Structures of Sin—Mark Spencer, Derek Jeffreys, John Crosby—Hildebrand Project Summer Seminar 2024

[Music] all right I'd like to welcome everyone to our afternoon uh incon ation session and we're going to be picking up on some themes that we talked about earlier in the day today especially in John Crosby's keynote lecture this morning and our uh discussion this afternoon is on structures of sin and co-responsibility and other related topics and uh we're going to hear first From Derek Jeff and then from John Crosby I may say a little bit after that and then we'll open it up for conversation very good uh good afternoon as uh Professor Spencer said

we're going to be picking up on a few of the topics of this morning some continuity uh between topics and I'm going to be briefly talking about this concept of structures of sin the way I'm going to do this is to take you back to the 1980s so 1984 to 1988 there's a very interesting uh moment in the papacy of John Paul II he had a debate with Liberation theology which I'll talk about in a moment and he also came out with a remarkable and cyal called salvii does which was mentioned this morning and I'm

going to suggest that there's a connection between uh these two uh documents then I'm going to end by stepping back and asking what can we learn about this debate that occurred in the 1980s about structures of sin Some a bit of more specific things that I think that we can learn so let's go back to uh 1984 to 1986 John Paul II became po in 1979 and this for me is a very rich period really from 80 to 90 in his thought he came out with a lot of interesting um encyclicals and in 1984 I

had this included in your reader we we saw the first document by Cardinal Joseph rotzinger in response to uh Liberation Theology and then we saw another one in 1986 some people think that that's a better one than the 884 one I I think it's a it's a richer engagement with the topic for those of you who don't know liberation theology was a theological movement that came out primarily not exclusively but primarily from Latin and uh South America and it focused rightfully in my mind on the scandal of poverty and just how awful poverty is in

developing nations but also in uh Developed Nations as well and it continually pointed out the biblical witness about um poverty there's a lot of sections in the Bible about poor people and helping the poor uh but the movement also uh came up with this concept of structures of sin and it's sort of what we were trying to get at this morning is there a level at which an institution begins to take on a certain kind of unity or a certain kind of Form uh which is not independent of the persons but has its own uh

character and The Liberation theologians insisted that that's indeed the case that there are structures that exhibit sinful practices attitudes um policies people for that matter and so they spent a great deal of time uh talking about this concept of structures of sin particularly in relation to the economics of of South and and Latin America now the interventions the two Interventions didn't really deny those two contributions uh there was a term called the preferential option for the poor which John Paul II does affirm in one of his uh incal so they didn't really deny that that's

a that should be a the central issue here about the scandal of poverty and Cardinal Joseph rodiger and John Paul II also felt that there was something to this uh issue of the of structures of sin but their criticisms was about institutional Analysis one of the things that I've spent a lot of my career on is trying to figure out well you have these institutions and you have personalism and sort of how do these things kind of fit together these complex uh modern bureaucracies and modern institutions and what The Liberation theologians did is turned to

the Marxist tradition and they said that is the key to understanding these kinds of Institutions and uh the Vatican said That that was a mistake that we have to be very careful about what kind of uh tools conceptual tools that we Embrace uh when we're thinking about institutions but there was also another worry which is that in all this talk about structures of sin the person becomes effaced the person kind of disappears and uh so there was a lot of controversy about this back and forth and theologians going to the Vatican and Uh off and

some other uh gueras people like that in in this kind of dispute now it's very interesting to me having uh studied John Paul II's thought for a very long time my first book was on on his views of international politics it's very interesting to me is that around the same time you get this document called svii Delores and it is an absolutely remarkable treatment of suffering we talked this morning about suffering and bearing suffering and um Professor freder actually quoted from s it's a tech that's a text that I really like a lot that particular

text that she quoted and so this is a beautiful treatment of suffering but I think you also get a greater sense of uh the concept of being a person and I included in your reading packets a selection from Salu Dees and it's a treatment of the parable of the Good Samaritan John Paul II did a lot of interesting things with with Biblical texts the Rich Young Man Uh these kinds of texts so he does a very intriguing analysis of the parable of the Good Samaritan and what does he say he says well when somebody is

suffering you need to be present to them but in both a spiritual way and also a material way so there's a recognition that just being present to somebody is important but there's also some material realities that we need to we need to help the poor we can't just say well I'm I'm with you I have compassion or pity That's it's very important but we need to think about how we're going to actually help people who are in poverty but there's a very interesting moment in that section that I've I I I selected for all of

you he uses this term availability and I can't prove that he's drawing from someone named Gabriel Marcel but it's a very similar concept availabilities uh Fidel created Fidelity these different words that Marcel uh uses it's a beautiful idea from a really A great thinker not always to easy to read I mean he's deliberately non-systematic quotes a lot from his plays kind of irritating but he's a very rich uh mind and availability is this presence to another person and tomorrow I'm going to give a little bit more detail about this when I discussed my own involvement

with prison Ministry what exactly does that mean to be present to another this morning we had some good questions about well what does This concretely mean when you're dealing with somebody who is in despair or uh dying or something like that and there's a lot to say on that topic but I just wanted to point out this strange term that all of a sudden crops up and John Paul II as I'm sure most of you know was the deeply philosophically trained worked on MOX shayer worked on so many of the thinkers that uh people in

are interested here in the foundation so you get that uh understanding so it's very Clear that liberation theology made a mistake when you engage institutions you have to think about well what kind of tools are you going to use and the the Vatican felt that there was um a problem with the selection of texts so I put these two together just for your for your interest these documents of Liberation theology and this discussion of uh suffering in C future Del ERS now what can we gain from this I don't want to speak too long I

want to Have a conversation what can we take away from that first of all we need institutional analysis and that means really getting to know institutions as I said I've spent time thinking about this in terms of the military our prison system but whatever you do if you're involved in hospitals or hospice or anything like the the homeless anything like that you have to know what's going on institutionally and too many philosophers and too many People in ethics make a lot of statements about these institutions that don't really know what's going on you really have

