Is There a Common Good in Our Common Home?
A new podcast from the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education initiates conversations around pressing questions of justice facing our world.
In January 2017, the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education launches a new podcast called INTEGRAL, exploring the challenging and poignant question: “Is there a common good in our common home?” The podcast will feature SCU faculty from across the university, drawing on their research and teaching disciplines to initiate conversations for listeners around pressing questions of justice facing our world today.
“The events of this last year, both in our country and across the globe, have lent a sense of urgency to this question of the common good,“ said Theresa Ladrigan-Whelpley, the Director of Bannan Institutes at Santa Clara University. “We hope this podcast will invite listeners to critically reflect on issues of injustice facing our communities and consider how these issues impact not just some of us, but all of us. How are we called to enter more deeply into our common humanity? How are we called to respond in little and big ways?”
“Santa Clara’s Jesuit, Catholic mission underwrites our responsibility to form leaders who are not only knowledgeable, but also who are prepared to make a transformative impact on our world,” said Ladrigan-Whelpley. “We hope our listeners will find themselves around a dinner table saying: ‘I heard this podcast, it surfaced some questions for me, questions about who I am, who we all are.,’ and discern a call to action.” Pope Francis in his recent encyclical, Laudato Si’ On Care for Our Common Home urges that in “the present condition of global society, where injustices abound and growing numbers of people are deprived of basic human rights and considered expendable, the principle of the common good becomes, logically and inevitably, a summons to solidarity...” (n. 158). Ladrigan-Whelpley hopes that this podcast may become a part of that summons to solidarity.
INTEGRAL will launch with four seasons, with each season featuring six 20-minute episodes. The first season focuses on issues of racial and ethnic justice and the common good. The next three seasons will take up issues of economic justice, gender justice, and environmental justice and the common good. You can find INTEGRAL on iTunes, Soundcloud, Podbean, and at scu.edu/integral.
The Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education promotes and enhances the distinctively Jesuit, Catholic tradition of education at Santa Clara University and seeks to provide leadership for the integration of faith, justice, and the intellectual life on campus and in the broader community. This podcast is an innovative approach to deepening the impact of Santa Clara University’s mission as the Jesuit University in Silicon Valley.
For those residing in the Bay Area, the Ignatian Center will be hosting quarterly luncheon discussions with podcast contributors, inviting listeners into deeper dialogue around the question of the common good throughout the year. Visit scu.edu/integral for more details and to RSVP.