Acts Of Deep Hope w The Sisters Of Loretto

Summary

Truth in the Barrel – "Acts of Deep Hope w/ The Sisters of Loretto"

Hosts: Amy McGrath & Denver Riggleman
Date: December 9, 2025
Guests: The Sisters of Loretto (Johanna, Maria, Mary Ann), Community Members (Susan, Jesse)

Episode Overview

In this intimate episode of "Truth in the Barrel", Amy McGrath visits the Sisters of Loretto in Central Kentucky for a raw discussion on faith, public policy, and the meaning of “acts of deep hope.” The conversation explores how faith intersects with public issues like the common good, immigration, environmental justice, and the true definition of being “pro-life,” especially through the lens of Catholic sisters and rooted community activists. The tone is deeply reflective, at times critical, but ultimately hopeful—a testament to radical empathy and steadfast commitment to justice.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. History and Mission of the Sisters of Loretto

• Johanna gives a brief history of the order:
  • Founded in 1812 near Central KY, on current property since 1824 ([03:08]).
  • Mission: Establishing and supporting schools, currently in St. Louis, Denver, and El Paso ([03:52]).
  • Personal story: Drawn to the order’s spirit of service, joined at 18 ([04:39]).
• Core principle: Following the gospel by “being helpful and improving the lives of the people around us.” ([11:01])

2. Defining the Common Good

• Maria: "Common good really means sharing of resources... It answers to the needs of a diverse group in society." ([06:13])
• Susan: Invokes Thomas Merton’s "original unity": “When we live to the depth of who we are... everything is connected.” ([09:38])
• Jesse: Stresses interdependence with humanity, earth, past, present, and future: “It’s about being in relationship...” ([09:56])

3. Faith and Public Policy: Immigration

• Marianne: Critiques hypocrisy in economic reliance on immigrant labor: “We owe those people. They came because we wanted them.” ([13:22])
• Kimber: Calls for both legal structures and moral openness for newcomers ([13:43]).
• Johanna: “Probably here illegally because there’s no way to do it legally.” Critiques criminalization: “Beyond law is responsibility...criminalizing these people...is totally selfish.” ([15:01])
• Susan: Urges policymakers to grapple with complexity—recognizing US interventions abroad, climate change, and the roots of migration ([16:56]).
• Kimber: Testifies to shared humanity: “What really hurts me is this lack of respect for them as equal human beings with just the same desires and hopes that I have to live a good life.” ([18:35])

4. Environmental Justice as Moral Imperative

• Jesse: “This is our entire context. This is our home, the planet where we live. It’s not like we get a second chance somewhere else.” ([20:25])
  • Personal account: Describes Kentucky flooding’s effect on young children as a sign of climate crisis ([20:53]).
  • Cites principle: “What you do to the land, you do to the people. And what you do to the people, you do to the land.” ([22:11])
• Kimber: Warns against divorcing people from land, loss of agricultural heritage: “If you turn your back on agricultural and farming, you’re doing a great injustice to the whole country.” ([23:37])
• Susan: Details support for Apache at Oak Flat, whose sacred land is threatened by copper mining—a result of policy failures and market forces ([24:30]).

5. Critique of Current Government and Political Climate

(One word characterizations of the administration):

• Johanna: "Self-serving" and "Isolationist" ([27:12])
• Kimber: "Destructive" ([27:24])
• Marianne: "Cruel" ([27:26])
• Susan: "Moral corruption" ([27:28])
• Jesse: "Dysfunctional" ([27:43])

Deeper Reflections:

• Marianne: Details cruelty in immigration enforcement, care for detainees, and ending of international aid, decrying “a gotcha level, a meanness.” ([27:50–28:41])
• Johanna: Connects politics to “selfish isolationism” and the twisting of Christian language for exclusionary, America-first policies ([29:09–29:50]).
• Susan: Laments weaponizing faith against empathy: “There are some Christian nationalists...calling empathy toxic...taking that basic understanding and calling it sinful.” ([31:08–31:38])

6. Reclaiming ‘Pro-Life’ and Catholic Identity

• Kimber: Broadens “pro-life” to mean respecting people and the planet—rejects narrow focus: “Study a little bit of embryology if you want to see the randomness of choice in humanity.” ([34:05–35:45])
• Johanna: Quotes Pope Leo: “Don’t call yourself pro-life if you have no concern about what happens to that child after it’s born.” ([37:06])
• Marianne: “Scripture says, choose life. That’s it. ...Women sometimes feel that abortion is the best choice they can make for life...It’s a serious, solemn choice.” ([38:40])
• Kimber: Emphasizes the primacy of conscience and education in making difficult moral choices ([39:42–40:16]).