to spend time in the institution and kind of grow with that and figure out what is happening so that's my first uh conclusion from these documents that that The Liberation theologians were correct in my view in that kind of focus they were incorrect in the kind of conceptual apparatus that they endorsed so you want to think about I I'm going to pick this social scientific theory for example behaviorism let's say in the context of Prisons I've reviewed some books where people take be a Skinner or somebody like that and you have to say is this

really a good tool is this in keeping with my philosophical commitment to the person the Dignity of the person the value of the person and if it's not doesn't mean you can't use it at all but maybe not maybe you're going to say this Is just not something that I helps illuminate uh the institution okay and the last thing I would say is don't ever forget the person the kind of work that's done here uh in the hildon project the essential characteristics of a person I'm going to come back to this tomorrow but the person

as an embodied Spirit capable of free choice and love and will and knowledge the Deep sense of what it means to be a person because this is really important today people Have often uh forgotten that so those are three uh uh I I hope to get even more concrete tomorrow but these are three things I think that we can take away from looking at these documents and thinking about the structures of sin so I'm going to turn to my colleague Professor Crosby and if he wishes to make comments or responses good thank you Derek um

I think I'll offer a a little response simply in the way of how I came person person Al to the issue of Structures of sin and how I came to acknowledge that there really is such a thing and how it has to be inserted within the whole of Catholic teaching um it was back at the time of the murder of George Floyd and a number of other black um people uh and a lot was said about the fact that this shows that there is systemic racism in our society some affirmed this systemic racism as and

saw being exemplified in the way these CA murder cases were handled um And others denied it and said this is a fiction uh of the sociologists there is no such thing that the only um real Sin is individual personal sin to try to have sinful structures is well it's an offense against personalism it's looking for uh sin in an objective Place whereas it's the human heart and conscience that is the real Locust of sin so I uh was driven back to do some soul searching about my own upbringing I grew up uh in Mobile Alabama

in the 50s and 60s and uh There was undeniably a great deal of racism that I took for granted uh and I I I Revisited all of that and I came uh to the uh conclusion that yes there is such a thing as a social structure of sin a kind of objectivized evil uh that's not simply identical with the malice of a particular racist individual uh but let me give you an example of what I began to recognize uh as uh as as a kind of systemic racism um uh Growing up I had a lot

of contact with uh uh black people um but there were certain features about the situation and the life of these people that I just took for granted uh without putting it into question so they all lived in very poor neighborhoods hardly any of them had a car they attended segregated schools most of them didn't finish grammar school um and none of this Seemed unusual to me or strange um I just took it for granted um and what on reflection comes comes to me is that I I didn't discover that I had Wicked malice in my

heart towards the blacks of Mobile Alabama it was a kind of as I say thoughtless taking for granted the fact that they were all on the periphery these blacks that they were all in subservient position to White employers didn't trouble me it didn't seem strange It just seemed the natural way things are and that um that appearance of naturalness of what is in fact quite disordered uh is I would take it a kind of systemic racism racism not just in the human heart but in uh presuppositions that we make uh ways of perceiving the world

uh my my mother had a lot of dealings with with black women who helped in the house and uh she too made all of these Racist assumptions but without the least bit of malice whenever one of the blacks people were sick or in need she was the first to take care and provide things and and help that they otherwise didn't have access to so it's this peculiar situation of uh social structure that embody something fundamentally false uh and which are taken for granted without any great inner malice uh And yeah that um there are other

uh specimens of uh this let me no um yeah another specimen of this systemic racism uh there many places in the southern states where slaves were auctioned off these are places of unimaginable grief it was here that families were broken up that mothers saw their children for The last time time children saw their mother for the last time but very few of these slave markets are memorialized all across the southern states there are statues commemorating the Confederate generals like Jefferson Davis uh but very few Memorials of the terrible human suffering inflicted at the slave markets

President Obama once spoke at one of these slave markets and noticed that there was a memorial moral plaque Commemorating an insignificant speech that alexand that Andrew Jackson had given there but no Memorial plaque for the thousands of slaves who had passed through no remembrance of their names or of their final place so uh yeah I um so in this way I I'm this is my way of coming at the so social structures of sin and I do want to affirm um that of course these are not like independent Powers these social structures that we have

no power over uh they arise uh according to Universal Catholic teaching from the perversity of the human heart they Purdue through the the blindness self-interested blindness of the heart and they are they can be dismantled and removed by the energetic stirring of consciences so I don't at all think of these structures of sin as U as something that constrains our freedom as some disorder that's Completely beyond the reach of our free choice um but yet there is something there a curious objectivity some kind of Detachment from the heart and the conscience uh that leads me

to uh Embrace for my own part that I AA of systemic racism no yeah and maybe I'll just add this as one final uh thought um not many years ago the mayor white mayor of New Orleans Uh began to think that there was something wrong about all the Confederate statues in New Orleans he realized that they were put up at the end of the 19th century to send a message to the back black population of New Orleans the message something like this we may have lost the Civil War but we are now the ones in

charge here in New Orleans which is a white City for white people the message of white Supremacy so the mayor uh realized that this was a was humiliating for the black men and women of the city and he said very rightly that the Confederate generals had fought a war to deny the humanity of black people how is it right to ask black men and women of today to honor such men and live in the shadow of their statues so he took the matter to his city council and amazingly Enough by a vote of 6 to1

his city council voted to Take all these Confederate generals down take their statues uh down and it was some protest but no BL real violence or Bloodshed and uh it it it was an act of dismantling a certain a certain social structure a certain uh wrong message uh a certain D objectified denigration of the black population here was a case where one intervene acted to undo it so uh confirming the fact that this is something accessible to our freedom Freom despite a curious kind of Detachment from our freedom so yeah that's um all I would

contribute uh by way of U uh an example you're talking about Latin America and Marxist influen this is very different with the but it's the same phenomenon I think yeah so I think we can Cur and and evaluating it like that well I don't want to say too much I think we open the for questions by entirely first of all thank you for your story I entirely affirm what you've Said and I think that all of you can reflect on this given different kinds of Institutions as I said I'm going to just give you one

example and then I think we can have questions and answers the the prison where I um volunteer as a Maximum Security Prison in Green Bay Wisconsin and this place is 126 years old and it looks like an old prison it's the walls were built originally by young men in 19 uh the early part of the 20th century and it's a Scary Place uh first time I Went there it was a scary place and it holds about 1, to 1100 men many of them um it's a Maximum Security Prison and many of them have done really

