Once upon a time, people could have civil discourse

Each day my inbox is filled either with junk or with messages that need responses. Now that my university uses Outlook, the “clutter” feature attempts to sort out what is necessary. Often, the accuracy surprises me, but sometimes key e-mails or newsletters slip through and end up where they don’t belong.

One such e-mail was my university’s weekly newsletter, which includes a “jolt” for the day, taken from Bustedhalo. 

“This is important,” said Pope Francis, “to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is criss-crossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead toward God.”

Is it a coincidence that we return to conversation – to listening, to fellowship, to the circulation of ideas – at a time when our world is sorely divided? 

Pope Francis’s message is one that requires true dialogue, understanding that people have different viewpoints: they “come closer together and move apart.”

In my literature survey, we’ve been focusing on the 18th and 19th centuries. The Romantics are usually considered as solitary artists, looking to nature for divine inspiration and upholding the imagination. 

In my class, we complicate that association. The 18th century, I tell my students, was an era of sociability and conversation. 

The circulation of ideas and expansion of knowledge was important. In both public and private spaces, individuals came together to discuss literature, politics, religion, the arts and whatever else was going on at the time. 

Central to this idea of circulating ideas was an openness to dialogue. Individuals listened for the sole purpose of understanding one another. 

To imagine that free exchange is astounding. The cacophony of voices, the fellowship among diverse peoples. In my class, we look at diary entries and letters to get a full understanding of what this liberal exchange meant for the individuals involved. 

Is it so strange that we long for those past histories? 

In contrast to our present, in which people listen for the sake of finding holes in another’s argument or to hear their own viewpoints regurgitated, the exchange of knowledge and conversation certainly seems a less contentious route.

Today, when I teach rhetorical argument to my first-year writing students, they have conceptions of recent political debates in their minds. 

Regardless of party, these debates tend to enact the same thing: the “argument” is more akin to a person digging their heels in and refusing to identify with the other side, even if, perhaps, there is a common ground.

No wonder it’s difficult for these same students to take a more pluralistic account of their own arguments. They’ve not had any experience at looking at the same issue from multiple perspectives.

Once we return to the centrality of fellowship and community experience, I believe our world would be more understanding. 

Not only would we seek out common ground, but we also would be listening. We would be acting, in fact, as Jesus himself acted. We would be fulfilling our roles as Catholic citizens.

Dr. Heather Bozant-Witcher can be reached at [email protected].