7. Closing Reflections: Acts of Hope and Grassroots Change

• Johanna: Weekly vigil with the sign, “We are all neighbors. No exceptions.” ([41:46])
• Kimber: Stresses the value of “availability”—of showing up for neighbors, fostering real civic participation ([42:30–43:12]).
• Marianne: Calls for an end to the death penalty in Kentucky—“we do not have the right as a state to kill.” ([43:47])
• Susan: Invokes theme "We’re saved by beauty": “Beauty and goodness are calling us toward a life where everything and everyone can flourish. ...Don’t just resist cruelty—build the life we want.” ([44:15])
• Jesse: On Walter Brueggemann’s ‘prophetic imagination’: “To truly be the kind of alternative community...we have to engage in acts, gestures of resistance and acts of deep hope.” ([44:55])
  • Advice from Indigenous elder: “Always ask yourself, are you centering life? And if you are not centering life, stop...” ([45:28])

8. Pride in Public Service

• Jesse: Finds hope not in political leaders, but in everyday people working in broken systems: “I am proud of those people. ...front desk clerks, social workers...trying to make it work in an utterly chaotic, broken system.” ([46:39–48:01])
• Host: “Government is just people.” ([48:27])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Johanna ([04:39]): “I came up this hill at the ripe old age of 18 to give my life to God.”
• Maria ([06:44]): “The common good is ...respect and caring. That’s what I find important about being a member of a religious community.”
• Susan ([09:38]): “When we live to the depth of who we are as human beings...everything is connected.”
• Johanna ([15:10]): “Law is not the greatest moral force that we have. Love is, you know. Beyond law is responsibility.”
• Jesse ([20:25]): “This is our entire context. This is our home, the planet where we live.”
• Susan ([24:30]): “Policy has not protected the religious freedom of the Apache...We all use copper...that’s the complexity we have to be willing to grapple with.”
• Jesse ([44:55]): “We have to engage in acts, gestures of resistance and acts of deep hope.”
• Pat McCabe quote via Jesse ([45:28]): “Always ask yourself, are you centering life? If you are not centering life, stop and start over again and do it differently.”
• Johanna ([41:46]): “We are all neighbors. No exceptions.”

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• [03:08] — History & mission of the Sisters of Loretto
• [06:10] — What does the common good mean?
• [11:32] — Immigration in the lens of faith and policy
• [15:01] — The law vs. love and responsibility
• [20:01] — Environmental justice: generational impact and moral core
• [26:40] — One word for the current administration & elaboration
• [34:01] — What does ‘pro life’ mean to you?
• [41:46] — Closing reflections: hope, action, and what’s next

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Tone & Final Message

Throughout the episode, the speakers maintain a tone of fierce compassion, blending righteous indignation at injustice with personal humility and hope. The Sisters and guests advocate for radical, inclusive love as a guide to policy and everyday action—emphasizing availability, neighborliness, environmental stewardship, and a refusal to give in to despair or cynicism, no matter how fraught the times.

“To me, that is an act of deep hope right now: centering life... What can I do today as an act of deep hope?” – Jesse ([45:28])

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For further information and episodes:
Visit www.TruthintheBarrel.com

Transcript

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[Host / Interviewer]

Like many Americans, my faith is really important to me. It's had a great effect on the decisions I've made, both public and private throughout my life. My parents were devout Catholics and Catholicism was the example of faith that they passed down to me. I also think, though like many Americans, I struggle with with what it truly means to live out one's faith in today's society, especially in this polarized political Environment. Today on Truth in the Barrel, I'm in Central Kentucky talking to the Sisters of Loretto, a religious order of nuns who, in their own language, work for justice and act for peace. I met with them to have an honest conversation on faith and public policy and how one can affect the other. So around the table we have Johanna, Maria, Mary Ann, who are sisters, and then we also have two members of the community here in Central Kentucky, Susan and Jesse, who are talking with us today. And I want to start out just asking a little bit about the Sisters of Loretto. Johanna, can you tell us how long this order has been here in Central Kentucky and how long you've been here? Yes.

