Friends some seriously (and apparently intentionally) inhumane actions are being perpetrated in our name and funded by our tax dollars. This is true on many levels and across the country, but this particular story is local and takes place a 20 minute drive from my house at Delaney Hall, a private for profit prison in an industrial area of Newark, New Jersey where immigrants are detained on behalf of our federal government.
There are many issues with the lack of due process, lies and deception by ICE officials, and violations of established legal protections that have led to up to 1,000 of our immigrant brothers and sisters being detained at Delaney Hall on any given day. Then there are the questions about how these human beings are being treated while in detention. Those are topics for another post.
This story is simply about the arbitrary and constantly changing rules for visitors, rules that are cruel and inhumane. Inhumanity seems to be the point and motivating factor. There is no other explanation to what is happening to the families desperate to see their loved ones one more time before they are deported.
Like the 14 year old US citizen child who was in tears today, trying to get into the detention center with her Aunt. Her mom and dad are both detained at Delaney Hall. They heard that her father might be deported tonight. They were desperate for accurate information regarding the fate of her parents. They could not afford legal assistance. Listening to her story was simply heart breaking.
Or like Bella who was denied the right to visit her daughter Mary during the scheduled 7:30 am visitation time allotted for just 15 visitors each Saturday for the up to 100 female detainees in Mary’s ward. Bella made an early morning trip from her home across the Hudson in New York to get there in time, at great expense. The published visitation rules signed by the Delaney Hall security chief say you may be denied entry if you arrive after the start of visitation hours. She arrived by 7:20 but the guard decided she was too late and told her to come back tomorrow. I tried to advocate for her but to no avail. He kept just saying she should have come earlier and he was within her rights to deny her visitation. Even though they had not yet let the 7:30 visitors inside, and they had not met the limit on the number of allowed visitors. I asked to speak to a supervisor, after identifying myself as a Catholic Sister/clergy, but he refused and again just said he was within his rights to deny her entry.
Bella literally dropped to her knees and opened her arms wide in supplication, calling out to God for mercy. She was in tears, as was I. Powerless in the face of inhumanity and injustice.
These are just two stories of many, just from today during the morning hours at this one detention center. Visitation is no longer allowed during the week at Delaney Hall, only on the weekends and during very limited hours. Family members line up hours early, waiting in the hot sun, often after driving hours to visit, without any guarantee they will be allowed inside. The visitation hours and rules published on the Delaney Hall and ICE websites are incorrect and out-of-date at best, if not intentional misinformation. Each week the guards seem to change the rules or at least apply them inconsistently. The families suffer, as do their loved ones who are waiting for a visit that never comes. Why? I can’t help but think it is by design.
And then this afternoon, after navigating this whole ordeal to set eyes on their loved one for a few minutes, a group of visitors came out to find their vehicles had been ticketed or towed by the Newark Police Department. Because, you see, not only is there not a visitor parking lot at this detention center (operated by tax dollars under a $1 Billion 5 year contract with ICE), there is also not any legal parking on the public city street outside the detention center. There is a public parking lot next door at the Essex County Detention Center, but visitors to the private prison next door are not allowed to park there, although staff apparently are. Again, why? I can’t help but think this inhumanity is by design.
This is not ok. We cannot be silent.
Now for good news. A group of folks organized in mutual aid swiftly organized to help the visitors get their cars out of the impound lot. Others are strategizing how to work with elected officials on a long-term parking solution. Many folks spent time outside Delaney Hall today in solidarity and support of the visitors, providing umbrellas and tents to protect them from the sun while they waited hours outside the gate. Offering coffee and donuts and water. Creating a play area for the children. Making and holding up signs as public witness to say that profiting off of human misery is immoral, that no human being is illegal, and that we are called to love our neighbors. Some of the visitors even brought toys and snacks themselves to share with others. Community at its organic best.
Goodness, in other words, was present even amidst the inhumanity. Love is always stronger than hate.
Last night I made this prayer video featuring pictures of our global family set to a song that has been in my heart of late, Turning of the World by Sarah Thomsen.
Then, in this morning’s liturgical readings, I heard in Psalm 37:
Turn from evil and do good,
that you may abide forever;
For the Lord loves what is right,
and forsakes not his faithful ones
And from the Gospel of Matthew:
But beware of men, for they will hand you over to courts and scourge you in their synagogues, and you will be led before governors and kings for my sake as a witness before them and the pagans. When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say. For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.
We are in times when much evil is being done by those in power. This leaves us with a choice. What will we do as …
Millions of children and families lose their lives that could have been saved with humanitarian food and medical assistance, which has already been funded by our government.
Families are torn apart by an inhumane immigration detention system on steroids fueled by greed and ideology.