terrible deeds and people just drive past this it's right off the highway they don't know anything about it they don't know who's in there it used to be called a Reformatory which was a movement to deal with population of 17 year olds to 25 year olds which is a a Troublesome part of some people's lives it's not hasn't Been a Reformatory in decades it's a Maximum Security Prison for adult men but you get people oh the Reformatory women there they don't just ask any questions they just drive past and don't think about we had a

lot of Horrors postco a lot of Horrors in this place and I think this is what Professor Crosby is talking about a strange kind of Det attachment and the place has its own Unity of some kind and I think we can debate exactly ontologically what That is and things like that the phenomena is very real that these places and these institutions take on a certain aspect I it feels like the walls you walk into this place and the walls a lot of suffering of these young men and this might sound like dooski and mysticism and

something like that but there's there's real suffering in this place and Decades of suffering so I I thought your your comments were very appropo uh John and I uh I think that they're really uh Food for thought and important thank you yeah thank you for thank you to both of you um and I think there are some microphones if people put their hands up uh we can start having a conversation I'm going to start it off with a question to all of you um to just sort of I know you're going to talk about this

tomorrow Derek practical things that we can do but I'd like to sort of get the ball rolling on that if both of you could say some things about sort of Practically how we can uh work to dismantle these structures of sin we all find ourselves as as parts of them not just racist structures of sin but uh structures of sin involving economic Injustice towards the poor and uh economic Injustice in other ways environmental Injustice and it's very easy for us to just sort of be part of those right like I mean I I I shop

at Amazon all the time and Amazon exploits its workers terribly um but uh but I Continue to shop at Amazon uh so we've heard a lot about how you can sort of practically live out community on a small scale um it seems here there are things we can do in a sort of interpersonal way as you're doing in in prisons and jails um but what can we if we're trying to live personalistic do to influence the dismantling of these structures of skin sin on a large scale sort of on a level of of national policy

are the things we Can do there well there's a always a a relationship between the personal and the and the institutional so I resist saying well it's only structures of sin or systemic racism or something like that without the personal side and it's not enough just to say well I'm going to do things interpersonally and pay no attention to the institutional realities so that's the starting point there has to be that dialogue between the two but this means uh Al really getting to know What some of the not become a policy maker I'm not a

a a prison Warden uh I taught the police department of Green Bay once ethics and learned a lot about them but I'm not a police officer and so you have to be very cautious about how much you actually do know and don't know but you need to get involved in in those details I I wrote uh a lot about Salter confinement where I did try to uh and there have been movements to try to eliminate that uh the state of New York Just got rid of solitary confinement entirely uh Wisconsin we just don't seem to

want to do anything I'm afraid but so you can't lose hope of trying to make those institutional changes that that uh uh relationship between those two is pretty Central to me thank you John you yeah yeah well I I would think um um we could all somehow resolve uh to be a little more self-critical you know and uh maybe test a little more critically the mores and the patterns of behavior And the expectations and the stratification of our social life and uh try to bring to light I mean as soon as we're conscious of it

we've already made a tremendous step uh forward uh so to burst the bubble of the this appearance of naturalness in what is really highly disordered that's uh a step forward and then you know the New Orleans Mayor shows a very concrete project that that intervened and and reshaped the face of the City of New Orleans and uh you know Struck a blow at certain structures of sin well I think we have a question over here yeah um thank you so much for both of your comments first of all um I couldn't help but think about

Robin D'Angelo's white fragility as both of you were speaking um particular as it relates to kind of like communal guilt and in that book she defines racism as something more something that's inhabited by white people than a direct Discrimination um and cause white persons to kind of reframe how they understand racism as something that they inherently inhabit regardless of their decisions um and I'm just curious if you guys think that that is a good thing for us to move towards or if there's a better way to approach it than her proposal I unfortunately don't know

that book do you white for jilia you you may have an answer I don't really recommend that text I think there are some Difficulties uh without getting into the weeds of the argument uh I think there's some difficulties in her presentation it it became very popular after the George Floyd incident I mean in general I take the position that we've described here but I think she makes uh some a lot of assumptions and mistakes and I know this has become the basis for important dialogue I don't disagree with that at all but it's not a

work uh JP that I really would highly recommend it's she Doesn't have know historical knowledge of of racism and she does not have sociolog iCal knowledge or a lot of other things so uh I don't mean to burst your bubble if you like the book but it's not a text that I would recommend what is there something you would recommend is good on this well there are many books that I would recommend on there's a lot of worthwhile texts on on race and racism and uh but that's a movement that uh Ki is another one

uh at Boston uh University I think both of them kind of missed the mark they became very popular uh but I think they kind of missed the mark and so unfortunately sometimes people my sons call these people grifters I don't mean to be but grifters yes uh and I don't want to go that far but I don't think that they uh helped as much as they should have um so there are lots of texts dealing with uh different aspects of racism the history of racism that one can explore uh other Than that particular one Amanda

uh first just to John Paul's question I think it's it's interesting and we've got to be wary of whenever the account for social evils would leave no capacity for reconciliation or restoration so anything that would lock us into an entrenched Paradigm so I don't know if it does that but like there has to always be open the capacity for people to turn around and act morally and so against a kind of Determinism there but I wanted to pick up Mark on your question which is quite similar to what I was left with at the end

of your excellent remarks and that is the concrete dismantling of these structures of sin and how we can best discern the personalist and humanizing antidote given that probably there are also ways in which persons of Goodwill would disagree about what that concrete uh antidote looks like so for example on the one hand you could have the Highlighting of ethical exemplars from the marginalized Community m or and you could have the highlighting of ethical exemplars who dissented from the conventions of their society and acted rightly those are different approaches and do you include both and a

whole wider plurality or make a choice in favor of one or the other and then what is the didactic power of that and then just one other issue in the mix I'm thinking a lot of the rupnik Scandal so For those who are not familiar there's a priest uh who uh was a Serial abuser and designed many mosaics that are throughout Catholic churches around the world and it's been a big uh decision point for the church about the particularly the churches that have these mosaics what to do with this art do you destroy the art