[Johanna]

This order was started in 1812, just a few miles away from here. We have been on this actual property since 1824. We moved here. The land was given to us by Father Stephen Theodore Baden, who was the first priest ordained in the United States. So our history goes way back and.

We have been here all of this time. And then from here we have spread out to do work out west in the south.

We established schools, many schools, and the Sisters staffed those.

I guess we would say maybe our main centers away from here has been St. Louis, Denver, Colorado and El Paso, Texas. And we still have three schools that exist, three high schools that we still support and sponsor in those three places. So I myself joined the community in 1952, 73 years ago. Can't believe it. Came up this hill at the ripe old age of 18 to give my life to God. As I understood what that meant at the time.

I had.

Gone to a school that was sponsored by the Sisters of Loretto. I was attracted to their spirit, very friendly, very busy about trying to be follow the gospel, the teachings of Jesus. And I was very attracted by their spirit and was sort of invited by them to join.

And I answered the call. It was kind of so, you know, some people talk about, you know, soul searching, about should I and shouldn't I? No, to me it was a green light, you know, move, move forward.

[Host / Interviewer]

I think it's fair to say that the Sisters of Loretto are very civically minded, that you all step up, you care about what's going on in the world. I tend to think of public policy as it's about people, it's about the moral decisions that we make, the trade offs that we make and the values that we have. And it's one of the reasons I wanted to get into politics to begin with. But I want to go back and ask you to start out.

[Kimber]

The teachings.

[Host / Interviewer]

Of the Catholic church talk a lot about these two words, the common good. And so does the preamble of our constitution. Okay, and so I want to ask you, and I'll start with you, Maria.

What does common good mean to you?

[Kimber]

I think common good really means sharing of resources because that's what's going to support the life of each and every person that's involved in the community. That's kind of a short way of looking at it. And the common good answers to the needs of a diverse group of people in society. So it takes the common good is a very, I think.

Important, yet kind of fluid. It depends on being really aware of what is affecting the people who are part of this common good that's being addressed. And you know, from a church point of view, the church has always been, at least at core, interested in.

Respect and caring. I think put those two words together for common good, respect and caring. And that's what I find important about being a member of a religious community. I'm kind of sort of willing to put my efforts and my whatever I have to offer at the service of that common good.

[Host / Interviewer]

Marianne, what do you think.

About leaders in government today? What do you want to see out of government leaders that you're not seeing right now?

[Marianne]

Well.

I see a divide, that there's one segment of the political reality, I guess, that views government as providing security for our borders. Lots of military, lots of protection, but they don't believe that security is found in a healthy population.

And to me, I want a government that really cares about housing, that cares, you know, it matters. For instance, when we talk about immigrants and health care. We want to give immigrants good health care. We don't want people to have tuberculosis. We don't want, I mean, just as a flat self interested, the common good. We want people to be healthy. And it matters to us. It matters that children feel safe and have safe housing and don't get lead places. It matters regardless of who their parents are or where they were born. And that's what I want government to be concerned about.

[Host / Interviewer]

That makes sense. Jesse. I'm sorry, Susan.

[Susan]

I'd like to jump in about the common good and what people of faith can offer. I believe in the common good as it's normally the term, as it's normally described. And I think people of faith go take it much deeper because, you know, Thomas Merton, who's the monk who lived just down the road from us, he described original unity, and he described the importance of waking up from the separate self. And so.

When we live to the Depth of who we are as human beings. And not just as human beings, but the whole universe. It's a fact that everything is connected.

[Host / Interviewer]

It's a fact.

[Susan]

It's not a principle that I choose to live by or not.

[Johanna]

That makes sense.

[Jesse]

The thing that came to mind when you asked that question, and this goes right along with what Thomas Merton said, though I'm not that eloquent. But what came to me is relationship. And it's not just about relationships with other humans. It's about being in relationship with Earth. It's about being in relationship with the past and being in relationship with the present as we understand it. So that when we think about the common good, we're not just thinking about what's good for people right now in this moment, but we're thinking about what is good for Earth, what is good in order to heal the wrongs of the past, what is good in order to set up future generations for a flourishing.

