek in 2025 to resist other social sins, including those that seek to undermine democracy and consolidate power through oligarchy and autocracy. We are all enmeshed in a complex web of unjust structures and distorted consciousness in the best of times. In these times, you might be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed. The primary locus for resistance to social sin is in our connections in our own lives, areas where we have influence and can take actions, no matter how small, grounded in love and right relationship. Resistance is not futile. Each and every act of resistance, no matter how small, can serve to affirm inherent human dignity and the integrity of God’s creation, even if it does not actually serve, by itself, to end the social sin.

CONTEMPORARY RESISTANCE IN EVERYDAY ACTIONS
Most people are not likely to face the dramatic life and death choices that were almost an everyday occurrence under the Nazi regime. Yet, as discussed in chapters Episodes One and Two, social sin enmeshes ordinary people in a web of “unjust structures, distorted consciousness, and collective actions and inaction that facilitate injustice and dehumanization.” (Heyer, 415) Most often, this web manifests itself in daily lives and choices in an increasingly globalized social, political, and economic system. It follows then that contemporary Christians seeking to resist social sin must look first at their connections to social sin in their everyday lives and choices. This is their primary locus for change.

The Second Vatican Council recognized the moral importance of everyday ordinary actions. Gaudium et Spes claims that human beings, created in God’s image, have a mandate to “rule the world in justice and holiness.” We do this through “the massive endeavor of humanity,” both at the individual and collective level. Yet, as the Council reminds us, this mandate “also applies to everyday activities.” (Gaudium et Spes, 34) Hence, it should govern our actions in every sphere of life, not just dramatic choices. Evoking the memory of Jesus, the Council asserts that “the way of love is open to all people and that … this love is to be pursued not just in great matters but above all in the ordinary circumstances of life.” (GS, 38) Facing the life-threatening and life-diminishing realities of contemporary forms of social sin, by extension this mandate also extends to actions for justice, both in extraordinary and ordinary circumstances.

In his introduction to Resist! Christian Dissent for the 21st Century, Michael G. Long asserts that resistance is a call for “everyday Christians, ordinary Christians.” 1 He also ponders “what it means to be Christian resisters” in the dominant US culture today. (Long, xxviii, xxx)

“What exactly should we resist as we make our way through this new century? Should we restrict ourselves to the evils identified in the Bible? Or are there new targets of Christian resistance? Should we resist just the governing authorities? Or are there additional forces that demand our resistance?” (Long, xxxi)

German Theologian Dorothee Sölle also ponders exactly what it is we are to resist today. Given that she was fifteen years old when the second world war ended, she was of course intimately familiar with the context of resistance discussed in the previous section. She contends that while it is important to remember that resistance carries “the memory of the dead, such as Sophie Scholl,” it cannot be reduced to the mere veneration of heroes. Rather, today’s realities require us to “offer resistance actively and deliberately and in very diverse situations, against becoming habituated to death, something that is one of the spiritual foundations of the culture of the First World.” (Sölle, Silent Cry, 4)

Sölle suggests that resistance is the “adequate form of struggle for those Christians” who are part of the dominant culture, such as “members of the white bourgeoisie—those who normally participate in the oppression and profit from exploitation.” Such resistance is a “form of liberation theology” from their social location of privilege. It is a “radical NO to the capitalist murder machine.” (Sölle, Resistance, 178-179) This “no” may take a variety of forms, such as “evasion, dissent, abstinence, refusal, boycott or strike, reform or counterproposal, dialogue or mediation.” There are echoes of Wink’s list of creative alternatives for those who follow the third way of Jesus. Sölle believes that these acts of resistance, from within the dominant culture, require a “radically mystical consciousness” which maintains connection to “those who think otherwise … No one is excluded or eliminated.” (Sölle, Silent Cry, 198) Here, Monroe’s research finding comes to mind— that only the rescuer group was able to include everyone in their worldview, and thus find the strength to advocate for the powerless at great personal risk.

