ROUNDTABLE: Jon Sobrino, SJ and liberation theology

The following reflection is from Patrick Cashio, a GCW community member doing the Metanoia Semester with us. He gave a Roundtable on October 30th on the latest book by Jon Sobrino, SJ, No Salvation Outside the Poor: Prophetic-Utopian Essays. 
At first impulse, the title of Jon Sobrino’s latest book, No Salvation Outside the Poor, sounds [...]

Read Full Post »

ROUNDTABLE: And They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our …

That was the title Diedre Houchen gave the Roundtable discussion she led last Thursday.  After sharing some of her own faith journey, she invited others to share a bit of their own.  Many had similar tales of finding connection with a particular community or way of being “spiritual,” then leaving to move on to something [...]

Read Full Post »

ROUNDTABLE: Liberation Theology and Guatemalan Gang Violence

 
 Joe Brew, Kelli’s son, is about to leave for his third summer in Guatemala where he will teach at the “Institut,” a school which Holy Faith Catholic Church, the GCW’s home parish, helps sponsor.  He led the Roundtable discussion this past Thursday.
Joe talked about the growth of gangs in Ciudad Quetzal, an extremely impoverished area on [...]

Read Full Post »

ROUNDTABLE: Finding your voice

Daniel Watkins, a UF grad student in the history department and dedicated volunteer at the GCW, started off this week’s Roundtable by reading us the passage in scripture about the persistent widow and the judge. For those who don’t remember, the story goes like this: There is a widow who must continually harrass the local [...]

Read Full Post »

ROUNDTABLE: Immigration

Last Thursday Joan Prado, who has worked for many years for the Department of Labor, led a discussion on immigration. She described the current political atmosphere and attitude toward undocumented migrant workers and also the harsher penalties being considered for “illegal aliens” and those who employ them. The conversation around the issue was particularly interesting because of [...]

Read Full Post »

ROUNDTABLE: “We don’t want to give food to the hungry.”

Disturbing, but that was the understanding we came away with after last Thursday’s roundtable discussion led by Joe Jackson.  Joe is a professor at the UF Law School and regularly offers his services to homeless folks as well as to those who try to help them. 
Joe gave an overview of his understanding of poverty [...]

Read Full Post »

ROUNDTABLE: Cosmopolitan Disinterestedness and the Care for the Poor

Last Thursday, Daniel Watkins – a grad student in the history department, and a friend of the house – led a roundtable discussion on “Cosmopolitan Disinterestedness and the Care for the Poor.”  It was really interesting, and our participants had a lot to say in response. 
The term “cosmopolitan disinterestedness” is descriptive of where we are [...]

Read Full Post »

ROUNDTABLE: Crossing the Border

This past Thursday, we discussed immigration, specifically Mexican immigration, with Leah Sarat, a doctoral student in Religion and the Americas at the University of Florida. Leah shared stories from her recent research trip to an indigenous Mexican community in which many of the members had crossed the Mexico-US border once or several times. After making [...]

Read Full Post »

ROUNDTABLE: Gandhi

Fr. Jim Wright, Episcopalian priest and executive director of the Alachua County Coalition for the Homeless and Hungry, led the roundtable discussion tonight on Gandhi.  His presentation focused on Gandhi’s time in South Africa and how his experience of discrimination there influenced his embrace of satyagraha, or ”soul/truth force,” as a means of nonviolent resistance.
After his presentation, we discussed the [...]

Read Full Post »