In that same way, it’s almost impossible to think of Ireland and not speak of St. Patrick.

Years ago, when I traveled to Ireland with my dad, we both quickly realized, though, that our across-the-ocean perspective of this beloved saint wasn’t the full story. No, the St. Patrick of Ireland and what he meant to the people of his adopted homeland were not what I had learned about. Sure, thanks to the many Irish immigrants who came and brought their faith to the United States, those of us in other countries have gotten a taste of what this beloved saint means to the Irish, but it’s just that—an outsider’s view.

That is why we wanted to provide you, our readers, with a more intimate look into how the people of Ireland celebrate their beloved patron saint on his blessed feast day. We hope you enjoy it!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

1. The Resurrection of Jesus. The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee now came to the tomb at early dawn. Two men in dazzling clothes said to the women: “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but has risen” (Lk 24:5). When the women heard this and returned from the tomb, they spread the good news to the Eleven and to all the rest. Twenty centuries later, we now rejoice to hear the same wonderful news!

O Risen Jesus, fill us with the joy and hope that the women experienced and then shared with the Eleven and with the early Christian community.

2. The Ascension of Jesus into Heaven. “Then he led them [out] as far as Bethany, raised his hands, and blessed them. As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven” (Lk 24:51). “Suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven’” (Acts 1:10-11).

The message for each of us looking upward is to turn our gaze downward. We are prompted, then, to ask the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus has promised to send, to show each of us our mission here on earth!

3. The Coming of the Holy Spirit. “When the time of Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and and came to rest on each one of them” (Acts 2:1-3).

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free” Lk 4:18).

Where do you and I find “the poor,” “the captives,” “the blind,” and “the oppressed” in our day? Is this not the mission to which you and I are called?

4. The Assumption of Mary into Heaven. “When the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things. . . .The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 966).

How do we respond to this incredible honor bestowed upon Mary, the Mother of Jesus? One simple way is by imitating the humility of Mary, who said, “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your will!” One thing seems certain: those who—like Mary—humble themselves before God, will also one day be exalted in God’s glorious presence!

5. Mary Is Crowned Queen of Heaven and Earth. The Coronation of Mary is intended to highlight the bodily aspect of the Assumption and to record the final moment of Our Lady’s Assumption into heaven. The prophecy of the psalmist was fulfilled, in which he said to the Lord: “At your right hand stands the queen in the gold from Ophir” (Ps 45:9). In addition, as the Song of Songs (4:8) reads: “A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the Sun, with the moon at her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”

How are we to respond to this glorious presentation of Mary’s being crowned Queen of Heaven? We can simply praise her for this great honor she has received—and ask her blessing and protection!

Next Month: The Luminous Mysteries

Archbishop Oscar Romero may have been murdered decades ago, but his presence lives on in El Salvador.

Last March, as the city of San Salvador began its week-long commemoration of Archbishop Oscar Romero’s death, the souvenir T-shirts were abundant, worn by locals and visiting pilgrims alike. They were hot sellers in the stalls surrounding the downtown cathedral. There, Romero’s body lies in a crypt where everyday campesinos (native farmers) come, light candles, touch his tomb and metaphorically whisper in his ear, beseeching favors.

“As a Christian, I do not believe in death without resurrection. If I am murdered, I will arise again in the Salvadoran people,” reads one popular shirt. The shirt bears the archbishop’s words and his bespectacled image above a map of the New Jersey-sized nation where more than 75,000 people perished in the civil war of the 1980s.

Romero, killed by soldiers while celebrating Mass at a hospital chapel on March 24, 1980, was an atypical victim, if one judges by his elevated position. But he joined thousands of others far less famous, from human-rights lawyers to union organizers to campesinos, as well as three North American sisters and a laywoman missionary, whose deaths have never been legally addressed in El Salvador. No one has ever been convicted of the murder of the archbishop.

Romero remains alive in the hearts of Salvadorans. Three decades later, tens of thousands crowded the downtown streets in a march to the cathedral, shouting, “Viva Romero.” Long an unofficial national hero, he has been formally embraced by the country’s new government. At the country’s only airport, international visitors are welcomed with an official mural depicting the archbishop.