[Susan]

Life.

[Kimber]

Go ahead, please.

[Johanna]

I would just like to add another piece to what I was saying that our whole impetus in beginning with the three young women who started out, their reason for coming together was to begin to teach the children around them who were growing up without benefit of education. So it's always been part of our inspiration to. To live with a vision of how we can be helpful and improve the lives of the people around us from the very beginning.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I want to get into a couple of thorny issues because public policy is a little bit. Well, it's all about.

Some trade offs and how we deal with some of these things. So the first, the first thing I want to ask you all about is immigration. And.

You know.

[Kimber]

Pope Leo, our new.

[Host / Interviewer]

Pope, has reflected recently about the Gospel of Matthew, saying that at the end of life, we would be judged on how we receive the foreigner. And.

I'm thinking, how do we craft a policy that speaks to receiving the foreigner? And I'll make the question even more pointed here to anybody who wants to take this on how should government handle people who want to come to the United States? Because.

A lot of people in recent years have wanted to come to the United States and we have a system and some people have not been able to come through that system legally. And so what do you think? How do we handle this?

[Marianne]

There are a lot of layers, I'd say.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, this is Marianne speaking.

[Marianne]

So one of the simple layers, it seems pretty obvious to me, is the people that we wanted to come to do our work. And almost 100 years ago, Woody Guthrie wrote a song about the deportee who is riding back on the airplane probably without pay, but came here to pick our apples.

We owe those people. They came because they wanted work, but they came because we offered work, because we wanted them.

That's one level. Now, there are a lot of others.

But I'll let somebody else talk about those.

[Kimber]

Well, I think it's just been such a long standing gray area that people who had the position to make decisions about immigration laws just didn't do it. And so I think that there's that aspect of having a legal structure that can allow people to come in, but then I think there's also another part of it, and that's people having kind of an acceptance, a hospitality or more a moral kind of opening to people who want to come and share with us. But to me, right at this moment, we need to set up, we need to have set up some structures that say more or less, more clearly.

But in that and with an openness really, to sharing some of what this country has to offer to others.

[Host / Interviewer]

What do you say to people who say, well, if folks are here illegally, they gotta go, we got it. You know, even if they came here when they were 10 years old, you know, they're here, they're. They're breaking the law because they're here illegally.

[Johanna]

What do you say to that? Probably here illegally because there's no way to do it legally.

You know.

All of the people that are, that are, you know, on the base of the Statue of Liberty, you know, give me your poor, give me all the masses from your, you know, the quote, the balance is somewhere between that and, you know, the impossibility of getting in if it were possible to do it in some kind of. And, you know, this whole argument, you know, that there's not room and there's not resources here. I, I watch documentaries all the time on YouTube.

The cities that are empty near the Rust Belt up there.

So there's vast stretches of cities that are empty. So it's not a matter of room, but it's a lack of imagination, scarcity, fear.

Criminalizing, raising. You know, the law is not the supreme. It is not the greatest moral force that we have. Love is, you know, beyond law is responsibility. And that's what's lacking now. You know, putting, just criminalizing these people, tearing their lives apart and putting them out of this country, you know, just. Is totally selfish.

[Santa]

Yeah.

[Host / Interviewer]

The landing of Black Hawk helicopters in cities, at apartment buildings and taking people out and, you know, putting them in zip ties is Just not something I thought I would see in our country.

[Susan]

But what I wanted to say is I think we need policymakers who can grapple with complexity and with the big picture because, I mean, there's so much pressure. And my heart goes out to policymakers under the pressure of people who want a superficial fix of a problem. Yeah, when we look at the big picture.

We see people fleeing their countries because of climate change. Yeah, we see that. This is, from my perspective, that our country has not always respected the common good of other countries and we have intervened and created problems that cause people to want to flee their home countries, and so they come here. So when we can grapple with the complexity and allow that to distill with the love that Johanna just mentioned and what other people have talked about in.

[Host / Interviewer]

Terms of respect.

[Susan]

That my sense is we will come to something that is just and fair.

[Host / Interviewer]

How is the treatment of migrants right now and immigrants coming into our country? How does that relate to your faith? How is it connected?

[Kimber]

Well, it goes against everything that I believe about.

Being alive and.

