Msgr. Paul V. Garrity
As I recover from a broken wrist, the avalanche of issues that are dumped upon us each day shows no signs of letting up. It is hard to know where to begin if our goals are to rise above the acrimony of our partisan world. Nirvana is more than a late 80’s rock band, it is the Buddhist goal of perfect peace and liberation. It is also a bridge that we will never cross until God calls us home. Meantime, we cannot lose hope that the present turmoil of our world and nation can get better.
The avalanche that confronts us daily is full of complexity. MSNBC and FOX News bend over backward to feed us their digestion of the day’s happenings. If all we do is get our news from one source, be it TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, or our favorite TV station, we are depriving ourselves of the real food we need to nourish our citizenship in a liberal democracy. The result is polarization that leads to intransigence, rigidity, and the impossibility of finding common ground for the common good.
Fifty years ago, WGBH in Boston teamed up with KCET in Los Angeles, to produce “The Advocates.” It was the brainchild of Harvard Law professor Roger Fisher who wanted to make “public
affairs your affairs.” He used a modified trial concept to debate significant issues with distinguished guests like Ronald Reagan, Walter Cronkite, Alan Dershowitz, Ted Kennedy, and a host of debaters who would make history in the ensuing decades. After a thorough airing of a topic, viewers were invited to reflect on their own views and share these with the producers. Issues like legalizing sports betting, withdrawing from Vietnam, offshore drilling, and the legalization of marijuana were in the news at the time and made for great debate. Both sides of the political spectrum, like conservative commentator William F. Buckley and liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith, heaped enormous praise on the show.
“The Advocates” casts into bold relief our nation’s crying need for dialogue and debate in search of the common good. When Senators and Congress people appear on the Sunday morning shows, they refuse to answer direct questions. They obfuscate real issues, dissemble, and proceed to wax interminably on the question they wished they had been asked. Back-to-back guests deny everything that the previous guests have said and are equally evasive when answering direct questions that are uncomfortable. These kinds of news shows become political theater, and in some cases, echo chambers for their own biases.
While “The Advocates” are a thing of the past, the need for critical thinking and honest dialogue has never been more necessary. A steady diet of proteins or starches is not good for one’s health. Nor is a steady diet of listening to people with whom we already agree. The hardest thing to do today is engage in conversation with friends with whom we have political differences. Part of the difficulty is that persuasion may be the assumed purpose of the conversation. Listening and understanding where others are coming from and why is a discipline that is more than difficult to practice. It is, however, the only way forward for us as individuals and our nation, as a whole, if we are ever to heal from the vitriol that continues to poison personal friendships and national debate.
Our democracy has survived through a civil war, The Great Depression, and COVID-19. It is threatened today, however, by the poison of disrespect that has become normalized in places and by people that we would never have thought possible. A brick building is able to withstand high winds because each brick does its job. Each brick is important. In the same way, our democracy is able to withstand threats from without and dangers from within when we all understand that we are the bricks that hold our fragile democracy together. Rome was not built in a day and the journey of 1,000 miles begins with one step. Our hope and prayer is that we can all understand that our deepening partisanship is a clear and present danger that cannot be ignored. It is also fantasy to look for a silver bullet.
Msgr. Garrity is a Senior Priest of the Archdiocese of Boston
and former pastor of St. Mary’s Parish and School.
