Beyond Wealth and Housing: Dissolving the Borders of the Mind

Can ancient spiritual truths reshape modern political and economic landscapes?

In this illuminating episode of the Leading Dialogues podcast, Swami Purnananda sits down with Sister Sheila Curran of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy. Together, they bridge the worlds of Eastern metaphysics, Christian mysticism, and radical social activism to examine how spirituality can express itself through structural justice and human rights.

Sister Sheila details her extensive background with Social Justice Ireland and her time working alongside liberation theologians like Gustavo Gutiérrez in Peru. The conversation traces the revolutionary history of Ireland's "Walking Nuns," who broke traditional cloister walls to serve the poor, and draws striking parallels to the egalitarian spiritual movements led by Swami Vivekananda and Sister Nivedita in India.

Turn your attention to the pressing crises of the modern world as the discussion tackles the moral failures of the housing crisis, how government negligence fuels anti-immigrant scapegoating, and the delicate peace-building lessons carved out of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Finally, explore a profound meditation on "internal borders," the deep-seated prejudices of the human heart, and discover how both the Vedantic vision of universal oneness and Christ’s "Kingdom of Heaven within" provide the ultimate remedy for a fractured society.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Well, I'm delighted to welcome another guest on our Leading Dialogues podcast. I'm delighted to introduce to you Sister Sheena Curran, who is a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, the Northern Branch here in Ireland. She also holds a master's in equality studies at the UCD here in Dublin and in biblical ministry at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. She got that in 2011. And she also has a doctorate of ministry from that same Catholic Theological Union. And so you'll see she's a very distinguished guest. In addition to that, she lived in Peru for many years, ministering in a shanty town in the outskirts of the city of Lima, and while also, of course, working in the institute of Bartolome de las Castas, which is a social justice and human rights non-governmental organization founded by the liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez. She was working alongside him and developed a deep understanding of liberation theology as a result. At present, Sister Sheila works as an eco-feminist liberation theologian and a social justice and civil rights advocate, and her interdisciplinary approach, not only to theology, but also the interface between life experience and what she describes as the biblical world. So she currently works with migrants and refugees in the City of Dublin while also giving courses, retreats, conferences in Ireland and also internationally. So welcome, if I may, call you Sheila.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Thank you. Thank you, Sami. Thank you for inviting me to be part of your podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

All good. Well, I I'm going to start with a question that we didn't actually pose to you, and that is that recently you gave a document, budget choices, for 2027 to the government. And I just wondered if you could give me a brief background and what the contents were and what the aims were of making such a document.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Well, budget I'm a board member of a group called Social Justice Ireland. And Social Justice Ireland is an organization. Um it was originally founded by two religious people called Sean Healy and Bridget Reynolds as part of the Justice Office of the Conference of Religious in Ireland for many years. It's now an independent organization run by a group of lay people, which has always looked at structural justice issues in Ireland. Every year, for the last 35 years, I'd say if not more, it always has produced a document coming up to the budget in Ireland. So it analyses the government's finances, where the government has been using its finances, and it makes proposals on how to work for a more fairer and just Ireland. So under every part of the government's program, like whether it is social welfare, the environment, rural and urban divide, all of those issues, and how they could use both taxation differently, proposing it, it's costed, financed, showing how taxation could be more fair in the light of creating a more equal and just Ireland. So it's a quite a heavy document. It's always reviewed and analyzed by other economists. But it does put forward a very different way in which the government could be using its resources. Of course, as you know, Ireland is quite a rich country, very much a rich country, and it's holding the presidency of the EU at the moment. And that's a very big moment for us in the country. And like so the proposals are even more radical in the light of what we could be setting out. And we also, it's used by other groups as a lobby document on their areas that they may work, you know, specific organizations like housing or social welfare or whatever may use the document and its materials to lobby for their clientele as well. So that's what it is. It's produced every year. And then after the budget, we analyze the budget in the light of the proposal and what the budget may or may not have achieved.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