Participatory, you might say. I mean.

I feel what's happening to these people because I feel a connection with them as other human beings. I mean, I've lived outside this country, so I know I lived in Chile and Nicaragua for a while, et cetera. But what I know about people wanting to come here is that they're just like me, really. You want to be able to have enough to eat, have a roof over your head and be able to take care of your children. Now, do people make poor choices? And is there drugs going around in the world? Yes. But basically what really hurts me is this lack of respect for them as equal human beings with just the same desires and hopes that I have to live a good life.

[Host / Interviewer]

Jesse, you talked earlier a little bit about environmental justice. And what I heard from you is it's not just about the trees and what's around you, but it's about the future generations.

Our children, their children, etc. What are they going to inherit? What are we going to give them? I want to just ask you or anybody else that wants to talk about this.

How important is this issue? And do you think that we as a country are moving in the right direction?

[Jesse]

I think this issue. Well, it's not an issue. This is our entire context. This is our home, the planet where we live. It's not like we get a second chance somewhere else. And so.

Yeah.

It'S an incredibly important issue to me personally. I have two little kids, a three year old And a four year old. And.

Earlier this year with the flooding in Kentucky, we happened to be going to Nashville and driving back and we were driving back on the Bluegrass Expressway and there were no, the towns were just gone. They were totally underwater. And my spouse and I had the conversation on the way back of. With climate change intensifying in the way.

[Johanna]

That it is.

[Marianne]

How do we tell.

[Jesse]

Our kids who are asleep in the backseat, you know, like this is going to be their norm, how do we prepare them for that? This is, this is totally out of our realm of understanding. And so.

I think that there is so much that needs to be done in terms of environmental policy that reflects environmental justice, that reflects the deep interconnectedness to racial justice.

That needs to be done at a broad policy level. In addition to individuals taking actions on.

[Johanna]

Their own.

[Jesse]

There's some folks out in California from movement generation and they say what you do to the land, you.

[Host / Interviewer]

Do to the people.

[Jesse]

And what you do to the people, you do to the land. And I think until we recognize the inherent connections between us as people and.

[Host / Interviewer]

Earth.

[Jesse]

We'Re not going to center environmental justice as we should. And so that's like a very broad piece of it.

And then, you know, when we're talking about specific policy and specific decisions that people are making, one thing that we do in Loretto sometimes is we develop like questions to ask ourselves to guide our decision making as we're making decisions as a community. And one of those questions is, what would Earth have to say about this? If Earth had a seat at the table, what would Earth say? And we take that really seriously.

[Kimber]

And I think something here in Kentucky. I don't come from a farming background, but I've learned so much in my years that I've been here about what is happening to the land and that sense of use and of taking away, divorcing people, divorcing people from a contact with the land and divorcing people's health from providing.

Life giving type of food.

I just think that's important. People have to realize, especially here in Kentucky, the amount of land that's being destroyed, you might say by things like speculation, by things, by mostly I think sort of speculation and development. And I don't have an answer to this. But if you look, turn your back on agricultural and farming, you're doing a great injustice to the whole country because it has so many things that it touches in our lives. Not having that experience of looking out and being able to see the trees. But mostly I'm concerned really about nutrition and concerned about People having a sensibility to nature as you like, or the life of this planet.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yes, ma'.

[Santa]

Am.

[Susan]

Yes. So Loretto is directly involved in supporting an Apache tribe in Arizona as they struggle, as they fight to protect a mountain that is sacred to them. It's called Oak Flat. There's a copper company that's trying to mine the copper under that mountain. And what it would do, the mining process would collapse that, that sacred mountain into a two mile wide crater. Crater policy originally protected the Apache and that sacred mountain. In 2014, policy then gave that mountain to a resolution copper company that was slipped into a last minute, must pass defense bill.

Policy has not protected.

The religious freedom of the Apache.

The Supreme Court for the second time just refused to hear their case.

It's a place where they pray, where they worship, where the young women do their coming of age ceremony. And so those are very real examples of what happens when policy.

Does not protect people.

But the other thing is that.

We all use copper, you know, so that's the complexity that we have to be willing to grapple with. We're using copper right now. We use copper for renewable energy.

[Marianne]

So.