President Mauricio Funes, elected in 2009, joined last year’s commemoration march, the first Salvadoran president to do so, and has formally apologized for the government’s role in the murder. During his inaugural address, he asked that his administration be judged by the standards set by Romero. While Romero’s prophetic witness stirred divisions within the Church when he was alive—some of his auxiliary bishops cautioned that he went too far in defending the poor.

Reaching a New Generation

Even the younger generations, who did not experience the civil war or know Romero personally, invoke his legacy. The streets are filled with murals depicting the man, often with quotes from his many homilies and radio talks.

“Christ and Romero are the same to us,” says Mauricio Lemus, a lay leader at Santa Cruz Church outside San Salvador. At 33, Lemus was a child when the archbishop was murdered.

Mario Salvador Diaz, 21, a student at the national university, was born nearly a decade after Romero’s death, but has read countless books and seen films about the archbishop. His parents told him stories of the impact the archbishop had on their lives. Diaz helped construct a mural outside his parish, Our Lady of Guadalupe, dedicated to the memory of the archbishop.

For younger Salvadorans, who comprise the vast majority of the population, Romero “has become the spiritual support of those who have their hearts broken. He has become the saint of El Salvador and the Americas,” says Diaz.

“The people believe Romero is still with them,” says Dennis O’Connor, director of CRISPAZ, a Cincinnati-based organization devoted to forging links between American Christians and Salvadorans. “Thirty years after his death, he remains legendary.”

A Romero Revival

Jesuit Father Dean Brackley ministered in New York’s South Bronx until being called to teach theology at the University of Central America in San Salvador after six of his fellow Jesuits and two women helpers—a mother and daughter—were murdered by Salvadoran military soldiers in 1989. That event was the last great spasm of violence directed against the Church during the civil war. Father Brackley has noticed a revival in Romero interest and public favor over the past decade.

For many years, says Father Brackley, “Romero was absent from public discussions, his memory suppressed by the media.” This year’s commemoration was an indication that the resurrection of Romero’s legacy has come full circle.

In El Salvador, he has been embraced as a Christ figure, a national hero, his memory kept alive through the efforts of those who suffered during the civil war.

Faith and Politics

The view of Romero in El Salvador today is much like that of African-Americans toward Martin Luther King, Jr., says Father Brackley. Dr. King is seen in both a Christian prophetic and political context. From a Church perspective, Romero’s canonization process continues. Still, that is expected to be a long-term project, for the archbishop’s actions and words remain controversial. While almost all Salvadorans concede that Romero was a man of saintly proportions, that legacy, as it often is with popular saint-like figures, continues to be contested.

“There is a struggle over Romero and his legacy,” says Father Brackley. Some argue that “Romero’s political critique is not essential to his sanctity.” He was, in this model, a man of prayer and simplicity, devoted to the Church and his people, eschewing the offer of a mansion in a secure gated community to live in a simple series of rooms on the grounds of a hospital for children with cancer.

This faction points to a man, a carpenter’s son born in 1917, who faithfully served the Church, with a devotion to the popes honed through service as a young priest in wartime Rome. In his pursuit of peace and reconciliation, he was willing to criticize all factions, including the rebels, in a conflict that became internationally colored by the Cold War. Some say that Romero’s reputation for personal piety was hijacked by those with a political agenda.

“His prayer flowed from his love and defense of the poor, his belief that the Church must walk with the poor,” says Father Brackley, who has written extensively on the Romero legacy and frequently greets international visitors who come to the University of Central America, wanting to learn more about the legendary figure.

“Romero points the Church forward. This is the way we have to go. We have to walk with the crucified people today. Romero understood that, if it was not good news for the poor, it was not the gospel,” he says.

Compelled to Be a Prophet

While emerging as an international figure, Romero cannot be understood without understanding the context in which he lived. El Salvador is, while small, densely populated—it now has more than six million people. It has frequently been wracked by violence. Today, it is the criminal drug gangs who wreak havoc.

In Romero’s day, soldiers—in large part financed by the U.S. government—and militia death squads wrought terror on large sections of the population. Most Salvadorans continue to live in poverty; many have escaped to the United States, Canada and Europe in search of work.