And uh, I mean, in the past, has it had a positive impact? Uh, has it been taken into consideration seriously and implemented?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yes, it's some it depends on the governments, as you know, like the political parties. Some political parties take aspects of it very seriously because it is costed, it is researched. Other parties may not be in agreement because their emphasis is on creating more wealth or whatever, in the light of how that wealth is like Ireland's taxation policy is not a good taxation policy. Most of our taxation comes from global investment, particularly through the IT sector or through the data research, you know, the data centers and all of that. So most of our big off the big money we have comes from taxation, like to companies like Google or like Meta and all of these companies. So they look at a different way in which we could have more equal taxation, more taxing of you know, the very wealthy, more equal distribution of wealth, not just through the PAYE sector. So, I mean, it always depends, but some things have been, you know, taken seriously, like the basic income, looking for a basic income which has been implemented for some people in the arts in Ireland. Social Justice Ireland pioneered the basic income about 30 years ago as a way in which it could create a different type of economy in Ireland. You have to keep lobbying, you know, you have to keep going. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Uh I mean, all of this is really under the remit, if you want to call it that, the kind of uh drive and purpose of the uh Congregation of Sisters of Mercy. And maybe you could just tell us a little bit about the foundation of that in the 19th century. And the founder, I think uh she's been elevated to venerable as far as I understand, and uh how widespread the congregation is internationally.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Well, the Sisters of Mercy were founded by a woman called Catherine McAuley, a Dublin woman, and she was in her 40s. She used her inheritance to she was a woman that I mean, she has a very, very interesting history. It would take you all day to go through her history because she was uh orphaned. She lived with a family who were Quakers, and um they give her the wealth um when she she was orphaned with her brothers, and they when they died, she got the wealth, which was a house in Kulak. Um it's it's a house owned now by the Sisters of Mercy still, out in a place called Kulak, which would have been a poorer area of Dublin, but would have been a rural area of Dublin back in the day. She didn't set out to found a congregation. It wasn't her aim, like she was Catholic, but she didn't set out necessarily to found a religious order. She, with other women, two other women in particular, set out to help the needs of the poor and disenfranchised in Ireland of that time, particularly women and children, where she saw that women were being abused in some of the big grand houses of Dublin and you know, had no other skill set to which they could have um found employment or and the children who were poor were not getting educated. People who were sick were, you know not in places to be cared for because Dublin was a very, very impoverished place. Ireland was very impoverished. Um particularly after the Civil War and because of the famine and all of that. But anyway, when she had that wealth, she decided to she bought a property in Baggett Street in Dublin, and she opened a house of mercy in 1827. But Ireland was a very, very Catholic country and very dominated by the hierarchy. So the bishop did not particularly like that these women were running this uh place and I mean for all these poor people to come into, and more or less encouraged her to become uh to become a religious. So she joined the Presentation Sisters for three years to have that formation, and she and the th two other women with her founded the Sisters of Mercy in 1831. And the House of Mercy was opened. Um Baggett Street was the first House of Mercy. Our structure at that time was that when there was a need, other women joined her. Other people were. We were the first congregation in Ireland that did not have what they call cloister. Most religious congregations were enclosed or they didn't go out in the streets. These were known as the walking nuns. They went around the city of Dublin seeking out the poor and the sick, particularly. There was, of course, a cholera pandemic, so they um attended to the needs, and some of the sisters contacted cholera and died. But every place then that saw these sisters looked for more members in Ireland and in Britain at that time. And they sent two or three sisters to respond to that need. Wherever there were some Irish priests, these sisters, so they founded their own foundations. They were independent once they grew. The congregation grew quite extensively, and it would have been the congregation. When I joined the Sisters of Mercy, I was 20 in 1981. We were four and a half thousand sisters in Ireland alone. Needless to say, that demographic has changed radically since then. But um our congregation still is quite a large congregation. It is very much, you know.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

It's about 5,000 at the moment, is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Yeah, and we are in Ireland, England, the Americas, Africa, particularly Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria, Asia, and Australia.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

How did you get to Peru then?

SPEAKER_00 10:59

We had um I worked uh like as you know, I worked both in Belfast and in Dublin, and at that time we were looking for people to respond um to the needs in South America. And uh we were one we merged into one congregation in 1994. So there was a call out for people to respond to the needs to go to Peru and South America. I had always been, from I was very young, a member of a support group for Latin America. Because when I worked in Belfast, um, you know, the needs of like at that time in the 80s in Latin America, it was a lot of dictatorships, there was a lot of violence, there were a lot of people killed, including religious women and men. And um, so we were very much on the grounds of inequality and injustice. So I thought I would go to Peru. So I went to Peru in 1995. And um we had two, three missions in Peru. We were also part of the larger Mercy group because there were Mercies from the Americas, there were Mercies from Australia and New Zealand, as well as mercies from England and Ireland. We were 56 Mercy sisters in Peru at the time I went there. Needless to say, we're only about 11 Mercy sisters in Peru at this time.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Right. I mean, I can't help thinking uh around the time of um the formation, as it were, of uh the your congregation, uh actually a bit later, uh our order of, well, the order of monks founded by Swami Vivekananda was very different because again, it was responding really to the needs in India of the poorest of the poor. And it was just a nevadita from Ireland, from Dunganon, who was very much at the center of upliftment of women in India and of establishing schools. Because I think it's true to say, though, that in um Catherine's time there would have been the the education system would have been dominated by the Church of Ireland. Would that be correct?

