Anger, Lamentation, and Common Ground

Abstract

This essay argues that the Catholic Common Ground Initiative, founded twenty-five years ago, needs to shift focus to deal with the pervasiveness of anger among American Catholics. Instead of striving to achieve agreement through rational dialogue, American Catholics should aim to find common ground in our sorrow by developing liturgies of lamentation to address the pervasive devastation arising from crises such as clergy sex abuse. Lamentation finds common ground in the common experience of loss, without insisting that everyone attribute the loss to the same cause or agree upon the same path toward renewal.