“A Consistent Ethic of Life” with Kim Daniels

Show Notes:

Living into a consistent ethic of life is central to the work of Kim Daniels. For Kim, that means living into a life that expands our moral imagination and puts the lives of other people front and center to whatever decision is being made, at every level in society. It means seeing people as the image of God, no matter their circumstances. It means looking out for the people on the edges, and bringing us all together to build a world that actively cares about those on the margins.

Kim is the director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown Univeristy, where is is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies. She is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Chicago Law School. In 2016, Kim was appointed by Pope Francis as a Member of the Vatican Dicastery for Communication. She was appointed as a member of the Synod 2021-2024 Communications Commission.

Transcript:

Chris McAlilly 00:00
I'm Eddie Rester. I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight.

Eddie Rester 00:03

Today we have as our guest, Kim Daniels. Kim is the leader of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life. She works out of Georgetown. She is a lawyer, and she draws conversations together to help people think clearly about what it means to live a consistent ethic of life, to help people live out not just in their local area, but advocate together for public policy, for what it means to live this life of the common good, to respect life, to help people make sure that we have policies where people's lives are lifted up.

Chris McAlilly 00:39

Georgetown is a really interesting institution on the the national landscape. It's a Christian, Catholic, Jesuit institution that is at the center of our nation's capital. And one of the things that Kim is doing is drawing together interesting conversation partners, building dialogues across people that may or may not agree on a whole range of issues, topics in our common life together, but doing that from a particular moral vision with a particular moral key. At the heart of it is just this idea that people are valuable. They're valuable to God. They're valuable to us as our neighbors. And we talk a lot about building in the conversation. At a time of disintegration, fragmentation, and polarization, what it would look like to build families, to raise kids in the Gospel. We talk about building friendships, building institutions that would ultimately lead to kind of a more robust flourishing for all of us. What's your takeaway from this conversation, Eddie?

Eddie Rester 01:47

I think one of the things that really captured me when she said we don't have binary conversations. We don't have conversations that are eitheror. They're not debate conversations, but they bring in people who have a vision of the common life, to begin to offer ways of thinking about things like immigration and religious liberty, care for creation, all of these things, which help us have a larger conversation about the common good. She talks about, at one point, some friends who have released a film, Join or Die, which is about the need we have to join groups. And that's out of our conversations there that we can begin to see each other in the image of God again, which I think, you know, this is worth a longer conversation between us at some point. The breakdown, I think, in our world is we fail to see each other as people created the image of God. We think people are less than. We don't keep that the front. And yet for Kim and her work, she makes sure that is kept at the forefront of how we see other people.

Chris McAlilly 02:53

Yeah, so this is a wide ranging conversation about ideas. But at the heart of it, you have an incredibly bright and professional individual who also is a mom, and, you know, is embedded in a community and a family. And I think there's just a lot. There's a lot of rich conversation here. We're so glad that you've joined us, as always, for the conversation here on The Weight. If you like this episode, share it with your friends, and we always look forward to hearing from you. So leave us a review. Let us know if you liked the episode. [INTRO] The truth is, the world is growing more angry, more bitter, and more cynical. People don't trust one another, and we feel disconnected.

Eddie Rester 03:43

The way forward is not more tribalism. It's more curiosity that challenges what we believe, how we live, and how we treat one another. It's more conversation that inspires wisdom, healing and hope.

Chris McAlilly 03:55

So we launched The Weight podcast as a space to cultivate sacred conversations with a wide range of voices at the intersection of culture and theology, art and technology, science and mental health. And we want you to be a part of it.

Eddie Rester 04:10
Join us each week for the next conversation on The Weight. [END INTRO]

Chris McAlilly 04:19
We're here today with Kim Daniels. Kim, thanks for joining the podcast today.

Kim Daniels 04:23
Sure, I'm really glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Chris McAlilly 04:27
Tell us a little bit about your your background and your current work. Where are you located?

Kim Daniels 04:35

So I am the director of Georgetown University's Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life and I've been here at Georgetown for about six years. I also have a role at the Vatican as a member of the Dicastery for Communication, which is analogous to the sort of communications operation for the Vatican and also as a member of something called the Synod Communications Commission. So just a couple roles over there that sounds very churchy, but really it's just a way of connecting our global church together. My background is as a lawyer. I started out as lawyer working on pro-life and religious liberty issues. And I also am a mom of six kids. So that's what I kind of bring to the table here today.

Eddie Rester 05:18

Well, I was raised Catholic. So I'm really excited to get to talk with you. I have one aunt with eight kids, one with seven. My mom had three kids, and so she was seen as the failure of the bunch, I think, by her mom. When you think about your role, obviously, you have deep Catholic roots. Were you raised in the Catholic Church, a lon time family Catholic?