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Well, you know, Ireland was occupied by Britain and um the dominance, you know, there wasn't Catholic emancipation, you know, like until we had Catholics were oppressed and therefore could not uh you know witness to their faith freely at that time. And it was particularly um Prototism um would have been the order of the day. Um like Catherine was reared by both a Protestant and Quaker family. But um the need of more because Ireland was very, very impoverished. Like it was Catholics who couldn't own land, they couldn't own their own house, you know, they didn't have access to education. Healthcare was, you know, relatively scarce. We found it a lot of hospitals here at that time. Um as with other religious orders of the time, you know, the Catholics were so impoverished, and therefore the response you know for that need um became a very growing thing. But it was also that the state did not take on its responsibility. Right. The state has not taken on its responsibilities. And even though there are scandals associated with my order around orphanages, you know, mother and baby homes or things called Magdalene laundries, when they're taken out of their context and taken out of the context of what happens to people who are poor, and when institutionalization and how people are seen in a particular period of time, it gets a bit warped. It doesn't mean to say that things were not right, but it also doesn't give the fully fledged picture of the demand and needs and the lack of resourcing, but also how women were viewed, you know, women who had children out of wedlock, women who had children, you know, in all sorts of circumstances, not only through abuse, but you know, through the abuse of power of men who would have been very wealthy, didn't want their children known. I mean, this is all over the world, but um at that time the structure was very much an oppressed structure in Ireland, as I say, because of the male dominant hierarchical vision of church. But it means today also we still have people who are impoverished, we still have the poor who do not get their rights, we still have a very unequal system. So things haven't leveled out, despite the scandals, despite everything we say, we know, and you live in Ireland, you know, that there is great inequality and that there is great need, and people who are homeless or people, children who are homeless on the streets of Dublin or any other big town in Ireland still exists.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Well, that kind of brings me then to the next uh thing, uh, and that is uh what, in your view, would be the the uh key issues now in terms of social justice and human rights uh in Ireland as such?

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Well, uh you know, one of the biggest ones, and it's not just in Ireland, it's across the EU generally, is housing and homelessness. You know, how come we are such a wealthy country that we had stopped building social housing, affordable rental housing for people, the people cannot find a home. Even people who are earning reasonably good salaries cannot get a mortgage. You know, that is a scandal. It's a scandal to how we are living. But you need a place to live, everybody needs a place to live, to live with dignity and respect.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

And I suppose particularly in an Ireland where historically uh land ownership and domestic ownership was uh was uh was was not available historically or was denied even. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

So that's one of the biggest issues of all time. You know, people cannot find a place to live. And that the most of the housing is uh you know is controlled by the private sector, who are making huge, huge profit. And that is a moral question. It's a it's a moral question for anybody, regardless, you know, of a faith tradition. There's also a huge issue around changing landscape of the population of Ireland. Ireland would have been, you know, for most of my growing up period of time, Eurocentric white, you know, mainly white people in Ireland, mostly Christian, you know, give or take, some of the Jewish population, a few maybe, you know, other religions, like Muslims that might have come in to study, you know, mainly people who came of another culture and of another color to Ireland were either, you know, coming to study or holding, you know, a research profile, generally speaking, broad stroke, not necessarily all the data. But that demographic changed from the latter part, probably the end of the 90s into the 2000s. And Ireland was no longer a place where people in my generation grew to leave the country, especially in the 80s where there was huge unemployment and huge poverty. They were all coming to our country from all these countries. So there's a huge different demographic. You can stand now in Dublin, you can hear accents from all over the world, you have people from all different cultures. But how we manage that is an opportunity for us. It's an opportunity for us to lead, how we can manage that. And that is a serious question because while there are incidences of racism, discrimination, Islamophobia, or any other, like whether it's anti-Semitic or whatever, they're quite low in relation to what's going on in other parts of Europe. But if we do not do something about that now and tackle it seriously, and open spaces of real dialogue, as you know, what we try to do in Dublin City Interfaith Forum, we will be down those roads of more serious problems. But it is a richness, and we know that from research from different groups that do the research that most people in Ireland are not anti different diverse groups in their place. There is a small percentage who have the louder voices in that space at the moment. So as I say, it's how we really, really work hard to make sure that that little voice doesn't become the dominant voice.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

