My latest contribution to the conversation was posted today on Global Sisters Report where I reflect on my childhood connection to land where children, men, and women were enslaved by the Catholic Church – on grounds where I prayed during my confirmation retreat as a 13 year old.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1285) quotes from Pope Paul VI’s 1964 Lumen Gentium (11) when speaking of the power and promise of the sacrament of confirmation. Shortly after that retreat, my classmates and I received the sacrament through which we were meant to be “more perfectly bound to the Church.” Which church, I now found myself wondering? The church that enslaved generations of human beings for profit? The church that hid or ignored this history for convenience? Or the church that re-members — finds and claims those who have been lost — and seeks reconciliation and restorative justice?

It is important to re-member those who were lost in the telling of our history, to bring them into the whole fabric of our story, the good and the bad. We are better for the bringing together of all the members of our human family into our memories. The first step is telling the truth, no matter how hard it is to face. 

Visit Global Sisters Report to read the entire column – “Re-membering History is painful, but necessary”