🕊️ Against the Logic of Violence

“When the logic of the world is pain, when the logic of the world is violence, be illogical. Traffic in the nonsense of the Gospel. In love. In mercy. In searching out the lost.”

Jesus tells a story that doesn’t add up—and that’s the point. In a world addicted to violence and division, God chooses grace. God chooses love. God carries us home.

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Catholic Social Thought & Public Life

A Special Initiative Roundtable on Catholic Principles,
Human Costs, and Pastoral Challenges

CURRENT TOPIC:

Deportations and Assaults on Human Dignity

Thursday, September 11, 2025
6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. EDT

This summer, the United States has witnessed families torn apart, communities full of fear, and people afraid to go to church and work because of the threats and realities of deportations on a wide scale. Catholic leaders have been on the frontlines speaking out and standing in solidarity with immigrants, united in a belief in the God-given dignity of all people, and faced with one of the most dramatic disruptions of the U.S. Church’s life in recent decades.

Pope Francis reminded the U.S. Catholic bishops in February 2025 that the “common good is promoted when society and government, with creativity and strict respect for the rights of all… welcomes, protects, promotes and integrates the most fragile, unprotected and vulnerable.” And in recent weeks, Pope Leo XIV has encouraged us to see migrants as “messengers of hope” in a world darkened by ongoing violence and war—a stark contrast to the rhetoric and fear stoked by many politicians.

As bishops and other Catholic leaders uphold these teachings through their public witness, policymakers and the rest of us must seek the common good, find paths to unity and solidarity, and remember that a just society defends the rights and interests of its most vulnerable members. This urgent dialogue will bring together Catholic bishops, academic and policy experts, and community leaders to explore how the principles of Catholic social teaching can help us seek a better way forward.

Kim Daniels, director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, will moderate the dialogue.