do you cover the art do you have a plaque indicating and acknowledging the abuse uh recently uh one Church said we're going to have a Prayer of the faithful for victims of abuse so again there's all these different Contours and I I think it's just interesting to consider like what is the positive content we're imbu because we have so much of a culture that would say dismantle the structures of sin tear down the Injustice which is a first step but if we don't have a positive moral content to replace it that's dactic and exemplary we

could be just as a drift uh Afterwards well I do agree uh Amanda I've only met you yesterday uh that you seem to have a good mixture here because you do a lot of different talks about euthanasia and Canada but you also told me that you're involved in some parliamentary activities and that's a good example of how to bring together these two sides um and so and I certainly agree with you that's some just tearing something down without any kind of Alternatives or any in the Prison world you have some people who call themselves prison

abolitionists and they have taught me a lot although I'm myself I'm not an abolitionist but some of them simply want to dismantle we we have a terrible caral system I mean just extraordinarily Bad and The Temptations to say crush it um that sometimes can lead to worse problems so I take your points and each kind of activity you have to think very carefully about that mixture of the personal and the Institutional and how to how to affect that kind of change it'll be different in the business World it'll be different in the medical world in

your case it has to do with uh uh controversy about euthanasia so yeah think very hard about that relationship so very good good comments can I just insert blue thank you um just before we move on because maybe um Charles you'll have a different direction but the the mention of the rupnik mosaics I think They're in several hundred churches I mean it's um it's particularly egregious because he abused also religious sisters and sometimes it seems to have been sort of part of the art making process so I don't have a solution to that but it

did me of the fact that um a certain radical approach to all of Western Art could be it could be viewed as sort of expressions of structures of sin because so many aristocratic households for example which were the patrons had their Wealth by extortion then during the colonial period much if this comes from the backs of slaves so are we going to write off the Baroque in the name of structures of sin uh I know that's not what you're suggesting but just to to show how difficult these issues get very quickly no I would be

very interested in what you know you have to say there some people out there who want us to sort of abandon our Western cannon not because they disagree with it but because they Think it's somehow poisoned through the yeah I don't think that's the case so we all have to live with the the legacy of sin we have to live with our own sin I mean I don't who knows what people are going to think about us in 100 years if we have any kind of documents and Beauty to to offer them so I don't

take that approach to the past but you need to name it you need to say that this is part of the creation the strange fact that there could be horrible people People kavaj or something like that who had this beautiful art uh but no the answer is not to just simply face it uh but in the particular context the issue of the statues I I think that was a very positive move you don't have to destroy them you can move them to a museum or something like that uh in certain concrete cases and in this

particular case that you're talking about I haven't looked at all the details about how many churches this would be but it would be Pretty awful if I were victimized by a priest to walk in and and see that Mosaic so again this is very contextual at certain level we don't want a blanket approach and say uh people like Hyer things get a little complicated you know but sometimes that enters into the work but uh simply saying you were an awful person and therefore I'm going to police your art and get rid of you is a

terrible approach yeah no no I think it's an Excellent idea Amanda uh this uh idea holding up exemplary persons from uh the subjugated race or from the subjugating race who had the selflessness to see through the structures of sin I think so oriented somewhere yeah y right I the power of uh those exemplary person shouldn't be underestimated and uh and it's just the kind of alternative to this uh destructive approach that you and John Henry have mentioned yeah Charles thank you I'll just address the Um my comments to both of you I'm wondering you I

think it was um I can't remember which one was um saying that um these structures of sin arise from Human perversity they can be dismantled they're not independent Powers but they're objective in some way can that be a little bit elaborate ated on and would that it all relate to what Paul writes in several places about the Principalities and powers that our Battle Is Not Just against flesh and blood but principalities and powers that do seem to be um objective and stand over against us and it's not just the result of individual will but something

may be greater and then the other um uh another wonderment is would what would you think as a legitimate Tool uh to analyze um structures of sin um critical theory um and that's it's very uh Debatable as actually what critical theory is MH um and then just a comment um exemplars I'm thinking of um communities that can be exemplars so I'm going to go back to the local so one of of the reason what what we practice in our community we we do not have private property for a reason it's not just to um uh

help us not to fall into greed but it's a declaration against a fallen system that depends on private property that and um Uh gives rise to Injustice and so it's structured into the uh embedded into the way we are we want to live justly um and do so in a in a structural way among others so could that not be one way to dismantle um uh From Below rather than from above you want me to take the first two that U yeah certainly the witness of the brudof um uh and your shared life together and

the renunciation of the private property that that certainly can Contribute to uh uh this U uh you know elevation of consciousness whereby we begin to see through the structures of sin instead of just blindly accept them I think that witness of such a community just like the witness of great individuals can is surely an important part of of the process well let me address two of your questions rather than the third one I think we can do an ont ology of these kinds of uh um strange unities uh I know You went to Buffalo and

you had a professor up there called Barry Smith who didn't antology just about everything and it got a little strange and weird but I think you can really reflect on the meaning of these um uh we we've been having a discussion about quasi substances or parts or things like that but I think you can really recognize that there is as Professor Crosby said some kind of I don't objective subjective is a a very complex Topic in epistemology but there's something standing over against us uh that has the qualities that uh Professor Crosby mentioned so I

think we could do that and if you anybody wants to talk about that the character of substance quasy substance all those things on your second question you have to tell me what you mean by critical theory I who do you have in mind uh some of it frankly I I would not recommend at all uh but I have found in my own work that Michelle Fuko Is a very problematic uh philosophically very problematic uh historically I mean just gets a lot of history wrong he's almost inescapable because he raised some questions that uh I ignored

him as a graduate student and those all the stuff coming from France I thought this is just but when I started working in prisons I thought well the guy does have a couple of insights so you can reject his overall philosophical Vision which I think is destructive and false frankly Also as an historian you can say the guy just got that that selection I gave you from about Madness that that scholar is very much opposed to Fuko from an historical standpoint not a philosophical standpoint so you'd have to tell me what you mean by critical

