Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Fairfield University's Center for Catholic Studies program this evening, the 20th annual Andromeda O'Callaghan Lecture on Women in Church and Society. We are delighted to have you all here. We know that the audience we have, thanks to the sad occasion of Covis, but the good side of that, we have probably 300 of you attending from all over the place. We are so happy to see you here and we are so looking forward to the event that is about to happen. So in a minute or two, I'm going to pass you over to have our speaker introduce. But before I do that, I just want to say one word about our process here. So Colleen Gibson, who is our speaker, will speak for, I imagine, about 45 minutes. And after that, we'll have the usual time for question and answer. But on the webinar system, you can pose your question at any moment during the time that she is talking. So if a question comes to your mind, then what you should do is go to the little Q&A feature that you see on your screen and type in the question. And then after she ends her talk, some at least, depending on how many questions there are, some at least of those questions will be put to her and you'll see how she responds to it. So that's principally the only bit of the only real bit of sort of housekeeping that we have to do. And I think at this point, we have most of you gathered. So at this point, I would like to introduce to you Elise Raeby. Elise Raeby is not only a Fairfield alum class of 2008. That's one year before our present speaker tonight graduated from the university. Elise also worked in the Center for Catholic Studies for three years from, I think, 2010. And so she is familiar with our program and the many wonderful things that we do. In fact, she was responsible for many of them some years ago. Elise is currently a PhD candidate in theology at Boston College and I think getting close to the end of the many hurdles that you have to pass to reach that point. So I have asked Elise to take over from this point to introduce Colleen, our speaker tonight. And after Colleen has spoken, Elise will be fielding the question and answers. And maybe at the very end, I'll come back in with a little piece of information for you about where we go from here. So without any more ado, Elise over to you. Thank you, Paul. This evening, we gather for the 20th annual and Drummy O'Callaghan lecture on women in the church. This lecture series honors Ann Drummy O'Callaghan, who devoted her life as a catechist, advocate for the intellectually disabled, a youth minister, and as a director of religious education. She worked for many years spreading the gospel among children, teenagers, and adults in the diocese of Bridgeport. We are grateful to the O'Callaghan family for supporting this lecture series over the past 20 years. With this year's lecture, we also celebrate another notable anniversary, the 50th anniversary of the first women undergraduates at Fairfield University, first admitted in 1970. It is especially fitting, then, that tonight's speaker is herself a graduate of Fairfield University. Sister Colleen Gibson is a sister of St. Joseph of Philadelphia. She graduated from Fairfield University in 2009 with degrees in religious studies and American studies. As an undergraduate at Fairfield, she was widely involved in campus ministry, which is where she and I became dear friends, and she was a member and captain of the rugby team. She was also the valedictorian of her graduating class. Sister Colleen entered the Sisters of St. Joseph in 2011 after working for Common Wheel Magazine and volunteering with the St. Joseph Worker Program in Philadelphia. She has worked in a range of ministries throughout her formation, including parish ministry, college campus ministry, and retreat ministry. She currently lives and ministers in Camden, New Jersey, her home state, where she runs a neighborhood center, teaches adult education courses, and manages a food assistance program. But in spite of all of her work in the trenches of the church, if you ask her what she does, she often responds, I'm a writer, and she is a gifted one at that. She is a regular columnist for the National Catholic Reporter, where she writes about religious life, and she contributes frequently to give us this day. She made her final vows with the Sister of St. Joseph last September. Her title for tonight's lecture is Showing Up, The Radical Work of Commitment and Uncertain Times. Welcome, Sister Colleen. We are so grateful to hear from you tonight. Thank you so much. Thank you, Elise, for that lovely introduction, and thank you to the Center for Catholic Studies for inviting me to be with you all tonight. It's really an honor for me to be with you, to share my insights and to do so in the memory of Anne Drumeo Callaghan. I would particularly like to thank Anne's family and friends, who support this lecture in her memory. As I prepared for tonight, I was delighted to learn more about Anne's life and legacy, to hear from mutual friends who knew her, and to pray with her, and her legacy of devoted service, empowering love, and faithful commitment. As you know, I am an alumna of Fairfield University. And even though we can't be together on campus, know that a piece of my heart is there. Though I had been looking forward to returning to my alma mater in person, I am so glad that many people across the country are able to join us tonight via Zoom. In a year that has been filled with turmoil, where uncertainty has taken center stage, I thought it would be fitting to look at the purpose and the promise of commitment in our lives and our world. And so tonight, I hope to guide us through two distinct movements. First, I will explore the nature of commitment, with special emphasis on the defining characteristics that make the act of showing up radical. Then I will move us to look at the commitments amid uncertainty that are being called forth from us as individuals and as a church, and how women especially are living these commitments. To begin though, I'd like to offer a poem to help us mark the sacred space that we share in this moment, wherever we are. Entitled Three Simple Letters, I wrote it a few years ago, and I pray that it speaks to your experience in the same way that it reflects on my own. It goes, Three Simple Letters, Y-E-S, unforetold in meaning, unforeseen in duty. You speak them without fully knowing what they mean. You say them, not to what is asked, but to who is asking. Y-E-S, to you who will be revealed in time, in hands worn deep with crags and crevices. This is the work beyond words, to be given, to be formed, to discover that it is not what you bring, but who you are that matters. Even that is changing, and it should, if you let it. Forget solid ground and settle in the mixed-up alphabet of life, for a standard written on the heart and held in the soul. You speaking, not knowing what it will mean in the next moment, but when that comes, it will sustain you. So each utterance will be a deliverance to the glory you imagined with that first Y-E-S. Before beginning my current ministry at the Sisters St. Joseph Neighborhood Center in Camden, New Jersey, I served as a campus minister at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia. It was my first ministry as a professed sister, and I thought I knew what to expect.  What I didn't anticipate was that at least once a week, I would be asked why I became a sister. Sometimes the question would come in the midst of deep conversations on retreat, while at other times, I would be sitting at my desk in the middle of a communal space, and a student who I didn't know would come up to me and simply ask, so why'd you become a sister? This manner of questioning always came as a surprise, like being called to account in the midst of the daily grind. Yet in time, I came to enjoy the question and the curiosity it entailed. This idea of commitment to something like religious life was an anomaly my students couldn't help but ask about. One evening, after giving a talk about vocation and discernment, a student looked me square in the eye as we talked about her journey, and she asked, what do you do when the questions shift from should I do this with my life, to will I do this with my life? That small shift and big question are gateways into examining the nature of commitment universally and in our world today. In its most basic form, commitment is a pledge or agreement to do something in the future. To make a commitment is to create an understanding of trust. Simply put, it is the promise that what I say today will hold true tomorrow. For example, the appointment I made today for Tuesday, I trust will be honored when Tuesday comes by the person I've agreed with. This type of commitment is valuable and important, but for our discussion tonight, I'd offer a more nuanced and substantial definition of commitment. The type of commitment I am referring to is the obligation that comes from personal investment. It is the state of being and dedication that emotionally impels the person or person to agree to it. This commitment is ongoing and integrated into our identity. In the context of faith, the commitments we make are binding and existential. They impel us to action, not only on an emotional level, but on moral, spiritual, and relational grounds too.  