Here is a link to the March 18th Catholic School Matters Radio Hour. This week’s podcast features two great guests. First, Dr. Ann Garrido, professor of homiletics and author of the recent book “Let’s Talk About Truth: A Guide for Preachers, Teachers, and Other Catholic Leaders in a World of Doubt and Discord, joins the podcast (again!) to discuss her book on truth and what she was hoping to accomplish.
Ann believes her message is important so we discuss “everyone is entitled to their own opinion,” facts, objective reality, truth, and alignment with reality. She outlines the different levels of truth: facts, judgements, and relationships. She discusses the difficulty of making good judgements because it’s difficult to get facts and trust the sources of our information.
Ann discusses how some people’s motivations interfere with truth. They are not interested in aligning their realities to truth, rather they are interested in persuading people to another reality.
Ann says that our society has seemed to have lost the capacity to name a lie. We discuss how the divorce from facts has impacted our culture. Ann points out that she has never heard a homily about lying. According to the catechism, lying affects the fundamental relation between a man and God.
Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? Those three questions provide some fodder for conversation as we discuss how important relationships are in communication. Love and mercy need to be part of the discussion about truth.
Then my next guest, Meg Samaniego, the Director of the Onward Leaders program in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles describes the leadership formation program in the Archdiocese. Seventeen emerging leaders have been trained with sixteen still in the Archdiocese and six are being trained this year. Samaniego describes what they are looking for and the three levers they use to train new leaders: stewardship, navigating the Archdiocesan school system, mission of the school as part of the parish, the Archdiocese, and the church at large. Two skills and one mindset, she explains, which serve to train new leaders but also serve as threats to a new leader.
She also underscores the unique ways they train new leaders and prepare emerging leaders for the challenges of Catholic school leadership.
Here is another link to the March 18th podcast.