Kim Daniels 05:42

Sure. Well, first I should say, of course, every family is different. And everybody... God gives us all the family that is right for us, and our family is just as you, sounds like you have experience with it, a big, loud, noisy, fun family, and I love it. And I actually grew up, just have one twin brother, but my mom and dad both come from large, extended families. And so I grew up in a suburban Catholic parish in Houston, Texas, actually, although my extended family is all on the East Coast, and that's where we are now. And I really, I'll tell you, the place... I was a cradle Catholic, I'm a cradle Catholic. My faith was always very important to me. I went off to college, secular university, Princeton University, and it was really an opportunity, you know, counterintuitively, I guess to really be exposed to the beauty and truth and goodness of the heart of our faith, just this tradition of art and music and literature that I had had an inkling of, but had never really had the chance to dive into. And my faith really deepened when I was in college, and then, of course, with my husband as we built our family life.

Chris McAlilly 06:44

Yeah, we are in a college town. And we talk a lot about kind of discovering or rediscovering faith in those impactful years, kind of the transition from adolescence to emerging adulthood. Would you say a little bit more about that? I mean, just the way you experienced, I guess, faith within the context of Princeton.

Kim Daniels 07:06

Sure. It was, you know, fascinating. I'm sure a lot of people, a lot of your listeners, might have this experience, in that college was a wonderful time for me to be exposed to ideas in a serious way. And I think, you know, everybody gets something, approaches higher education with a different thinking process, or brings different things to the table. For me, I was very ready for that, and really met a lot of people who were serious thinkers about both issues of faith. I met serious Catholics who exposed me to Aquinas and Augustine and whether we're doing theological thinking, or again Dante and other scholars or other writers that our tradition of literature to the 20th century Catholic Renaissance here in the United States. And so I just soaked it all up, and I loved it. And the thing about higher education, right, about a university setting is that you have the opportunity to read and listen to and learn from all of these great works within a context of a community of learning and a faith community, in my case. I again found other Catholics to talk about these things with and other Christians, other people of faith, and really helped me to grow in my Catholic faith, and then take that on to law school and my professional life and family life.

Chris McAlilly 08:26

I was gonna ask you one just additional question about that. So, you know, I think that one of the things that kind of swirls around in the current kind of cultural conversation, particularly among Protestant, is this question of are universities... I mean, they're widely known as deeply secular places. Can they, will they be home to a Christian intellectual life moving forward? Or, you know, there are certain, particularly within kind of Methodism, as Methodism kind of continues to get renegotiated. There are questions about the proper place for a deep engagement with the faith intellectually. And there's some that are saying, you know, we need to leave. We need to kind of leave the Research 1 secular university context, and really engage that in a in a different context. I wonder how you think about that. Do you think that Christian thought, a deep Christian intellectual life can flourish and thrive within the context of a secular university? Or do you see the need, perhaps, to kind of distance, the Christian conversation first, so that we have kind of clear bearings before we then kind of come back into a conversation with secular conversation partners? Or feel free to just completely reject the premise. You're like, I don't know what you're talking about. Protestants are crazy. You know, come over and be Catholic.

Kim Daniels 09:51

Well, I won't say that. What I will say is I can speak from my own experience here at Georgetown, which as the nation's oldest Catholic and Jesuit university, really comes from both our faith tradtion as Catholics and that particular Jesuit charism of really engaging with the world. So I think something that makes our Georgetown environment distinct is, number one, is this idea of excellence. Right? So scholarship, it's excellent scholarship, engaged with the world, you know, all for the greater glory of God, right. So that's part of the Jesuit charism. It also is not about retreating from the world, but engaging with it. It's about being in the mix, being in the nation's capital, and being part of the global conversation, frankly. The Catholic Church is the largest network of networks in the world. And that includes our higher education institutions. And I very much feel that as someone at a Jesuit university, I've learned and love to be connected with my colleagues at other Jesuit schools as well. I think that it's really fascinating to me to be at a school that is so mission-centered, too. So that really does put the pursuit of truth as part of what we are about, right, and and again, all for the greater glory of God. So that's all part and parcel of how we think about what our educational mission is about. And at the same time, it's important that within our plurarlist educational context in our particular context, here in the United States, that we give wide guardrails to that, that we learned from engaging with other people who think differently from us. And at the same time, there is at the heart of what we do, are Catholic teachings about human life and dignity, about justice, about the common good. And those also shape our conversations here on campus. So on the one hand, I think that you can build a community around these kinds of common purposes at secular schools and schools that come from faith commitments that are rooted in faith commitments. But it's all very intentional, and it takes work. And that's the work of being part of a pluralist country. But the bottom line for me is that I've learned over the course of my professional and personal life, that I really believe in engaging, in leaning in, engaging and persuading and being right there in the mix.