As Christians, our faith is a commitment in and of itself. The way in which we live our faith is a reflection of our core commitment to the gospel message of Jesus Christ. And as such, everything we do and everything we are bears the marks of that primary commitment. Believe me, I know that commitment is not a sexy topic. We live in an age filled with a fear of missing out. Our commitment stands in the way of the next best thing, and uncertainty makes existential commitment seem old-fashioned, at the very least, if not unappealing. But what if we looked beyond the narrative that no one commits to anything anymore to expose the certainty commitment could promise amid uncertain times? At the heart of our commitments, beyond obligation or imperative, is love. We commit ourselves to love with a capital L, and that love is what and who we commit ourselves to. In the words so often attributed to Pedro Arrupe, fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything. The commitments that stem from that fundamental commitment to love are the core and character of our being. These commitments oblige us to forgive and be forgiven, to serve, to listen, to speak out, to offer mercy, and to embrace the outcast. They require us to lose ourselves in order to embrace all that God offers, invites, and impels us to. The undergraduate who asked me what to do when the questions shift from should I do this with my life to will I do this with my life, she understood this. Her experience was telling her that the option was bigger than any one choice. It was bound up in a call and required the courage to comply. In the words of Jesus at the Last Supper, it is not you who chose me, but I who chose you. The question then becomes for us. Will we embrace the implications of the love we've fallen into? Will we allow the core commitments we make to dictate the lives we live and call forth the courage we need? Anyone who has made an ongoing or life commitment knows that living up to our promises is rewarding, but also difficult. It is not all sunshine and rainbows. It is not continual and unwavering consolation. In good times, the promises we make appear in the form of joy and fortitude. In happiness and the palpable feeling of love. Yet, in hard times, times of darkness and uncertainty, commitment looks much more like faithfulness. It looks like the image I have of my grandmother sitting by my grandfather's hospital bed in the middle of the night, her face lit only by hospital monitors, holding firmly to his hand, ever present as he lay unconscious to us. It looks like the parishioner or vowed religious who, despite feeling double-crossed by the institutions they love, remain engaged for the greater good. It looks like the parent who, even after the divorce, responds to the divine urgency to love and cherish their child, despite all else. In darkness, our commitments help us to survive. They remind us of the love we first said yes to, a love that continually says yes to us. Committing to living out our faith is a radical act. It is hard work, and I would argue that commitment and the resulting call to show up are characterized by three key elements. The work of commitment is rooted, relational, and countercultural. First and foremost, to understand commitment and to answer the call to show up, we need to understand that to be considered radical, commitment must be rooted. Derived from the Latin word, radix, meaning root, radical work is work that must be rooted before anything else. In order to stand for what we profess to believe, we must be rooted in the core commitment of our being. This means dedicating ourselves to our relationship with God, recognizing that every other relationship comes from or is inherently linked to this first love. To this end, as radical work, commitment reminds us who we are. When we are challenged by our commitments, we discover our deepest calls. We remember who we were when we first said yes. We recall why we responded affirmatively, and we discover how that very call has changed us. When I first came to religious life, sisters would repeatedly say to me, the reason why you came is not the reason why you stay. I wondered what they meant, how the purest of intentions could change, how the love of God I desired to live out could be supplanted by some other reason. As the years went on, though, I realized that the reason I came didn't change. It was transformed, just as I was. As a result of time and experience, that first love gave way to fidelity. To a love that knew trial and pain, a love that felt the pinch of commitment. Religious or not, many of us know the pinch of that transformation. It may be difficulties after years of marriage, changing relationships with adult children or elderly parents, or new expectations from upper management after decades with a company. We endure this process and hopefully grow as a result. These holy disturbances reform us, breaking down and rebuilding our initial desires, expectations, and assumptions over time and with experience. We do not, after all, commit to an ideal. We do not commit to a theory, an ideology, or even a theology. We as Christians commit to a lived reality. We commit to a way, a truth, a life, to a person, Jesus, and often to specific people, spouses, family, friends. The commitments of our lives are also not solitary moments. They may be made particularly evident in pivotal moments, but commitment is a process. It requires encounter, growth, insight, and discernment. It shows us where God is calling us, what the invitation is that's being offered. You don't just wake up one day and get married. You don't just show up on a college campus without applying, without going through a process of discernment and decision making. In other words, commitment is an ongoing component of living a discerning life. The core commitments of our lives, our very vocation, is rooted in an attentiveness to the Holy Spirit. In order to honor and uphold our commitments, we commit to continual discernment of spirits, to a continual renewal of our commitment to God. Here, I think of what many biblical commentators say about the calling of the First Disciples by the same. In our reading of those stories, we can stand in amazement at the freedom of their response. If we think about commitment in momentary terms, then their unhesitating response is miraculous. In that moment, they dropped everything and followed Jesus. What a miraculous gift of self and grace of discipleship. Yet, more than likely, those individuals had heard of Jesus before that encounter. They had heard his message, whether in a crowd or through hearsay, which would have planted a seed of call in them. Thus, in the moments the Gospel reveals to us, we see the sprouting of those seeds. Those moments are not the beginning nor the end of their commitment. They are notable moments of movement and growth. But they are rooted in deeper soil. In these moments, we witness the disciples taking what they knew and felt and responding to the call. For the rest of their lives, the disciples lived into the promises they made. Their commitment is tried time and again, as it is with each of us. But their roots continue to deepen and strengthen. For over 120 years, the Sisters of St. Joseph have ministered in Camden, New Jersey, where I minister today. Over time, we have laid down roots in the city. When I discerned a call to leave my work in campus ministry to join the work of establishing a new neighborhood center in Camden, I discovered anew the radical rootedness of commitment. We began our work by going out and meeting our neighbors and asking them, if they could do anything for their neighborhood, what would it be? What were the things that would enrich their lives and the lives of their neighbors? Often, we were met with blank stares. What were we asking and who were we to be asking it was the implied notion. Our neighbors were right to think that, despite our institutional history in the city, the people we met on the street didn't know us from anyone else. What they did know was the promises of do-gooders and outside saviors. How could they trust we would stay, that we wouldn't do what countless nonprofits had done before, show up for a few years and then ship out? Our first few years proved challenging. It has been and continues to be a process of building trust. Yet in time, new routes have been laid down as we've shared with our neighbors, teaching English and life skills, distributing food and aid, and sharing in prayer, among many other things. Our neighbors have seen the nature of our commitment, who we say we are and how we live out what we say we're about. Our roots as a religious congregation, our charism, history and vows, led us to this ministry. Yet the work we do has flourished in and because of the radical work of relationship building. This brings me to the second characteristic of the radical work of commitment. It is relational. Each week we gather at the center to offer prayers for our neighborhood and we share reflection time with our neighbors around scripture. More often than not, the topic moves beyond scripture into everyday life. Today's topic you'll be interested was Donald Trump. One week, a few weeks after we hired her, our receptionist, Rina, joined us for one of our prayers. Rina is a force to be reckoned with. Her Spanish is faster than I can understand and as we found it's faster than many native Spanish speakers can too. She has a heart of gold. But in her excitement, she can often lose sight of details. The week she joined us, the prayer group, joined the prayer group, she excitedly told us that she had been spreading the word about the center at her sister's beauty salon down the block. She told us how the women at the shop had asked her, who are those women you work with? What religion are they? What do they do? Essentially they were asking, why should we care? Rina was flustered and in that moment she told us, I couldn't remember, but I told them, I told them that these women are all about the neighbor. They love their neighbors, everyone. They want to serve their neighbor and they don't want anything. They believe in the neighbor. Their religion is the neighbor. Listening to Rina's story, I smiled. First, we made sure that she knew we were Catholic sisters. Then we also smiled because we knew she got it. Our lives commitment was coming through loud and clear. They believe in the neighbor, she explained, without any prompting. In fact, we could see that she perceived the deeper, more radical work of commitment being done. Fortified and rooted, our commitments call us to be in relationship with others. A commitment, after all, is a covenant and a covenant is a relationship. Thus, our commitments are made in union with someone or something else. They call us to show up where we are needed, where our roots plant us. As such, a commitment must be fostered and tended to. It is a living, breathing thing and it requires care. Like any true relationship, a commitment is a two-way street. It is reliant on the mutuality that any good relationship is built on. I do not simply or solely commit myself to love and serve this institution, person or ideal. I commit with the expectation that it will, in turn and in its own way, love and offer itself to me in return. Without such mutuality, a commitment becomes a constraint. It loses the life-giving nature of its being and instead stifles the parties involved, greeting resentment, resignation and regret in the process. Such commitment echoes Reno's words to her friends. They don't want anything. Our desire in committing to this time and place, to this neighborhood and our neighbors is to be in union with them. Nothing that we do matters unless we do it together. For this reason, we began our ministry by asking not what we could do for the neighborhood, but what our neighbors would do if they could. Our work is dependent on mutual