theory some of it might be helpful my own view is a lot of it isn't um but I had a conversation with somebody here about Theory and there some younger um people were telling me about what's Going on with Theory at Yale and places like that and I was hoping it would kind of go away but apparently it's still around so I I the third one I don't have a detailed response uh Charles but thank you for those questions I would also just if I could jump in on that as well I mean I think

in hillerbrand and in the realist personalist phenomenologists um we find some tools for analysis um in this idea that's come up a couple of times and that Maria is Going to talk about tomorrow of the unitive power of value if we think of disvalue right so values are things like justice and beauty and courage and you know uh intellectual genius and these sorts of ways in which things show up as important if we think of disvalue as the polar opposite of those you can get a sort of perverse Unity that comes about through people uh

coming together around these disvalues around various sorts of Injustice as in the case of slavery and There's a kind of external Force in a sense which maybe theologically we would want to understand in terms of the Demonic um but even sort of phenomenologically we can just see how uh disvalue has this sort of magnetic or gravitational power to pull people together into these structures of sin I think we're going to hear more about this I suppose tomorrow about the Vira which is a very interesting concept way the values bring Uh together yes uh people as

you said can be shown in relation to the disvalues so I think that's an excellent point yeah so we'll continue talking about that as we go forward here someone over here yes sorry John um I've a question for Professor Jeff I was quite interested um in uh your experience and uh comments about the prison system um and how awful it was especially since um there were actual people um in the prison um who are treated not very much Like people um and it has been said a couple of times already that you know we are

uh the image of God uh but um we of course were made in the image of God since then we' Fallen myself I've fallen quite a way um but um um a question that might be at very much at the the root of the whole um prison system does human dignity uh increase and decrease uh to the extent that um A person participates in virtue in God yeah this would be a big discussion I think there are different kinds of dignity uh what we call inherent dignity that that does not at all change and that

is what is being violated in my view uh but there's also other kinds of dignity our colleague Professor cyer describes a kind of acquired dignity that comes in degrees uh and so we have to decide first of all the meaning of the term uh Dignity Professor Crosby has written very insightfully about this topic uh but in terms of inherent dignity it is my own view that our prison system profoundly violates inherent dignity uh almost he faces it in our solitary confinement regime uh so I hope that helps perhaps we can uh talk a bit more

about the concept of dignity I've written about it and I thought I was going to get away from it and I'm afraid I'm still stuck you wrote a book with With that title didn't you uh I've written several books on that topic exactly and uh I thought I was done with that but uh here it is pardon no that was a good question that was an excellent question so yeah yes hi um thank you both for your um your talks I had a question kind of building on Amanda's point about Orienting ourselves um within within

these Concepts like how to approach them um thinking about the fact that uh uh Dr Crosby your talk on shared responsibility um and this idea of structures of sin it can be very um paralyzing actually because I think with media I I feel that all the injustices of the world whether it's war or um child slavery um it we could go on and on and on there's there seems to be endless uh things to feel terrible about Um and so I guess my question is maybe one of prudence or how to even how to think

about where um so if we have responsibility where where and how to meet that responsibility is does it have something to do with proximity um you know locality like starting where you're at geographically or I don't I don't know but I think that often times the the problem that this can lead to is a is a um an overwhelm that leads to non-action so I just was wondering if You could speak to that yeah yeah well uh you know um in a way one of the points I was trying to make this morning was that

this idea of co-responsibility uh is encouraging when we feel that evil is too great and we can't make a dent against it the idea that all the good we do has this resonance in the moral universe and bears fruit that we won't see uh so so that's an encouraging thought that we don't just fight evil Head on directly uh and maybe get destroyed in the process but we can also fight it um through uh by by somehow harnessing uh this mysterious moral energy of defusion uh that comes from uh uh the solidarity and the co-responsibility

so uh it somehow where we seemed powerless well we're after all not so powerless if this is true that we have this co-responsibility and the good we do can redown to the blessing of uh People who will'll never meet and never see uh so I I I understand that natural feeling of overwhelm problem's too big for me to touch uh I throw up my hands in despair but uh on closer reflection there's that uh there's something there that can encourage us to uh think of ourselves as real agents in the struggle between good and evil

just thanks to this dimension of co-responsibility yeah I share Professor Crosby's Point Entirely as I did some of his earlier points but I also see what you're saying Renee is that sometimes these problems seem absolutely overwhelming sometimes you're just disappointed written some books with with the hope that there would be some kind of change in certain areas it just didn't come and so when confronts a kind of danger of Despair despair is that there's nothing I can do I'm going to stop doing that but I am encouraged uh sometimes you see small Changes those are

really important as I mentioned New York State got rid of the Salter confinement system we have not but somehow that that's a really positive thing as far as picking the the area um sometimes it's that kind of choice sometimes the choice comes to you and it's not physical proximity it's uh in my case many years ago it came to me through the prison system and I don't uh uh a lot of that wasn't my own choice Confluence of all kinds of events if You're interested in Providence then you can begin that kind of talk as

well so I wouldn't say well I'm hopeless there's so many problems and what begin to think about your own story your own life and what is Central to you and how you can begin to undertake a response to that the kind of Injustice um perhaps it's inadequate but well before I hand it to you Amanda two things I'm reminded of there's a final interview of hanor balasar which You can see online it's in German but there are subtitles and sort of about the last question that's asked is sort of what is your ultimate commitment or

conviction um and it's interesting because he would have had many deeply theological things to say but he says that ultimately I believe that human Destiny passes through the freedom of each individual person uh which is a striking sort of reflection back on his life and in fact He he then tells the story of Maximus the Confessor through whom Orthodox Christian doctrine passed really in one sense through him because he was surrounded by opponents on all sides so it's always struck me that to your point Renee we can feel powerless but in fact there is a

tremendous amount that rest with each of us one thing I was just going to say I sort of picked it up in the room a little bit is uh is there a what do you make of the reaction from Those of us who are not sort of steeped in critical theory who feel that um the uh systemic racism issue can be overstated is this just a lack of willingness to accept our you know our solidarity with particularly our past uh or is there or do you think Derek in particular that this is partially due to