Eddie Rester 12:09

And I think we heard that in a panel that you led recently, where you really began to talk about faith in the public life. How do we have the important conversations? And the phrase that you used and that y'all discussed was having a consistent ethic of life. Help us understand from your background, what do you mean when you say, consistent ethic of life?

Kim Daniels 12:35

Sure. So that has particular roots in Catholic teaching. So let me maybe back up and tell you a little bit about our Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life before I go into the consistent ethic, which is, again, at the heart of a kind of that engagement with public life, particularly here in the United States. Our goal at the Initiative is to bring the principles of Catholic social thought, like respect for human life and dignity and pursuit of the common good and the dignity of work and workers, to public conversations, national and global, to build bridges across divides, across ecclesial, religious, political, ideological divides, and to help a new generation of young people see their faith as central to the pursuit of the common good. In pursuing that mission through public dialogues and other efforts, one of the issues that we focus on and one of the ways we see bringing people together, is to focus on what we call, what Catholics often call, this consistent ethic of life. And that is rooted in the question, you know, when we ask ourselves, when the gospel asks us, you know, who is my neighbor? We have a very expansive answer to that question, right? The answer is everyone, especially the people we don't see, those our culture ignores or marginalizes or leaves behind. And that includes everybody from the unborn, to the undocumented, to the unemployed, to those on death row, to those who are suffering from poverty, to the refugee. And so keeping those, that group of our neighbors together in mind, the most vulnerable, those without a voice, and caring for

them consistently, that is the standard by which we test public policy, and that's the standard by which we test our public efforts. I think it rests on two foundational principles of Catholic social thought, and one is the belief in the dignity of each human person, as made in the image and likeness of God. So with equal dignity for each human person. And then a second is our understanding. I think obviously it resonates in so many faiths, but I think it's a particularly Catholic view, that we are social beings and solidarity matters, right? So again, getting back to the idea that we don't retreat from public life. We are social. We are created as social beings, and that means that we are intertwined with our neighbors and that we have a duty of care to them and a duty of love.

Eddie Rester 14:50

So much of what you've mentioned, whether it's refugees or the undocumented, those become hot button political topics, where people pull back into one side or the other, one kind of set of beliefs or the other. And yet, what I hear from you is that y'all are working to try to pull things back to this common conversation. What are some ways that y'all are working to bring people out from this retreat to the edges back to a healthy, trustworthy conversation about what can be done?

Kim Daniels 15:29

Sure. Well, you know, in many ways, you know, Pope Francis can be a lightning rod for some, but for so many people, he has been a really effective communicator for this consistent ethic, right, because he is somebody who stands again for the unborn, the undocumented, and the unemployed all together and talks about them all in this consistent way. And what he does, I think is so important, it's a lesson for all of us. And how we route our conversations is he starts with the human face in front of us, right, and that's where we should all start. So really resisting. One lesson is to really resist abstraction, and resist the idea that these conversations should happen in a vacuum around abstract principles, where none of us have any skin in the game. You know, when we create kind of intellectual architecture around our arguments, and we are convincing ourselves that we are right or wrong, when you have human faces in front of you, the faces of people, their stories, who are affected by policies or issues, it's much harder to engage in this in a kind of ideological and divisive way. And I think that's a first lesson. A second lesson is not to hold these kinds of conversations in a binary way. So for instance, we hold major public dialogues that attract, you know, hundreds, thousands of people online, for sure and in person as well. We always have a great crowd. And we never have it as a debate where we're sort of one side against the other. We always have a number of different perspectives. And that might be different perspectives on the issue, the consistent ethic of life, for instance, around, you know, the issue of abortion, or the death penalty, or, again, caring for those at the border. But it also might be that we have people come from different backgrounds and their age, or where they come from in the country, or their racial, or ethnic background, and all, or the work that they do. All of those things bring a different perspective and resist this idea that we're in two binary camps. And then I think the final thing is that Catholic Social Teaching provides, for me, again, a wonderful intellectual architecture, moral architecture, language for talking about the fact that our moral teachings as Christians hang together as an integrated whole, that it is about human life and dignity, and to see everybody as made in the image and likeness of God. And it is about understanding that we are called, as a central element of Catholic Social Teaching, to stand in solidarity with one another, to accompany one another when the going gets tough, to resist the individualism that's often, too often, at the heart of our culture.