The coffers of the ultra wealthy are overfilled by stealing life saving food and health care from those on the margins though drastic budget cuts and eliminating the social safety net.
We must call this what it is … social sin. We cannot be silent, even if as Jesus points out in this Gospel passage, there may be consequences. We must use whatever privilege we have and also take risks to turn from evil and do what is good, trusting in the Spirit of God.
Together we can turn the world through our loving, healing, and dreaming. Let us be hope for one another.
This week I finally had a chance to visit the Roman Colosseum, something that has been on my bucket list ever since my high school Latin days. It is certainly a magnificent sight and a colossal site to behold, even filled with hordes of tourists like myself during a June heatwave.
Walking through the remains of this stone structure, echoes of the countless human lives lost in the name of empire and entertainment sounded in my heart. As I stood at the cross overlooking the sight of their torture in the arena, I prayed with and for them. I prayed too with the memories of those who watched, jeered, and cheered, and for the political leaders who orchestrated it all for propaganda and ideological purposes.
I couldn’t help but make connections to what is happening at home in my own country even as I stood there in Rome. Today’s people on the margins are being sacrificed for political purposes, whether through the siphoning off of life-saving food and medicine at home and abroad, or deporting and detaining our immigrant brothers and sisters while ignoring the constitutional right to due process. Tears are being shed and lives disrupted and even taken. And for what? Political ideology at best and nefarious intention at worse, with real human impacts at a scale that only history will truly measure.
I for one feel the need to speak out, to pray, and to act. I am in solidarity with the people in peaceful protest on the streets in Los Angeles and across the country. Although I will still be out of the country, my Congregation is one of many that will be represented on June 24 in Washington, DC and in echo events in New Jersey and Washington State for the Sisters Speak Out event, a prayer and public witness for immigrants and a just economy. https://sistersspeakout.my.canva.site/
Finally, as events unfold in my nation this weekend, I am proud to be part of the elected leadership team of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace as we have issued a public statement in support of nonviolent action. We also express our profound concern about unjust action against immigrants, the deployment of military forces in our own nation, and the display today in our nation’s capital.
“Consistent with our mission as agents of peace through justice, we reject the false belief that national strength derives from military power and reject the militarization being used to quell domestic demonstrations.”
Persecution and human suffering in the name of political theater is social sin, pure and simple. I say not in my name. I resist and reject it. And I pray for the heart and soul of my nation and all those whose lives are being disrupted and lost.
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.
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 IIreflected 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 resistthe 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)
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)
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.
I am feeling the call to write more during this time in history. Starting today I am going to be sharing excerpts from my Master Thesis for my Moral Theology degree (from Catholic Theological Union), in which I developed an ethic of resistance. I will publish this as a series. My original application was to the social sin of human trafficking, but you will see as this series moves forward that I looked at other examples and responses by ordinary Christians to extreme social sin, such as the death-dealing reality of the Nazi Holocaust. The identity and worldview of these resisters led them to counter dehumanization through acts of resistance, often at great personal cost. Their witness offers ordinary persons seeking to resist social sin today a model and path to follow in our times. Who knew that just one decade later I would be mining my own research for practical applications in our country?
First, a few introductory words about how I understand resistance as an ethical framework.
Resistance can be understood as “standing fast to a position or principle.” Margaret Collins Weitz derives this understanding from the Latin roots of the word for resistance, resistere. The prefix re intensifies the stronger form of the verb stare, to stand. In this light, resistance involves an “inner certainty … allied with a strong sense of conscience and belief in human dignity.” (Weitz, 33-34)
So as we navigate these days, let us hold fast to that which we know to be true: we are good. God is good. And our job is to promote good for others and, indeed, all of God’s creation. It’s that simple. We have to keep it simple so as to stay the course in the face of misinformation, deception, disconnection, globalized indifference, and the normalization of extreme social sin. And with that, episode one.