At the time of Romero’s appointment as archbishop in 1977, those who clamored for change openly expressed disappointment. Romero was perceived at the time as timid and allied with the wealthy. He was, critics said, a man chosen so as not to disturb the powerful, who saw the emergence of liberation theology and the growing movement in the Church for a “preferential option for the poor” as a threat.

Romero was considered a safe choice, a quiet intellectual who would not prove a problem. His visage evoked a quiet placidity. Few saw him as a man who would disturb the status quo in a Catholic country where a small group of families controlled almost all the wealth. They crushed any efforts at rebellion by controlling the government and the military.

But that analysis proved wrong. Romero, says Father Brackley, began as an archbishop simply dedicated to advancing the agenda of the Church. But he quickly discovered, in the circumstances of his time, that he was compelled to be a prophet.

How Did This Happen?

Some say the roots began early, in Romero’s quiet upbringing in a small provincial village. He was born poor, lived among the poor and sympathized with their struggles. But other factors as well galvanized him into action.

Romero had spirited discussions with a friend and Jesuit priest, Father Rutilio Grande. Father Grande had long been identified with groups advocating change, and Romero thought his friend was pushing too aggressively. But once Father Grande was murdered soon after Romero became archbishop, the quiet, scholarly Church leader emerged as a prophetic lion.

His homilies became more pointed. At a time when the press in El Salvador was heavily censored, his Sunday homilies, broadcast over the radio, offered hope for those who wanted recognition and condemnation of massacres in the countryside, as government troops and militias swept through whole villages, killing thousands. Romero heard the stories as he listened to peasants who trekked, sometimes with donkeys in tow, to their archbishop’s office, pleading with him to say something.

So he did. Romero’s condemnations of the violence became bolder toward the end of his three-year tenure as archbishop. He challenged wealthy Catholic families, who were well-known for public displays of piety but financed death squads. He emphasized the Church’s call for the rights of workers to organize, and decried the poverty that caused so many Salvadorans to leave the country in search of work. He called upon the leaders of the only country formally dedicated to Jesus, the Savior, to live up to its namesake.

Many think he sealed his fate when, days before his murder, Romero clamored for soldiers to “cease the repression” and lay down their arms, because “no soldier is obligated to obey an order contrary to the will of God.” The statement was seen in some quarters as a call to mutiny.

While the social and political legacy of Romero is still debated, his sanctity is still celebrated in traditional Catholic ways. The crowds who come to the crypt at the San Salvador cathedral are a testament to the Catholic belief in the Communion of Saints. They murmur quiet prayers, touch his coffin and beseech him for favors. Popular religiosity merges with Romero’s prophetic witness without contradiction. His tomb is always covered in flowers brought there by the people he served, as well as by international visitors.

A Miracle?

Dennis O’Connor knows very well about Romero’s impact, even 30 years after his murder. While visiting El Salvador in 2008, O’Connor came down with severe pains. He hurried home to Cincinnati, where he underwent surgery that removed cancerous tumors from his colon, and was told by his doctors that he might not have lived if he had waited much longer. Recovery was expected to be arduous, marked off in years.

Meanwhile, in El Salvador, a group of visiting pilgrims from St. Margaret of York Church in Cincinnati joined hands and prayed at the Romero crypt for O’Connor’s recovery. Something happened: O’Connor was back at work in a few weeks, surpassing any medical expectations. Today his cancer is in remission.

“I think that my case was miraculous,” says O’Connor. “I was given a second chance because I was working with the people of El Salvador. There is no doubt in my mind that there was divine intervention and a whisper in the ear from Romero.”

Still a Strong Presence

In any case, there has been a miracle of resurrection regarding Romero. He is acclaimed as a national hero. Perhaps his killers thought someday they would be hailed for ridding El Salvador of a controversial Churchman by marching into a hospital chapel and taking out the man who had proven so troublesome to those in power. Perhaps they thought they were ridding the turbulent Central American region of a dangerous revolutionary leader. If those who plotted the murders are still alive, they dare not offer themselves for public scrutiny.

By contrast, Romero’s image, rare for a bishop anywhere in the world, is emblazoned on T-shirts, akin to a rock star. It is expected that the anniversary of his death will become a national Salvadoran holiday. Despite the controversy that still surrounds him, he is expected to be canonized someday, a sign of personal piety and prophetic witness for all the Americas.