Chris McAlilly 18:00

One of the conversations that we recently had on the podcast was with a man named Michael Wear, who has a Center for Christianity and Public Life in DC. And one of the things that he talked about in a recent book that he's written on the spirit of our politics, and it came up in our conversation, was the absence or disappearance of moral knowledge in the American conversation around a whole host of things. I do think that, you know, that's one of the things that the Catholic Church brings to the table is a moral architecture and language, that's language that that finds its way particularly into the law, as a source of moral knowledge that could be one of the factors that leads to public policymaking and decision making, on a whole range of topics. And one of the things that's distinctive about that to me is that it doesn't easily map on to the American conversation related to a progressive view or a conservative view. And I wonder if you could maybe just extrapolate a bit more, as you think particularly about this idea of a consistent ethic of life, for folks that may not be familiar with that term, or that set of ideas, in terms of how it can be helpful in reshaping or I guess, as you said, kind of complicating the binaries that we often work with.

Kim Daniels 19:27

Sure. And I think maybe to give a closer and more precise definition of this idea of that consistent ethic of life. It would be this kind of systemic or systematic vision of life that seeks to expand our moral imagination as a society, not to partition it into categories, right. And so again, to put the idea of the lives of human persons front and center whenever we're making decisions, regardless of where the policy outcomes fall. And so as you say, I think you're precisely right. We don't map onto political parties in a neat way. Catholic Social Teaching does not map in a neat way. On the one hand, you know Catholic Social Teaching argues against the death penalty, argues in favor of protecting unborn life, but also argues in favor of protecting and caring for mothers who are facing unexpected pregnancies and would really call for very robust social safety net for women and others in those situations, other parents like moms and dads and other kids families involved in facing those kinds of situations. So all of that hangs together. Then you talk about care for our climate, care for our common home, care for our environment, also really implicates this idea that we are called to protect the voiceless and vulnerable, who often face the impact of environmental degradation first. All of these things hang together. And I think that in our ads, we, if you're thinking seriously with Catholic social thought as your guidepost, with the idea of this is a way that over 2000 years, the church has put our thinking about how to engage in public life into practice, you don't end up in the in the party, as a political party that exists here in the United States today. And I think a real test of our faith is whether we are challenging our allies, where we feel that they are not adhering to our bedrock principles.

Chris McAlilly 21:21

I think one of the things that, again, in this conversation with Michael Wear that he brought to my attention is the way in which American politics has a way of either using or viewing Christianity as something that to be used or something that is useless. And I wonder, as you think about this, as you're convening conversations, as you're actively trying to construct moral knowledge for the moment, you know, in terms of the work that you were doing, and that you guys are doing there at Georgetown, I wonder how you navigate that, how you resist, I guess the temptation to be used?

Kim Daniels 22:02 Sure.

Chris McAlilly 22:03
Or how you make sure that, you know...

Eddie Rester 22:08 It's not irrelevant.

Chris McAlilly 22:09

Yeah, the resources that you're bringing to the table are not just kind of a conversation that are happening in a corner with a few people that think this is important, but actually are finding their way into conversations in a serious manner.

Kim Daniels 22:23

Well, it's precisely to me the challenge of our public life, right, is to be engaged, but not to be used, to be political, but not to be partisan, right, not to get drawn into the drama of politics, but to remain rooted in our faith and our principles if they guide us. And that is always a temptation, and always a danger. But of course, that doesn't mean that we retreat from that. But we try to engage it as citizens, as wise members, prudential members of our society. I think that, how do we do that? Well, so part of it is, you know, we really believe in the power of dialogue and in the fact that modeling dialogue is a good thing in and of itself, that engaging in that and showing that people who disagree can deal with each other without being hostile, can recognize in the other person someone who's acting out of good faith, that all of that models something that is too often lacking in our public life. One of the great things, though, about being part of our big, messy church is that we are a church that is very institutional. So it's not just conversations. It's more about our Catholic charities and our Catholic Health Association and our network of Catholic secondary schools and universities and colleges, that really give our people a grounding in how to live out our beliefs in life. And that might be through service, and that might be through advocacy. And then it might be through acting as informed and engaged and faithful citizens. But we are really, we do see is a principle again, of Catholic Social Teaching this call to political participation, which doesn't just end at the voting booth, right? If you end up you know, we have a two party system here. So if you end up voting for, say, somebody who believes that abortion should be legal through nine months, then your obligation at the other end after you've cast that vote really is to see how best you can serve in your community and elsewhere to advocate for unborn children. And likewise, if you ended up voting for someone who believes that the undocumented are people who shouldn't be seen as less than human, then you should have a real obligation under our teaching to see how you can best serve and counter that view. So in other words, it's something that is part of our public life, not just sort of on that day that you cast your vote, but throughout our lives. And I guess I would also say one more thing. I obviously am very, you know, I believe in Catholic Social Teaching as a really wonderful way to think about how to engage in public life, but part of that approach is really listening to others. And I want to be very clear that we have so much to learn from other people. And that's one of the wonderful benefits of being in such a robust and pluralistic society as we live in is that we have lots of opportunities to learn from people. And we've had many of those opportunities in particular over the past few years.