investment and empowerment. It's not that we don't want anything, as Reno said, but rather that what we want is to be for and with our neighbors for the betterment of all. We strive each day to live out the gospel message of love that we've committed ourselves to. Our showing up then looks like the hard work of relationships, like the radical, transformative work of love. To quote N. Gordon Crosby, to say yes to Christ is to say yes to people. To know Christ as God is to be organically, integrally part of a community. And to be ultimately responsible to Christ is to be responsible to others in Christ's body. Together we show the world who Christ is until the entire broken human race will respond to the love of God manifested in that body. Trusting the person or persons we commit to be that God, others or the larger systems we are a part of means working together to discern what our commitments require of us from one day to the next. Commitment calls us to wait in the haze of uncertainty together, to be the people of hope our faith calls us to be. Not with blind optimism or polyannish abandon, but with honesty and the critical eye of wisdom. We must be attentive to one another and attentive to the many things that influence our collective actions, be it our needs, past experiences, weaknesses, ignorance, jealousies or privileges. Commitment requires that we show up as fully ourselves. This brings us to the final aspect of the radical nature of commitments, the counter cultural work of showing up. Showing up is scary work. It is hard. In a culture that trains us as individuals, it calls us to reach beyond ourselves. In a society where we are judged by our successes, it invites us to fail. In a day and age when news shifts multiple times in a moment, it asks us to remain stable. I see it in the lessons I needed to give the college students I worked with that you can't have serious conversations in text form or that when we began our work on the streets in Camden, it wasn't enough to cite our history in the city or to say that we weren't going anywhere. It was important that we showed up for our neighbors, that we went to people's houses for coffee, that we chatted on the street, that we invested our lives on the ground, keeping the promise of commitment with our lives. Precisely because commitment to a cause, a person or a grander vocation is rooted and relational is why it is and can be counter cultural. Showing up demands that we defy the status quo. It places the common good over personal gain, people over profits. It values encounter as a gateway to transformation. To show up today is to choose civility, to abandon binary ways of thinking and instead bring our whole selves into relationship. It means to grow in empathy, to admit our shortcomings, to be vulnerable and to surrender ourselves to the belief that we are all one. Because commitment is reliant on the one who we commit to and is nurtured in community, whether that be a religious community, a marriage or another type of grouping, we can show up because we don't do it alone. United in our commitment communally, we testify to the radical power of love, embodying the Beatitudes by showing up so earnestly that we risk losing everything in pursuit of the truest promises of God, those of faith, hope and love. This type of commitment can be hard to understand. Earlier this spring before COVID regulations suspended our English classes at the Neighborhood Center, the students I teach found themselves stumped by a lingering question. It wasn't the question of how to conjugate verbs or the difference between on, under and in. The question was about me. Teacher, one woman in my class said, as we move from one lesson to another, how long have you been a sister? Why, what if you no longer want to be a sister? Why do you do this?  Because English is not their first language, the questions certainly weren't as clear as I made them at first. But together we figured out what was being asked. And then I faced the challenge of how to answer in a way that my class of beginning speakers would understand. Love, I said with a smile. I teach because of love. I am a sister because of love. I've taken these vows of chastity, poverty and obedience out of love. I am not looking to get out of this commitment, I said to the class. And they looked very confused. My response I understood was confusing. Don't you want to be married? Another student asked, I love God and I love you. I said in response. And then I reminded them that we had a quiz to take and everyone laughed. We moved on, but I kept returning to this conversation. Without enough Spanish, I was stripped of the words to convey my commitment. And so what remained? It was love. The radical commitment rooted in relationship and flying in the face of what the world tells us we need and want. This is the nature of commitment and it's the call to show up lived out. For centuries, women have been showing up. Women are the unseen actors of the gospel and by and large church history. The stories of women's commitments mark the story of Jesus' life, death and resurrection from the beginning to the end. It is women's courage and conviction in showing up that gives life and grounding to the church. At the Annunciation, we witness Mary's act of commitment. We hear the feelings, the challenge and ultimately the grace of saying yes to God's invitation. That yes in that moment brings forth the fullness of life. It grounds the story of Jesus on the foundation of a woman's commitment to God's word. It is a radical response to a mysterious request. It is an act of faith and a promise to show up no matter the uncertainty. It is a commitment that continues to change the world. We see the power of these commitments throughout Jesus' life and ministry. In the outcry of the Syrophoenician woman whose faith demands change and whose commitment to her daughter changes Jesus' vision of his ministry. It is in the widow's might and the woman at the well in searching and finding the vision of a kingdom that includes all and leaves no one behind. It is in Mary and Martha and their friendship with Jesus, a friendship that is rooted, relational and revolutionary. And in Martha's profession of faith, even in the midst of grief, naming her feelings, her hurt and yet also her faith, which makes way for miracles. And we see that it is the women, the marginalized, the less than the faithful ones who are present at the cross, who never leave Jesus' side, who show up time and again. And then even in death, they are there. And when mourning comes, Mary Magdalene returns to the grave committed to the radical work of love in the most uncertain of times. And her commitment, it too is a commitment that changed and continues to change the world. Then, well, then come Phoebe and Lydia, Felicity and Monica, Genevieve, Bridget, Hildegard, Catherine, Joan, Teresa, Francis Cabrini, Josephine Bacchita, Therese, Dorothy Day, Mary-Luc Tobin, Dorothy Stang, Dorothy Kazell, Edith Ford, Maura Clark, Gene Donovan, the list goes on and on. They showed up in the most uncertain of times and it changed the world. We know these people in our own lives too. They are our grandmothers, our mothers, our aunts and our friends. Those who have loved us into being and whose commitments call forth in us the invocation to go and do likewise. We have to ask ourselves then, in these unprecedented times, how are we being called to show up? What does commitment look like in the midst of uncertainty? And what does the radical work of commitment have to offer the world today? 25 years ago, when Anne Drummy O'Callaghan, whose name and memory grace this lecture, was honored at the Celebrate Women Dinner in Norwalk, she offered the following words, which still ring true today. She said, I hope that we who are Roman Catholic women will cease to think as St. Paul says in childish ways. Instead, like the bent over woman in the gospel who was healed by Jesus, we will stand free and tall to claim our rightful place in the discipleship of Jesus, the discipleship of equals. We will know in our souls that it is right to claim equal partnership with men in participation and leadership in our church. A quarter century later, these words still hold true and so does the call they invoke. It is a call to partnership, presence, and participation. While there's no lack of women's participation in the church on the parish level, the inclusion and integration of women's voices, experiences, and presence at levels above the pews is still lacking. Anne's call for a discipleship of equals, of course, echoes the words of Elizabeth Shusler-Ferenza, a biblical scholar whose work strives to lift up female faces of discipleship. As she writes, and I quote, the mission of the 12 to do what Jesus did is not restricted to the 12, but is a mission given to all the disciples, end quote. Indeed, this mission to do what Jesus did is a mission given to all of us. This is what showing up is all about. And I would argue tonight that in considering our church and women's roles they are in, there are four key areas in which such showing up and the consideration of our commitments is especially pertinent. At the table of ecclesial decision-making, in the public square, on the margins, and in the parish. I begin at the tables of ecclesial decision-making. With few exceptions, the leadership roles of our church are held by men. And while we've seen the expansion in recent years of roles for women within Vatican commissions and other leadership bodies, that representation is far from equal and arguably minuscule. The need for women's voices to be heard in the church is great. By failing to give forums for women's voices to be heard within the church, and without appointing women to leadership roles, the church's current leadership is failing to embrace the fullness of the body of Christ. This absence of women in key administrative and discerning roles shows a blindness to the value of women's voices and being. It impoverishes our church, and it is an injustice to the people of God. Whether conscious or not, intentional or not, this absence sends a message. It perpetuates invisibility. Absence does not draw attention. And so our language remains unbalanced as do our views and actions. Unconsciously, this absence sows division, demeans and creates dissonance that is grounds for anger, cynicism, disillusionment, and ultimately a loss of faith. Without a visible presence of women in the institutional church, we fail to recognize what we are missing in excluding their experience, wisdom, and presence at tables where decisions are being made. This of course