The crowds continue coming to his crypt. On the exact day of the 30th anniversary of the murder, in the pulpit in the floor above the archbishop’s tomb, U.S. Cardinal McCarrick spoke of Romero at a Mass as if he were still there, as if death never really did come for the archbishop.

“Your death was not the end of your mission or your ministry. It was only the beginning,” he told a cathedral packed with foreign visitors, the country’s president and the Salvadorans who embraced their champion in life, death, and resurrection.

Key Dates in Oscar Romero’s Life

August 15, 1917
Oscar Arnulfo Romero y Goldámez is born in Ciudad Barrios, a Salvadoran mountain town near the Honduran border.

April 4, 1942
Romero is ordained a Catholic priest in Rome.

1944
Romero returns to El Salvador, where he serves as a parish priest.

February 23, 1977
Romero is appointed archbishop of San Salvador.

March 12, 1977
Romero’s friend and fellow priest Rutilio Grande, S.J., i
assassinated, an event that profoundly affects Romero.

March 23, 1980
In a homily, Romero urges soldiers to disobey orders that go against God’s will: “I ask you, I pray you, I order you in the name of God to stop this oppression,” he pleads. Many feel it was this homily which sealed Romero’s fate.

March 24, 1980
Archbishop Romero is shot and killed while celebrating Mass.

1981
Romero is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

March 24, 2010
Thirty years after Romero’s assassination, El Salvador’s President Mauricio Funes offers an official state apology for Romero’s assassination.

May 23, 2015
Romero is beatified.

October 14, 2018
Romero is canonized.

To learn more, read our blog Oscar Romero: Pastor, Peacemaker, Saint.

“If we really want to be at peace,” environmentalist Wendell Berry writes, “we will have to waste less, spend less, use less, want less, need less.”

The trail begins with an easy climb, along old logging roads, through a young mix of pine and oak, hickory and sweet gum. The last of the golden crowned kinglets call their see-see-see from the needled branches of the loblollies and the red buds blaze with their purple signs of spring. The season turns; tilting again toward the sun.

This is the time of turning—the 40 days of fasting and penance that are meant to bend us again toward the light, to tune our souls to God. It is a time when we welcome silence into our lives so that we can stop from the rush and listen to the God who arrives not in the roar but the quiet. 

I’ve been climbing this mountain as many days as I can this Lent, finding a place among the rocks, looking down on the valley. This is a quiet place, a place where Creation speaks in its fullness. But the landscape below is pocked and marked by another way. The ridge across from here is littered with television and cell phone towers, the valley is marred by sprawling homes. When I was a boy these were mostly wild places, a home to green herons and bobcats, the city’s borders still out of earshot. In the last 20 years the farms have given way to shopping centers and cookie cutter houses, forests to fertilized lawns and golf courses. 

“We all live by robbing nature, but our standard of living demands that the robbery shall continue.” These words from the farmer and writer Wendell Berry ring in me like the words of John the Baptist: repent, for the kingdom of God has come near. 

I’m as much a participant in this theft as anyone else. I drive too much, buy too much, use too much. I’m addicted to convenience and choice, I’m in the thrall of that old vice luxury. And yet, like so many others I want peace, I want wholeness, I want the creation to be full and alive. This is the disjunction we call sin—the disordered desires Augustine saw as the roots of our disease. To get straight we must change our ways and our wants. 

“If we want to be at peace,” Berry writes, “we will have to waste less, spend less, use less, want less, need less.” Our lives must be disciplined into the proper scale of the human. Such change of heart and desire cannot be accomplished simply by a moment’s decision. It requires the grace and effort of conversion, the turning and tuning that this penitential season is all about. 

When I reach the mountain peak, over the field of boulders, sweat drips from my brow and borders my backpack. It has been warm here most of February, a string of record breaking days. It is the point of constant conversation. Though few want to say the words “climate change,” even the skeptics must wonder at the weather. Some days will always be different, cold spells and warm, but we’ve had “strange weather” here for years now. 