[Susan]

I think what I'm trying to say is that we all need the consciousness and the humility to recognize that it's not just their problem out there, but it's our problem. And that takes me back to the understanding of the common good.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, right. I want to go around the table here and force you to respond and think of one word.

And then I'll let you expand upon that, but think of one word that describes the current administration.

In our country right now, in the last, what would we been, 10 months, one word and then we'll talk about that.

We're starting with Joanna.

[Johanna]

I know, I know exactly the word. I mean, I know exactly what I want to say, but I don't, I don't.

[Host / Interviewer]

Can't boil it down to one word.

[Johanna]

Self serving.

[Kimber]

Okay.

[Johanna]

Isolationist.

[Host / Interviewer]

Okay. What do you, what do you think, Maria?

We can come back.

[Kimber]

Destructive.

[Johanna]

Okay.

[Marianne]

Cruel.

[Susan]

Two words. Morally corruption.

[Jesse]

Yeah, Marianne, took my word. I was going to say cruel. I'll also say.

Dysfunctional.

[Susan]

Yeah.

[Kimber]

Okay.

[Host / Interviewer]

Marianne, what your. Your word again and why?

[Marianne]

Well, I see cruelty in, on many levels. Most obviously the masked ICE agents taking people on the street and then putting them in detention centers that are overcrowded, without water, without access to bathrooms, without adequate food, much less the medication they might need, much less due process. So that the treatment of detainees is particularly cruel. The immediate stopping of USAID to the poor around the world was an Incredibly cruel act. We burned food that had been stockpiled to feed the hungry. I mean, there's.

A gotcha level, a meanness that in many of the behaviors of the current government that a black reporter asked who was responsible for it was part of the Southern Command policy. And the response was, your mama. I mean, that's ugly.

[Johanna]

I said, selfish isolationism. And I just see anything that's concerned about the environment or anything that's concerned about the common good, anything that touches on common values based in the gospel. We call ourselves a Christian nation, dragging all of that Christian terminology out to bolster up what we're doing to immigrants and the way we're isolating and the way we're. It's America first maga.

The word woke. I mean, everything that's good, everything that's good and humane gets, you know, put into that word woke, which is spiritual awakening. It's the only good part of it that's there. I mean, you know, Christian teacher. Well, teachers are telling us, you know, that we have to wake up, that we're in a pivotal moment for the human family. The way we act now is going to determine whether we survive as a species. I mean, we've created the atomic bomb and we don't have the moral fiber not to use it. And as long as that's in the play out there, you know, this is very, very serious business. So I see our preoccupation with seeing that America has. Has it all is just so selfish.

Anyone else?

[Susan]

Yeah. Sometimes I ask myself, how do the ICE agents do what they're doing, especially the treatment of children? Like, I'm sure many of them have children at home and they love their children. How can they do what they're doing?

And I can only think that somehow they have cut themselves off from that basic human impulse of empathy, that capacity to put ourselves in the shoes of someone else.

And I'm very struck by the fact that there are some Christian nationalists who are now calling empathy toxic.

So people who call themselves Christian, like I call myself Christian, are taking that basic understanding of we're all connected and calling it sinful. They're calling it sinful.

So I guess I'm just saying that to say that there is something.

[Santa]

At.

[Susan]

Work underneath these actions that is cutting us off from our basic humanity and capacity to connect. And blaming individual ICE agents isn't going to help.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, the words that I heard.

[Johanna]

I.

[Host / Interviewer]

Hear a lot of are cruel. You know, when you boil down this administration and what's happening, and I personally believe it's not what people voted for. I mean, I could be wrong there, but I don't think, you know, even people that voted for this president and the people in Congress voted for this type of cruelty. And we're seeing it. We see it in the immigration fights. We see it in the government shutdown with the cutting off of SNAP benefits and things like that.

[Johanna]

And.

[Host / Interviewer]

We see it every day. And that is one of the reasons I wanted to step back in and run again, because I was so tired of this. And it wasn't basically what my faith taught me, you know, But I want to. I want to ask you all about. Because, you know, this is. This is politics here. And.

The words pro life have been used, okay, in many different ways. And here I am with this unique opportunity to sit down with. With sisters, people who have dedicated their lives to God, you know, Catholic nuns and people who are persons of faith, and ask you all, what does that mean? What does the words pro life mean to you.

And what does it not mean to you?

