Our country’s pain these days isn’t necessarily on the same scale, but it rhymes with Katharine’s America in a way that is instructive. Like her, we face a situation that it would be very easy to withdraw from. She, too, lived in a time of immigration, economic turmoil, fraught borders, gang violence, and epic war. She lived in a particularly restless America, one without much innocence to go around, one that was made to grow up quick. It is hard not to imagine that feeling like the end of things. Her generous response to that atmosphere is a wise model.
I’m at @firstthingsmag looking to the example of Saint Katharine Drexel, whose response to political and social strife is instructive as we attempt to navigate our own with charity. Read more
Catherine L. Addington 