The challenge climate change brings is one that pits the excesses of human life against the whole of the creation. Our very way of life, in the layers of habits and convenience, are at the root of the destruction of God’s gifts. As Pope Francis says in Laudato Si: 

“People may well have a growing ecological sensitivity but it has not succeeded in changing their harmful habits of consumption which, rather than decreasing, appear to be growing all the more. A simple example is the increasing use and power of air-conditioning. The markets, which immediately benefit from sales, stimulate ever greater demand. An outsider looking at our world would be amazed at such behavior, which at times appears self-destructive” (LS 55).

If we are to turn and tune our lives to God, to enter ever more deeply into the patterns of God’s gifts in the creation, then we must diminish our wants; we must change our “harmful habits of consumption.” The work of penance and fasting are meant to enable such changes. They are the modes by which we return our lives to our humble roots in the humus, the life giving dirt.

The time I have on the rocky edge runs thin. I’ll have to descend soon enough, but for a moment I feel the grandeur of creation and my smallness in it. For a moment I have no worries, only the sense of God’s abiding grace in the world. It is that sense to which all penance points—a clearing away, an opening to the light all around. It is the way of humility, the poverty of spirit, which lets us see it. 

In August 2015, Fox newscaster Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) becomes ill as she prepares to moderate the Republican debate. Fox News CEO Roger Ailes (John Lithgow), who favors conspiracy theories, thinks she may have been poisoned. Kelly is criticized after asking then-candidate Donald J. Trump about his past sexist remarks and if a man of his temperament should be elected president. He begins to tweet insulting remarks about her—and others follow suit. Fox hires security for Kelly after a photographer trespasses and takes a photo of her children at home.

Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) loses her position as cohost of Fox and Friends in 2013. She’s given her own daytime show, but ratings are low. After being fired by Fox in 2016, she files a sexual harassment lawsuit against Ailes. Her lawyers inform her of how difficult this will be because of the combined power of Fox and Ailes, but Carlson persists. She is certain that others will come forward to support her lawsuit, but they do not—at first.

Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie) is a young, ambitious new hire at Fox who wants her own show. When she visits Ailes in his office, he asks her to show her loyalty by pulling up her skirt. Pospisil is mortified, outraged, and confused, her hopes suddenly clouded.

Carlson’s lawsuit goes public. Almost everyone at Fox News supports Ailes, while Kelly is surprisingly silent. When she refuses to speak up for Ailes and shares her own story with colleagues, the scene is set for the bombshell revelations of Carlson’s lawsuit and the consequences that follow.

Written by Charles Randolph and directed by Jay Roach, Bombshell is not an easy film to watch. To see these women continually humiliated, demeaned, and harassed—both on-air and in private—is disgusting. However, the film is important for two reasons. In the context of the #MeToo movement in American culture, this is both a warning shot about male privilege and encouragement for women to speak up about respect and equity in the workplace. Bombshell gives insight into how the reporters and “entertainers” of Fox News seek to influence their audience by choosing stories that instill fear and elicit outrage.

The performances in the film are spot-on, especially Theron as Kelly. At times I didn’t know if I was watching—and hearing—the actor or Kelly herself. Robbie, also excellent, plays a character composite of several women who work or worked at Fox News.

L, R Sexual situations, sexual harassment, some language.

JoJo Rabbit

The film opens toward the end of World War II. We are introduced to a group of Hitler Youth in training, led by Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell) and Fraulein Rahm (Rebel Wilson). Among the children, 10-year-old Johannes “JoJo” Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis) stands out for his nationalistic fervor and enthusiasm. When he refuses to kill a rabbit, however, he is mocked and called “JoJo Rabbit” by his peers. To show he is brave, he throws a hand grenade that bounces off a tree and explodes in front of him, leaving his face scarred. No longer in training, his new job is distributing Nazi leaflets.

JoJo misses his father, whom he believes is fighting in Italy. He gets angry at his mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), when he discovers she is hiding a Jewish girl, Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), in their house. When JoJo is overwhelmed, he takes refuge with his imaginary friend, an absurd and stupid Adolf Hitler (played by writer-director Taika Waititi), who promotes hatred of the Jews to the boy.

I didn’t expect to like JoJo Rabbit, for the idea of making light of Hitler, the Nazis, and anti-Semitism is wrong. However, Waititi’s film is very much an anti-hate satire. Rosie allows JoJo to participate in the Hitler Youth because it is a way to keep him safe while she undermines German aggression in secret. As JoJo and Elsa become friends, the boy stops repeating the anti-Semitic insults he has learned and watches out for her. Finally, when the Russians enter the town at the end of the war, some of the characters who seemed one-dimensional now show they are capable of being authentically human.