Episode 1: Resistance in the Christian Tradition
The Christian tradition of resistance of course begins with the person of Jesus. “The practice of resistance in the life of Jesus is where Christians must begin for understanding how to resist evil.” (DeYoung, 6) Curtiss Paul DeYoung identifies three key modes of resistance practiced by Jesus in the Gospels. First, Jesus “resisted the popular notion of who was ‘worthy’ of relationship by developing friendships with persons at the margins of society in his day—women, tax collectors, Samaritans, militant activists, people with disabilities, poor people, and working people.” (DeYoung, 6) In other words, Jesus resisted social norms of exclusion in his own personal sphere by “creating a wide web of relationships” around himself. (DeYoung, 6-7) Second, Jesus “resisted stereotypes and transformed cultural images in his day by injecting into popular culture positive descriptions of Samaritans and women.” (DeYoung, 11) Third, Jesus resisted through public protest, such as the incident against the money changers in the temple. “This demand for equal access to the central institution of religion and community governance was so significant and memorable that it is included by all of the Gospel writers.” (DeYoung, 12)
Another Gospel passage directly related to resistance is the Sermon on the Mount, in particular Matthew 5:39a: “ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil” (NAB). Johannes Nissen notes that this passage is traditionally understood as advocating “non-resistance to evil.” (Nissen, 184). It is potentially problematic because, as Walter Wink observes, “if Jesus commands us not to resist, then the only other choice would appear to be passivity, complicity in our own oppression, surrender.” (Wink, 184)
However, Wink asserts that the Greek word used in Matthew, antisēnai, does not merely mean “resist” or “stand against,” but rather to “resist violently, to revolt or rebel, to engage in an insurrection.” In other words, the message of Jesus to his followers is not to “mirror evil” with evil. Wink concludes that the “logic of the text” points neither to passivity nor violent resistance, but instead to finding “a third way, a way that is neither submission nor assault, neither fight nor flight, a way that can secure your human dignity and begin to change the power equation.” (Wink, 184-185)
The actions suggested by Jesus in the passages following this admonition against resisting evildoers—to turn the other cheek, give away one’s cloak, walk a second mile, and give to those who borrow (Matthew 5: 39b-41)—are “not rules to be followed legalistically, but examples to spark an infinite variety of creative response in new and changed circumstances.” (Wink, 185) Inspired by these examples, Wink suggests creative alternatives for the Christian choosing to follow Jesus’ third way of resisting evil (see Figure 4). (Wink, 186-187)
In choosing creative resistance, followers of Jesus seek to deny, defuse, and defeat the dehumanizing tactics of oppressors.
Christian resistance to evil has always been played out within a social context, as Christians have navigated relationships with the state, society, and economy in light of the Gospel and the reality of evil. “Resistance is the process of drawing attention to evil and injustice while pressuring the powers that be to pursue positive social change.” (DeYoung, 16)
From its very beginnings as a “tiny, fragile organization,” the Christian Church faced state sponsored discrimination. Søren Dosenrode observes that, from this minority position, “Christians rendered passive resistance to the state as no other real alternative remained.” Martyrdom was often the result of such resistance. (Dosenrode, 11-12) In their daily lives, early Christians resisted poverty and economic oppression by “creating a countercultural community that practiced its own economy of grace,” such as that depicted in Acts 4: 32-37. (Long, xxi-iii) It was not until the legalization of Christianity in 313, and the evolving close relationship between church and state when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, that resistance became a serious question for Christians. (Donsenrode, 11-12)
One early model for Christian resistance is St. Maximus the Confessor (580-662 CE). His Four Centuries on Love is cited by Charles C. McCarthy as containing the core of his teaching on resistance, centered on the example of Jesus and the primacy of love. (McCarthy, 77) “The one who loves Christ thoroughly imitates him as much as he can.” (Maximus, 81) Maximus taught that in the struggle against evil, the “microcosmic deed of love is all that humanity has to work with,” and indeed, all it needs. (McCarthy, 82)
Maximus lived out this teaching on resistance in his own life. He stood fast against monothelitism, the “theology that Christ was not as the Council of Chalcedon had stated, ‘true God and true man,’ but, in fact, had one will (divine), not a human will and a divine will.” 1 (McCarthy, 84). His belief in the doctrine that Christ had two wills led him to resist both civil and ecclesial authorities who supported monothelitism; he “suffered imprisonment and torture for this stand.” (McCarthy, 78) Maximus was later exiled to Lazica where he died in 662 CE. (McCarthy, 65)
For Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk who contemplated the spirituality of resistance, Maximus is a model of what is possible for human persons facing evil. Maximus “portrays nonviolent resistance under suffering and persecution as the normal way of the Christian.” Countering those who dismiss resistance as impractical or impossible, Merton holds up Maximus as one who believed that Jesus “does not command the impossible, but clearly what is possible.” Furthermore, for Maximus, Gospel resistance, modeled on the way Jesus actually resisted evil, should be “aimed not at the evildoer but at evil as its source.” 2 (Merton, 176)
Notwithstanding early models of Christian nonviolent resistance such as Maximus, in practice the ongoing marriage between church and state led to a mixed assessment of resistance. Dosenrode observes that in the Middle Ages, certain forms of passive resistance were “known and accepted as common law,” such as refusing to pay taxes, provided they were proportional. More active forms of resistance were also carefully assessed by theologians and Church authorities. For example, tyrannicide was accepted as a last resort by Thomas Aquinas, “provided that it was rooted in a higher power than an individual’s idea.” At the Council of Constance (1414-1418), however, the Catholic Church condemned tyrannicide outright as contrary to the moral life. Protestant and Reformed churches “became more open to resistance to defend the true faith” during the Reformation, while the Catholic Church held close to its condemnation. By the twentieth century, the doctrine of resistance in the Catholic, Reformed, and Protestant churches was one of “restraint in the use of power” and support of the state and status quo. (Dosenrode, 13-14, 17) The experience of the Nazi holocaust called this stance into question.
