Faith Feeds Guide: Journeying in Faith Amid Polarization - Friendship

Having a faith conversation with old and new friends is as easy as setting the table.

JOURNEYING IN FAITH AMID POLARIZATION FRIENDSHIP

• Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill: A Real-Life Friendship by Rich Gorecki 10 Conversation Starters 12

• Overcoming Polarization Through Friendship: Lessons From a Jesuit Education by Lorenzo F. S. Leo and Dennis J. Wieboldt III 13

Conversation Starters 15

• Gathering Prayer 16

The C21 Center Presents

The FAITH FEEDS program is designed for individuals who are hungry for opportunities to talk about their faith with others who share it. Participants gather over coffee or a potluck lunch or dinner, and a host facilitates conversation using the C21 Center’s biannual magazine, C21 Resources.

The FAITH FEEDS GUIDE offers easy, step-by-step instructions for planning, as well as materials to guide the conversation. It’s as simple as deciding to host the gathering wherever your community is found and spreading the word.

All selected articles have been taken from material produced by the C21 Center.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Who should host a FAITH FEEDS?

Anyone who has a heart for facilitating conversations about faith is perfect to host a FAITH FEEDS.

Where do I host a FAITH FEEDS?

You can host a FAITH FEEDS in-person or virtually through video conference software. FAITH FEEDS conversations are meant for small groups of 10-12 people.

What is the host’s commitment?

The host is responsible for coordinating meeting times, sending out materials and video conference links, and facilitating conversation during the FAITH FEEDS.

What is the guest’s commitment?

Guests are asked to read the articles that will be discussed and be open to faith-filled conversation.

Still have more questions? No problem! Email karen.kiefer@bc.edu and we’ll help you get set up.

READY TO GET STARTED?

STEP ONE

Decide to host a FAITH FEEDS. Coordinate a date, time, location, and guest list. An hour is enough time to allocate for the virtual or in-person gathering.

STEP TWO

Interested participants are asked to RSVP directly to you, the host. Once you have your list of attendees, confirm with everyone via email. That would be the appropriate time to ask in-person guests to commit to bringing a potluck dish or drink to the gathering. For virtual FAITH FEEDS, send out your video conference link.

STEP THREE

Review the selected articles from your FAITH FEEDS Guide and the questions that will serve as a starter for your FAITH FEEDS discussion. Hosts should send their guests a link to the guide, which can be found on bc.edu/FAITHFEEDS.

STEP FOUR

Send out a confirmation email a week before the FAITH FEEDS gathering. Hosts should arrive early for in-person or virtual set up. Begin with the Gathering Prayer found on the last page of this guide. Hosts can open the discussion by using the suggested questions. The conversation should grow organically from there. Enjoy this gathering of new friends, knowing the Lord is with YOU!

STEP FIVE

Make plans for another FAITH FEEDS. We would love to hear about your FAITH FEEDS experience. You can find contact information on the last page of this guide.

CONVERSATION STARTERS

Here are three articles to guide your FAITH FEEDS conversation. We suggest that you select two that will work best for your group, and if time permits, add in a third. In addition to the original article, you will find a relevant quotation, summary, and suggested questions for discussion. We offer these as tools for your use, but feel free to go where the Holy Spirit leads. Conversations should respect and ensure confidentiality between participants.

This guide’s theme is: Journeying in Faith Amid Polarization - Friendship

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES: SAY NO TO CONTEMPT

By Arthur C. Brooks

America is being torn apart, but our problem isn’t that we’re too angry at each other. It’s not that we disagree too much. It’s not even incivility or intolerance. The heart of the problem is contempt—our habit of treating people who disagree with us not just as wrong or misguided in their views, but as worthless. You’ve probably noticed this, because we see contempt everywhere we look in public life. On TV. On social media. From public figures. It’s probably affecting your life, too: one in six Americans has stopped talking to close friends and family over politics. Contempt is making us miserable and keeping us from making progress as a society. How can we fight back?

WHAT IS CONTEMPT?

Think about the last time you were angry at someone—maybe you got in a fight with a friend, or your spouse, or a colleague. Were you hoping to erase that person from your life? Of course not. You wanted that person to right whatever wrong they’d done to you. That’s what anger is supposed to do—help us resolve conflicts.