This affecting dramedy is based on the 2008 novel Caging Skies by Christine Leunens. The performances are stellar. Sam Rockwell, as usual, is superb as the idiotic, would-be Nazi captain in charge of training children.

A-3, PG-13 Racism, violence, peril.

I Still Believe

It is 1999, and the musically gifted Jeremy (K.J. Apa) leaves home in Indiana for a Christian college in California. His father, Tom (Gary Sinise), gives him a guitar that he trea-sures. Once at school, Jeremy begins to perform and notices Melissa (Britt Robertson) in the audience. They meet and are immediately attracted to one another. At first hesitant, Melissa finally agrees to keep company with Jeremy. Two years later, they are very much in love. Jeremy intends to propose, but his father thinks they are too young. But when Melissa is diagnosed with cancer, they marry.

This biopic of the real-life romance between the future contemporary Christian singer Jeremy Camp and the strong and good Melissa Henning is very touching. Apa, who does his own singing, is excellent, as is Robertson. Directed by Andrew and Jon Erwin, the film lingers too long on Jeremy’s grief, but it offers a way to talk about illness, suffering, and death for young people. The film is based on Jeremy Camp’s memoir I Still Believe.

Not yet rated, PG Dying, death.

Conscience: “A judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right.”
—Catechism of the Catholic Church

Five years ago, Pope Francis stood in front of the members of the US Congress during his visit to the nation’s capital and told them: “Your own responsibility as members of Congress is to enable this country, by your legislative activity, to grow as a nation. You are the face of its people, their representatives. You are called to defend and preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good, for this is the chief aim of all politics.” His message seemed well received. But that was five years ago, and, while our political landscape was certainly divided, we could not have foreseen the current state of politics in our country.

The pope’s words seem especially pertinent right now as we watch the constitutional impeachment process of President Donald Trump play out before our eyes. For the past six months or so, it has been the lead story for most news outlets and at the forefront of most Americans’ attention. It is only the third time in our country’s history a president has faced a Senate trial over impeachment, the other two being Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, and it has been polarizing for our nation.

A Sturdy Foundation

As of the writing of this editorial in late January, the Senate is currently hearing arguments regarding the potential removal of the president from office, so the situation is still very much in flux. But by the time you read this editorial, history will have spoken. It is a history that has stood upon the foundation of our Constitution for over 230 years.

It is important now for the same reason as when our country’s founders wrote the process into the Constitution. Power cannot go unchecked. If we do not uphold the very foundation upon which our country was built, we are setting future generations up for further trouble and discord down the road.

The problem is, though, that both in Congress and among the American people, we have begun treating our political future something like a high-stakes playoff game—Democrats versus Republicans, my team versus yours, we win and you lose. If the news doesn’t fit our version of the narrative, we denounce it and vilify the messenger. Through our behavior on both national and personal levels, we have managed to reduce our highest offices and ourselves to a new low.

That, however, isn’t the way our country will move forward and grow. Sometimes we need to demand accountability. This current situation is about drawing a line in the sand for the sake of future generations.

We the People

What is our role in this process? we may wonder. This impeachment is about more than just members of Congress. As Americans, we all play a part in shaping our country and its principles by our own behavior. Although Pope Francis was speaking to elected officials in Congress when he spoke the words above, we, too, are called to “preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good.”

That is why, at a moment such as this, we need to find a way to step back and take a look at the bigger picture. We must ask ourselves: What is the desired outcome? Do we want to make our nation better, or do we just want to win at all costs? What does our conscience tell us?

It is a question that Pope Francis also hit upon in his congressional speech: “The challenges facing us today call for a renewal of that spirit of cooperation, which has accomplished so much good throughout the history of the United States. The complexity, the gravity, and the urgency of these challenges demand that we pool our resources and talents, and resolve to support one another, with respect for our differences and our convictions of conscience.”

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, conscience is “a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right” (1778).

“Just and right”—that’s a very simple benchmark. It is an intriguing lens through which to view our current situation and one to carry with us as we move forward, just as we always have and will. We must. Our future generations are depending on it.