Remembering Walter Brueggemann (1933-2025)

A Valuable Resource for Contemporary Social Catholics

Reminder: readers can view the following post, and dozens of other ones, at the Social Catholicism and a Better Kind of Politics website.

A quarter century ago, as a newly-minted theologian influenced by the “postliberal” theological perspective of George Lindbeck, I foolishly dismissed the work of Walter Brueggemann as reflecting a tragically misguided “liberal Protestantism.” Having become better informed about Catholic social teaching, history, and the world, my views have changed considerably.

In what follows, I will first discuss why Catholics should learn from the recently deceased Walter Brueggemann, a Protestant who was one of the great Old Testament scholars of recent generations. I will secondly discuss two tributes written on his passing, the first of which was published in the Jesuit magazine America. The second was published in Sojourners Magazine, the publication of “a Christian organization dedicated to social justice, peace, and faith-driven activism,” from which I think Catholics should learn.

1. Why Catholics Should Learn from Walter Brueggemann

According to the 2004 Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, this “integral and solidary humanism” (no. 1) is in “friendly dialogue with all sources of knowledge” (nos. 76-78). I think this spirit of searching broadly for rays of intellectual light is profoundly Catholic, and reflected in great doctors of the Church like St. Thomas Aquinas, and in the tradition of social Catholics. For this reason, I will continue to encourage Catholics to eschew the tribal “us versus them” and “friend versus enemy” thinking that permeates American society and to look broadly for sources of intellectual light, even if they come from those whose views on matters of faith and morals differ at times. Among those sources, I think Scripture and Tradition encourage us to look favorably toward the efforts of those seeking to defend the marginalized and to apply critical scrutiny those allied with wealth and power.

One distinguished source of insight who takes precisely this biblical stance—and with whom I think Catholics should be in friendly dialogue—is the great Protestant Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, who passed on to his eternal reward on June 5.¹ His website lists an astounding 168 books that he published in his long life (although this includes various repackagings of earlier works). For those of us who find it more feasible to digest recorded books, many of Brueggemann’s works are available in that format. He was also writing weekly popular articles through this May, fighting the good fight until the end. Brueggemann was also eminently quotable, as I illustrate in the photos below.

[Brueggemann’s abundance agenda from AZ Quotes]

The work of Brueggemann merits the sustained attention of Catholics who want to realize the great but largely unrealized potential of the word of God in the inspired Scriptures, which is meant to nourish the life of the Church (Dei verbum: Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, nos. 21-26). Such nourishment is essential if the Church is to manifest her true identity as the salt and light in the world (see Mt 5:13-16), and as the efficacious sign and instrument of unity between the human family and with God (see Lumen gentium: Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, no. 1).

Drawing such nourishment from the word of God—as it comes to us in human words—is especially urgent for clergy, not only for their own union with Christ, but for those they have a sacred duty to nourish. For this reason, the Second Vatican Council emphasized (Dei verbum, no. 21 ) that:

…like the Christian religion itself, all the preaching of the Church must be nourished and regulated by Sacred Scripture. For in the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven meets His children with great love and speaks with them; and the force and power in the word of God is so great that it stands as the support and energy of the Church, the strength of faith for her sons, the food of the soul, the pure and everlasting source of spiritual life [emphasis added]. Consequently these words are perfectly applicable to Sacred Scripture: "For the word of God is living and active" (Heb. 4:12) and "it has power to build you up and give you your heritage among all those who are sanctified" (Acts 20:32; see 1 Thess. 2:13)

As the Council further affirmed, robust preaching from the word of God is indispensable if the laity are to realize their high calling to holiness in Christ, and to fulfill their mission of infusing a Christian spirit into the world (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, nos. 13, 19, 20). Given the stakes for each person, for the mission of the Church, and for the life of the world, the Council not only spoke of the beauty of the Scriptures through which the condescension in which the word of God takes on the vulnerability of human language. It also includes the stern warning of St. Jerome that “‘ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ’” (Dei verbum, no. 25).

Walter Brueggemann’s work is particularly valuable for Catholics because it not only treats the Old Testament with great scholarly erudition that is both encouraged by the Church (see Dei verbum, no. 12), and crucial for drawing sustenance from it. His work does so in a way that shows the surprising but profound power of these texts to speak to us today as the word of God. It can, therefore, help Catholics to appreciate the contemporary relevance of the Old Testament emphasis on justice and on the most vulnerable—the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the alien.

