Most of us understand empathy to be something akin to a warm blanket; the idea that to be truly empathic we must be able to place ourselves in someone else’s shoes. It is important to note, however, that any exploration of empathy and its application in culture and society is insufficient if understood as an ability to know what another is thinking or feeling based solely on how we think or feel ourselves.

Let us not falsely assume that the times we find ourselves in is a first. We know that our nation has moved in and out of tragic periods throughout its history. You only have to pick up one of the latest bestsellers to learn about how whole generations of Americans were able to move the country from the brink of destruction before. We can do it again. Our future relies only on the will of the people who will create it, as well as those who will inhabit it.

In light of current events, it is easy to see America not as a certainty but as something tentative and fragile. As the “experiment” that it is. The proof of this fragility is all around us. Given current levels of political polarization, an ever-increasing economic and class divide, or the whispers turned headlines of a looming civil war, it can seem naïve, silly even, to think of America as a “done deal”.

How do we as Americans and as the Church make sense of this extraordinary moment? How do we begin to reverse the course of history we have been writing for far too long? And how do we begin to repair the damage done to our democracy and to our social fabric?