Heidi Schlumpf writes:

At a time when democracy is in decline and it’s difficult to imagine people coming together to even discuss the common good, religious people and institutions can help reconstitute the collapsed public sphere — but not in ways that many think of “public religion” today, said sociologist of religion Jesuit Fr. Paddy Gilger.

In a Nov. 9 talk on “The Subject of Public Religion,” sponsored by the Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage at Loyola University Chicago, Gilger described the “multiple forces of de-democratization” that are prompting a “steady drip toward a tribalized, post-truth world.”

“We see this all over the country and the world, not just in the difficulty we have in crafting legislation or electing a speaker of the House, but even in our laughably common inability to listen to or speak with those who disagree with us or push upon us,” said Gilger, assistant professor of sociology and this year’s Teilhard Fellow at the Hank Center.

Gilger attributes much of this crisis to what he sees as the collapse of the public sphere, that segment of society — separate from the state and from the private sphere — where an inclusive group of citizens can rationally debate about the good of society at large.

But Gilger sees hope in reclaiming that lost public sphere — and he believes public religion can play a role, despite the perception by many that strongly held religious beliefs contribute to polarization.

“I am confident there are ways we can respond to this crisis. It is not impossible,” he said. “There are ways in fact that public religion, of many kinds, can help in reconstructing a plural public sphere and in doing so, help stem the tide of de-democratization, anti-politics, demagoguery and autocracy.”

You can watch the full talk here:

Fr. Patrick Gilger, SJ was also recently interviewed by Focolare Media:

On a larger scale, it can be helpful to remember that what differentiates the Catholic Church from many other institutions is that we are an internally plural organization. There are many different ways of being Catholic. Of course, there are things that we must accept that unite us—fidelity to the Pope, commitment to the magisterium, making the effort to revere the Lord at liturgy, for example. If we are not doing these things we are placing ourselves outside the community. But that does not mean there isn’t difference within it, either. We can’t be satisfied with simply being polite to one another, we have love one another. Even “dialogue”—that magic word—may be insufficient if we don’t sufficiently love the person we’re dialoguing with.

I think the real answer is not civility but communion, the recognition that we are members of the Body of Christ together, each bringing a different gift. As St. Paul says, the gift of the eye is not the gift of the ear (see 1 Cor. 12). It is because we have this common identity that we can overcome the almost-ontological, fear-driven polarization dominating much of our world today. So, our task, as individuals and also as communities, is to do what Christians have always done: become the kinds of persons capable of being a sacrifice to the Lord for the world. Our challenges are unique, but the call is the same. We must love so fully that giving ourselves is no longer an oppressive burden but privilege—so fully that we are drawn to the unique disunity of our times like filaments to magnet.