Chris McAlilly 25:12

I wonder, you mentioned Pope Francis as being maybe an example, or an exemplar of someone who is applying or kind of thinking actively about how to engage Catholic Social Teaching in a kind of global citizen way, in conversations with a range of characters today. I wonder when you think about figures historically that you admire, you know, maybe other examples that you would draw people's attention to if they're interested in kind of exploring not just just the teachings of the Church, but maybe particular individuals, some of the saints perhaps, or folks that have been inspiring to you, that you have in the background as you do your work?

Kim Daniels 25:55

Sure, I mean, there's so many to talk about, right. And I want to be very clear, when I talk about Pope Francis, one of the most interesting things about him is not just this idea of being a global citizen, but that he really, in other words, that we have responsibility to our neighbors in other countries, but also the fact that his world, his outlook is really rooted in local, particular communities. So he would say that your first responsibility is to your neighbor down the street, and to the voiceless and vulnerable around you. And that is something I have great admiration for. But when I think about so many exemplars that our Christian faith tradition brings forward... Here in the United States, someone that I always want to raise up is Dorothy Day, who was a woman at sort of early part of the 20th century, who led, that was a radical, involved in politics, involved in newspaper writing sort of the New York bohemian scene, and ended up converting to Catholicism and living a life of radical poverty, and also publishing a newspaper called The Catholic Worker, which is still published today. A life of radical poverty in service to those who were poor, who were looking for their next meal, and also a life of real opposition to war and violence generally. And so Dorothy Day's life for me is a remarkable model of what an engaged citizen can look like here in our context, right, because she radically lived her life according to the principles she believed in. And that started with the people in her community, but it also had national and even global implications. And you can agree or disagree with her perspective on a variety of different issues, but you can't disagree with the fact that she took her faith very seriously, and lived it in the best way she could. I think the other person, another person, there's so many we could talk about, St. Oscar Romero. We could talk about St. John Paul II who was just, you know, such a wonderful figure in my own life, in terms of how I grew up sort of watching him and his efforts. But I would also say, for our context here, Martin Luther King. I think that Martin Luther King spoke with such a moral clarity, and again stood for this vision that there was a justice in the world that we were called to pursue, even when it was challenging and difficult. And a real model of how faith in public life has really affected our lives for the good.

Eddie Rester 28:15

When you think about and I love what you said, starting locally, because again, one of the things in Michael Wear's book, and we just talked to him last week, so he's fresh in our minds. One of the things in his book is that you want to have these larger conversations, be involved. But he really comes back to your hometown, your neighborhood, knowing the people around you, building the trust and the politic of your town rather than being overly concerned about all that's going on nationally. How do you, in your work, kind of bridge that? How do you encourage folks to be right there in the thick of things in their neighborhood, but also drawn into the larger conversations of the common good, and the image of God, which I think is one of the most important things that we can hold on to as faithful people? How do you begin to help people do that?

Kim Daniels 29:16

It's a great question. And I think you're right, and Michael was right to point to engagement with the people next to you with your own community as a way to rebuild trust. And I think there's so much conversation around how we resist the hostility and division and polarization in our country. And so much of it starts right there, starts with talking to your neighbors, talking to your friends, building in your community. So how do we do it? Well, first of all, we really try to build actual physical community where we are at Georgetown. So we have for instance, I'll give two examples. We have major public dialogues where we feel Gaston Hall or Riggs Library at Georgetown around some of these big issues, that consistent ethic of life or the election and how faithful citizens can engage or, you know, immigration or other issues. And at the same time, we also have programs our Salt and Light program for young leaders, young Catholics and our Latino Leaders program for young Latino leaders. And around those in particular, we try to form a home, a community for young Catholics in Washington, DC and other people of faith to kind of come together around these issues, where they're also meeting each other and building friendships and knowing that they'll see the same faces again and again. So DC can be a very transient town where people are in and out and move quickly and are working all the time. And one of the things we like to do with our Salt and Light Program is we have a happy hour before and then we have an hour of dialogue with a great group of participants to talk about one of these important issues and then we have a happy hour reception afterwards where people can, you know, hang around and again, find opportunities to build friendships. So that's important, and I think central to our work. I do want to say, I want to highlight one other thing we did. We were the Washington DC premiere of a film called "Join or Die" by Pete and Rebecca Davis, which is tremendous. And you should watch it. And you should talk to Pete and Becky. Because they're really wonderful filmmakers. Pete has written a book on the sort of the need to rebuild community. While he was in college at Harvard, he worked with Robert Putnam, the great sociologist and author of the book "Bowling Alone" and others. And this film "Join or Die" that he did with his sister, who is a filmmaker, is a real way to highlight Putnam's work. And what Putnam says is that isolation is what is eating away at us, right? And that we have to resist isolation, and build community. And "Join or Die," the tagline there is about joining a club. And the idea is that how do we build community? How do we resist polarization? Well, here in the United States, clubs. It, to me, it's a great, great, great film. And it just talks about the ways in which clubs, for our frontier society, you know, back in the day, were the way that people got engaged in a new town and a new community and how many times they found just excuses to get together with their neighbors, their friends, other people around common interests. And the idea was, how do we do that today? And so, you know, in our little lane, we do it around these issues and discussions that we like, but I think the idea is to really pursue a way of resisting isolation and building community where you are, because it's harder again to argue with people who you know and love.

