Marcus Mescher is associate professor of Christian ethics at Xavier University, the author of The Ethics of Encounter: Christian Neighbor Love as a Practice of Solidarity, and a writer at Millennial. Millennial editor Robert Christian interviewed him on his life, work, and faith.

You teach theology at a Catholic university. Has that experience changed over time? What are your impressions of Generation Z (at least the Gen-Z students you encounter)?

I just finished my tenth year at Xavier University. I’ve seen a lot of change in college students across those ten years, plus another five years when I was accompanying students in college campus ministry settings at Boston College. Even though my current students report much lower rates of church attendance and religious literacy, they are consistently bright, kind, and engaged in the courses I teach. Some critique Gen Z for being obsessed with their phones, less involved on campus, and lacking in resilience. But I don’t think we fully appreciate the existential threats they’ve faced to this point: climate collapse that’s endangering the planet, gun violence that has impacted so many of them or at least someone they know, and a pandemic that caused tremendous disruption and revealed so many gaps in our social fabric.

The hardest thing about teaching Gen Z students is their fear of disagreement or being judged; it can have a muzzling effect on the classroom that makes it a challenge for each person to show up in an authentic and vulnerable way. But I don’t blame them one bit. They see people getting called out and cancelled all the time. Screens have fostered a kind of “spectator culture” that encourages a kind of passive observation of others, reinforced a “compare and despair” dynamic with others on social media, or gotten them accustomed to the endless distraction of the infinite scroll. It might take a little more work to break open meaningful connection, but I’m always fascinated by how students respond to what we’re reading, whether it’s a book by Fr. Greg Boyle about compassion and kinship, how to pray by Fr. James Martin, or the value of practicing contemplation—taking a long, loving look at the real—as Fr. Walter Burghardt describes.

Gen Z sees a world in need and wants to find a way to make a difference. That makes it a lot of fun to be in the classroom with them, to reflect, analyze, and apply sources of wisdom from a variety of perspectives. Every class is a wonderful reminder that we have so much to learn from each other. ​

Your most recent work is researching clergy sexual abuse and its impact. Why did you take this on and what have you found?

A survivor reached out to me and asked for my help as a Catholic moral theologian. When I asked why she contacted me, she said she had read my book, The Ethics of Encounter, which uses the story of the Good Samaritan as its focal theme. She explained: I was hoping you’d follow the example of the Samaritan, go into the ditch, and listen to my story. She described the pain not only of being failed by a priest or by Church leaders, but by other lay people who seemed mostly unaware or indifferent to what it’s like to be so deeply hurt by someone who represents God or the Church. Then I started to hear from more survivors and realized this wasn’t a problem from a long time ago. Abuse is still happening. And many times, survivors told me that when they summoned the courage to come forward and tell someone what happened to them, they were blamed for the abuse or it was minimized  or they were told just to “move on.” Often they were told to pray for their perpetrator and forgive him, even without the abuse ever being acknowledged or the abuser showing any remorse. Many survivors said that telling another person—even someone they trusted—was traumatizing, and sometimes even more than the original abuse. It made me curious why so many people in the Church seem to have so little compassion for survivors. And then, I started thinking more about what solidarity with survivors might entail. Originally, I planned to work on restorative justice with survivors of abuse. After presenting on this at a conference hosted at Villanova. I realized that we cannot heal wounds that we don’t fully understand.

Over the course of several years, I researched moral injury and found this to be a helpful lens for understanding the psychological, spiritual, moral, interpersonal, and institutional wounds caused by this betrayal of sacred trust. Moral injury is most acute in survivors, but it is also present in their loved ones who also feel betrayed or some degree of anger or guilt that they didn’t do more to protect their relative or friend. Moral injury is present in Church employees who feel implicated in this crisis by working for an institution that not only was aware of the scope of abuse—likely millions of cases—but often did everything possible to shield perpetrators and sometimes, unleashing them on particularly vulnerable populations (like in communities of color, low-income areas, among indigenous persons, and people who were at risk of deportation—all groups who often did not have the resources to report abuse or be believed if they did)​​. The morally injured also include non-offending priests who feel betrayed by the lack of transparency and accountability of Church leaders; in millions of lay Catholics who may feel like their relationship with the church (especially as a moral authority) has been damaged; and also many ex-Catholics who feel like the Church abandoned them or betrayed their core values (like protecting children and adults from serial predators).

Paul tells us that the Church is the Body of Christ and that “if one parts suffers, all parts suffer with it” (1 Cor 12:26), so I suppose the last few years have been a deep-dive into the wounds carried by the members of the Church in the hope that this will lead us toward effective strategies for healing and prevention. Anyone who is interested in learning more about how moral injury helps us understand the psychological, spiritual, moral, and social dimensions of harm caused by clergy abuse and its concealment can read about this here. ​

Your book, The Ethics of Encounter, is one of the finest Catholic books of this century in my opinion. What was the aim of the book? 