And I suppose that uh minority is echoing uh supposed situations in UK and other parts of Europe, maybe. Um and uh I I you know the issues of uh migration and refugees, which are two distinct things, you know, but somehow are conflated in many people's minds. And one wonders what the key issues are currently for those people, in your view.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Well, also if you're just in like I come from Donegal and there's a mica crisis, for example, houses that were built with defective blocks, thousands and thousands of homes that people thought my brother's one of them, you know, that they had their home and that their mortgage is paid, and that in their 60s now they can look towards retiring and whatever, and find that their houses were crumbling. So they are very angry because the person who made these blocks, the company who made these blocks, is not reprimanded. They cannot, they're only given a small grant because the government will not do take 100% responsibility for the fact that even though these houses were supervised under governmental law to be built correctly, were built incorrectly. So people with anger like that project their anger onto these groups that are coming as refugees because they think they're getting everything and these other people are getting nothing, when the responsibility lies with the government. And it suits the government to have a rhetoric that doesn't blame them. So you have to really work hard at projecting the right information. When people receive the correct information, the vulnerable group is not the target. It's the government that needs to be the target, and that's the work that's really hard. It's how to get out different messaging and and it's how to ensure that the facts are given. And also when we challenge the government rhetoric, because some of our parliamentarians have been using that rhetoric to their advantage. Like just this week we had since the new EU EU laws on migration have come in, that one, you know, nine out of ten people have been turned away at our border. I mean, that is probably factually incorrect, but it makes a good headline. And then people think, oh, this government's really tackling all these millions of people when we know there is less and less people coming to Ireland because they're experiencing homelessness, they're experiencing it difficult to get employment, they're experiencing you know some of the hardships. So it's really difficult, but the work is how to get out proper messaging, which is groups like ours are trying to do, that we ensure that there's spaces for dialogue. There's a basis for correct information, and that the targeting of the lobbying and the targeting of the messaging goes to the correct sources.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Are there lessons we can learn related to this in some way from uh what do you call the troubles in Northern Ireland?

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Well, like we are we have a very delicate peace process in Northern Ireland. We have a very delicate peace process. And um like the way migration is used as a buffer around the border. Like I've grown I grew up in a border town and I grew up and I lived in Belfast during some of the worst periods of the troubles. War doesn't achieve anything and all wars end in dialogue. Doesn't matter how long it takes, all wars end in dialogue. But we also know that everybody has to be at the table for that dialogue. John Hume and the man who's gone to God, when he first started to have dialogue with the IRA, everybody bullierized him because he maintained they had to be at the table. No more than the RUC, the DUP, whoever it was had to be at the table for peace to be achieved. And that you have to stay with the dialogue. You have to stay, you have to keep it going. It's not easy, it's not straightforward, but it is the only way to achieve peace. And that's what we have to ensure that that dialogue space remains there and that it's work that peace comes, but it has to be maintained, and to work for peace is an ongoing long-term project. So what we're learning in from all that happened in the north, and to keep that peace is truth telling, justice, how to bring justice about. It's not revenge, how to get justice, how to know what happened at periods of time, what actually happened, how to do probably, you know, reconciliation. That's not a term like that's all fluffy and you know forgiveness and that, but you have to work hard to achieve that. And it comes with truth telling, dialogue, and we are learning to keep that to the fore. And up until now, we have managed to keep the peace process going.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

Well, that was my next uh question comment was um other institutions or organized ways or mechanisms of doing exactly what you're saying?