Contempt is different. It involves anger, but it adds another emotional ingredient: disgust. The result of combining these two feelings is akin to what happens when you pour ammonia into bleach: you get a dan-

gerous, toxic compound. Because while anger says “I care about this and want to fix our relationship,” contempt says, “You are beneath caring about.” It leads to permanent enemies, and it harms our happiness and our health.

A psychologist named John Gottman has spent 40 years studying marital reconciliation and is arguably the world’s leading expert in what makes relationships work. In fact, he can sit down with a couple for just one hour, and after listening to them talking about their relationship, he can predict with 94 percent accuracy whether they will divorce within three years. What’s the giveaway? Indicators of contempt: sarcasm, sneering, hostile humor, and especially eye-rolling.

So contempt is clearly bad for marriages. But aren’t there some people out there who deserve our contempt?

There are some pretty bad ideas out there, but contempt is always the wrong response for two reasons. The first is that dismissing voices on the fringes leaves those voices unchallenged by people of goodwill and excludes the possibility of getting them to reconsider their views. The second reason to say no to contempt is that it’s terrible for us as individuals. Experiencing contempt increases anxiety, depression, and jealousy. It harms our sleep quality. And it causes a comprehensive degradation of our immune systems. But this isn’t just the case when you are treated with contempt. It’s also the case when you treat others with contempt.

PRACTICE WARMHEARTEDNESS

So if contempt is so bad for us, what can we do to overcome its grip on our culture? To answer this question, I asked the wisest man I know, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. His answer? Practice warm-heartedness. Now, that may sound soft or idealistic to you. But coming from the Dalai Lama, this is actually tough and bracing advice. You see, the Dalai Lama leads the Tibetan Buddhist people, who were driven into exile by the communist Chinese government when he was just a teenager. Nevertheless, he begins each day by praying that China’s leaders lead a good and happy life. If the Dalai Lama can practice warm-heartedness in the face of persecution and exile, we can practice warm-heartedness toward people we disagree with

here at home. To get you started, here are a few practical suggestions that will help us fight contempt with warm-heartedness.

STAND UP FOR OTHERS

Number one: Follow the 5 to 1 rule. Offer five encouraging, positive comments for every one criticism, whether in person or on social media. You might be an outlier on Twitter or in your friend group, but you’ll be a magnetic force for warm-heartedness.

Number two: Stand up for people who aren’t in the room. Most of us don’t have many friends on the “other side” these days, which makes it easier to trash the people who aren’t around. But if you hear your friends who agree with you saying contemptuous things about the people you disagree with, speak up. Don’t be a jerk about it, but gently defend the people who aren’t represented.

Number three: Ask yourself who in your life you’ve treated with contempt—who you’ve mocked or dismissed when you disagreed. Maybe it’s a family member, maybe it’s a colleague. But gather up some courage and apologize. It’ll be scary—but it’s the right thing to do, and I’ll tell you what, it’ll set your heart on fire.

MOVING FORWARD

If we can say no to contempt, and embrace warm-heartedness, our problems won’t disappear overnight. But if we’re willing to commit to a renewed national culture based in solidarity and love, we’ll be happier people, and can build a movement that will make America the country that we—and the world—need it to be.

Arthur D. Brooks is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Public and Nonprofit Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, and Professor of Management Practice at the Harvard Business School.

This article is an excerpt from an American Enterprise Institute video (March 4, 2019) that discusses his book Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt, and is printed with permission.

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES: SAY NO TO CONTEMPT

“The basic source of all happiness is a sense of kindness and warm-heartedness towards others. . . .We must continually consider the oneness of humanity, remembering that we all want to be happy. . . .Along the way we may be faced with problems, but we must not lose hope. We must keep up our determination without being impatient to achieve quick results.”

—The Dalai Lama, “The Purpose of Life is to Be Happy”

Summary

Arthur Brooks sees society as suffering from contempt, “our habit of treating people who disagree with us...as worthless,” and argues instead for a culture of warm-heartedness. Although doing so can be a challenge, Brooks sees the use of warm-heartedness as central to defying the destructiveness of contempt.

Questions for Conversation

1. How have you seen warm-heartedness in your life? How have you succeeded, or struggled, to be warm-hearted?

2. Which of Brooks’ three suggestions for practicing warmheartedness most resonates with you? How could you enact this suggestion more fruitfully in your life?