Realizing this potential is of renewal by the inspired word is essential for American Catholics who have been formed in an individualistic culture that is utterly foreign the the richly social vision of the Scriptures and of Catholicism. For those of us who want to help especially American Catholics to appreciate Catholic Social Doctrine and Pope Leo XIV, therefore, Brueggemann’s work can be a valuable resource.

Various tributes have been recently published on the occasion of Brueggemann’s passing.

2. Recent Tributes to Walter Brueggemann

A) At America Magazine:

James Keane published an excellent piece called “Walter Brueggemann: A Scholar of the Prophets—and a Prophetic Voice.”

Some extended excerpts regarding a relatively early work of Brueggemann that anticipated much of the themes and approaches that would be further developed in subsequent works.

…his 1978 text The Prophetic Imagination, which sold over a million copies and is still considered a classic almost half a century later. The book’s themes of how the biblical prophets were disruptive forces in the politics and cultures of their day would remain some of Brueggemann’s themes throughout his career. In his writings and public talks, he was often critical of the consumerism and nationalism that he saw as anti-biblical and yet pervasive in much of American life.

I previously wrote of how William T. Cavanaugh similarly criticized consumerism and nationalism as idolatrous, and proposed an incarnational and sacramental Catholicism as the only remedy to the contemporary decline of Christian faith.

In a 2018 essay in Sojourners on the 40th anniversary of The Prophetic Imagination, five prominent scholars commented on its impact. “Brueggemann’s critique of royal consciousness and structures opened the door for us to engage in post-colonial critique of the Bible and imperialist ideology in religion,” wrote the theologian Kwok Pui-Lan. “Rarely would you find a classic that speaks so poignantly to today’s political situation as it was published 40 years ago.”

Regarding some of Brueggemann’s more recent works:

In 2007, [he] published Like Fire in the Bones: Listening to the Prophetic Word in Jeremiah, a collection of 15 articles on the Old Testament prophet. In a short review for America, Dianne Bergant, C.S.A., noted that the book offered a fair summary of the “emphases of Brueggemann’s own Christian concerns, namely, careful analysis and interpretation of the biblical tradition, remarkable insight into the reality and needs of the contemporary world, and the responsibility of Christians who cherish that tradition.”

Brueggemann also has offered thoughtful ways of addressing the diverse voices in the Old Testament texts that were written across many generations.

Brueggemann pointed out time and again in his writings that many social and ethical questions in the Bible are not answered consistently across books or eras of composition. At the same time, he did not see this thematic reality as a stumbling block to an appreciation of the Bible as the Word of God. For Brueggemann, wrote Lawrence Boadt in a 2004 review of An Introduction to the Old Testament, “the Old Testament is not a hodgepodge of contradictions, but a unique and extraordinary portrait of the living God, who is always speaking anew through the church and to the church through the richness of its texts.”

With the “first naivete” of reading Scripture uncritically no longer possible to him upon doing critical studies, Brueggemann’s work reflects coming to a “second naivete” of being able to recognize God speaking through the sacred texts.

America reviewed a number of Brueggemann’s books over the years—with Dan Harrington, S.J., often including his works in his “Books on the Bible” roundups. Brueggeman, wrote Father Harrington in a 1993 review of Old Testament Theology, “is one of the very best biblical theologians at work today. He is concerned not only with describing the theology of the Old Testament writings but also with articulating their significance for Christian theology and discipleship today.”

Although it is not easy to be deeply attentive to the historical context of Old Testament writings and bring them to bear on contemporary politics, Brueggemann made serious attempts to do so that were not easily dismissed. This was so precisely because his guiding insights were so well established, and because they applied so well to contemporary challenges.

In 2023, Brueggemann published Ancient Echoes: Refusing the Fear-Filled, Greed-Driven Toxicity of the Far Right, a collection of essays on biblical texts that had relevance to contemporary political discussion. Reviewed by Harold W. Attridge for America, the book identified eight propositions which Brueggemann associated with the MAGA movement and marshaled scriptural texts against them: “(1) government is bad; (2) yesteryear was perfect, ideal; (3) establishment experts are wrong, science is suspect; (4) people are entitled to their own facts; (5) short-term profits are everything; (6) liberty equals selfishness; (7) inequality is not so bad; (8) universal health care is tyranny.”