draws our attention to the issue of vocation and the tenuous relationship between vocation and power within the Catholic church. Currently, there are no clerical avenues open to women in the church. Those vocations for all intents and purposes are limited to men. This clearly creates a stumbling block to women's leadership on an upper administrative level in the church. Call, however, should not be bound up in the question of power. Listening to God's call and discerning the spirit's prompting in our lives is not nor should it ever be a power play. Over the last few years, I have engaged in a series of online conversations with Dr. Phyllis Sagano on the issue of women deacons in the Catholic church. For the last two years, I've curated and posed questions that have come from people of all different beliefs within the church, asking them to Dr. Sagano on the topic. What I found most striking beyond the historical precedent for women deacons and the need to name and empower the ministry already being done by women in the church is the way in which vocation and power are often misaffiliated by people on both ends of the ecclesiological spectrum, whether in favor of women deacons or not, many view this vocation not as a distinctive call, but as a stepping stone to women's ordination to the priesthood. Others see the deaconate as a means to an end of having women's voices heard by lending to them the authority of the order of deacon. Both of these perspectives consider the deaconate as a mean to power rather than a vocation to service. By diminishing the deaconate as a vocation not fully formed, we dismiss the work of the spirit and curtail women's ability to show up and serve in this way in our church. We lose out on the gifts they would bring as preachers, the talents and presence they would share with communities of faith and the perspective and wisdom they would bring to areas of leadership they cannot currently occupy. The work of the spirit though cannot be stifled. I think of the fact that for 800 years in the Western church's history, there were no permanent deacons, male or female. Yet in the mid 20th century within the Caritas movement in Germany, the idea of restoring the permanent deaconate with its ability to renew a vision of the church as servant in the face of many needs was renewed. Individuals who felt called to this state of life founded deaconate circles. The members of which included men and women who engaged in ministries of charity while also exploring the possibility of a renewed ordained deaconate. They lived their call and in time, the movement grew. When the Second Vatican Council was called, members of the deaconate circles moved to Rome and served as a resource to the council fathers who knew little about this distinct order of ministry. As we know, their presence made a difference leading eventually to the restoration of the permanent deaconate for married men following the Second Vatican Council. I raise this example because it speaks to the discernment and desire bound up in our call to show up. These circles were radical, rooted, relational and counter-cultural and they echoed Jesus's call to great love which each member felt drawn to commit themselves to. As conversations around women in the deaconate and increasing women's leadership roles in the church evolve and become more prevalent, I believe there is much to be learned from the example of these circles. When we show up by raising our voices, by engaging in civil conversation, by dialoguing, by praying, by sharing our stories and by seeking to move as the spirit wills, there is hope in these actions, even in the midst of uncertainty and resistance. To adapt the words of John Fogarty, put us in, coach, we're ready to play. Without waiting on the church, women have already proved this readiness and demonstrated their commitment to the gospel by being at the forefront of the church in the public square, the second area where women are showing up. From Sister Norma Pimentel at the border to Kerry Robinson at the leadership roundtable, in the United States and around the world, women give voice to the cares and concerns of the church far beyond formal church leadership. Where the church in the United States has developed a myopic view of key issues, hedging political gain and favor on them, women have maintained a broader vision of what it means to be church in the world. As we saw in the backlash to the apostolic visitation of women religious in the United States and the congregation for the doctrine of the faith's investigation of the leadership conference of women religious, there is a public trust afforded to women in the church and particularly to women religious that gives them the ability to stand outside of the institution and yet to stand for the values of the gospel. These women give life to their commitments. They're showing up is a testimony to God's love and the call to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with God. They are doing the work so often assigned to women, the hidden work of love. Yet I think in our modern era, there is a transformation even in this work. Today, women's showing up to serve is and needs to be more visible. After all, the witness of this showing up not only helps those who are served, but it gives life and shines light on the teachings we embody, the commitments we live out, the gospel we share. By showing up and sharing, we invite others to join us. We also show up on behalf of the issues that matter, recognizing and utilizing the value of women's voices on important issues. Women in the church are bridges, straddling the uneven terrain of our world. Women in the church occupy both the public square and the margins. They build relationships of meaning and influence. Their presence truly is invaluable. Women in the church hold the powerful position to represent the conscience of the church, to call the institution to change and to work so that all people's voices can be heard and the table can be made big enough for everyone. This expansion of the table leads us from the public square to our third area of commitment, the margins. This movement is what we see projects like Nuns on the Bus, which highlights the work of women religious and other Catholic nonprofits that are doing charity and justice work today. The organizations highlighted by these groups draw the church out to the margins. They make visible injustices, advocate for change, empower those left out by the church. And in the process, recognize and acknowledge the shortcomings of our church and our society. In so doing, their commitment and the call they issue to show up calls us as a church and as individuals committed to God's love to be and to do better. Because our commitments are rooted in love, they require us to continually examine what is the next most loving thing we can do, an act that stems from our initial commitment. We must ask, what has God made us ready for? In the uncertainty of our times, the list of issues this pertains to is longer than any lecture I could give. We have many margins to reach out to. Surely care for the earth, immigration, human trafficking, respect for life, labor rights and healthcare reform could all be examined through the lens of our commitments and the need for the church to show up. Within the bounds of the church too, we have margins to draw into deeper communion. Areas in need of our attention and desperate for us as individuals and as the body of Christ to show up. Be it to and for the LGBT community, those with disabilities, immigrants, refugees, women or people of color. For us as a church to do what Jesus did, we must embrace and listen to those on the margins and examine our own role in marginalizing these groups. In considering this dual role and looking at the radical work of commitment in reaching out to the margins, tonight I believe it is important for us to look more closely at the example and reality of racism and racial justice in our church and our world today. The awareness of racism and racial injustice that has come to a head in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown and countless others is a clarion call as we consider our commitment to love and justice in our world and church. These killings were not solitary incidents but another page in the long history of racism and racial relations in our country. The question they placed before us is not should we do something about racism, but will we? As the issue of race has come to the fore, I've watched as institutions, including the church and religious congregations around the country have grappled with how best to react. What does it mean to show up in this moment? Is the question that continues to ring out in my own life and ministry. At the Neighborhood Center, this has meant examining our own implicit biases and posting banners in front of the center which read, love your neighbors, racism is a sin in both Spanish and English. When we did this, our neighbors soon began to ask for their own signs. And in a neighborhood where graffiti dons many hard surfaces and things like flower pots have been known to grow feet and go missing, nothing happened. The signs remained untouched, bearing witness to our belief and we made sure that as we shared them far and wide with donors and our neighbors on social media that we declared that black lives matter.  