the fact that uh the critical race position is presented so aggressively and as Amanda was saying before we're just locked in and there's nothing we Can do yeah but I but I know that there you know when we speak of people of Goodwill there are those who are generally a bit more hesitant to accept um the structures of sin concept wholesale they want maybe even more nuances than we've given so I just wanted to sort of speak for that sensibility yeah I don't think it's overstated and I think we often just have to listen to

others and and understand their own experiences and as I said I've tried to do this by uh I trained the police force 180 officers and went forward to them and talked about dignity and heard their push back and I wanted to hear their position and see what they had to say so I don't believe uh it's overstating but the critical again what do we mean by critical theory but I don't think that that was the most helpful framework at all I think in some ways it was very alienating the George Floyd incident was So shocking

and it should have been and it happens to a lot of people around the country but it's still uh I just not sure that was the best kind of apparatus and this gets to my earlier Point what kind of apparatus do you reach for in in order to understand the situation and I would not have chosen that so it's a very real problem I try to be open to receive from other people and and in their own experiences but be cautious about uh what kind of apparatus you Choose if I could just jump back for

a minute to the question of our Dutch friend uh on the Dignity of persons and if it's if there's a dignity that's never lost and it seems to me that we do have to say that even the worst criminal uh does not forfeit a certain basic human dignity it's that's been disputed um among Catholic theologians and there even texts in aquinus where he seems to say that the criminal is like a beast And has lost this Humanity in other texts where he seems to say no the criminal still retains this fundamental human dignity but I

think that latter position is a position very important to maintain entirely and then of course distinguishing that inalienable dignity from the other other senses where dignity comes in degrees couldn't agree with you more there John absolutely yeah and if I could go Ahead sinful structures I think there is a response in the New Testament so you have the let's say the slavery is sinful structure slavery that was a very common thing in gistic Civilization what does s Paul um do with the slave he sends him back to his master and was realizing with that he

is undermining the system says I give the slave back but he is renewed he's a new person yeah and that doesn't seem to have any Effect but in the end that would provoke the abolition of slavery in in the Middle Ages yeah um sometimes I think we are impatient there understandable also right but it's quite a striking example so Christianity didn't introduce a I call it a revolution that um cancels the structures but it's it's going from the inside yeah right maybe you can comment on that well thank you that's a very helpful comment all

by itself uh I did you have more on that Derek yeah I I Think we'd have to work on that a bit more because I I do agree with you you're referring to phiman or that text in the New Testament but the whole question of slavery in the Roman world and understanding what happened with the slavery and I'm not sure that for us the best response is to Simply make those kinds of moves are very important but there is we live in a different kind of world with institutions and we have to uh do the

kind of things that Professor Crosby mentioned uh more public kinds of responses so for me that's just not going to be it's important it's necessary as philosopher would say necessary but not sufficient approach to the problem you have further questions here um yes may there were just brief do you want to go ahead first thank you Amanda um I've thought of a lot of these issues before but Never under the construct structures of sin and that was really interesting to me because it helped me contextualize our discussion today about repentance and I started thinking about

how complicated the calculus is for repentance uh especially with sins that seem to be transgenerational are things that um you know last a lifetime and for simple sins like if I were to eat my little brother's peanut butter and jelly sandwich and he were to demand of me I Want your car now I'd say well that that's an unreasonable expectation of my Penance um because I can kind of do a simple calculation of what's reasonable Penance for me not just at this time but for this act and I'm wondering if there is some sort of

ethical framework that talks about how to calculate Penance for things that are transgenerational or Eternal because at the time of confession a priest knows that our sins are something that seem Eternal when we Leave the confessional there's still residue on our hearts and yet you know I don't have people throwing stones at me because I'm only saying an Our Father for something there's kind of a a permission of time and I'm wondering what that looks like for issues like these because I'm not sure that tearing down a mosaic or dismantling a statue seems like enough

but at the same time there's also like a what can I do at this time um so is there you know Someone smart who came up with a calculus that makes that more simple no if only uh I would resist the gabrio Marcel uh distinguish between a problem and a mystery and this kind of thing is not something we can have a solution to or a technical formula or anything like that doesn't mean we can't try to understand it and and and work on it so I don't really have any kind of uh formula for

doing that you have to live it uh I'm not a priest so I can't Examine you know what happens in the confessional but uh I I don't I think that would be a mistake to try to have some kind of calculus at all it's just a wrong approach uh to the issue yeah it could be that the notion of Inc commensurability which pops up in philosophy in different places fits here too that you know no reparation is enough for you know what happened at those uh slave markets and destruction of Families there's no such thing

it's too much it's all not enough but so it's the the reparation and the crime being restored are so incommensurable that it seems that a real con ing calculus isn't even available I agree with you yeah very good yeah would would you say that in these cases and maybe even in the case of our uh individual penances after we go to confession I sometimes have this worry about you know you say your sins and you say get three hail mares Sort of a tit fortat kind of thing that maybe a kind of accounting calculus is

not the right model yeah in the case of reparations say for slavery or the treatment of indigenous people um it seems like a real reparation would would be uh the full integration of the two peoples into a common life right where we no longer have the kinds of structures of sin separations right um do you think that sort of model is the right kind of model in relation To those who have committed serious crimes or reparations cases that that's the sort of restorative model we ought to be looking to yeah I like the focus on

restoration and doing something new uh in as a response to the uh wrong inflicted on them that's yeah yeah I like I like the concept of inconen ability because I think these are crimes that some crimes are just so awful that one and you want to avoid what Professor Spencer just said which n calls the Accountant mentalities or you know I'm going to add these things up you just don't don't want to do that but there is a a practice called restorative justice which I can talk to some of you about I have participated in

it where one tries to restore uh the harm it's not just the offender who has harmed others but the offender has a story about his harm and people get in the room it's extremely powerful there was a 60 Minutes piece uh about 2 years ago that featured a Gentleman that I went to church with and it was immensely powerful uh deal he's never going to be released so it's not a matter of him trying to get over on anybody but he came to an understanding of the harm that he did and he met with some