That is an awfully nice thing to say. Unfortunately, the book came out just as COVID arrived in America, so I’m not sure it found the readership I hoped it would. But I have been heartened to hear from people who found the book to be an illuminating and encouraging resource for putting into practice the “culture of encounter” that Pope Francis has championed.

I have been captivated by Pope Francis’ attention to Jesus’ habit of encountering people with tenderness. For example, I think of Jesus’ encounter with the blind man Bartimaeus. Bartimaeus is the recipient of so much stigma and shame; he feels invisible and insignificant like many people today, I imagine. He’s sitting on the roadside, begging so he can have enough to eat. Everyone ignores Bartimaeus or tries to avoid him, convinced he has done something to deserve divine punishment. When Jesus encounters Bartimaeus, he does not presume to know what he wants. He doesn’t just use him as a prop to show off his divine power. Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” Jesus empowers Bartimaeus to find and raise his voice. Jesus encounters Bartimaeus not with judgment or scorn, like his contemporaries, but with curiosity and compassion. After Bartimaeus says, “Teacher, I want to see,” Jesus heals him and tells him to “go your way.” Jesus respects Bartimaeus’ dignity and agency; he heals Bartimaeus to restore him to the community. It’s not just a story about healing an individual, but reminding us, as Mother Teresa often said, that “if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

The Ethics of Encounter is a proposal for rethinking how we encounter one another and how we might mend our torn social fabric. It aims to show readers how we might put into practice the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, starting with a defense of the infinite and inherent dignity of the human person and striving toward building mutually respectful and responsible relationships in order to realize solidarity in our own social context.

How does your faith affect your life outside of your work?

I was a student of Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez when he taught at Boston College, and he defined discipleship as not only following Jesus, but “availability to the Holy Spirit.” So I spend a lot of time thinking not just about how to incarnate the tenderness of Christ, but also how to be more attentive and responsive to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in my everyday life. Primarily, this means trying to be the husband and father that God is calling and enabling me to be. But it also means that I’m intentional about the kind of neighbor I am, or the presence I bring to the roads when I’m driving. I try to honor the dignity and agency of every person I meet, whether that’s someone standing at an offramp or the person checking out my items at the grocery store. I also try to bring this to my social media interactions, and when that seems like too much of a challenge, then I log off and spend more time with my wife and kids and our dog.

My deepest desire is to be Christ for, and see Christ in, each person I encounter and, as Peter Maurin often said, try to help build a society “to make it easier for people to be good.” I try to deliver on this through the products I buy (or the ones I avoid buying, using this guide, for example), the charities I support (like CRS, JRS, and the local Catholic Worker community), by limiting my carbon footprint, and being dedicated to civic engagement by contacting elected officials and asking them to advocate for legislation that defends human rights and delivers on the conditions for the flourishing of all creation. It means making time for prayer, reflection, and discernment and weaving those into our family routine. It means going to Mass to share in the Eucharist and also adopting the sacramental vision that “seeks God in all things,” whether that’s the sacrament of another person, the beauty of nature, the creativity of art or joy of music, or the nearness of God always reminding me that mercy is who God is and what God wants for and from all God’s people.

Why are you Catholic in 2024?

Being Catholic is constitutive of my identity. It’s a part of me at a much deeper level than a choice, habit, or outlook. I feel deeply connected to Christ and the Church in such a way that “leaving” just doesn’t make sense; it has never felt like a viable option. That’s not to say the Church is perfect or that I feel perfectly at home in the Church. I am well aware that the Church is marked by sin, and not just in the abstract but in actual instances of hypocrisy, corruption, and abuse of its sacred power. But I know that the Resurrection means that God’s love is stronger than sin and death, so I am not tempted to despair. I am Catholic because of the sacramental life of the Church and the communion of saints like Clare and Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola, and Teresa of Calcutta. The Church is accountable to so many prophets who try to teach us over and over that there is no holiness but social holiness, that is: a fidelity to Christ and Christ in the outcast, those most in need (e.g., Amos 5:7-15; Matthew 25:31-46). I am Catholic because of witnesses like St. Óscar Romero and Dorothy Stang, Pedro Arrupe and Dorothy Day. And I know there are so many people—literally millions—who embrace the universal call to holiness, most of whom will never make headlines. So many parents and grandparents who nurtured and encouraged their children and grandchildren. So many coaches and teachers who helped young people discover a passion, or how to believe in themselves, or how to marshal their talent in order to make a difference. So many people in business or in their local neighborhood who could cut corners or take advantage but don’t; they make sacrifices for the greater good. We are all the Body of Christ and no member is more or less important than any other part of the body. By virtue of our baptism, we are equals in the Church, with gifts to offer and burdens to carry together. This communion of saints—past, present, and future—fills me with hope, the conviction that there is good worth fighting for, in and beyond the Catholic Church. ​