While Attridge remained unsure whether “Bible-reading supporters of right-wing politicians will be totally convinced,” he noted that “Brueggemann’s review of biblical texts relevant to contemporary political issues will no doubt delight left-leaning preachers and ordinary faithful, who will welcome the reminder that Scripture strongly defends the poor, the weak and the marginalized while condemning wealthy oppressors.”

This last point coincides with one I made above regarding the importance of identifying with the marginalized to understand the ethical message of the Scriptures. To the extent that we do so and abandon contrary ideologies, his writings can be appreciated.

B) At Sojourners:

Given that the infrastructure for social Catholicism in the United States has fallen into such grave disrepair, we will need to not only look back at our history (which I will continue to do in future posts), and to some current apostolates within Catholicism.² We will also need to at examples among our separated brothers and sisters in Christ for inspiration. One example toward which we could look with profit is Sojourners.

At sojo.net Adam Russell Taylor published this piece on the “The ‘Dangerous Oddness’ of Walter Brueggemann.”

Regarding Brueggemann’s groundbreaking The Prophetic Imagination, Taylor writes.

… Brueggemann roots discipleship in a radical commitment to act in solidarity with the disinherited, dismantling the evils of empire or, as he would have put it, the “royal consciousness.” Brueggemann pointed out that throughout the Bible, kings and military leaders embodied a way of thinking concerned with the acquisition of power or wealth, often at the expense of those most vulnerable in that society. He noted that this “royal consciousness” was repeatedly rebuked by the prophets and ultimately, Jesus.

Taylor cites Brueggemann on how Jesus fulfills this prophetic tradition, in a citation that alludes to the Lucan Jesus who—in the prophetic tradition—brings good news to the poor. This focus on “the acquisition of power or wealth, often at the expense of the most vulnerable in society” is a manifestation of the libido dominandi I have discussed elsewhere, especially as it exists in the contemporary economics and politics leading to what the Vatican also calls “the polycrisis” and a new generation of autocrats reflecting what Brueggemann calls “royal consciousness.”

In both his teaching and his very presence, Jesus of Nazareth presented the ultimate criticism of the royal consciousness. He has, in fact, dismantled the dominant culture and nullified its claims. The way of his ultimate criticism is his decisive solidarity with marginal people and the accompanying vulnerability required by that solidarity. The only solidarity worth affirming is solidarity characterized by the same helplessness they know and experience.

Brueggemann’s description of the liberation Jesus brings corresponds closely with the incarnational perspective of the Catholic tradition, from Jesus and St. Paul through Second Vatican Council.

Taylor comments as follows.

We are living through a grave moment in our politics today, when Christian faith is being misused and abused to advance nationalism and autocracy. It makes what Brueggeman called God’s “preferred futures” seem farther away than ever. And that’s not accidental; as Brueggemann repeatedly pointed out, one of empire’s key projects is to shrink our imagination until the future we imagine doesn’t threaten its agenda.

Taylor also links to the text of a speech Brueggemann gave to Sojourners in 2018 entitled “Jesus Acted Out the Alternative to Empire.” For convenience, I paste the bulk of it below.

Jesus Acted Out the Alternative to Empire

I have come to the conclusion that the prophets can only be understood if you understand that their context is an ideological totalism, that intends to contain all thinkable, imaginable, doable social possibilities. That totalism always wants to monopolize imagination, and it wants to monopolize technology, so that there are no serious alternatives that seem on offer.

What Brueggemann describes as “ideological totalism” of “royal consciousness” also therefore relates to today’s political-economic manifestation of Augustine’s Libido dominandi.

In the ancient world of the Bible, that totalism is represented and embodied by the monarchy of Solomon in the Jerusalem temple. The king was surrounded by priests in the temple and by scribes who did the fine print to legitimate everything. And that totalism was completely intolerant of any alternative thinking.

I’ll leave it to readers to connect the dots.

We are able in the Old Testament to identify many of the features of Solomon's totalism. First of all, it was an economy of extraction that regularly transferred wealth from subsistence farmers to the elite in Jerusalem, who lived off the surplus and the device and the strategy for that extraction was an exploitative tax system.

So, you remember that at the death of Solomon, under his son Rehoboam, there was a tax revolt, and they killed the tax officer who had regressive tax policies. That totalism also represented a strong military. Solomon was an arms dealer: Partly Solomon's military was for show, and partly it was for intimidation.

I’ll also leave it to readers to contemplate the contemporary relevance of references to military show and intimidation the texts above, and displays of opulence mentioned below.