SPEAKER_00 24:27

There are like I mean, there's the inter there's a shared island initiative, you know, north and south. There is the religious organizations to which we're all a part, you know, when they bring together, because some of the really good work for peace building has been brought by people of faith. Faith groups coming together. Centres like Coramalia in in Northern Ireland, and here in the Republic you have um Glen Creed, and these have worked very hard to bring reconciliation and peace building. The government has the Shared Island Initiative, which it brings different, you know, from different things like you know, investment, uh business values, you know, what values? Like this is the EU project, even though Northern Ireland is in that delicate position because of Brexit, that it's not part of, you know, England is not part of the EU. The UK is not part of the EU. So how do you maintain the values of you know diversity, democracy? How do you safeguard these? And these are real questions in a world order and a global environment that's changing rapidly all the time. So, yes, there are institutions, but we have to keep being there. We have to keep being in the spaces and keep asking for those spaces to be opened. Yes. Like, you know, when we were at um uh the last uh meeting that we had um over in DCU about, you know, we were invited to hear Mariah McGuinness give a speech about you know Brexit and the EU and what happened and how that dialogue, these are opportunities and spaces that we have to keep the dialogue going, to keep the spaces open, and to keep making sure that we don't go down the road to violence again.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Uh one curiosity question, completely different. Um so uh when the congregation uh the Sisters of Mercy was founded as a congregation, they were given a monastic uniform, so to speak. And that doesn't seem to be the case. And I was just wondering, out of pure curiosity, uh why that is, so why the break is there and what advantages there would be in your specific work for not having the uh non-uniform, so to speak, or the habit actually, I suppose. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Well, the habits of congregations, you know, including our own, they were all to do with a peasant dress at the time. Most congregations, you know, took on what would have been a very simple dress at the time. And in Catherine Macaulay's case, you know, i it the uniform, especially the headgear, you know, the the veil and that was because like in the Catholic Church at the time, you could not go into the church without your head covered. So these veils that lots of religious orders, you know, adapted at the time was to keep your head covered, and then there was a particular religious format, whether it was from French congregations to other Europeans, the style address, you know, was to have your head covered, and then whatever was the dress of the time. And that stuck. It's like a bit like some of the bad theology and in in Catholic theology. You wonder how does that stick so long when other things moved? And part of it was a control. It was a control of how women because to be a woman, to look like a woman and to operate as women, as it still is, you know, for the Catholic Church, you know, this divide between because we do not have equality in the Catholic Church, it is a very difficult thing around dress, you know, your body shape, your image, you know, whatever. And to be stylish, you know, was seen to be a mortal sin. But as congregations develop, particularly in Europe, you know, um, a lot of them shed away those uh dresses and just use the ordinary dress of people of the day. Unfortunately for some of the more conservative orders, you know, there is that battle about bringing back in a religious habit. But you're very identifiable. You know, if you were in Dublin back in the 70s, 80s, you saw floods of these people walking around Dublin, everybody knew they were nuns. Um, but today nobody knows, you know, unless you do wear a habit. And that has been always a running battle for me personally, and for a lot of people like me in my group, is to be an ordinary person in the midst. And also that hierarchy, you know, religious was seen as a step above humanity.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

You know, a priest or a nun was seen as something that was a step above humanity. And that was never meant to be the case. That wasn't what we're my congregation was about. And like that crept in very much, you know, within Irish society quite a lot. And even in Latin America, you would be very, very well respected. And while there is a sense of respect that's for every human being to be respected, it's that divide that you were like as if you walked, you know, kind of about two inches above the ground.

SPEAKER_01 29:31

Well, if I can say we're endangered ourselves, you know, because um uh, for example, um in India, uhstronomy is you know revered. Uh well, uh we call it they're called Maharaj, you know. Maharaj, the word Maharaj is used in three contexts. A cook for a cook is called Maharaj. Of course, a Maharaj, a king is called that. And uh Sanyasin renunciant is also called that. And uh I people are surprised, they go to America, for example, and they see most of our Swamis dressed just in civilian dress jeans, teachers, that kind of thing, you know. And uh sometimes people get a culture shock who are not used to that. And only the the uh the head monk, if you will, would would wear that. But of course, for formal ritualistic purposes, we we, you know, for worship and communal prayer and meditation and so on, we use that, we we wear that. But uh I I I got into trouble myself because when we go to Dunganan, where people are used to seeing the monks walking around in the Geroa cloth, and there was a particular monk visiting, a well-known monk, Swami Chitananda, great author. And um he uh I took him to the airport and he said, you know, Swami Prabhavananda, one of the pioneers of uh of the movement in uh in America, uh, used to say, Outside the monastery, you don't wear anything to do with monks or anything, you know. Inside the monastery, yes, but outside, no. And in France, for example, we have that very strict rule that uh if we step out of the monastic grounds, we do not wear anything to do with uh with uh monasteries or anything like that. Uh we don't draw attention to ourselves. We have two kinds of groups of thinking. One is we dress deliberately like that so people ask us a question, who are you? And then we can do some kind of undercover missionary work. And the other would be just to not to draw attention to oneself, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