Cynthia Moe-Lobeda also reflects from within the dominant culture on resistance to the life-threatening and life-diminishing reality of social sin. “‘Resistance’ means refusing to participate in some aspects of an economic system that is in fact destroying earth’s atmosphere and countless livelihoods, communities, and lives.” (Moe-Lobeda, 242) This resistance can, and must, occur at various levels: individuals and households, civil society, business, and government. “The actions of each reinforce the work of the others.” (Moe-Lobeda, 246) Moe-Lobeda’s multi-level understanding of resistance recognizes the complex structural reality of social sin. “While structural sin transcends individual moral agency, it does not transcend collective agency. … Social movements demonstrate that people, working together, can indeed counter structural sin.” (Moe-Lobeda, 63)

Moe-Lobeda outlines a three-tiered schema for practices of resistance by individuals, civil society, business, and government. The first level is direct action against the impact of the social sin, such as buying goods which are certified as fair trade, meaning the producers received a just wage. The second level is aimed at changes in public policy, such as legislative advocacy. The third level forms people “capable of making choices” against the social sin. (Moe-Lobeda, 252)

It is important to remember that actions of resistance from within the dominant culture, whether undertaken by individual actors or larger social groups, take place within a “paradox of privilege. … Even when a person does recognize and repent of structural sin, it is not possible to divest oneself from the impact of the social structures into which our lives are woven.” (Moe-Lobeda, 61)

Christian resistance to evil has always taken place within a particular social context and requires navigating a web of social, political, and economic relationships. When ethical reflection on the social problem of human trafficking begins from the experience of trafficked persons, resistance emerges as an appropriate moral response which holds fast to the truth of human dignity.2

The goal of the above discussion of resistance—from the Christian tradition, to the example of resistance to extreme social sin in the Nazi holocaust, to reflection on contemporary resistance from within the dominant culture—has been to set the stage for the development of an ethic of resistance to the social sin. It should be clear that even in the face of extreme social sin, resistance is possible and serves to affirm inherent human dignity, even if it does not actually serve, by itself, to end the social sin. Furthermore, given that identity constrains moral choice, it is important to consider how acts of resistance might help transform the social context in ways which “move us beyond generalized feelings of sympathy, sorrow, or even outrage to a sense of moral imperative.” (Monroe, 231)

Next Up: Episode 4 – Layers of Resistance Model

1 Emphasis in original text.

2 While my Masters Thesis looked at the social sin of human trafficking, I believe this theological reflection and analysis can be useful for ordinary persons seeking an ethical response to other social sins, including those that seek to undermine democracy and consolidate power through oligarchy and autocracy.

Sources

Kristin E. Heyer, “Social Sin and Immigration: Good Fences Make Bad Neighbors.” Theological Studies 71, no 2. (Summer 2010)

Michael G. Long, ed, Resist! Christian Dissent for the 21st Century (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008)

Moe-Lobeda, Cynthia D. Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological Economic Vocation. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013.

Kristen Renwick Monroe, Ethics in an Age of Terror and Genocide: Identity and Moral Choice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012)

Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes, 1965 https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html

Dorothy Sölle, “Resistance: Toward a First World Theology,” Christianity and Crisis 30, no. 12 (July 1979)

Dorothy Sölle, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance (Minneapolis, MN, Fortress Press 2001)

Excerpt from: “Human Trafficking as Social Sin: An Ethic of Resistance,” by Susan Rose Francois, CSJP. Submitted to the Faculty of The Catholic Theological Union at Chicago in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Masters of Arts in Theology, March 2015.

Resistance in the Christian Tradition – Episode 2, Nazi Holocaust: Resisting Extreme Social Sin

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See Episode 1 – Introduction

I am sharing excerpts from my theological research on the Ethics of Resistance to Social Sin. In Episode 2, I share critical learnings from the experience of ordinary Christians resisting the death dealing reality of the Nazi regime in Germany and occupied territories. One major finding is that identity constrains the menu of moral choice. So how you see yourself, and the world, matters! Will you be a bystander who feels they are one person alone and can’t make a difference? A perpetrator/supporter who lashes out preemptively? Or a resister/rescuer who understands we all have agency to effect change and incorporate human dignity into your worldview? The choice my friends is ours!