The totalism also had to exercise enormous economic opulence to impress people with wealth, so that Solomon's temple is essentially an exhibit of Solomon's much much gold. The temple, and the priest who operated the temple, fashioned a series of purity laws to determine who the purer people and the impurer people were, to determine who had access and who was excluded from the goodies.

I have come to think that the three-chambered temple of King Solomon is a lot like a commercial airline. There was the outer court for women and gentiles. There was the inner court for guys in suits. And there was the holy of holies, where only the high priest could go. And that flows a lot like the tourist cabin and the first-class cabin and cockpit, where only the high priest can go. So everything is delineated by rank, and therefore by opportunities that come with it. And this whole enterprise of extraction and exhibit and grandiose commoditization was all blessed by a very anemic God, whose only function was to bless the regime. So that under Solomon, you get chosen king, a chosen city, and a chosen land, to the exclusion of all those who were not chosen.

And what you can see in the biblical record is that this totalism was completely impatient with and intolerant of any alternative thinking. It was prepared to crush any alternative thinking, which was represented by the prophets.

So what you get is the expulsion of the prophets, or the killing of the prophets, because they challenge the totalism that was legitimated by this anemic God.

So, in the way the history of the Old Testament works: For 400 years you get a recital of the kings of the family of Solomon, and these are the point persons for the extraction system. But when you read along in First and Second Kings, what you see periodically are eruptions of poetry. These are the prophets who come from nowhere, and they regularly unsettle the kings, and they come to occupy space in the historical recital. If you look at those prophets, you can see first of all that they are without a pedigree. They don't have any credentials that legitimates what they want to say. Second, they come from nowhere. They are people who do not accept the truth of the totalism, and the way they articulate their coming from elsewhere is that they either say, “Thus says the Lord,” or they say “The word of the Lord came to me,” and "the Lord" becomes a kind of a signal that this is a word that will not fit or accommodate the totalism.

The prophets, moreover, were deeply grounded in the old covenantal traditions and the wisdom traditions. So that they knew that there were structures and limits that were inherent to the way of creation that could not be marked with impunity. They have a very vigorous notion of the governance of God. But along with that sense of tradition, they have an acute sense of social reality.

Here Catholics should think of God’s eternal law that governs all things, the natural law whereby we are able to grasp God’s true and just judgments, God as the exemplar of justice, and of justice regarding the common good as the highest moral virtue that governs our socio-political engagement. From these we can be confident that there are standards of justice, we can know them, and we are with God when we work for justice.

They know how to follow the money. And they know that if you follow the money, what you can see is that the extraction system produces many grievances and cries of oppression and exploitation. And they have a peculiar affinity to the cries of injustice that they believe are the motor of creating futures. So when you add all that up — no credentials, coming from elsewhere, knowing the tradition, doing social analysis — it is not surprising that the characteristic idiom of the prophets is that they speak in poetic rhetoric. They speak in language that on the one hand is porous and elusive and slippery, and on the other hand that can be dangerous and offensive and scandalous to people who live inside the regime.

So what you have in the Old Testament, when you read the royal history, is the managers of extraction who tend to operate with unambiguous memo. And disrupting that are these poetic voices that are dangerous and subversive and oppressive, because they are voices that come from outside the totalism and that refuse to accept the totalization as normative.

If you take the phrase “prophetic imagination,” the imagination part of that is that the prophets are able to imagine the world other than the way that is in front of them. The word prophetic alludes to the reality of God. And what the prophets believe deeply is that God is a lively character, and a real agent who acts in the world, who causes endings and who causes new beginnings. And that's worth thinking about, because that is not ordinary thinking among us — that God is a lively agent and a real character.

My hope and prayer is that under especially the leadership of Pope Leo XIV, Catholics will “wake up” to the reality of our authentic tradition, and how God is offering us a new beginning to live that out as we confront not only the threat of a dystopian future, but God calling us to be agents of hope and fraternity in this Jubilee Year.

Brueggemann continues:

If you consider most conservative evangelicals, they do not believe that God is a lively character and a real agent, because they've got God all packaged up into sustained systematic explanations. And if you consider most theological progressives, they don't believe that God is a real character and a lively agent, either, because they really believe that God has no hands but our hands.

So prophetic imagination is grounded in the conviction that God is doing something lively in the world. That it may be slow, but it is very sure, and that a new world is coming into being that will discredit and dismiss the old totalism.

If you look at what the prophetic tasks are, you can identify that there are three prophetic tasks.