While edifying, it also reveals the privileged ignorance of never having to consider that such a statement should be made or that we should have made it sooner. As we engage on the margins and see our own role in marginalization, we come to see the larger issues of injustice, illusion, delusion and willful ignorance within our church and institutions. In this day and age, we can no longer be complicit in such inequity and injustice. Here I recognize that the universal we does not in fact include all of us. Here I hope to recognize that the church has many parts, parts that have not been but need to be more in union. Here my use of the pronoun we should be understood to mean we, white Catholics and the institutions we dominate, parishes, religious congregations, ecclesial administrations, educational and social service institutions. We cannot ignore our role in oppressing the people of God and of devaluing members of our congregations because of the color of their skin. We must acknowledge that the systems we belong to are at odds with the faith we've committed ourselves to. And in recognizing this conflict, we must move towards action. This action is not one-sided. Like our commitments, it is a two-way street. We are showing up to listen, to learn, and to recognize where we've sinned, and then in our realized brokenness to discern the next steps that are necessary. This is the radical work of commitment in these uncertain times. Stances such as this and the actions they necessitate to underscore our commitments to God's love, not just in word but indeed are difficult to make because they challenge the status quo and threaten what has been, no matter how unjust degrading or dehumanizing it has been. Showing up in this way, going to the margins and recognizing our role in creating distance is uncomfortable. Calling into question our actions and institutions threatens our image of who we think we are and declare ourselves to be. It requires honestly naming our sinfulness and our sins and working to make recompense and reconciliation a reality. This is the slow work, this is slow work with multiple facets and lots of pushback. Watching the church engage in this work has been both edifying and disappointing. Institutionalized racism is not easily dismantled. Naming racism as a sin is an important first step, declaring unequivocally that Black Lives Matter is too. Yet years, decades, and centuries of institutionalization are much more complicated to undo. Small steps, I pray, are signs of the larger steps that must be committed to. These are the intensive culture shifting steps of reforming systems, structures, and ways of thinking and being that are needed to be anti-racist. This is certain to be hard, soul searching, uncomfortable work. I see the nation's stages of it as bad religious congregations and their leadership, both male and female, begin to name commitments to change. This includes the recognition and ongoing confrontation of the ways in which they have been complicit in racism, how predominantly white congregations have historically, even while serving diverse populations, fostered membership that is largely white and the need for frank conversations and reform to ongoing formation of membership to foster transformation. We need to listen to one another, to the hurt, the pain, the exclusion. The same can be said of our church institutions in this country, in this country of our parishes and of the need for honest reflection and intentional action. We must act, we must go to the margins, we must pray for conversion and trust through intentional action and hard work that in Christ, all things are held together. From the margins, this is the center we must return to, the one we commit to and who holds us to account. Finally, in considering the work of showing up, I call our attention to the current model of the parish. In the midst of COVID, I've marveled at the ways in which parish life has been remade and wonder what the future holds as shifting demographics, mergers and expansions, decreased enrollment in Catholic education and declining creasely vocations are compounded by the inability to be together in person and the ensuing reformation and reimagining of what the parish church will look like. This reimagining is twofold. First, as we consider women in the church, we must again examine the leadership role afforded to women. While pastoral council and parish staff teams hopefully reflect a broader diversity of voices in the parish, parish leadership by and large is dependent on the pastor of a church. It is the pastor who makes final decisions and who forms the overarching life of a parish. He has the ability to cultivate gifts, to dictate liturgy, to call forth or stifle individuals. Thus, the openness of parish leadership to women and other lay people is dependent on the pastor. In some places, there is great openness and collegiality by pastors and in others there is not. This hit or miss model of parish life reduces the parish to a person rather than the people. As we consider parish leadership and women in the church, it is important to consider the integral role parishioners play through their participation in the parish's life and the guidance they offer. Here, consultation is key. The second aspect of reimagining the parish is to consider what in fact, do we see as the role of the parish? Is the parish a community of faith? Is it a governing structure? Is it a place of growth, of welcome, of vibrancy? Or is it a memorial to the way things are? Is it a means to an end? And to what end does it aim? We must ask ourselves of the parish and of all ground level communities of faith, associate groups, young adult ministry, religious congregations. We must ask how as bodies of faith do we nurture all people? Do we welcome? Do we listen? Do we live and grow together? What do we value and how do we live up to those values? Are we actively cherishing the diversity of our bodies and challenging the status quo? Simply put, what are we committed to? And are we nurturing our commitments so that they're not just simply being kept alive but are calling forth new life? As all this takes place, I believe there is an opportunity for us as a church to discern what God is calling us to. We are being called to show up, to form communities that can sustain all amid wider uncertainty. These communities need to be radically welcoming in the truest sense of that radicality. Our showing up, our being who God has called us to be, creates a stronger, more diverse church. It shows Christ's love in action and brings forth commitments we may not have even realized we needed to make. Calling us to commitments that hold us accountable to God and to the communities we belong to and profess to be. The church is not about politics, though it often seems like it is. The church is about people. It is about a commitment to the teachings of Jesus Christ and a living out of those teachings in a community that finds life and love in and as the body of Christ. We are united in Christ and each of us is rooted in Christ. Our commitment stem from and return to this core reality and identity. From this point, we can discern God's calling as our commitment necessitates we do. That discernment roots who we are. In the words of St. Ignatius's first principle and foundation, the goal of our life is to live with God forever.  Our own response of love allows God's life to flow into us without limit. Our only desire and our one choice should be this. I want and I choose what better leads to God's deepening his life in me. To fulfill this desire and actively choose what we profess, we need transparency in our institutions and relationships. Inclusion in our structures and our communities and communion in the heart of everything we do. These points are not easy. They are bound to lead to frustration and growing pains. Transformation is a process. We know this from our own experience. Commitments are not easy things to make but showing up is a risk worth taking. In uncertain times, it is in these actions and commitments that certainty, found in courage and conviction, holds us steady, even if not providing perfect resolution. And so as I close tonight, I offer the words in the Carina Whitaker's poem, Hidden Dreams, where she writes, "'As for me, I am almost sure "'that in the body of Christ that we call the church, "'we have the power to help each other's dreams come true. "'Truly we have the power to bring our dreams to light, "'no matter how dark the world seems. "'In our showing up, we cast light for all to see. "'We embody courage and confidence "'that can only come from our relationship in and with God "'and which compels us out into the world.' And in all of this, in our commitments, in the promises we keep with our lives, we show signs of hope, radically rooted, relational, and counter-cultural. We listen for the promptings of the spirit, knowing that when she calls, we must respond. Not if, but when. Not then, but now. Not them, but us. Not should we, but will we." Thank you. Thank you, Colleen, for your words of wisdom and your reflections on what it means to commit to show up and to be rooted in a world today that is certainly uncertain, and perhaps even more so as the days continue. As a reminder to our audience joining in, at the bottom of your screen, you should see a Q&A button where you can type a question if you have one. We had a number of questions come in throughout Colleen's presentation. So I'm gonna start with two of the questions that came in that matched the first part of Sister Colleen's talk. You started by describing commitment as radical, rooted, relational, and as counter-cultural because of the showing up that it requires. And we have two questions came in about the nature of commitment. One person asked, if you would say a bit more about how your own commitment has been transformed, you mentioned the reason why you come is not the reason why you stay and what is it that brings about that transformation of commitment? And then another question on the same topic is for someone that is perhaps at a crossroads in their life, wondering what kind of commitment to make.  And how do you know that your commitment was the correct one? So these questions kind of speak to the ongoing process of commitment and the discernment that it requires. You know, not tiny questions, you know. You guys paid a lot of money. You're gonna get the 10 cent answer. That's a lot. But I think to speak to my own commitment and the idea of transformation of commitment that over time, what we commit to transforms and it transforms us, I can speak to my own. There was a line, you know, I talked about, you know, in time, the assumptions that we came with the expectations are transformed. And so for me, when I came to religious life because that's the commitment, the way that I frame all of this, when I came to religious life, I had an idealized version of what religious life looked like. I had never met any sisters before. And so this idealistic view, I thought, you know, oh, they love God. They live out that love each and every day. Their community is flourishing and deep and there's this presence. And then when you show up and there's reality, as with any, you know, showing up, the reality is different than the ideal. And so I think watching that initial commitment and that initial draw be transformed and be changed over time, but to recognize that the core, the very core, so for me, you know, this love of God that is solely in my primary, you know, relational commitment that everything else should come out of that. And then to discover the way in which that relationship has enhanced all of my relationships. And so I think we live into our commitments, you know, if you asked a newlywed couple what it's like, you know, to be married and what the secret is to marriage, the answer they would give and the answer that a couple has been married for, you know, 52 years would be very different.  