Eddie Rester 32:30

One of the... You bring up Robert Putnam, and he wrote a book called "The Upswing" where he talked about what happened there at the first of the 20th century that really shot the United States into a different world than it had been coming out of the Civil War. He talks about the all of these institutions that formed at the start of the 20th century. And that part of what we've lost is, as all these institutions have died, there's nothing for people to join, or they don't feel that there is a place for them to join. And I can't remember the name of the guy who wrote a book called "The Unlonely Project" recently.

Kim Daniels 33:06
I'm not sure I've heard of that one.

Eddie Rester 33:08

Great book, but he says the same thing. He says when people are lonely, the tendency to fracture from others actually grows exponentially. It's not that we suddenly have this desire to join, the longer we are lonely, the more we tend to pull away from people. And so I think it's fascinating and wonderful that that's a part of what y'all's work is.

Kim Daniels 33:30

Well, and I'll say, I mean, it was great. We had Robert Putnam with us as part of it. We had this film screening, and then we had a dialogue with Putnam and Pete and Rebecca and others. And you know, so here's this wonderful, wonderful thinker, this giant of sociology and of sort of public thinking for the last 50 years. And one of the things that was so interesting about our conversation was that he said, and again, he's a secular person, he's not Catholic, and not really religious. And he said that part of bringing people together is also having a moral voice in public life. And he actually said Pope Francis, he said, you know, one of the things about Pope Francis, he said, "I'm not Catholic," but one of the things is having this sort of clear, moral voice in public life, standing up for principles that go beyond efficiency, or, you know, utility, but really speaking to the value of every person, you know, moral key is really key to bringing people together as well, right? To having them recognize that there's more to life than those kinds of instrumental concerns. And also looking to other people as getting together with other people as ways to put that mission into practice. Again, not in an abstract way, not in that way of thinking through, you know, I'm gonna go join something so I can put my moral vision into practice, but just giving people opportunities to be together and live out their care for others.

Chris McAlilly 34:52

So much of my thinking around these things comes back. It just comes back to the base principles that you see in a book like "Nicomachean Ethics" from Aristotle, just this idea that, if you want to good society, if you want to be actively engaged in the direction of the common good, you have to have friendship, and you have to have friendships that are not just based on utility or on pleasure. You need friendships that, yes, maybe we don't... You know, bowling with another person rather than bowling alone, that's a good start. But you need more than that, right? You need more than just entertainment. You know, relationships that are built on seeking pleasure or just transactional friendships, you know, you need deep meaningful engagement, that can help you grow in virtue, so you can become a person that's actually good, you know, that has depth of character, and that is really like, oriented towards some vision of the good life that can be pursued with others. And so much, it's just those basic principles that kind of get brought forward through Aquinas into the Christian tradition, you know, it's so, so basic to where we are today. And it just, to me, it's it reads as just incredibly fresh in 2024. Iit's not just ancient wisdom, it's really, really impactful for the way I would like to communicate the gospel today. I wonder how you think about that.

