Msgr. Paul V. Garrity
When Sgt. Joe Friday would be listening to the life story of a crime victim, he would famously say: Just the facts ma’am. Dragnet began as a radio show in 1949 and blossomed into a 50’s and 60’s television show. It portrayed the best of policing as LAPD detectives Joe Friday and his partners solved the city’s crimes. His iconic focus on the facts and just the facts casts into bold relief the difficulty of separating facts from fiction in our polarized world.
Vladimir Putin began the war in Ukraine by attacking a sovereign nation that Russia had previously agreed to respect. Rioters and vandals attacked the nation’s Capital building on January 6th and we all got to watch the video again and again. Once in a century storms now ravage our planet with great regularity and are attributable to climate change caused by human activity. These are facts. They are not made up. They are not merely the opinions of certain people.
That these facts are incontrovertible has not prevented people from labeling them as alternate facts. This notion calls to mind the famous question of Pontious Pilate to Jesus: what is truth. Mathematics sems to be the only place where truth is uncontested today. Thankfully, no one has had the temerity to suggest that two and two are really five.
The old adage that everyone is welcome to their own opinion but not their own facts has become a casualty of modern-day communication. In some quarters, doubling down on falsehoods has become a strategic approach to narratives that contain embarrassing information. “The dog ate my homework” is no longer a joke. It is put forth as a legitimate explanation that everyone is expected to accept.
Joe Friday was interested in the facts because facts do not lie and help catch criminals. Galileo had a tough time convincing church authorities that the earth was not the center of the universe. When the truth of facts becomes undeniable and accepted, good things happen. At least this has been considered a truism since Archimedes and Aristotle. The Scientific method that has brought so much good to the world is based on the reliability of facts.
Strangely, facts are not carrying the same weight they once did. Simple conversations bear witness to this contemporary phenomenon. Psychologists tell us that we cannot change other people’s minds through a recitation of facts that call into question their beliefs. Some people continue to believe that Ukraine is responsible for its ongoing war and that only tourists visited the Capital on January 6th. What does change people’s minds are relationships with trusted friends whose judgments have proven to be reliable over many years.
In the last years of his life, Pope Francis wrote eloquently about the need for unity and peace in our divided world. He convened people from around the globe in a two-year, groundbreaking meeting called the Synod on Synodality. At its heart was his desire that listening become the antidote to division and acrimony in the Catholic Church and beyond. Trivialized by some, his focus on listening was aimed at the importance of building relationships from which great things can be accomplished.
While his desire that the Catholic Church become a Listening Church, his greatest desire was that the world might move beyond the violence, cruelty and divisiveness that bring only pain and suffering. His formula was that listening is the foundation of relationships and that building relationships across political divides is the only way to effect positive change in our present world.
As the Conclave that will elect a new Pope is about to get underway, the legacy of Pope Francis is being applauded, critiqued and even castigated by some. He was not a progressive, a liberal or a radical. He was a pastor. His pastor’s heart is on display in his many letters that he addressed to Catholics but also to the world. He walked the talk from 2013 until his death on Easter Monday. He listened to world leaders; he listened to faith leaders and he listed to the women in prison whose feet he washed. Listening, he taught us, builds relationships; and building relationships is how we build peace.
Msgr. Garrity is a Senior Priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and former pastor of St. Mary’s Parish and School, Lynn.
