by: Sr. Ann Killian,OP, Assistant Professor of English - University of Notre Dame

We live in a time of global war. The late Pope Francis invited us to theologize from that concrete situation. In his 2023 apostolic letter Ad theologiam promovendam, Francis wrote that the times demand “openness to the world” and a theology that is fundamentally contextual, dialogic, transdisciplinary, and sapiential. How can theological formation attune our senses to Sophia Wisdom, who is present even amid political violence, militarization, and ecocide?

Our schools and faith communities offer spaces where we can speak truthfully about what is happening. From my context as a Catholic sister committed to gospel nonviolence, I find those spaces on the peripheries of the institutional church among the peacemakers of Pax Christi USA, a group that has been advocating for disarmament, racial justice, and Palestinian liberation for more than 50 years. The temptation in our current moment is to react with urgency to every executive order the White House issues.

But the sheer volume and absurdity of it all is designed to overwhelm our opposition—and to distract us from the deep soulwork of collective conversion and social reparation.

To engage this work, I’m part of an experiment in spiritual formation with fellow Pax Christi members. We’ve convened a working group that is adopting a dialogic, transdisciplinary approach to nonviolence education and praxis. Guided by the work of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective, our process is rooted in storytelling, theological reflection, and self-examination.

We begin by recognizing that the world modernity has made is inherently violent and unsustainable. The modern conveniences we enjoy cause harm to God’s creation and to the poor. When did this invisible violence become apparent to each of us? Group members recall kairos moments when they became conscientized; we share stories of ancestors who resisted.

We hold in common a desire to unlearn our modern colonial habits of consuming and accumulating without limit, yet we still find ourselves reverting to transactional ways of relating or clinging to technocratic narratives of progress. Acknowledging the inner voice that resists change, we ask what loss needs to be grieved. We name the harm caused by the Catholic Church, which sanctioned and participated in the murder and enslavement of Black and Indigenous peoples, settler-colonial thefts of land and labor, and the privatization of public goods. Sometimes the group sits in silence, present to the anguish and shame and longing for transformation.

It is painful to look for long at the deep religious and ecclesial roots of our current crisis. But looking together at the thing that is killing us—the catastrophe we have collectively wrought—may be a way to survive through crisis and midwife a future. Pope Francis urged the church to embrace the synodal way of journeying together through history with respect for the gifts each culture brings. This entails listening to people like the Indigenous leaders at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, who have survived centuries of colonial and genocidal oppression while continuing to protect the forest. They have wisdom to teach those with ears to hear.

So many of us yearn to preserve life. To do so requires letting go of the world as we know it—and clinging to the Living One who goes before us.