NAZI HOLOCAUST: RESISTING EXTREME SOCIAL SIN
The metanarrative of the Nazi Holocaust rightly focuses on the violence, repression, and death-dealing atrocities committed against millions of innocent people in the name of National Socialism and its corresponding ideology. Yet, there is another narrative, sometimes neglected, which is also set within Nazi Germany and the territories it occupied by force. It is the story of ordinary people—farmers, college students, and average citizens—who resisted the Nazi regime from within their own spheres of influence, frequently paying for their resistance with their own lives.

To be sure, many Germans supported Adolf Hitler and company when they assumed power, while others chose a position on the sidelines. As of 1941, the majority of the population had not become members of the Nazi party or its organizations. What is less well known is the story of the thousands of people arrested or executed for acts of resistance: 300,000 German political resisters were in prison by 1939; 5,000 active resisters were executed; and 15,000 members of the military were killed for desertion or other actions deemed subversive. (Kidder, vii-viii)

Mark A. Wolfgam asserts that, behind these numbers, one can discern still other “very ordinary Germans [who] were able to carry out meaningful acts of resistance.” The reason these acts of resistance by ordinary persons are not well known, at least in part, is because in the immediate decades after the war, resistance narratives “were focused primarily upon heroic elite resistance.” More recent efforts to collect oral histories from the wider population who survived the war, however, have illustrated that many ordinary people “sought to work for the end of the regime in more limited and private ways.” (Wolfgam, 202-203)

Those who sought to resist this extreme reality of social sin were faced with an overarching bureaucratic machine that impacted and controlled many facets of daily life. Hence, the path to resistance was not an easy one, nor was it easy to sustain.

“Sometimes a single gesture was all that could be dared. The range of actions that constitute resistance is very broad, encompassing flight, hiding, sheltering those in danger, participating in forbidden activities, maintaining a sense of humanity in a dehumanizing environment, and engaging in military or quasi-military actions that would physically harm the Nazi machine.” (Gurewitsch, 221)

Some, like Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer beatified by the Catholic Church in 2007, resisted military involvement all together. Jägerstätter was beheaded in 1943 for his refusal to serve in the Nazi military, despite repeated counsel to the contrary by Church officials.
(Kidder, 34) He wrote of his discernment to resist: “Does it still bear witness to Christian love of neighbor if I commit an act, which I truly regard as evil and very unjust, and yet I continue to commit the act because otherwise I would suffer either physical or economic harm?” (Putz, 70)1

Other ordinary people sought to transform the social context by raising consciousness and conscience regarding the atrocities of the Nazi regime. In Munich, Germany, a group of college students calling themselves the White Rose Society widely distributed six strongly worded leaflets “to encourage passive resistance to the Nazi regime by unmasking its evil.” (Kidder, 34) They asked: “Why do the German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes, crimes so unworthy of the human race?” (White Rose Society, “Second Leaflet”) In February 1942, after being caught in the act of distributing the sixth leaflet on the campus of the University of Munich, siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl were arrested, sentenced with high treason, and executed. Other White Rose Society members were later executed. (Michalczyk and Müller, 49)

Seven months after the arrest of the Scholl siblings, thousands of ordinary people in Denmark managed a remarkable act of resistance on a grand scale. Within two days of a leaked announcement of a Nazi plan to round up the Danish Jewish population en masse—around 7,000 people—on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, “most Jews had succeeding in finding refuge with other Danes or in going into hiding.” They were helped by “thousands of unknown individuals” across the wide spectrum of Danish society. Still other Danes “knew what was going on, from neighbors to the staff on trains to the Danish police, and did not tell the Germans.” Within two months, most Danish Jews had escaped via small fishing boats to safety in neutral Sweden. (Trautner-Kromann, 91-93)

The contemporary reader, reflecting on what is now known of the extent of the atrocities of the Nazi holocaust and the probable cost for these acts of resistance, might be forgiven for thinking that these ordinary resisters were extraordinary, if not heroic. Andrew Michael Flescher contends that even those named “heroes” are both “ordinary and extraordinary.” They are extraordinary in that they “perform considerable altruistic actions at great costs,” yet they are ordinary because “they affirm rather than transcend their humanity.” 2 (Flescher, 154-155)

Reflecting on his own study of oral histories by ordinary Germans who resisted the Nazi regime, Wolfgam observes that “these acts of resistance … open new questions as to why more was not done.” (Wolfgam, 216-217) This key ethical question has relevance beyond the Nazi holocaust, to contemporary genocide, and to individual and collective response to other forms of social sin. It is helpful to ask the reverse of this key question: what was it that enabled thousands of ordinary people to counter the dehumanization of the Nazi regime through acts of resistance to extreme social sin in their daily lives?