Kim Daniels 36:14

And I will say that, you know, having a bunch of kids, I'm sure that your listeners have this experience. Many women and men, parents do, we have dads out there, too. But mom's especially we're, it's hard. It's it's a lot. It's a lot of... It could be hard, let me put it that way. Right? It's a lot. If you're doing it alone, if you're doing it without people, companions on the journey, other people around to share the carpooling, to know when your kid is sick and you know, can they do something to help you out, and to know when a baby's being born, when someone's mom is sick and needs help, that's what a community is like. And that's what friendship is like. You know, I really, I really, really agree with that as well. I mean, friendship isn't friendship, if it's just about transactional benefits, or utility or whatnot. That's not what friendship is. And I come at it, I think, from my perspective, or where I learned the most about this, is from my perspective as a mom. I have mentioned earlier, I've got six kids. I've lived in this house for 25 years. My kids have all grown up in our parish school. And it is a real home and a community for us. And even that somewhere where we've just really built friendships and built a common life. It's not that we're all sitting around talking about the Nicomachean Ethics. But the idea is, we're living it. We are in, in my experience in our parish, in our school, we were together for a common purpose, which was raising our kids in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in a rich community of care and friendship and love. And obviously, I'm putting in an ideal spin on it. And you know, I don't mean to, I'm sure we all wouldn't be talking about it like that every day. But that's how it's ultimately lived out. And as a young mom in particular, I think something that really deepened my own faith was seeing how my neighbors, my fellow parishioners, the other parents at our school, really cared for each other, even they didn't have to. Right? That they were thoughtful, that they did those little things even without having to be told. And it taught me how to be in community, as well.

Chris McAlilly 38:22

The thing that I hear running through this conversation is the importance of, in an era where things are being torn down, or there's fragmentation or disintegration, what's needed is to build things, build conversations, build dialogues, build families, build friendships, and that work of building it takes time. You know, building institutions is even harder, but it's worthy work. I guess, you know, when you think about it, what I heard in what you were saying that I want to learn how to do is how do I build friendships between my kids? You know, it's like, it's really basic. It's like, how do you create the conditions for these kinds of things to happen in my house, and then among our household and our neighbors and the people down the street, you know. It really gets back to the very basic things.

Kim Daniels 39:18

Can I give an example of that? Because I, first of all, we talked about Dorothy Day earlier, right? And Dorothy Day used to talk about the duty of hospitality, which is one of the, like, what a wonderful duty, to say, I'm gonna have my friends over. That's something that I can do that you know, comes naturally is enjoyable. And it's wonderful that God gives us these kinds of duties, as well as some things that are more difficult, but she used to talk about that as being one of the things we're called to do the most is to be hospitable. And that looks like, for her that looked like something for particular on the Lower East Side of New York, and her soup kitchens and offering a place to sleep for people. But in her own particular times in places you know, that might look differently. And I think that for us at its best, right, that's not worrying about perfection. And it's not worrying if you're just ordering pizza, and doing something last minute and the house doesn't look right. It's just making things happen. And I'll tell you sort of an interesting story. We used to have, you know, we're in the season of Lent, as you know, and as we approach Easter... And when our kids were younger, we started this with a couple of friends that we would do on Friday nights. We called it Lent Soup, and we would have people over. We would just make a big pot of vegetable soup. And we kind of had... We put out an invitation and kind of had an open door. We started with prayer, and obviously grace, and then we ended at the end as well. But it was kind of common, you could you know, leave when you had to show up with whatever you're wearing. You know, bring the kids, don't bring the kids, whatever you feel like. And we did that for a few years. Sometimes we rotated houses for a while, sometimes we did at our house for you know, one particular year, whatever. But I will tell you tha--and it was vegetable soup and macaroni and cheese. And so it wasn't anything fancy at all, just big trays of the macaroni cheese and big pot of soup. And maybe some stewed apples or something, you know, because it's a Friday in Lent. And every once in a while some s'mores. And I will tell you that our kids, who our oldest is 29, our youngest is 17. And I can't tell you how often they say, "Are we going to do Lent Soup again? Remember when we used to do that?" It really resonated with them and probably taught them more about our faith in a very visceral way than all of the so many homilies and so many conversations with their mom about Catholic social teaching, you know. It's much more about seeing others, people that they love and know and respect standing around praying before they have some soup together and the kids run around in the backyard.

Eddie Rester 41:53

As we think about some of the things we talked about the beginning, the respect for life, the dignity of work, and I just I'm sitting here thinking about how that character, that virtue of dignity of work, and I just I'm sitting here thinking about how that character, that virtue of hospitality really underlies every single one of them. Because if you want to respect someone's life, you want to help them build a life that is possible, if you're talking about a single mother or a child being raised without the resources he or she needs, it really comes down to are we willing to be the neighbor? Are we willing to reveal hospitality? And I think about the story of the Good Samaritan where Jesus flips the question backwards. They're asking, "Who is my neighbor?" And Jesus basically forces them to answer the question, "Am I willing to be the neighbor?" And it feels like in this moment, that that's the work of the Church right now. That's the work of your institute right now is are we willing to help people find again, this deep, deep love of being neighbor to others? Any thoughts on that?