The first prophetic task is to be clear on the force and illegitimacy of the totalism. And what we have to recognize is that almost all of us, conservative and liberals — almost all of us, clergy and laity — are to some extent inured in the totalism. We take it as normative. And to take that as normative is a great narcotic that makes us passive and apathetic. Becoming clear and unambiguous about the force of the totalism is a teaching point that we really have to work at.

Catholics who are in touch with the same prophetic Spirit that Jesus promises will guide the Church will trust—in my opinion—that the new autocracy is not consistent with the Kingdom that Jesus proclaimed was breaking-in through his incarnation, and ministry.

The second task of prophetic imagination that I could identify is that we have to pronounce the truth about the force of the totalism that contradicts the purpose of God. That's called prophetic judgment. And my sense is that in the institutional church we are very quiet about prophetic judgment, because we and most of our parishioners are too deeply committed to totalism, and you really are not able to talk that way.

But if we understand the totalism honestly and clearly, then we have to talk about that contradiction. And we are able to say that a predatory system of economic extraction contradicts the purpose of God, that the extraction system in which we live, lives by cheap labor. And as we all know, that the history of cheap labor in the United States is grounded in the institution of slavery. So many of our economic arrangements are simply tradeoffs to continue the practices of slavery.

And particularly, we might pay attention to the book by a Christian Baptist, The Half of It Has Never Been Told, which makes the compelling argument that the wealth of the United States basically is grounded in slavery. So if you think about the things that go around cheap labor and slavery, what you come up with is regressive taxation, high interest rates, stacked mortgage rates, and debt — so you can imagine the way we are helping college students get into insufferable debt, which assures that they will be willing workers in the extraction system for all of their working life. Plus, the fact that we have to recognize that this system is committed to the deregulation of banks and all sorts of deregulation, that lets creation be exploited. Deregulation really means the unleashing of predatory forces against the vulnerable.

These are very challenging words for American Catholics, and I think we need to prayerfully consider what they have to say to us.

And we have to recognize that the totalism in which we live is a system of incredible militarization, so that on the one hand what we are seeing is the militarization of the police, and on the other hand we are seeing the militarization of sports.

…

Brueggemann next lists three prophetic tasks for contemporary Christians, and sketches four dimensions of a future toward which he thinks the prophetic imagination should lead.

So the first task is to identify the totalism. The second task is to identify the contradictions that put us on the route to death, because one can see that we now live in a society that is engaged in its self-destruction.

And the third task of prophetic imagination is to articulate the alternative world that God has promised, and that God is birthing before our very eyes. If we have eyes to see it.

It is not often enough noticed that for all of the harsh judgment of Amos and Isaiah and Jeremiah, there runs through their rhetoric extraordinary promises about beating swords into plowshares and not learning war anymore — all of which, I think, have come to contemporary fruition into Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have A Dream." It is a dream that imagines a world that is completely alternative to the one in which we now live.

So I thought I'd take a stab at identifying with you four dimensions of that future, that prophetic imagination ought to be imagining.

These are all obvious to you, but there is some merit in lining them out. The first of these is a new ecological perspective in which the earth and all of the creatures of the earth are treated like covenant partners who are entitled to dignity and viability. Every acre, every squirrel, every radish, every whale, every cornstalk is entitled to viability and respect. And of course, I commend you as the Bible for this prophetic task, Wendell Berry. In his most recent book, Wendell Berry has the phrase that “we have a duty to be old-fashioned.” So, as you know, Wendell Berry does not mind being old-fashioned, and he will have none of the extractive consumerism that we tend to think of as normal. So for Wendell Berry, two ethical reference points are restraint on the one hand and frugality on the other hand. That new environmentalism is an alternative to the kind of world of plastic accumulation that is killing our oceans and our ocean creatures.

The second facet of prophetic promise that I could identify is a new ecumenism. Listen to this carefully: a new ecumenism that makes room for other chosen peoples, other than Western white Christians.

That does not mean that we Christians give up our claims about Jesus, and we are in the process of recovering Jesus. But it means to recognize that our claims about Jesus are not universal statements, but they are confessional statements about how we intend to live our life. And that means that we have to make room for other religious traditions, and respect the viability of their claims, and find allies where we can about the main prophetic tasks of justice and holiness.