And that would be kind of similar, you know, the debates that go on, like you know, people always would say to me, but I didn't know you were, you know, you you don't look like a nun. And I'd say, but what does a nun look like? And like nuns are really the term nun is for enclosed sisters. Yes. Sisters are for those that are what we call an active you know, mission or you know, mission. And um the other side of it was that Catherine McAuley of her essence was to be with the people walking alongside, accompanying the people on the ground. So it was never meant to have this divide of convents, you know, structures that were so big, removed, you know, that was part of how the Catholic Church established itself in Ireland very much. While in the changes that came about after Vatican II, you know, which was a big revolution in the Catholic Church, was to change that structure. So people accompanied the people, lived like the people, where they're amongst the people, were you know carrying their pain, their struggles, especially those that were on the margins. And that's what forms our lives. You know, once you're urooted with the people that are most exploited in any culture, it tells you more about how a society is run and um it makes all the sense in the world, you know.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

And then they don't see you if if you're not about trying to put yourself two s two steps above anybody. Because we're only human beings, you know, we're mortal, we're flawed, and one of the things the scandals have brought us is into that where we get a lot of really bad rhetoric back now. You know, religion in Ireland doesn't have the same what would you say? It's it's not for a lot of people, religion's not important anymore. And it's not that you want to dominate a religious discourse, but the values of you know secularization and um all these horrible things that money just achieves everything, you can buy whatever you want in the market, people are marketable, life is marketable, the environment can be damaged in whatever way. You know, because that that kind of push in the global world is really sad when our values around safeguarding our common home, the dignity and respect for every human being, and that everybody has a right to be able to live life with dignity.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

And I suppose this really is what was behind this liberation theology, if we want to call that of Gustava Gutierrez. Um because I think uh in my understanding, liberation theology, that term, was in many ways an anathema in the Catholic Church. And yet that that stain never never uh never touched him, and quite legitimately he was all about the loving heart, I suppose, and the compassion for the poor and serving the needs of those poor people.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Well, Gustavo was a you know a diocesan priest originally in Peru. Um after the Vatican Council, the the Vatican Council was this big revolution, you know, where all the church the people came together. And one of the themes of the Vatican Council would have been the inequality in the world. But the West dominated that debate. So it was, you know, church in the modern world, like you know, more about the industrialization of the modern world. But the the bishops of Latin America, when they came back to their count their continent, they held a big meeting called um a meeting called Puebla and Medine, these conference of bishops came together to say how does Vatican II implement itself in our con continent? And it was a very unequal continent. It was ninety percent Christian, but very unequal. So people like Gustavo, who was a young theologian with people like Leonardo Boff, John Sobrino, these were all they had studied in Europe, they had studied in France, they studied under a a very famous Catholic theologian called Chenu and Ranner, Karl Rahner, and they came back and they said, Well, that's all very fine for them over there in this different type of world. What does this theology mean here in this continent where there are great gaps between rich and poor? And that wasn't enough to give charity to the poor. You know, the way the these terms, well, the poor you will always have with you, or you know, um give arms, you know. Poor people are poor because there is a reason why they are poor. There is a structural way in which people are kept poor. So that was the beginning. They used Marxist theory, you know, the way Marx was all about, you know, this thing about so it was that was a big thing at the time. So they were going around talking about structural injustice as a sin. That the poor are not poor because they're lazy, because they're no good, because they don't want, you know, like, and so you can throw your arms to the side. There is poverty because it is structurally orchestrated, and because the resources and the wealth of countries like Peru, which is an extremely wealthy country resource-wise, is a moral place to be. And that then formed a theology called liberationist theology, began to look at rereading the Bible from the standpoint of the poor. And the poor got that in their own hands, and they began to stand up for their rights, they became agents of their own destiny, and that caused huge problems. And for some in the Catholic Church at that time, like John Paul II, who was coming out of a very different context, began to question these people. Now Gustavo was never vilified totally by Rome, he was never silenced by Rome. But he once uh Pope Francis came into vogue, all that took on a new emphasis, as it is with the present Pope, in looking at the needs of migrants, refugees, the needs of the poor, the voice of the poor as being, you know, an image of God, like if this is how you treat people well, you know, this is how you treat it.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