He said, you know, what's the secret to being married so long?  You have to be in love and you have to be willing to hang in there for love because some days it doesn't look like this day. It doesn't look like the wedding day. So the transformation of commitment and I think, you know, we are held securely by the commitments that we make, you know, in religious life, you know, we say the, the commitments that we make hold us and hold us accountable.  So those initial, you recognize very early on what is superfluous to the commitment that you're making and what isn't. And then the second part of that question, Elise, can you just give me a little, it was about most decisions. How does one know that they are embarking in the right commitment? What are signs you look for in life too when you're deciding what you will commit yourself to? Yeah.  It looks like fortitude. It looks like a palpable sense of love. As you take that first step, you get, you will be affirmed, you know, life will tell you if it's the right step. And so you have to be able to assess, you have to be very mindful of where am I in my life? What state of being am I in? Am I moving closer to God? If I'm moving towards God, then there's a whole set of rules that apply to that. So then I will get joy back as a result. I will see, and I think it's reflected very often in the people around us.  But always I say, you know, go back to prayer, sit with it and trust in the courage of your conviction in what has brought you because a proper discernment, it leads up to that decision and it doesn't end in that moment. So it continues. And so you're doing the work of committing and then once you're committed, that work continues. And so I think always being able to reassess that it's not one and done. It's each day, it grows more and more. Thank you. I wanna shift to a few of the questions that speak to the second part of your lecture. You mentioned the four areas in which women specifically are doing the work of showing up in the church today. And we have a few questions that are kind of centering about the question of the local church. How do we speak out? How do we show up effectively for the local church on a parish level? And one person asked specifically in the transition from college campus ministry where some of them might feel very committed and feel that mutuality of commitment. What happens then when that young person graduates and goes into a parish and doesn't feel that sense of commitment reciprocated? So what are some of the ways in which showing up at the local church can be done most effectively? Both to sort of maybe bring about some of the change that you point into of meeting women's voices to be heard in the local church, but also ways that the local church can more effectively advocate or show up for the work of racial justice as you spoke to. So kind of bringing it down to home. Anyone that's listening is thinking, great, how can I show up for the church in my parish? What would you say to that?  And I think that idea of like showing up for what gives you life will give life to the parish and will draw people. Often when I'm talking to people to say, well, should we develop a young adult ministry? Should we put forth all these programs? I think part of it is to engage in the dialogue, to talk to the people who you're trying to target in a sense, but also to have those conversations but to do what is life giving for you and to pay attention to build relationships. I think that as a core piece of commitment that our relationships, in those relationships it draws forth the life of a community. And so on a parish level, it means having groups that are energized and find life with one another and then give that life to the parish body and then to the church locally and from there on out. I think the question about, moving from college campus ministry into like a parish model, I think that is an important, it's an important transition in our lives and in figuring out the commitment of our faith. And I would say to that questioner, it is so important to find groups where you belong and it might not be groups that are the same as you but groups where you can have honest conversations where you can talk about that transition, where you feel welcome and where you're drawn into. And so I think then it's the two pieces of that duality. For the person coming into the community, it's to seek out and to hang in there, to know that it's uncomfortable work. And then on the other side for the parish, for the established organization, it is saying, what is it that will make people feel most welcome? What is it when I walk into a large group that makes me feel like I am valued? What is the work of follow up? What is the work of showing up? What is the work of presence that is key there? And even just acknowledging in small ways the presence of different groups. And that isn't to say from the pulpit, oh, look at the young people who are here today.  Why not? Everyone then turns and looks at me in the parish but to say at the end of mass, to walk up to someone and say, oh, I've never seen you before. To engage in those little moments of relationship because those are stepping stones to larger relationships and larger engagement. And to not, I think large church bodies or the parish in general, we can really stifle young people. We can really just try to drain the life out of them. And so I think how do you build those relationships and how do you tap into that energy? But how do we recognize that? That energy can't come from anyone else. It's gotta be fostered within ourselves and where we find life in a parish. Then to speak to the social issues, to go out to the margins, to the issue of racism and racial injustice. I think it's important to be having honest conversations, to be doing honest looking at ourselves, to be doing the work of learning and studying. But we have to move beyond just that. It is not just recognizing that it is there or inviting other people in to reflect back to us where our own prejudice is. It is engaging in that work and having uncomfortable conversations and recognizing that no one is gonna save us except ourselves. And so doing that work as a parish body, as a people of faith and being willing to be uncomfortable and listen to points of view that might cause that holy disturbance, that feeling of I'm not quite sure about how I feel about this but can I stay at the table and engage in that conversation and hear what the person across from me is saying, what their experience is and can I also share mine and can we do this together? I wanna continue on that topic of those relationships amidst the issues of racial injustice. We have a question from someone that is asking specifically about how we do this work of showing up specifically as white women of privilege and have you encountered any resistance specifically in your work in Camden working with the neighborhood center or elsewhere in your ministries where you show up seeking relationships but are confronted with a misunderstanding of you're simply being a do-gooder here to help yourself or your own conscience.  Do you find moments of tension and confrontation due to political issues in your work in Camden? And how do you go about the work of building relationships and being a neighbor and loving a neighbor when that might not be as mutual and reciprocal as perhaps you might be seeking? Yeah, I think in terms of the work that we do here it was at the four, I think when we began to say, even though we have a history in the city of Camden the city of Camden from 120 years ago looks very different than the city of Camden today as with many cities and inner city places where our sister's minister and we're the church ministers. And so when we first came it was a tough reckoning with that of how do we come, what do we bring? What's the privilege that we bring? Even the idea of we will establish this neighborhood center and we'll set it up and we'll just start building relationships. I mean, that is, it comes from a privileged point of view. I mean, that even just the impetus that this wonderful project has been built on there are some assumptions in that work that we work each and every day against and we often say to people who come people who come to volunteer. So part of the mission here at the neighborhood center is we say we unite neighbor to neighbor and neighborhood to neighborhood. And so whenever we have people from outside of the city of Camden come in to visit us we say, this is not, this is not volunteerism. This is not, come look and feel good about yourself because you've visited the city of Camden and you've met some people. This is about the work of relationship.  You're not teaching the classes.  You have a crocheting group where, women from the suburbs come and sit side by side with women from our neighborhood. And nothing is more equalizing than trying to learn to do something together. And as you're hooking and looping learning but I think we've run into that over and over again and early on I was talking to someone and we were talking about, what do you think you offer to the neighborhood? And before I could even answer this person who was outside of our neighborhood said, oh, well you must offer just so much hope to the neighborhood. You just must be hopeful. You must bring hope to the despair. And I said, in all my work in the inner city I've worked in here in Camden and in Philadelphia. I said, the people who I have worked with the people who I've walked side by side with who I've shared a journey with are not hopeless people. They are not people without hope. If anything they teach me each and every day how to better have hope, how to better recognize that God will provide because my own privilege stands in the way of recognizing that. It stands in the way of recognizing that, oh yeah, there could be things that I don't have and I couldn't achieve that I need to rely on God for. We are so much in the mindset of, this individualism and achievement that we learn together here at the center. And so trying to dismiss those notions that we're here to save anybody but we're here to be together. And so then to move to that question of political conflict and how do you engage in conversation and the difficulty there? I think that is the question. That's the question for this day and age for sure. I don't know where you'll be in, I don't know, what an hour and a half but I think that is the place where we see the need for civility, for dialogue and for relationships. If we don't trust the person across from