1 The Third Council of Constantople declared monothelitism as a heresy in 681 CE.
2 Emphasis in the original text.
Sources:
Curtiss Paul DeYoung, “From Resistance to Reconciliation: The Means and Goal of Christian Resistance,” in Resist! Christian Dissent for the 21st Century, ed. Michael. G. Long (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008)
Søren Dosnerode, ed., Christianity and Resistance in the 20th Century: From Kaj Munk to Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Desmond Tutu (Boston: Brill, 2009)
Michael G. Long, ed, Resist! Christian Dissent for the 21st Century (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008)
Maximus the Confessor, Maximus the Confessor: Selected Writings, trans. George C. Berthold (New York: Paulist Press, 1985),
Charles C. McCarthy, “Maximus the Confessor (580-662),” in Non-Violence—Central to Christian Spirituality: Perspectives from Scripture to the Present, ed. Joseph T. Culliton (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1982),
Johannes Nissen, “Between Conformity and Nonconformity: The Issue of Non-Violent Resistance in Early Christianity and its Relevance Today,” in Christianity and Resistance in the 20th Century: From Kaj Munk and Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Desmond Tutu, ed. Søren Dosenrode (Boston: Brill, 2009)
Margaret Collins Weitz, “Resistance: A Matter of Conscience,” in Resisters, Rescuers, and Refugees: Historical and Ethical Issues, ed. John J. Michalczyk (Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1997)
Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992)
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.
I have been pondering what, if anything, to share regarding my post election thoughts. It hasn’t quite been a week, but I have been reading the national temperature and preparing for this result for a while now. So here goes…
First, before you ask, I have already discerned that this time around, I will not be reviving my daily practice of posting a prayer for President Trump.
Why?
For one thing, the platform itself has changed from Twitter to X, resulting in a significant change in ownership, philosophy, and audience. Somehow (the grace of God?), for the most part, I avoided being trolled or harassed last time. I suspect that may not be true this time around, and dealing with that possibility is not where I wish to place my energy.
This does not mean I stop praying. I pray for our elected leaders each and every day, and the 47th President and his administration will certainly be included in my daily prayers. As will the most vulnerable people and ecosystems who will be impacted by policy changes he proposes.
I have been posting short videos that share some simple messages about God’s love, goodness, the beauty of God’s creation, human dignity, the call to be still and grounded…
These are simple yet profound truths that seem to be lost or drowned out in the noise of the globalization of indifference and toxic nature of our (un)civil discourse that makes fertile ground for misinformation and the sowing of fear, hate and division. These posts seem to be finding an audience, if modest in size. More importantly, I believe this type of messaging is urgently needed in our public space. Let me explain.
When I was in graduate theological studies, my research focused on resistance to social sin. One of my key findings had to do with identity and moral choice.
Political psychologist Kristen Renwick Monroe analyzed first hand accounts of ordinary Germans during the Nazi regime and found that how they saw themselves directly impacted how they responded. I believe there are lessons to be learned for our present moment.
Those who supported the regime saw themselves as victims. They were willing to act preemptively against the other out of a desire for self-preservation.
Bystanders saw themselves as helpless, just one person alone against the Nazis. What could they do?
Rescuers saw themselves as connected with everyone and able to effect change. Notably, Monroe also discovered that they were the only group who “had integrated the value of human life into their worldview.”
She concludes that “identity constrains choice” across all three groups. In other words, one’s identity—in relation to self, other, world, and agency—radically influences one’s ethical response and actions. 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.”
So, in addition to getting ready to be a strong, vocal, and persistent advocate for the common good, human rights, peace, and the integrity of creation in the face of likely policy, legislative, and economic changes over the next four years, I also want to do my part to help (re)form our collective sense of identity and expand our menu of moral choice.
I see myself as connected to everyone. My worldview, informed and inspired by my parents and their/my Catholic faith, calls me to see human life and dignity and the goodness of all of God’s creation as central to my worldview and demanding of my action. My religious community strengthens and expands this understanding through our common life, prayer, mission, and charism.
I feel a deep sense of call to use my gifts, talents, and influence to spread that message in the belief that it will make a difference. Also, I am hoping it will help me stay grounded during the next four years.
At the Corner of Susan and St. Joseph 