relatives and was just rather overwhelming so I would much favor those kinds of things rather than trying to figure out recompense and those matters Amanda did you yeah so quick Roundup of uh Reactions first uh to you Mark about what to make of these radically diverging views though about what constitutes even a movement toward restitution in the first place or restoration so for example with indigenous peop some might say that's not at all the goal is an integration that's actually the source of Injustice from the start and so uh it it may be kind of

uh challenging given radically diverging views of of restoration to Cedric's point and we touched on it briefly but I just wanted to mention another interesting personalist thinker Robert spaman and he talks about these two kinds of dignity at least two kinds of dignity on the one hand that in alienable equal common to all dignity that can't be lost but he also talks about the additional dignity obviously from which we get the term that would be connected with the dignity connected to an office like a king or something like This or and how that can be

forfeited when people fail to meet the moral standards I love this line where he says starved in his bunker father maximilan Colby had more dignity than that henchman who than the henchman who took his life yet he also had more dignity than the righteous man for whom he sacrificed his life and that's because the heroism of Holiness is the highest dignity to which human beings can Aspire so there's this whole moral gradation Not at the level of that fundamental ontological dignity but at the level of moral dignity so maybe actually in uh the document released

by The Vatican recently called dignitas infinita there's a distinction of ontological dignity on the one hand and moral dignity there might even be four kinds of dignity in that document if I remember so that document would be a great uh sort of group project for the Hilder brand project to unpack and Lastly to Renee and Professor Crosby on the uh reacting to evil with uh without a sense of just despair or malaise at the situation I was recalling uh just really being struck by after the the deadliest attack on Jews in America uh with the

Pittsburg synagogue shooting in in 2018 um I remember seeing a lot of efforts on the part of Jewish groups who were saying we've got to do 11 Good Deeds we got to sing 11 times louder we Have got to do 11 kind of charitable works here and there and this was the kind of the touch point the response was for the 11 who we lost in this brutal unjust way we're going to react with 11 positive Good Deeds so just to overwhelm evil with goodness and I think I think that's a very positive aspirational but

also manageable thing to do when you see something wrong and you decide I'm going to cast more light into the world through my own effort to do good and That can really prevent our own demoralization and debilitation in the face of moral evil you entirely agree with all that you say Amanda well I've been talking you uh I would say that the dignity issue we could do do an entire session on that and all the comments you made were really quite good but I wanted to respond to the first point you made is that about

indigenous peoples and uh Assimilation and things like that for me that's an example of not listening to the people that you want to uh help because perhaps uh immigration in this country was often a kind of an assimilationist project and then people said well wait a minute now what exactly does that mean does it mean that the white Protestant majority that I'm supposed to become that and so you want you need to listen to those groups and sit down with them and see you don't Have to agree with everything people say but just sit down

and say well what do you want and and what what's important to your group um so I think that that's an important uh uh way of approaching this problem yeah if I could add to that um again here I think some of the things that hilderbrand says in the metaphysics of community on the the unity of communities can be helpful here hilderbrand has a great appreciation and others in the uh Realist personalist phenomenological movement have a great appreciation for the nation or the culture as a real Unity uh that there is a sort of unique

value that each genuine nation instantiates and that needs to be preserved and thinking about indigenous groups or immigrant groups or already established Nations or what have you in those terms I think can be quite helpful for thinking through how how to relate in a non sort of just dissolving Melting Pot sort of assimilationist mix salid as they they've said rather than right exactly yeah okay so I think like Amanda I have all these like thoughts that I been kind of storing up but I think it's just the first thing I was thinking about was like

we keep on bringing up just the futility of trying to make make reparation because nothing we do can make up for it and um I guess I've been thinking about this since this morning When Maria was talking about like accompanying people in their suffering I think the Incarnation is the answer to like all of these problems and how like my Our Father can't make up for my sins but Jesus made up for my sins and um and even just the idea of like you know he was he acknowledged our suffering he entered into it and

then he took it on for us and so I guess what you were saying Amanda about maximian K's model Of Holiness like he took on all of that and I just I really feel like the only way to bring healing in all of these situations is for everyone to enter into the you know communion of saints and receive healing from Christ and um so I think that all of our efforts are going to feel like they're not enough because because they aren't but if we like surrender them to God and you know open ourselves to

Grace and the Action of Grace in that and pray for the people and like yeah we should try to do actual things and not just sit and pray but but I just feel like again like you know you do the little you can and then you just offer it to God to do the rest and but again I just I feel like the Incarnation is the answer to all of these yeah I think um I might slightly disagree with that and says I I agree with what you've said about the importance of the Incarnation and

need To explore fully what that means but as John Paul II says sometimes there's a material reality here too that they there poor people who need Goods or something like that or we have to we can't have a prison system of over at this point it's not 2 million but it was a 2 million uh some years ago they just some things we can't have slaves in our midst uh things like that and I'm wasn't saying that we shouldn't not do stuff I just saying Like when you feel helpless and hopeless go go to that

image and actually I was thinking of another thing one one more thought I meant to bring up was please it's like you know we're like talking about what do we do with these mosaics or these you know buildings that were built by enslaved people and I was just thinking about how again in the Incarnation Christ took this instrument of torture and it's the symbol of Salvation and like so he know every Everything that is created through human suffering in a sense is redeemed because of the way he redeemed us through the cross and we can

see all these things as crosses for these people agree with you there again I wrote a book about torture though and sometimes we have to say stop torturing people the government I don't I don't want torture to continue I mean sometimes we have to Oppose no I'm not saying that I'm just saying I'm saying that there's hope in all of these that God has an answer in all of these and and so I'm not I'm not dismissing the suffering at all I'm saying we can be entered into our suffering by Christ we can take our

suffering and the things that cause our suffering to the cross and be healed by him like I'm a I'm being a theologian here so well I wonder Susanna if we reframed here's a way of reframing the Question I want to know what you think about this Derek what if we didn't have not only our faith but the whole reality that our faith is in there was no Christ there was no Redemption that point of reference didn't exist what would we be left with I mean I suppose there would still be there could be moral Heroes

but what does that add to say your ability to go and well it adds immensely but uh I mean that kind of counterfactual where where Of Christianity didn't exist I mean there are other I've studied Buddhism for a long time and there would still be Buddhists who have I don't I'm not a Buddhist I disagree with the Buddhists but I'm not uh so willing to say that it it makes all the difference to me that God exists and that Christ has redeemed us and 100% and some of my own policy positions emerge from this conception

that all as Professor Crosby said uh all persons have that value and they can Turn in a positive way I wouldn't do what I do if I didn't believe that so that directly comes from my uh uh Christian tradition but I guess I'm reluctant to say that others and other Traditions wouldn't do that it's there's a lot of different a lot of compassionate people in the world and um did you want to add anything no I'm uh I'm edified by what I'm hearing from my colleagues and by the participants we have maybe time for one