us, if we don't recognize that they are a beloved child of God then how do we engage in conversation? I think today in our culture in the United States especially we've dug out trenches and it spans into all sorts of areas. Just a little story. We started our English classes this weekend. The first day I'm in charge of putting everything online and I walked outside and the house next door is up for sale but it's been abandoned for a couple of months now. And on the stairs was a man, a white man and he said to me, oh, excuse me, miss. And I thought, well, why is he, it's like dusk. And he said, do you know if anybody lives here? I was like, why would I answer that? So I said, no, nobody lives there, it's for sale. Well, he said, I'm with the census. I'm a census taker. Well, as soon as he realized I was a nun or a sister he was like, I'm from Boston, I'm here for like two weeks and I have never met a Catholic who's so engaged in the faith. What do you think about Amy Barrett Cohen? What do you think about the Supreme Court? And I was like, oh no, oh please, I just wanna go teach English. Why can't we have a simpler time? But the conversation that we had and making the space for that conversation, I was out there, the sister who I worked with when I came back in, she said, I had no idea what happened. Like, where did you go? But I think being able to engage in those conversations and as we stood there and talked, our neighbors who we built relationships with the security guard for the school across the street walked past and he checked with me, he said, is everything okay? Are you doing all right? And then engaging him in the conversation, not around the Supreme Court, but around our city and this misconception by this quote unquote outsider who didn't know what the city was about and had a preconceived notion of Camden. So I think we have to recognize our privilege coming into that and in the midst of political conversations, we have to show up. We have to show up to make a difference. You've heard it, you're nauseated by go vote, vote, get everybody to vote, but we need to be engaged in those conversations because whatever happens in November, whoever is inaugurated in January, we as a people, as a country have to be able to come together, we have to be able to live with one another and we have to be able to do the work of committing to one another, not just as decent people in the sense of the common good, but as citizens and as responsible people, people who can be civil. And so I think it's difficult in the midst of the current reality, but just keep showing up, keep on trying and look for places that aren't just echo chambers and then don't just repeat back to us what we wanna hear, whether it's about the church, whether it's about politics, it's seeking out those spaces where we can hear other things. It might make our blood boil a little bit, but that's good, that's a spirit calling us to action too. That seems to bring us right back to where we began with the commitment being about a relationship and about showing up both as our best selves, but also with the courage to see where maybe we are not always at our best selves and commitment and relationships requires that genuine encounter that Pope Francis is often speaking of. We are just about out of time and we had a number of other questions in the Q&A which Sister Colleen will be able to see after. So she'll at least get to have all that fodder for future reflection. I will now, before I turn it over to Paul Lakeland, a number of questions did come in as well, asking if this lecture will be available online after and if it can be shared and the answer to that is yes. It will be available online within about a week, perhaps sooner. So keep an eye out on the Fairfield website for that. And with that, I will turn it over to Paul Lakeland to take us out for the evening. Well, thank you, Elise, and thank you, Colleen.  So for those of you, we had over 360 people here to begin with, and we've still got a huge number. So for those of you who would like to follow more of our events this year, there's just two events I want to mention, the next two that I want to mention that are coming up in the next couple of weeks. On Saturday, the 17th of October at 11 in the morning, we're going to have an hour session, just a short session, sort of bringing into dialogue with one another some of the women from that very first Fairfield class of 50 years ago, and a couple of women from alums from a much more recent time. So we're gonna hear about what it was like back then and get some kind of reaction and response from people, as I said, from a more recent vintage. So that sat 11 a.m. on Saturday, the 17th. The next lecture, formal lecture in our program is a lecture that's been held over from the spring because we couldn't do it in the spring when the school closed. And this is the annual Christian Engagement Lecture which the Center for Catholic Studies does in collaboration with the Bennett Center for Judaic Studies. So this is on the 22nd of October, which is a Thursday, I think, and that's at 7.30 in the evening. It's the 14th annual such lecture and it will be offered by Rabbi David Sandmell. And the topic is, listen carefully now, loving the Jews, bi-lo-semitism and the Judaizing in contemporary Christianity. So it's clearly a lecture of dialogue between Jewish and Christian groups. And we hope very much that many of you will sign up for and come to one or both of those events. And there are more to come, but for now that's enough. So it really is my honor to bring you this little event to a close right now by thanking a few people. Obviously, we thank the people who made this possible behind the scenes, the media center people. We thank Mary Crimmins, who is the administrative coordinator for the Center for Catholic Studies. I wanna thank the 361 of you who came to this event and I hope you're going away with a lot to think about. I wanna thank my former colleague at Fairfield, Elise Rabie for introducing Colleen and handling the questions in a way that, I think she should come back and do that all the time because she does it much better than I do. But of course, above all, we want to thank Colleen, Sister Colleen Gibson for this really remarkable event. I can only finish it in one way, thank her in one way to say this. We live in dark times, but I think over the past hour and a half, we've had a little grace and a little lightness introduced into these dark times. So thank you Colleen, thank you Elise, thank you all for being here and we look forward to seeing you all very soon. Thank you.


Sorry to be Dr. Buzzkill, but alcohol appears to be humanity's seven leading cause of death and disability. The safest level of drinking is none. But wait a second, what about the famous J-curve, where light to moderate drinkers appear to have lower mortality rates than the T-totalers at zero drinks a day? This may just be an artifact of the systemic misclassification of former drinkers as lifelong abstainers. This leads to the so-called sick-quitter effect, where the reason a person may be a non-drinker is because drinking made them sick, thereby making current drinkers look good in comparison. It's the same reason studies can find higher mortality among those who quit smoking compared to those who continue to smoke. It's not that abstention led to poor health, but poor health rather led to abstention.


The number one goal for every team here at Atlanta Falcons and 31 others is how do we make our roster better? You've talked about how you're going to play for 60 minutes, which they've done the last two seasons. That framework's in place. The culture, if you will, is in place. You've added some people to that and now you're going to get adds more to that. It's just about improving your total team. Now ideally you want to go into each draft and have the same mindset. And you want to draft good players with good skill sets and make sure you're not reaching for needs. Make sure you're staying disciplined to the board. We want to get an impact player regardless of what position it's in at that spot or in the first round. So we can move up. We can move down. We'll see. Flexibility is probably the best way to put it where you're not overreaching out of a need. So we feel really good about where we're at heading to Thursday night.  They're lying. Nobody really knows. We have a lot of options. Well, knowing the money that the Falcons had, it was going to be a matter of were they going to lump summit on one or two players or were they going to do it like they eventually did. And that's really spread it out to some areas. You get a Jesse Bates. You give him kind of the bigger deal, but then you say something for David Anyamata and you really address some needs, but you're not blowing your salary cap space on two or three players. When you've added so many good players to the team that you don't feel desperate at any spot, and yet you can still add to every spot. There's not one position where we would say we can't add a player there. We're not throwing darts. We've got a strategic plan. Like I said, we'd love to get everybody we target. We understand it's not the way, but there's a plan for these guys coming in. It's a domino effect, right? So wherever you take a player, whoever you take, then you can decide, okay, do we want to move back at this next pick? Do we want to move up? We might not make a single trade in this draft, or we might make four. You know, we don't see ourselves as a team that's ever going to just sit on our hands. If we see a player that we want, we want to try to figure out where to get it. And each pick, whether we're talking about the first pick or the pick in the third round, it's going to affect that next move. Thank God, man. Man, I appreciate you. I appreciate you, man. Hey, God is good. Let's go do this. Nijan, how you doing, bud? I'm doing awesome. How you doing? All right, man. We're fired up. Yup, yup. By the way, this thing fell. The only thing I got to say is either you or TQ's got to bring some of that Terry Black barbecue back up here. Hey, I got to go. Congrats, Nijan. Fired up. Yup. Go Horns. Congratulations, Nijan. Man, I appreciate you. Well, we're so not excited. I can't tell you. I mean, we just, this is a dream for us. We couldn't be happier that we could be joining the Atlanta Falcons. Yup, yup. I appreciate you. You want to pick the best player on the board. The best player on the board is going to be P.S.R. Robinson. Well, and since your general manager has drafted D, best of all, the Latly D, best of all, the Latly. There you go. With the eighth pick in the 2023 NFL draft, the Atlanta Falcons select B. John Robinson running back to Texas. The Falcons did it. The Atlanta Falcons had a highly talented, high character individual from Texas sitting on the draft board who just happens to play running back. Additional value be damned. I am excited to watch this group of players for Atlanta. When you have that guy, you go get him and you put him in your lineup. Yeah, man.  