Political psychologist Kristen Renwick Monroe offers a critical insight on this reverse question of motive. Analyzing extensive interviews with rescuers, bystanders, and Nazi supporters to examine their “diverse responses to Genocide,” Monroe concludes that “identity constrains choice” across all three groups. (Monroe, 190) In other words, one’s identity—in relation to self, other, world, and agency—radically influences one’s ethical response and actions. (Monroe, 245) She proposes thinking of one’s identity as providing a “cognitive menu” of moral choice. “Acts not on the cognitive menu are not considered, just as pizza is not an option in a Japanese restaurant.” (Monroe, 200)

Monroe found that bystanders “saw themselves as weak, low on efficacy, with little control over the situation.” (Monroe, 193) Their common response was: “But what could I do? I was one person alone against the Nazis.” (Monroe, 214) Supporters of the Nazi regime, paradoxically, saw themselves as victims, “besieged by threats to their well-being.” (Monroe, 197) They were willing to strike “preemptively” at target groups out of a perceived need for self preservation. (Monroe, 200) They also perceived themselves as constrained by “forces beyond human control that drive world events.” (Monroe, 214) By contrast, Monroe found that rescuers saw themselves as “connected with everyone” and able to effect change. (Monroe, 192) Notably, she also discovered that they were the only group who “had integrated the value of human life into their worldview.” Monroe believes that her findings suggest that identity constitutes “the force that moves us beyond generalized feelings of sympathy, sorrow, or even outrage to a sense of moral imperative…” Finally, she encourages “other scholars to test” her results in various contexts. (Monroe, 247) It seems clear that a key question from her findings for the field of ethics, particularly as it regards the response to contemporary and enduring forms of social sin, is how to broaden the menu of moral choice.

Next Up in the Series – Episode 3, Contemporary Resistance in Everyday Actions

1 Putz is a biographer and editor of the writings of Jägerstatter. She does not cite the exact source of this quotation.

2 Emphasis in the original text.

Sources

Andrew Michael Flescher, Heroes, Saints and Ordinary Morality (Washington, DC: Georgetown University, 2003)

Brana Gurewitsch, ed., Mothers, Sisters, Resisters: Oral Histories of Women Who Survived the Holocaust (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1998)

Annemarie S. Kidder, Ultimate Price: Testimonies of Christians Who Resisted the Third Reich (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012)

John J. Michalczyk and Franz J. Müller, “The White Rose Student Movement in Germany: Its History and Relevance Today,” in Resisters, Rescuers, and Refugees: Historical and Ethical Issues, ed. John J. Michalczyk (Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1997)

Kristen Renwick Monroe, Ethics in an Age of Terror and Genocide: Identity and Moral Choice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012)

Erna Putz, “Franz Jägerstatter: Better the Hands in Chains than the Will,” in Christianity and Resistance in the 20th Century (Boston: Brill, 2009)

Hanne Trautner-Kromann, “The Role of Moral Examples in Teaching Ethics after the Holocaust,” in The Double Binds of Ethics After the Holocaust: Salvaging the Fragments, eds. Jennifer L. Geddes, John K. Roth, and Jules Simon (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009),

White Rose Society, “Second Leaflet,” 1942. https://www.white-rose-studies.org/pages/leaflet-2

Mark A. Wolfgam, “Rediscovering Narratives of German Resistance: Opposing the Nazi ‘Terror-State,” Rethinking History 10 (June 2006)

Excerpt from: “Human Trafficking as Social Sin: An Ethic of Resistance,” by Susan Rose Francois, CSJP. Submitted to the Faculty of The Catholic Theological Union at Chicago in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Masters of Arts in Theology, March 2015.