3. How can warm-heartedness help us to work for a “culture based on solidarity and love?” What other ideas, virtues, skills, etc., might support you in this work?

RONALD REAGAN AND TIP O’NEILL: A REAL-LIFE FRIENDSHIP

By Rich Gorecki

Much has been written about the friendship—both political and personal—between Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill during the 1980s. This friendship, between the president and one of his rivals, shows a relationship of deep trust across difference.

Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, and Thomas Phillip “Tip” O’Neill, Jr. (Boston College ’36), Speaker of the House of Repre-

sentatives from 1977 to 1987, were two political opposites.

While much of their political partnership was based on smart gamesmanship, Reagan, the Republican, and O’Neill, the Democrat, could put aside their party differences to find solutions. They had mutual respect for each other that separated their ideological bent from the need for basic human decency. Report-

edly, the two political rivals were good friends who frequently enjoyed a drink together at the end of the day.

A FRIENDSHIP OF MUTUAL RESPECT

In his book Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked, MSNBC talk show host and author Chris Matthews describes a scene that exemplifies the close relationship between Reagan and O’Neill.

Following the assassination attempt, former Reagan aide Max Friedersdorf shared that O’Neill was one of the first people the president let visit him at George Washington University Hospital. Friedersdorf observed that when O’Neill entered Reagan’s hospital room, “he nodded my way and walked over to the bed and grasped both the president’s hands, and said, ‘God bless you, Mr. President.’ The president still seemed groggy ... with lots of tubes and needles running in and out of his body. But when he saw Tip, he lit up and gave the speaker a big smile, and said, ‘Thanks for coming, Tip.’ Then, still holding one of the president’s hands, the speaker got down on his knees and said he would like to offer a prayer for the president, choosing the 23rd Psalm.” Then O’Neill kissed Reagan on the forehead.

Matthews says this kind of relationship is sorely lacking in today’s Washington. “There were rules in those days,” Matthews writes. “Tip would say, ‘I’ll cut a deal on Social Security if you let me focus on taxing the wealthier people.’ There was always a deal. It’s not that they always found common ground, it’s that they each got something out of every deal...A lot of times it was just getting something from the other guy.”

Matthews, an aide to O’Neill at the time, said the heavily emphasized social component is overstated. However, a post on the website Respect + Rebellion says Reagan often answered O’Neill’s calls, “Tip, is it after 6 p.m.?” since he and O’Neill often fought during work hours. But after 6, these two enemies enjoyed each other’s company.

WHAT’S UNIQUE ABOUT THEIR FRIENDSHIP?

Matthews explains that Reagan and O’Neill genuinely liked each other. The two also didn’t suspect the

worst of each other. “Reagan was fond of Tip and completely believed that Tip wanted to help the little people. He just disagreed about how to do it.” Matthews continued, “Reagan was his party. Tip was his party. It wasn’t like [John] Boehner trying to deal with people who are a little different than him.” It was clear that each man truly represented their party in full.

To further validate their admiration for each other, the speaker’s son, Thomas P. O’Neill III (Boston College ’68), once wrote about the relationship between his father and the president:

“While neither man embraced the other’s world view, each respected the other’s right to hold it. Each respected the other as a man.”

—Thomas P. O’Neill III,

“Frenemies: a Story,” The New York Times.

At a retirement party for O’Neill in 1986, Reagan said, “Mr. Speaker, I’m grateful you have permitted me in the past, and I hope in the future, that singular honor—the honor of calling you my friend.”

Regardless of their party affiliation, the friendship between Reagan and O’Neill seemed to work well. They disagreed often but still worked toward the common goal of making our country better.

Friendships built in faith can exemplify these qualities, prioritizing mutual respect. It includes prayer and support in tough decisions. It relies on each other’s strengths to fill in gaps and speak the truth whenever there’s a shortcoming. They celebrate a great friendship at the end of the day, and offer a model—especially when you have political or ideological differences.

Rich Gorecki is the writer of GodBuddies, a blog about men’s need for deeper, more authentic friendships, and is the author of the book Get Out of Your Man Cave: The Crisis of Male Friendships

This article excerpt was originally published February 28, 2022, on God-Buddies.com and is printed with permission.