You know, I'm speechless, but I just can't wait to see what happens and how God bless me with the program. We're really excited about tonight. I mean, D. John, we hold him in high regard, on the field, off the field. We talk about positionless football, the versatility, the impact that he's going to make for us. We're extremely excited. The versatility part, where he's been effective. I mean, he did that at Texas at times, in his background, playing in the slot. We just feel he's an explosive weapon. He's a home run hitter. This is a good draft, so a lot of other good players on the board and a lot of other positions, and we're excited. We're going to bring in some good players. Matt? Hey, how you doing? Terry Fonto with the Falcons. Appreciate that. Where are you at right now? I'm back home in Quebec. You're in Quebec? It's going to be a long flight to get here, man, but look, we're extremely excited. I love it. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. We're going to be part of the formula that's going to take us to the next level. Yes, sir. Looking forward to it. Thank you. With the 38th pick and the 2023 NFL draft, the Atlanta Falcons have selected Matthew Merger. Not only added star power in this draft, but we also feel meat. They're getting a bigger physical, as you mentioned, road greater, 6'5", 323 pounds. They're getting bigger up front. Zach? Yo, what's up? Terry Fonto with the Falcons. What's going on? Ready to be a falcon, man? Hell, yeah. The Atlanta Falcons select Zach Harrison. Clearly value the lines of scrimmage. We know that's what games are, one and loss. And to get two players, Matt and Zach, we added size, strength, power up front, and both those guys are wired the right way. They're made up of the things that we value. And so we're really excited to bring both those players in. New England has made its pick at Atlanta's downfall. How you doing? Good, how you doing, man? Man, great, great. You want to be a falcon? Let's make it happen. We love everything you're about. Everything we preach. And we're just excited for you. Man, I appreciate it, coach. I can't wait. I absolutely love the Clark Phillips pick, cornerback out of Utah. But this gets a playmaker. Playmaker. Instincts, ball skills. Again, a tough competitive player, played a tough program. Highly productive, which I think is one of the better programs that sustain success. We have a lot of respect for that Utah program. It's certainly the way they play defense. And so we love their interactions with them. This is a guy that we had conviction on across the board, and we were excited that he was there when we picked him.  Yes, sir. I'm ready. All right, man. You are good, sir. And what happens to me with Helms is, does he contribute on defense? Absolutely. All of a sudden, when you start upgrading your talent, that upgrades the special teams as well. 100 percent. And Helms is going to be a core special teams player. We already know he can tackle. He led Alabama in tackling. So we know he can do that. But look what happened to Marquise Williams' group. Javon Gwynn, the first thing I start with is two-time captain. I mean, leaders.   There is a clear vision of what this staff wanted to do in the draft. Man, from the first pick, eighth overall to the seventh round, that's been the theme. We got smart, tough, highly competitive players. So very excited about the outcome of this draft. We kind of set it at the outset. There's a lot of people that work really hard. But it's very exciting to be able to wrap up a draft class like this and then get into the free agents. Obviously, they want to bring in, you know, a great football player. But you got to be great on the field and off the field.  You can't really do a job. And you want to do it to the best of your ability. So I think that that's what they want in a player. And, you know, I hope I can bring that to them. Iron Sharp and Zyron are like men's sharper man. We want to be very competitive because it's going to bring out the best in the people and the cream really rises in competitive situations. It goes back to the depth. Not just certain positions we've added, but the quality of players too. There's going to be a very, very competitive camp. Assuming that you don't have any major injuries, it's going to be a hard roster to make. And that's where you want it.


Sup guys how we doing welcome back to another video and welcome to The 93rd best player in the NFL for the year of 2021 as voted by his peers guys There is no time to lose We are looking at a man by the name of TJ Hawkinson, which is a name. I have never ever heard of my entire life So with that being said Time for another beverage. I can only hope you are doing the same And before we get into the video a quick word from our exclusive video sponsor read con one What's going on guys? It's me again first and foremost. 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Yeah, honestly, that's that's really all I can Do Seriously becoming a dad myself it does sort of tend to induce dad style jokes. I don't know where they come from they just do I Don't know what happens.  I don't know anyway, let's go a chick a chick a while while Real beast Stafford to Hawkinson Here we go He looks lean actually I'm gonna say I'm not gonna say he's the biggest But as we see right here, he knows how to lower his shoulder You know what you know what being an offensive player and due to the fact I haven't looked up any stats Recently, I think we owe him a bit of a a bit of an analysis. Let's analyze these stats Thomas James Hawkinson aka TJ is an American football title in for the Detroit Lions He was drafted pick number eight of the first round of the 2019 draft He made the Pro Bowl last year and lo and behold. He's made it to the top 100 He's 24 years of age six foot five 250 pounds is that not exactly what I predicted quite possibly 4.7 second 40 yard dash At six foot five and 250 pounds 37 and a half inch vertical jump. That's that's that's almost 40 inches guys That's that's ridiculous 10 foot three on the broad jump I probably would have expected a couple more inches and 17 reps on the bench now that for any man in any position Is impressive guys I tell you what this TJ Hawkinson from what I've from what I've seen so far really is a beast He played college football for the Iowa Hawkeyes and in 2018 he was awarded the John Mackie award as the nation's top tight end in college football Well, there you go, and then he went eighth pick overall not bad not bad at all I'm not gonna say that it would be too often that a tight end would be picked up that early in the draft but then When you think about it is this year there was a tight end picked up in the top five Kyle pits and looking at both of their stats I mean I wouldn't be surprised if Kyle pits as a rookie finds himself on this list Next year best of luck to the both of them, but this video is about Hawkinson Well, well, that's all you really need to know Not only a freak, but he looks like the oversized version of Christian McCaffrey That's good to hear Excuse don't do it against my Jags, please Young dude, that's killing it right now that Iowa. I mean, it's just like a factory of tight ends Speaking of Iowa and speaking of tight ends that reminds me Who was the player from Australia that went to Iowa and Got picked up through the international player pathway program. Ah Matt Leo Matt Leo. Yeah, you know what? I was confused. I thought he played tight end, but it was defensive end Same position different side of the ball. I guess But a guy who I'm hearing a whole lot about About his story more so than anything else is Darren Waller this guy right here In fact, I did see an Instagram post from him recently Celebrating four years sober. So well done at him Makes a lot of plays You know how big of a threat he was. He was a guy who he had to circle, you know He's a guy who had a lot of targets this year. It was a big part of the offense It's gonna sales well, I was assuming it was gonna be a clean catch for some Effective yards after the catch, but but no it was at his feet and at six foot five He was able to bend down and make the catch. It's very impressive TJ Hawkinson a young tight end that is really emerging in this offense So he scored a touchdown Oh my gosh, look at the screen you see that in the game of rugby Except in rugby there probably would have been about five guys from his own team behind him trying to keep him up off the ground and continuing forward because When you're in a position like that and the ball is held above the ground and there's more than one person from each side You know going back and forth trying to force the play It's called a mall and if the ball goes to ground It's over if the ball stays up off of the ground and you as the defensive team Can slow that mall to a standstill. It's your ball But if you're caught bringing the ball down to the ground so that that mall has to stop That's actually illegal the offensive side of the ball or the attack wants that ball to continue off of the ground Through the mall. So you're gonna get a lot of guys behind you pushing The defensive side of the ball wants one of two options to happen either They recruit enough players to then push back Against that force so that that ball doesn't continue forward anymore or even possibly goes back in which case Could be a turnover Secondly, they want to bring that ball to the ground, but they want to do it in a way that's not Penalizable or not illegal. So there's some real intricacies of the game some that even fly over my head But that was my Interpretation of a mall in rugby Six touchdowns He truly wishes he had only caught five what are we about to see here Oh, okay, but why did he only want to score five? Matt Ryan truly wishes he had only caught five I Me too Me too And I salute this big bopper Jason Kelsey, but this video is about TJ Hawkinson. So cheers, mate All the best for the coming year. It's not far away.  You won't miss him. He's six foot five. Anyways guys Thank you for watching as always head down to the description box below and check out the official channel sponsors Among other affiliate links and well, have a great day. See you on the next video