Kim Daniels 42:59

Sure. I'm so glad you brought up the Good Samaritan. Because for Pope Francis, again, he, you know, we have these big encyclicals in the church which are writings by the pope that are sent to all Catholics and people of goodwill on major topics. And one of his most important encyclicals is called "Fratelli Tutti: Brothers and Sisters All." And it's about how we are to be in the world today. And the central device of this long letter is the parable of the Good Samaritan as a way of understanding how we are to be in the world today. And he says we are called to focus on, we are called to serve especially those lying wounded by the roadside. And who are those people in our particular times and places? And so in that sense, our church is called to not be a fortress, but a home with open doors where everybody is welcome. And that means that especially we are not just staying within those doors, but going out and finding those laying wounded by the roadside. Now when you ask about, you know, sort of what does that look like for us in a particular context, I think of, you mentioned the consistent ethic of life, and I think about, you know, moms facing unexpected pregnancies. And I'll tell you having that... This is one of the most divisive issues that we can talk about. But for me, the face of the pro life movement for me is those folks, often women, who are on the front lines there to offer diapers and clothing and food and formula and whatever it takes to help a woman in need, who is facing an unexpected pregnancy or has had a baby. And so to me, it's that kind of hospitality that you're talking about that is the best face of this really challenging issue to me. And I think that it's quiet and it goes unmentioned too often. And having said that, I want to be clear that, you know, that doesn't mean we also have to advocate for policies that help women in need, that help women facing unexpected pregnancy. If we also... We can do it at the local level, we can do it with our neighbors. But we also, I guess, in our tradition are also called to advocate for public policies and other public ways of helping as a society, as a community, others in need, too.

Eddie Rester 45:15

One of the hot button topics around that has been postpartum care for moms in a lot of states, whether or not that will be provided for them. The child tax credit is another part of that larger conversation. So it's one of those conversations that begins locally with how do I provide, if I believe in the sanctity of life, am I going to provide? But then how do we make sure that policies are structured in such a way that life can flourish? That that mom or that single dad, at times, can raise a child in such a way that they have the advantages, the hopes, and the dreams that they need to become all that God has created them to be as a child of God?

Kim Daniels 46:01

Absolutely. You mentioned the child tax credit. And I think that's an example of something we talked about earlier, which is this idea of challenging your allies where needed, right. And so to me, when we're living in this environment, I think it's incumbent on people who have been advocating for pro life policies to say that. How do we make sure that we are helping those in need? And the child tax credit is a great example of a way that we know that we have a recent example of this really cutting child poverty in half, right? And how can we advocate? How can people who might not have been on board with that in the past, say, "This is a way that I'm going to step up and support a policy that will really help children?" So to my mind, I think it's as you say. It's something that happens locally in communities and neighborhoods. And it also happens in our advocacy efforts and ways we think about how we are as a local, state, and national community.

Chris McAlilly 46:58

We're coming up on--we're recording this on, I guess, the Thursday before we enter into Holy Week. So we'll have Palm Sunday. Churches, Protestant, Catholic, Christian communities across the world will gather and remember this journey that Jesus takes from the beginning of Holy Week, where Jesus enters into Jerusalem, and there's this long journey. And I've been meditating on the Gospel of Mark this season. And so, Jesus goes in a more and more and more lonely direction. I mean, there's this sense that he's gathered with all of these crowds, and all of a sudden, he's this singular figure. And then he goes to this point of forsakenness and abandonment and crying out in that to, "Why, why, why?" And, you know, there's so much of that story that just seems meaningless. And then at the end, you have the women that gather there with him, to care for him in the wake of the crucifixion, and then they're given this incredible news that, you know, he's not here, he's risen. He's going before us. And, you know, I do think sometimes, like how to connect the dots between the gospel narrative and the story of Jesus and public policy can be how we're supposed to live in the world and how we're supposed to structure our institutional life and our national politics. Those things can feel like such a stretch, but I'm so grateful to you for the ways in which you've drawn those themes together for us, and for the work that you're doing. It's not just what you're doing in this conversation, but you've made it your life's work. And so I'm grateful for your witness and just the work that you're doing and an opportunity to be in conversation with you today.

Kim Daniels 48:39

Oh, thank you. This has been wonderful. I really, really enjoyed. Like I said, I enjoy being in conversation with you all, listening to you all, and it would be wonderful if we could build these kinds of bridges and engagements, again, across our various religious traditions. And we share so much in common, of course, and so anyway, wonderful to have me, or wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me.

Eddie Rester 49:01

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Chris McAlilly 49:09

If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]