[Kimber]

Well, I think it's everything we've been talking about because we've been talking about. About how to best respect people, how environmentally, how to best respect the planet, how. And so I think one of the. To me, one of the problems that comes up is that there's this kind of break between.

I would say a little bit what we call religion or religions and science.

And that might sound kind of weird, but the truth of the matter is questions like pro life, you know, when you get into these whole questions about gender or same sex, you know, marriage, same, anything like that, you've divorced yourself from a whole. I always say, from science in the sense of those. Those are differences that come about because they're already built into the system. My nursing background, if I always say study a little bit of embryology, if you want to see the randomness of choice in the makeup, if you like, of humanity, but have some idea of that so that you can have some balance in what are your feelings about what God means made and what actually is happening in reality. This is what we live. And then this whole thing of God having been put into forms and hierarchies. It's like the more you study. I just love this whole thing of.

Science now with people not being able to really even be able to. To know how the interconnection of things. When you get into the whole science of quantum physics and the scientists are all saying, how can it be that particles can be anywhere and somewhere at the same time and be totally relational beyond anything that we've ever conceived as the laws of science. And that is God. It's be. You know, we've. God has given us a responsibility, not a responsibility, has given us life, and so use it to the best of our abilities. But I just have, I have found so much clarity in the fact that scientists can't answer some of these questions. They've seen, seen it happen, but they're saying to themselves, but how?

And we don't ask that enough of ourselves. How can we let this happen? That we keep people away, that we disrespect people? I don't know. You know.

It'S very unsettling.

[Johanna]

And I think the fact that pro life.

Usually when you toss it out there, you're talking about abortion. And I love what Pope Leo said, don't call yourself pro life if you have no concern about what happens to that child after it's born and all of the family structure and the communal structure that that child is called to live in. So pro life means pro life.

[Host / Interviewer]

Not to me, it means not cutting healthcare.

[Kimber]

Okay.

[Host / Interviewer]

To me, it means not cutting off SNAP benefits.

[Johanna]

Yeah. Anything that's life giving.

[Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. And so when I think about people that might.

Agree with me on 90% of the issues, but disagree with me on, you know, 10% and maybe, maybe they might disagree with me on, you know, because I'm, I'm for a woman's right to choose, but on the 90% of what I consider pro life issues, on healthcare, on SNAP benefits, on education, on things that make life affordable and good, livable, healthy and livable, environmental justice, for example. I feel like, you know, I'm pro life, but then politics would say potentially otherwise.

[Johanna]

I don't know.

[Marianne]

Well, scripture says choose life. That's it. And we want people to choose life, and they, they do. And women sometimes feel that abortion is the best choice they can make for life, for themselves, for their other children, for however they are struggling as best they can. Nobody wants an abortion. People don't use abortion as birth control. It's a serious.

Solemn choice that people face. And abortion rates go down when you.

[Jesse]

Have good health care.

[Marianne]

We know that for sure.

Now. That's, I'm a Catholic sister there I am saying that I think we have to give women the right to choose. It's the choice, the moral choice that women must make for ourselves.

[Kimber]

And the importance of conscience has always been very important within the traditional teachings of the church. And that's call it free will all we want. But that's the beauty of being able to make decisions for yourself.

What we have to do, I think, is what my part is to try to support people in forming conscience. And that's Ben Loretto's mission throughout time.

[Johanna]

Education.

[Kimber]

You know, you open somebody's mind to making their own decisions. And yeah, it's dangerous, but it's also life giving.

[Host / Interviewer]

I'd like to ask you all if there's an issue or something that you want to say. I mean, we have, we have a national object audience. We have lots of people in Kentucky, but a lot of people would love to hear from folks who have dedicated their life to God. And I don't talk a lot about my faith. I am somebody who grew up Catholic schools, my parents were Catholic, and I consider myself Christian and Catholic.

[Susan]

But.

[Host / Interviewer]

But I also believe, and this is.

Sort of deep down, that God loves everybody. And there's no exceptions to that. And I may not be a biblical scholar, but I'm somebody that sort of gets or wants to continue to get the basics, which is, you know, treat everybody as you would want to be treated and treat everybody to the best of your ability the way God has treated us, which is that love. That sort of no exceptions love.

But I would like to leave last words to you all, to the audience here, if we want to go around and tell us what you would like.