RONALD REAGAN AND TIP O’NEILL: A REAL-LIFE FRIENDSHIP

“A healthy politics is sorely needed, capable of reforming and coordinating institutions, promoting best practices and overcoming undue pressure and bureaucratic inertia. It should be added, though, that even the best mechanisms can break down when there are no worthy goals and values, or a genuine and profound humanism to serve as the basis of a noble and generous society.”

—Pope Francis, Laudato si’,

181

Summary

Despite significant ideological differences, President Ronald Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill offer a model of friendship in and through difference. The two leaders, emblems of their respective parties, worked to better the country while also grounding their relationship in mutual respect and care for one another. As Rich Gorecki writes, such friendship includes “prayer and support in tough decisions. It relies on each other’s strengths to fill in gaps and speak the truth whenever there’s a shortcoming.”

Questions for Conversation

1. Do you have or know of someone who has a friendship that “makes room” for authentic connection, healthy conflict, and difference? What seems to make these kinds of friendships work?

2. The article discusses a particularly human moment where O’Neill visited the president after the assassination attempt on Reagan. What stands out to you from this encounter? What might we learn about friendship from this tender moment?

3. What challenges have you experienced in friendships, especially in disagreement? How have your friendships helped you to grow even through difficulty?

OVERCOMING POLARIZATION THROUGH FRIENDSHIP

By Lorenzo F. S. Leo and Dennis J. Wieboldt III

IN THE BEGINNING

DW: My relationship with Lorenzo began during firstyear Orientation at Boston College. Shortly before arriving in Chestnut Hill, one of Lorenzo’s high school friends—Michael—had connected with me online.

Once I arrived on campus, Michael invited me to meet him and other graduates of Boston College High School. During Orientation, I met many of Michael’s former high school classmates, including Lorenzo, offering me a network of friends before classes even began. Having graduated from a much larger (and public) high school than Michael and Lorenzo, I recall being struck by the closeness of the relationships that they had forged with one another.

LL: I was incredibly excited to start BC. I came to college with many of my friends from BC High and was already familiar with the faith-informed educational atmosphere that Jesuit institutions offer their students. In some of my first conversations with Dennis during Orientation, we began to discuss Jesuit education with regard to the Core Curriculum.

FIRST CLASS, FIRST FRIENDSHIPS

DW: During Orientation, incoming students are required to select fall semester courses. After Lorenzo shared his and his family’s background with Jesuit education, I asked if he could recommend courses that could begin to fulfill BC’s Core requirements. After a conversation with Lorenzo and Michael, we all agreed to enroll in a course called Citizenship, Immigration, and Belonging (CIB) for the upcoming semester. This course was part of BC’s Complex Problems and Enduring Questions (CP/EQ) program, through which two faculty members from different academic depart-

ments co-teach a course and expose students to different disciplinary perspectives on a common social issue.

Within the first few days of CIB, I learned that Lorenzo and I approached the issue of immigration from markedly different perspectives—mine from a more historical perspective, and his from a more philosophical. Wary of the potential that in-class disagreements might have on our then-still-emerging out-of-class relationship, I was initially apprehensive to foreground those differences in our conversations. True to the Jesuit-informed pedagogy of the CP/EQ program, however, this initial apprehension soon subsided. Quite remarkably, in fact, my friendship with Lorenzo continued to grow alongside the extent of our disagreements over the course material. During this process, I began to understand how we were able to maintain our friendship despite (if not because of) these disagreements—our shared recognition that learning is an inherently interpersonal enterprise. LL: Inside and outside of CIB, I recognized that Dennis and I had different opinions on immigration and other social issues; however, I thought that was a good thing. I did not come to college to be in an echo chamber. What fun is it to be with friends who are exactly like you? Dennis and I appreciated one another, respected one another, and wanted to learn from one another.

TWO PERSPECTIVES UNDER ONE ROOF

DW: After our experience in CIB, Lorenzo became my closest conversation partner at BC, not least because I appreciated his willingness to continually challenge my approach to understanding difficult questions.

By circumscribing our disagreements through our friendship and our shared recognition that learning is an inherently corporate enterprise, we were able to leave conversations with a better understanding of one another and our common subject of inquiry.

This became especially clear during our third year at BC, during which we lived in an off-campus apartment together. As I was writing a thesis on the development of the Catholic intellectual tradition, Lorenzo was enrolled in philosophy courses that were exposing him to such different philosophical methods as Sufism. During this time in particular, I realized that our different ways of approaching questions—mine with a greater appreciation for tradition, and Lorenzo’s with a greater interest in pushing tradition beyond its borders—was the foundation of the disagreements we had been having since CIB. By contributing our different methodological perspectives to a conversation about a shared topic, we were contributing something unique to one another. In other words, we were learning not despite one another, but because of one another. LL: CIB made me and Dennis better friends. After that class, I knew that we could bounce ideas off of each other freely. So our friendship continued through the years as roommates. I really enjoyed learning something new in class and then being able to discuss it in our apartment. As the years went on and we became more entrenched in our respective coursework, the discussions we had became more intense.

Junior year is a great example of that intensity. As Dennis mentioned, he was working on his thesis and reading many Catholic philosophers and theologians. At the same time, I was taking classes on anti-moralism and existentialism and doing my own reading on 19th-century anarchy. I think it would be fair to say that Dennis was focused on the foundations of Western philosophy and I was focused on its fringes. During that time, we had animated and rewarding discussions that I often think about. I believe that we saw real value in each other’s work regardless of our ideological differences.

FRIENDSHIP IN A POLARIzING AGE

DW: When I decided to enroll at BC, I knew very little

about Jesuit pedagogy. As I reflect now on my time in college it seems as though one of the greatest lessons that BC taught me is also a central feature of the Jesuit pedagogical tradition—the importance of learning in community. In my relationship with Lorenzo, I was consistently challenged (in the positive sense of the term) to remember the personal loyalty that we had to one another and consequently profound sense of investment that we both had in one another’s formation of heart and mind.

By offering a tradition-informed perspective on a question we were both confronting, I hoped that Lorenzo would better appreciate how the learnings of our past could inform our present. This was not only because I hoped he would change his intellectual view on an issue (which I often, of course, did) but also because I thought it would bear personal fruits in ways that in my case, for example, resulted from a deeper understanding of the Catholic intellectual tradition. In short, I think the secret to our friendship in a polarizing age was my interest in contributing to Lorenzo’s formation of heart and mind and my willingness to accept his contribution to my formation in the same way.

LL: Dennis will be a lifelong friend of mine. It was serendipitous that we met during first-year Orientation. I must emphasize that we have very different political views, but I believe that is why our friendship is so strong. We fully acknowledge each other’s opinions and actually have constructive and engaging conversations. Occasionally, we were frustrated with one another, but that is to be expected. We are, at the end of the day, still human.

At the foundation of my friendships, I try to practice unconditional love. That is one of the most valuable things I learned in over twelve years of Jesuit education: love your friends. We are all trying to navigate an increasingly complex and turbulent world. Having friends with different perspectives to help us discern along the way is more valuable now than ever.

Lorenzo Leo, BA ‘23, is an M.Sc. student in Philosopy and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Dennis Wieboldt, BA ‘22, MA ’23, is a J.D./History Ph.D student at the University of Notre Dame.

OVERCOMING POLARIZATION THROUGH FRIENDSHIP

“If there is room for diverging positions and if these positions are valued, then conflict is no longer the ‘worst case scenario;’ rather, dissent becomes an indispensable necessity, a renegotiation of what is meaningful in the church, and, thus, part and parcel of the notion of synodality.”

Annemarie C. Mayer, “For a Synodal Church”

Summary

Lorenzo Leo and Dennis Wieboldt share how their experiences in Jesuit Catholic education fostered an enduring friendship between them despite differences in worldview and academic method. The two graduates explore how their differences, and commitments to one another as friends, formed them as thinkers and persons during their time in college and beyond.

Questions for Conversation

1. Who have been your lifelong friends, the ones who have challenged and taught you over a long period, or who have made a profound impact on your life? What have those friends taught you about yourself?

2. How do you think friendship can be formational and/or educational? What do we really learn through friendships?

3. Polarization suggests that those with different ideas cannot “live under the same roof.” However, Dennis and Lorenzo emphasize sharing a living and learning space as central to their development as friends. How can their friendship teach us to better “live under the same roof” with ideas and people with whom we may disagree?

GATHERING PRAYER

Prayer for Charity

Adapted from the Collect for Charity

Set our hearts aflame, O Lord, with the Spirit of your charity, that we may always think thoughts worthy and pleasing to your majesty, so as to love you and all whom we encounter. Amen.