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What do we do when a beloved comedian known as 'America's Dad' is convicted of sexual assault? Or when we discover that the man who wrote 'all men are created equal' also enslaved hundreds of people? Or when priests are exposed as pedophiles? From the popular to the political to the profound, each day brings new revelations that respected people, traditions, and institutions are not what we thought they were. Despite the shock that these disclosures produce, this state of affairs is anything but new. Facing the concrete task of living well when our best moral resources are not only contaminated but also potentially corrupting is an enduring feature of human experience. In this book, Karen V. Guth identifies 'tainted legacies' as a pressing contemporary moral problem and ethical challenge. Constructing a typology of responses to compromised thinkers, traditions, and institutions, she demonstrates the relevance of age-old debates in Christian theology for those who confront legacies tarnished by the traumas of slavery, racism, and sexual violence.
A microcosm of the history of American slavery in a collection of the most important primary and secondary readings on slavery at Georgetown University and among the Maryland Jesuits
These essays, articles, and documents introduce readers to the history of Georgetown University’s involvement in slavery and recent efforts to confront its troubling past. It traces Georgetown’s “Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation Initiative” and the role of universities–uniquely situated to conduct that reckoning through research, teaching, and modeling thoughtful discussion–in this movement.
The intertwining of U.S. Catholicism and race-based slavery is a painful aspect of the Church’s history. Many scholars have shied away from this uncomfortable topic, but in recent years a cadre of historians have studied Catholics’ varied roles: as enslaved persons, slaveholders, defenders of slavery, and, in a few cases, advocates of abolition and emancipation. This collection of nine essays is divided into three sections: enslaved persons and slaveholders, debating abolition and emancipation, and historians and historiography. The studies, many of which are informed by recent archival discoveries, offer a model for historians seeking to understand the relationship between slavery and t...
A profound new volume that reckons with the history of an American Catholic Church embedded in and drawing benefits from White supremacy For the Church to become a truly anti-racist institution, we must first understand how today’s racial challenges are embedded in the theo-logic of American Christianity and the cultural production of our Christian educational institutions. As colleges and universities reckon with their involvement in slavery, Grace of the Ghosts asks Christian-affiliated institutions (of congregation, school, and media) to expand this reckoning with attention to the many ways they have been embedded in and drew benefits from American systems of White supremacy. Too often,...
"Between Freedom and Equality begins with the life of Capt. George Pointer, an enslaved African who purchased his freedom in 1793 while working for George Washington's Potomac Company. Authors Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green then follow the lives of five generations of Pointer's descendants as they lived and worked on the banks of the Potomac, in the port of Georgetown, and in a rural corner of the nation's capital. By tracing the story of one family and their experiences, Between Freedom and Equality offers a moving and inspiring look at the challenges that free African Americans have faced in Washington, DC, since before the district's founding ..."--
The first modern biography of financial pioneer and philanthropist W. W. Corcoran Before the Gilded Age reveals the extraordinary ways in which W. W. Corcoran shaped the emerging cultural elite and changed the capital and the country both for better and for worse. A complex and controversial character, Corcoran influenced banking and finance, art and American culture, philanthropy, and the nation’s capital. Based on extensive archival research, Before the Gilded Age examines the fascinating life of an entrepreneur ahead of his time. A generation before Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller donated vast sums of money, Corcoran gave away most of his fortune and helped shape American philan...
"This book offers a general history of the Jesuit order in the United States from the colonial era to the present. It comprises five chapters along with an introduction and an epilogue. The historical focus is on the Jesuits' institutional developments placed in front of a background of American religious, cultural, and social change. A thread of investigation running through the entire book is into the relationship of Jesuit activities in America to those in Europe, and then by the twentieth century (as US Jesuits are increasingly assigned to "foreign missions") to those around the globe, especially Latin America. The five chapters are organized chronologically and are divided as follows: the colonial period (mid-sixteenth to mid-eighteenth century), the suppression and restoration (late eighteenth/early nineteenth century), the nineteenth century, the early twentieth century, the late twentieth century. An epilogue offers reflections on the present and future in light of the past"--
A pathbreaking book about world history, global justice, and the climate crisis—featuring a new preface by the author. “Coursing with moral urgency and propelled by brilliant prose, this is more than argument. It's how we build the power needed to win.” —Naomi Klein A clear, new case for reparations as a “constructive,” future-oriented project that responds to the weight of history’s injustices with the equitable distribution of benefits and burdens. Centuries ago, Táíwò explains, European powers engineered the systems through which advantages and disadvantages still flow. Colonialism and transatlantic slavery forged schemes of injustice on an unprecedented scale, a world or...
Responding to the signs of the time, this book brings the lens of Catholic social thought (CST) to the enterprise of Catholic higher education in the United States. Scandals in the Church and the growth of religious non-affiliation in the culture have made being Catholic greatly challenging for Catholic colleges and universities, at the same time that the economics of higher education have mounted a challenge to the very viability of many institutions. This book throws light on what Catholic colleges and universities might and must do in order both to preserve their mission and renew it for the future. CST is concerned with the right ordering of social institutions, or in other words the sys...