More question two more questions one on this side Charles and then yeah I wanted to clarify my point and integrate part of Susan's um because I think part of the feeling of overwhelm and debt is the sense that even though our debt is never paid that there's never a small payment we can make towards it that's acknowledged which was what I was trying to say with the when I leave confession and I know that my hour father is not enough for my sins at Least I can be a little bit assuaged that it's enough for

this time and I think I don't know what that looks like in society because there's an aspect of confession that's private so there's not a bunch of other people witnessing how much pain my sin has caused that they can remind me that my debt isn't paid and I think something that is really hard about these like public structures of sin is like how can We agree on what a small payment over a period of time is that seems Fair um because obviously you know just putting uh a little sign might not be enough to a

community that a painting you know caused a lot of Oppression like they might be like no no no the whole painting has to be ripped down and then someone's like well that's you know is that too extreme for this moment in time which is where the calculus came in because like there's there's something About the curve that keeps going and I think some of these positions make it sound sound like the debt has to be paid all at once um but we don't treat anything else like that when we buy a house very few people

buy a house outright they agree on you know a very small thing that can be paid and I don't like is there how would we do that with penants if it's not private like this is social um and we don't have people that you know are as merciful as God is about The fact that our debts aren't paid instantly um and how can we as a society be more merciful towards each other without ignoring the suffering of each other either yeah once again I would encourage you not to have the calculus a thought honestly because

you can't uh there's too much going on there and I think there's something theologically important because we're secondary causes and God is moving things in ways that are very difficult for us to understand And the truth of the matter is in social and political lives sometimes you simply don't know you just say I'm opposed to torture and I'm going to or abortion or something like that I'm going to take here I stand and uh you're not quite sure of all the effects and that's not something you ought to try to calculate um I mean the

point of view I think of personalist movement is it tends to be anti- consequentialist and uh I I agree With that entirely um but if I could also add to this so a point that it touches on a number of things that people have said Derek you mentioned uh Joseph zifer's work on human digity and he distinguishes this kind of digity that he calls bestowed dignity right right so touching on some of the things that Maria was talking about earlier right when a parent says to the child it is good that you exist right I

Rejoice that you exist this Bestows a kind of dignity on the on the child right or even something as simple as you know acknowledging that there are human beings suffering in prison that's right right it bestows a kind of dignity upon them and if we can develop abits as a society of bestowing dignity on others right hopefully explicitly in a face Toof face way but even just in our thoughts right thinking of people as dignified right this begins to move towards having a society in which we can Extend this Mercy towards each other yeah and

Professor cyer points out uh you know you have what do you have conflicts between these kinds of dignities they have to be properly ordered and I I don't bestow dignity on anybody in this room in terms of inherent dignity but I bestow it in in other forums and so you have to think about the orderings of the kinds of dignity once again this is a big topic one one answer that um Pope Paul might Give thinking back to this morning is that the the the the the asking of forgiveness if there's wrong done uh to

acknowledge it Call It by its name uh bring it before God and ask the aggrieved person for forgiveness that that's what he did repeatedly in uh the runup to the year 2000 and uh so that's not like returning a benefit but uh trying to enter into the truth of the grievance last question from Charles just to return back um I'm wondering if is the structure of sin the same thing as a sinful structure what is the distinction you're making I'm not I'm I'm wondering um because I I think of persons as being sinful they commit

sin um there can be unjust structures that we participate in um that are contrary to the ultimate will of God so I'm just wondering if um maybe Some reactions against the idea of sinful structures we might not say there might be evil structures uh and sinful persons um and I don't know if that has any Illuminating power um that might um enable us to act more Faithfully but um I've sometimes uh I agree that there's structural um there structures that are oppose the will of God or that fall short of the will of God miss

the mark of the will of God um that we need to attend to I'm just not always so sure structures of sin or sinful structures is the best way I'm just wondering if it might not be better to talk about um the structures of evil the um the instantiations of an of evil and I think of like in Nazi Germany um and anti-Semitism went beyond uh just individual attitudes um or attitudinal and even behavioral but There was there was something systemic that was evil yeah well uh yeah I think I think we're agreed on on

on the principle uh and are just discussing the most prudent uh language right to talk about it uh so yeah I I guess I would have taken sinful structure structure of sin as equivalent but perhaps on you're suggesting we reserve the talk of sinful for persons right and not and not use it for structures yeah that there may be some Merit in uh clearing cleaning up our language that way what do you think there uh I I do think that there might be some work to be done on on these distinctions uh Thomas aquinus in

his great book dealo just tries to do some of these fine distinctions between that kind of sin and the absence of a good that should be present and that kind of work so perhaps we could do that I don't see it as essential I think structures of sin Works pretty well but I think Charles is raising a good question here about whether evil we'd have to explore that means that's called dealo 500 pages of the great Thomas of qu uh who tries to help us out there um I've always found the the phrase structure of

sin helpful um in as much as not to deny that sin properly speaking is set of persons um but that the the things that we do subjectively have an objective result right I bring about communities I bring About relationships I bring about artifacts by my subjective acts and right the the German idealist tradition has this distinction between subjective spirit and objective spirit that the the structures of the mind and the heart are objectified out there in reality and that seems to happen with uh with with our sins right they bring about these social situations that

make it easier for persons to sin later on um or easier for injustices to be perpetuated later On good point there are also good objective Spirits I wish we could have talked about some of those today maybe we will tomorrow there's been a lot of negative stuff here but I think there there are systems of virtue yeah uh as well um and maybe we can talk about those going forward but at this point let's thank our speakers