The third facet of prophetic imagination, as you know, is a new economy that is organized around a love of neighbor and that is committed to the viability of widows, orphans, and immigrants. Widows, orphans, and immigrants are people who in the ancient world did not have advocates who were empowered by the totalism in a patriarchal society. So it becomes a test case for the economy, and it is a redistributive economy of respect and viability for vulnerable persons, and there is no way to cover over or to hide or disguise that we are talking about policies of redistribution. And obviously the 1 percent or the 3 percent or the 10 or whatever the top is intends to keep extracting from the vulnerable until we have only the 1 percent and big collection of subsistence peasants who have no economic viability. So what we have to do in the church is to educate the church that we are not really in the charity business, we are in the justice business.

And fourth, also obviously, the prophetic imagination means a new multiculturalism that opposes in all the vigorous ways we can think of white nationalism and all that’s now of making white America "Great Again." The Bible, because of its permeation with chosenness, lends itself too easily for that reading of tribal chosenness. But there are all kinds of trigger hints in the Old Testament and in the New Testament to the contrary — that chosenness has to remain open, that God is in the business of choosing many other peoples.

The best text I know in the Old Testament is this anticipatory text: At the end of Isaiah 19, where the prophet said, “Behold the days are coming when God promises are all fulfilled. Behold the days are coming, when I will bless Assyria, my people Egypt to my chosen, and Israel, my inheritance” — which is a recognition that there are many blessed chosen peoples. And in the New Testament surely the lead text is Peter's incredible vision in Acts 10, where God tells him to eat impure food to violate the old purity codes of Leviticus, and out of that comes this incredible dawning on Peter and Paul and all of the apostles that the good news of God's transformative love in the world is not a monopoly of any race or tribe or nation or tongue.

So, the practice of prophetic imagination, as you know, requires energy, courage, and freedom, and the sense of being otherwise. And I have no doubt that we are now arriving at a moment when there is no more middle ground. That we either sign on uncritically to the totalism, or we take on this task of dangerous oddness that exposes the contradictions and performs the alternatives.

Finally, I want to make a comment — and then I'll be finished — to make a comment about the institutional church. The institutional church is a very weak instrument for the prophetic imagination. But it is the best instrument we got. It is the best instrument we got because when people come to church they expect us to talk funny. They expect us to talk about God. And I believe we are now at a point when the church has got to recover its nerve and its energy and its courage and its freedom. To be about our proper business, the church cannot engage in prophetic imagination as long as it lives in the cocoon of the totalism. And that, of course, is where many clergy and the laity want the church to stay. Because you get rewards for that, and you get money, and you get payoffs, and you get success. But our mandate and our vocation is otherwise.

I think the church now must be more vigorously engaged in scripture after having been lazy for a very long time. And the church must do a much better job of social analysis than we have done, because very many church people think that social analysis feels like communism. And clearly the prophets were doing social analysis before anybody ever heard of Karl Marx.

The good news, that you can see all around now, is that the spirit is moving among us. It is the spirit of Jesus. And Jesus is that great voice of otherwise, who saw the contradictions of the gospel to the Roman Empire and who acted out an alternative.

Good Friday, which keeps being re-performed, was the last desperate reach of the totalism of the Roman Empire. They did their best. And I have come to think that we shouldn't use the word “crucifixion,” we should use the word “execution.” Jesus was executed as an enemy of the totalism. And Easter is that strange wondrous gift of newness that rushes beyond the totalism. It is no wonder that Mark ends his gospel by saying that they were afraid. It is very fearful to discover that the totalism is not normal. But it is the truth of the matter.

Since this post is already reaching length limits for a substack post, I’ll leave it to readers to further ponder the message Brueggemann offers to contemporary Catholics.

1. In writing this, I recognize that some Catholics may eschew his work because he encouraged Christians to “welcome” those who identify as LGBTQ, but I think is a misguided view tracing more to the “culture wars” than best of the Catholic tradition.

2. Several come immediately to mind. One is the Georgetown Universities Initiative for Catholic Social Thought and Public Life. It seeks “to promote dialogue on Catholic social thought and national and global issues, build bridges across political, religious, and ideological lines, and encourage a new generation of Catholic lay leaders to see their faith as an asset in pursuing the common good.” Another is the Network Lobby for Social Justice, best known for their role in the “affordable care act” and the “nuns on the bus” tour. Another is Notre Dame’s Institute for Social Concerns, which hosts regular conferences. Another is Just Faith ministries, which offers small group programs that parishes use to advance peace, racial equity and a sustainable world. None of these, however, is focused on providing intellectual support for a new social Catholicism, or propagating that vision.