[Johanna]

Well, it was just what you were saying. Every week on Wednesday, I go over to. To Springfield, Kentucky and sit at Main and Procter, not and hold a big sign that says we are all neighbors. No exceptions. And we get a lot of horn blowing, a lot of.

Support for that. So that's, that's what I want to say to everybody. We're all neighbors. What's good for one is good for all of us.

[Santa]

Marie.

[Kimber]

I've lived long enough that I've seen a lot and I'm pretty happy with what I've seen.

But I think most of all I've been willing to be available to people. And I think availability is going to be a big part of.

[Johanna]

Of.

[Kimber]

Being a citizen and a participating member. Available to the needs available, like we say out on the street with a sign going door to door. We need more of that going door to door at this moment so that I can look you in the eye and be looked at again. And I can tell you why.

I feel like I do about.

Being alive.

It's difficult these days. I go to bed really kind of heavy sometimes, having had some experience with authoritarianism and it's nasty. Excuse me, do not be naive. It is.

Straight up.

Not good.

[Host / Interviewer]

But we can't give up. We can't give up.

[Kimber]

And that's why I've seen people all over the place, and I. I know there's a lot of good out there.

[Marianne]

Death penalty. We have 25 men on death row here in Kentucky right now. Some of them did horrendous things, others, not so much. The death penalty is arbitrary, but I think that the governor should commute all of those sentences to life in prison and that we do not have the right as a state to kill.

[Susan]

Okay, Susan Lorado just had a gathering with the theme we're saved by beauty and we're. What I want to say is that beauty and goodness are calling us towards a life where everything and everyone can flourish. And let's not get so caught up in resisting what we know. We do not want the cruelty.

Let's build together the life that we do want.

[Jesse]

I've recently been reading Walter Brueggeman, as these gals know, and one thing that he talked about in the prophetic imagination is that to truly be the kind of alternative community that God is calling us to be, we have to engage in acts, gestures of resistance and acts of deep hope. And. And I find the gestures of resistance pretty easy. There's a lot to resist today. And I find acts of deep hope really challenging sometimes. And so I come back to.

[Johanna]

What.

[Jesse]

We were talking about earlier. Pat McCabe, who's a dine elder, says, always ask yourself, are you centering life? And if you are not centering life, stop and start over again and do it differently, because you have to center life. And to me, that is an act of deep hope right now is centering life. And so I try to bring myself back to that is, what can I do today as an act of deep hope? And in what I am doing today, am I centering life?

[Host / Interviewer]

Is there anyone? And I'll end on this because I like to end on a positive note. And that was pretty positive. But is there anyone or anything in government today that you are proud of that you just look at it and you say, maybe it's some person or something? You're like, that's leadership. I'm behind that person. Or I'm with you. Is there anybody, Anybody at all, or.

[Johanna]

Anything, any program, anything at all, where.

[Host / Interviewer]

You'Re like, yeah, that's it.

Or is it just so bleak and then maybe we won't end on it if it's so?

[Jesse]

I just want to say.

My two kids are adopted through the state of Kentucky, and.

I knew that when we were entering that system we were choosing to enter a place of pain and dysfunction. I had no idea how completely dysfunctional and cruel aspects of our childcare system are. Child welfare system. I did not expect to be totally undone as a person and sort of reformed in a new way. And I'm not proud of that system. It needs massive reform. But there are people in that system who are working so hard on a daily basis to do what is right. So to me, it's not about like a political leader that I can get behind. It's the people who are in it day in and day out who are trying to care for children and get food on other people's tables and stop another gas pipeline or whatever it is.

I am with those people and I am proud of those people. And so I don't.

I don't have one part. Well, I have lots of particular people in mind here in Kentucky, but I have social workers in mind. I have front desk clerks in mind. Those are the people that I can get behind and say, you're doing a really good job in the midst of an utterly chaotic, broken system. And they want it to be better. And that is who I am with.

[Host / Interviewer]

I think it's a great way to end because a lot of times we talk in politics about big government and government this and government that.

[Johanna]

Government is just people.

[Jesse]

It's just people.

[Host / Interviewer]

And a lot of times it's the people who work at the front desk or the people that are, are behind that big system. They're trying to make it work, and we're all trying to make it work for each other.