Hope for Common Ground

This book could not have come at a better time. When so many people both in the church and in society seem hopelessly divided over pressing ethical issues, Rubio shows us a path forward by focusing on the often overlooked importance of local communities, neighborhood organizations, and churches as ways of gathering us together to find common ground we may not have thought to be possible. Clearly written, richly researched, balanced, and eminently accessible, Hope for Common Ground deftly exemplifies how Catholic social teaching can aid us in addressing some of the most contested issues that confront us. It's a gift for anyone concerned about the common good. -- Paul J. Waddell, Professor of Theology & Religious Studies, St. Norbert College In Hope for Common Ground, respected theological ethicist Julie Hanlon Rubio offers a fresh, balanced, insightful, and cumulatively persuasive case for local engagements around commonly-held values as a way beyond the stale left-right, liberal-conservative polarizations that beset so many US Catholics and their neighbors today. Never denying nor forgetting the indispensable places of the personal and the structural levels for advancing human well-being, justice, and the common good, Rubio argues that on-the-ground Catholic and Christian communities possess a special genius for and calling to activism in 'the spaces between' the personal/familial and the political: in neighborhoods, civic life, local institutions, voluntary associations and grassroots organizing. -- Christine Firer Hinze, Professor of Theology, Director, Francis & Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies, Fordham University

Suitable for scholars, students, religious, and lay readers, this title investigates how Catholics divided by partisan rancor can better solve problems and understand one another.Much like the rest of the country, American Catholics are politically divided, perhaps more so now than at any point in their history. In this learned but accessible work for scholars, students, and religious and lay readers, ethicist Julie Hanlon Rubio suggests that there is a way beyond red versus blue for orthodox and progressive Catholics. In a call for believers on both sides of the liberal-conservative divide to put aside labels and rhetoric, Rubio, a leading scholar in marriage and family for more than twenty years, demonstrates that common ground does exist in the local sphere between the personal and the political. In Hope for Common Ground, Rubio draws on Catholic Social Thought to explore ways to bring Catholics together. Despite their differences, Catholics across the political spectrum can share responsibility for social sin and work within communities to contribute to social progress. Rubio expands this common space into in-depth discussions on family fragility, poverty, abortion, and end-of-life care. These four issues, though divisive, are part of a seamless worldview that holds all human life as sacred. Rubio argues that if those on different sides focus on what can be done to solve social problems in "the space between" or local communities, opposing sides will see they are not so far apart as they think. The common ground thus created can then lead to far-reaching progress on even the most divisive issues -- and help quiet the discord tearing apart the Church.