I think that's one of the difficulties with a global organization that tries to give a panacea to everybody in uh regardless of the context. Um I see you, you know, you have um uh house that so to speak in Kenya. Well, yeah, I know in Africa, you know, Sunday is an all-day uh spiritual event for Catholics. So that uh people go, it's a family thing, it's a social thing. And the mass takes something like two hours. And everyone enjoys it, and the singing and the the cultural input is huge, you know. And uh it's uh it's a day that people look forward to. And of course, I was surprised when I came to Ireland to be told, oh, um we go to Father So-and-so because we're in and out in 20 minutes, you know.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

It's a completely the context matters and everything, you know, and um but it's also around how liturgies are done, you know, like when people don't put in, you know, when I was in Peru, liturgy is very vibrant, it's very participative. It's not just the priest up there because there's more equality, at least, you know, like everywhere there's differences. But in the the parishes I worked in, and they people are more involved in the running of their parishes, they're more involved in the organization, they're also trained to accompany the sick, to accompany people who are grieving. Theology is done for everybody, not just the religious people, um, education and that. In Ireland, we have a long ways to go in that. And um very often a priest is just up there, you know, going through the liturgy as if it was just a shopping list. Yeah. People stay for that, you know.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

There are many inputs uh that have formed you and your sense of social justice and what have you. And uh so I see that uh Peru is an influence, I see Northern Ireland is an influence, or living on a border town is an influence, the uh involvement that you have in Ireland and also in Dublin with social activities, movements, and the whole ethos of your congregation. With all of that, uh what kind of lessons do you think that uh you have that acts as a solution or a series of solutions? I know you've mentioned some before, but uh, is there anything additional from your experience in Peru and the remedies that were applied there, experience in the border town, experience in Dublin, Ireland, uh, and elsewhere that you could you know give us uh uh from your experience?

SPEAKER_00 40:55

It's a kind of vague, vague kind of But I like I mean I think one of the things that I always would say to people is because I grew up in a border town, you know, that and border borders generally are political constructs, but I also learned that you can have borders in your mind and in your heart. And very often they're harder to shift than the borders that are political constructs.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 41:18

That is a border in your mind about who you are or whatever. Yes, the other thing is that people who human beings are human beings. They're fragile, they're different, they can have all sorts of things, but humanity as a construct and humanity as people, when you bring people together, things change and things can happen. Yes. So creating communities, creating spaces for dealing with difference and dialogue works. When I see the pain in your eye and you see the pain in my eye, we're in a very different space.

SPEAKER_01 41:55

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

That is one thing that I've learned that when you really with the person I really dislike, the person I find really difficult around the table, when we really sit, rather than my prejudice and my mind being constantly, well, I know they'll never do this, they'll never do that, that you have to living as a religious in a community has taught me that so much. Community is not easy. No. But it works and it it it kind of has from the individual worlds that we are now predominantly, that it's my it's me, me, me, I, I, I doesn't fulfill. And that the vacuums that people feel in life, you know, even though we became a wealthier country in Ireland and people can have a standard of living that was beyond my dreams in my lifetime, you know, when I grew up, that that doesn't give you everything.

unknown 42:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 42:47

You don't have to have necessarily a religious faith belief to realize that, but people search for something deeper.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

Yeah. Well, the way we handle it, or I if you want to put it that way, the way we approach it is that we recognize these borders. And because these internal borders are there, and are there with everybody, as you say, it's part of the humanity. And how to remove these borders is to have a deeper understanding of the human person, not just in terms of the difference of personality and history and the psychological accumulation that comes from that, which we all have, but also to have that penetrating vision, probably which Christ had, which went to the heart of every person and saw the unity of existence there that Jesus described as the kingdom of heaven within. And so, and I think somebody in the in India, uh, Mother Teresa had that expression, I'm seeing, I'm serving the Christ within, you know. And that is uh that's an important thing. If we were all able to do that, of course, you know, that would be a huge advance. Uh I don't think we have time for anything more, but thank you. You gave us a wonderful ending to this, you know, when you were comment about internal borders. I think that goes to the heart of everything. And I just thank you for um privilege uh making a privilege for us to have you and take part in this leading dialogues uh series of podcasts.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

So thank you very much. So pleasure to have a conversation with you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay.