“That richness of thought and perspectives really helps our work,” Jonathan Valenti, FCLC ’98, a principal with Deloitte Consulting, told Fordham College at Lincoln Center students in February.

Last fall, Fordham continued the conversation with students by hosting its first-ever Humanities Day, on September 19. “We all know that today, the humanities are under siege in virtually every university in this country,” Brenna Moore, Ph.D., a professor of theology, said at the event. “The logic seems to be we need a stripped down, efficient society. … Today we gather to push back on this pernicious logic.”

Moore is a member of the Fordham Humanities Consortium, which aims to “help our students flourish as they choose majors that seem increasingly countercultural.” The new group organized the Humanities Day gathering in partnership with Fordham’s Career Center. More than 100 students gathered in the McShane Campus Center at Rose Hill to hear from alumni and faculty about the value of studying philosophy, history, and other humanities fields.

In an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Martha C. Nussbaum, a professor in the philosophy department and the law school at the University of Chicago, described one of the less tangible benefits she observed while guest lecturing in a required philosophy course at Utah Valley University.

“What I saw was joy,” she wrote of the spirited debate that followed her lecture. “The sort of joy the philosopher Seneca described: not the flighty joy of the partygoer, but a solid inner joy that comes from discovering yourself.”

For Justin Foley, FCRH ’95, GABELLI ’03, who double majored in urban studies and philosophy, it was about learning to think creatively and being open to new paths, which is how he went from working as a tenant organizer to earning a Fordham M.B.A. to becoming a program organizer for the Service Employees International Union.

“Nobody said, ‘Here’s what your career track is going to be,’” he said. “I really learned to indulge my curiosity about the world around me. … My undergrad time has given me a framework for my values.”

—Franco Giacomarra, FCLC ’19, and Adam Kaufman, FCLC ’08

Why did you study the humanities, and what has the experience done for you personally and professionally? Tell us at [email protected].

“We all know that today, the humanities are under siege in virtually every university in this country,” Brenna Moore, Ph.D., theology professor, said at Fordham’s first-ever Humanities Day event on Sept. 19. “The logic seems to be we need a stripped down, efficient society, and education is about making workers competitive in our economy. Today we gather to push back on this pernicious logic.”

Moore is part of a group of faculty members that formed the Fordham Humanities Consortium, which aims to “help our students flourish as they choose majors that seem increasingly countercultural.” The group organized the Humanities Day gathering, in partnership with Fordham’s Career Center, drawing more than 100 students to hear from alumni and faculty about the importance of a humanities degree and potential future paths.

Putting Lessons into Action

Kacie Candela, FCRH ’19, is now a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, where she utilizes skills she learned as an English and international political economy major.

“I was able to take advantage of working with a professor so closely that by the time I got to law school, I didn’t need that close direction—I knew how to write a 60-page academic article because I had already done it,” she said.

Ian Smith, FCLC ’22, who majored in international studies and is a consultant for the United Nations, said that he took advantage of the resources at Fordham to land his current job.

“I got this job only because I did an internship at this agency, and the reason I got this internship was because I did research in Kenya over the summer when I was going into senior year, and the only reason I got to do that was because I got a grant from the dean’s office,” he said.

Finding Your Purpose

Tyesha Maddox, Ph.D., assistant professor of African and African American Studies, said that her own journey to becoming a historian of the African diaspora, with a focus on the Caribbean, was inspired by her family’s connections to the region. For Maddox, who started her academic journey with a bachelor’s in history and Africana Studies from Cornell University, the key was finding how her personal journey intersects with the needs of the broader world.

“The hard thing to do in life is to find a way to connect your purpose with your passion, and to do something that fulfills you and that you feel brings meaning to the world,” she said.

For Justin Foley, FCRH ’95, GABELLI ’03, his undergraduate experience showed him how to think creatively and be open to new paths, which is how he went from working as a tenant organizer to deciding to pursue an M.B.A. to becoming a program organizer for the Service Employees International Union.

Foley said his undergraduate degree in the humanities gave him the skills to navigate his not-quite-linear career path.

“Nobody said, ‘Here’s what your career track is going to be,’” said Foley, who double majored in urban studies and philosophy. “I really learned to indulge my curiosity about the world around me … My undergrad time has given me a framework for my values.”

Taking Advice

Aidan Graham, a junior at Fordham College at Rose Hill, said that he saw similarities between himself and Candela, as he is also majoring in international political economy—and philosophy—with plans to go into law as well. But he appreciated hearing from successful alumni who said their first path was not necessarily the only path.

“I found it comforting because a lot of the panelists said that the uncertainty that comes with studying humanities and not knowing your exact career path is common,” he said. “It’s like a sense of community.”

Additional reporting by Kelly Prinz.

“Sometimes the classroom can be such a formal atmosphere,” said Moore, who teaches theology at Fordham, along with Seitz, her husband. “Just seeing them lying on the floor with my dog, petting her, and telling us about terrible high school summer jobs they’ve had, just being more human—it was so sweet.” 

This summer, Moore served as a faculty mentor to three undergraduates participating in Fordham’s summer research programs: Laura Oldfather, a theology student at Fordham College at Lincoln Center who is revitalizing Ignatian spirituality for a new generation; Amara Overmyer, an English student at Fordham College at Lincoln Center who is writing stories about a local nonprofit; and Christopher Ciaccio, a philosophy student at Fordham College at Rose Hill who is imagining alternatives to capitalism using 20th-century French mystical thought. (The students’ research is, respectively, funded by Fordham College at Lincoln Center, the Center for Community Engaged Learning, and Fordham College at Rose Hill.) 

In mid-July, Moore and Seitz invited the students to their home in Hastings-on-Hudson for dinner, along with their theology colleague Stephanie Arel. While eating a homemade meal prepared by Moore—roasted chicken, potatoes, goat cheese salad, and watermelon—the students and scholars shared their research and the things they care about.

“They all are readers, writers, and thinkers who are doing super cool work this summer, and it was great to have a chance to think and learn together,” said Moore, who hosted students at her home last spring, too.

Ignatian Spirituality for Gen Z

Oldfather, who is originally from Wisconsin, is a theology major. She said she is studying how scholars are adapting the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola to different cultures and audiences, particularly women, who were “often left out of the history of the Jesuits.” 

“I’m looking at the work that people have done … and focusing on how this impacts a modern-day Fordham college student, like how the exercises would be applicable. As part of my research, I am writing a translation, updating some of the language. A lot of it is changing pronouns in places, making it gender-neutral. In some places, the language is very imperial or colonial, just because of the context of it being written in the 1500s,” said Oldfather, who will present her research at Fordham’s spring symposium next year. 

An Internship That Combines Writing and Humanitarian Work 

Overmyer, an English student from California, is a summer intern at an East Harlem nonprofit that helps vulnerable families and children, where she is developing website biographies for the organization’s nearly 60 staff and board members. 

At the dinner, she shared her work with the other students, who, in turn, broadened her perspective on theology and philosophy. (Her favorite part of the get-together, however, was meeting Moore and Seitz’s three-and-a-half year old golden retriever, Mosey: “I have slobber and hair all over my skirt that I wore that day, but it was worth it,” she said.) 

Moore said that she and her husband love seeing students in their “full humanity.” 

“We are, as humanities scholars and lecturers and students, studying human culture and civilization,” said Moore, “and it’s so much more interesting to do that when we show up in our full humanity, too.”

The group—a professor, a psychologist, and three students—gathered in a classroom in Duane Library on Feb. 14, where they spoke to members of the Fordham community about how love appears in their professional work.  

Literature on Love

Some of them shared their favorite literature on love. Thomas O’Donnell, Ph.D., associate professor of English and medieval studies, printed out three poems and passed out copies to the audience: a joyful poem written by Comtessa de Dia, a 12th-century French noblewoman; a mournful poem by Umm Khalid, an Arabic poet from the 8th or 9th century; and a funny poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, a 14th-century English poet. 

“[Chaucer] says he is so in love that he feels like a piece of roasted fish in jam sauce,” O’Donnell said, to laughter from the audience. 

Asher Harris, a Ph.D. student in theology, talked about American jazz musician John Coltrane, who expressed love and gratitude to God for saving him from his heroin addiction. The most open expression of this love appeared in his album A Love Supreme, particularly in the song “Psalm,” said Harris, who played a recording for the audience. 

Another scholar, Christopher Supplee, FCRH ’25, a creative writing major, shared a poem he wrote and recited in honor of the event: “A World Without Love.” 

“There are matters that cannot be mended by mortal hands alone,” he said to the audience, reading from his poem. “That only miracles may fix, assuming they still exist.” 

Supplee said that when he was writing his poem, he was inspired by the question “What is love?” 

“It made me want to sit down and think about what love means to me—what are my experiences, what I’ve read, what I’ve been taught from scholars, writers, and entertainment,” Supplee said. “Love can be expressed in many different ways, whether it be through justice, romance, or friendship.” 

Queer Love at Fordham

Other scholars shared their own research on love. Benedict Reilly, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill who studies theology, discussed the theme of love from his book Queer Prayer at Fordham. He started the book project two years ago, interviewing LGBTQ+ members of the Fordham community about how they pray. During those conversations, he learned about the connection between prayer and love. One interviewee said that she learned to love herself through prayer. Another interviewee—an asexual and aromantic woman who longed to have a child of her own—spoke about how she found love and comfort through a Hail Mary. 

“I’m sharing all of these with you because I want you to think about different prayers or songs that might be helpful to you all as you fall in love,” Reilly said. 

The final invited speaker, Sarika Persaud, Ph.D., a supervising psychologist in Counseling and Psychological Services who specializes in love and relationships, spoke about what her work has taught her about love. 

“When I’m sitting with a person and helping them heal, I’m not only opening them up to love as a feeling, to feel love again, but to love as who you are—to exist in the world as love,” said Persaud, who added that her Hinduism philosophy informs her work. “All of your desires, whatever relationships you enter into, whatever relationships come your way, whatever challenges come your way, they’re all opportunities … to love more.”

What Love Means to a Jesuit

After each guest spoke, event host and theology professor Brenna Moore invited the audience to reflect on what love means to them. 

Among them was Timothy Perron, S.J., a Jesuit in formation and doctoral student in theology. 

“As somebody who has taken a vow of celibacy, a lot of times, people think, ‘What could that person know about love, especially romantic love?’” Perron said. “But actually, I’ve thought about it a lot.” 

Before he decided to become a priest, he wondered if he could commit to that vow. After much thought, he said he realized that every human has the same needs and desires, but they appear in different ways. 

“I still have a need for close friendship, intimacy, love, and care for others … [but there are]all of these different ways that love could be understood,” Perron said. “If I see somebody who is looking for money or something, I’ll often stop and talk to them or take them to the nearest deli … Just stuff like that, where you feel that love and that connection … intentionally developing close relationships with people, keeping in close touch, calling them—all of those sorts of things, I think, are part of what love means.” 

“All of the things that we teach and talk about at Fordham—the city as our campus, research with justice and solidarity, attention to those on the margins—those are all at the center of this project,” said Brenna Moore, Ph.D., project co-leader and Fordham theology professor.

The organization, LSA Family Health Service, was founded by the Little Sisters of the Assumption in 1958. It’s a community-based organization that provides free services to disadvantaged families in East Harlem, with the goal of strengthening and empowering them to uplift the entire community. Last year, LSA enlisted two Fordham professors—Moore, a theology professor who serves on LSA’s board of directors, and Carey Kasten, Ph.D., an associate professor of Spanish—to help them tell their story. The resulting research project, “Mutuality in El Barrio: Stories of LSA Family Health Services in East Harlem,” will be the first academic study of LSA’s 63-year history and its long-term impact in the community, said Moore. 

In February 2020, Moore and Kasten launched their project, thanks to funding from CCEL’s Faculty-Led Initiatives program, which supports interdisciplinary projects that serve the local community and advance social justice. 

“We thought it was a great fit for CCEL and Fordham,” said Julie Gafney, Ph.D., executive director of CCEL. “This entire project, from conception to implementation, is about practicing mutuality.”

Mutuality is the guiding spiritual principle of LSA, which was originally founded by Catholic nuns, said Moore.

“They are now run by a more secular staff, but they’re still grounded in this principle of mutuality that distinguishes them from other organizations. They have a two-way relationship where both parties cultivate their strengths and learn from each other,” said Moore. 

In spring 2020, Moore and Kasten hired seven Spanish-speaking student researchers from Fordham—three undergraduates and four students from the Graduate School of Social Service—to help them interview immigrant families who have used LSA’s services. In fall 2020, the team interviewed 19 mothers in their native language about what brought them to the U.S. and how the skills they learned through LSA have empowered them and their families.

The women’s stories were emotional and poignant, said Moore. 

“There were several people in one household who had COVID, along with a little sister who had leukemia. There was so much trauma and struggle in these interviews. But it was also remarkable to hear about the resilience and the creativity these women possessed, as well as their desire to give back to their community through volunteering and helping their neighbors,” said Moore.  

The hour-and-a-half long conversations were emotional for the interviewers, too, said Kasten. 

“Those women are trusting you with so much at that moment—their story of coming to the U.S., with both trauma and reflection,” said Kasten, a fluent Spanish speaker who spearheaded the interview process. “The students were also moved by the interviews and drawn into the project because many of them are members of Spanish-speaking households whose parents have stories similar to the women that they interviewed.” 

This past spring, Moore and Kasten’s team transcribed their interviews and researched LSA’s history, spirituality, and ministry. In November, they were awarded the $15,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation’s Religion and Theology Program to take their project to the finish line. From now until January 2023, the team will complete their book, present their research at a conference, and host a public event where all project participants can celebrate their work. Their project is now under advance book contract with Fordham Press’s Empire State Editions. 

“It means everything for us to have our stories told,” said Trish Gough, director of volunteer services at LSA. “We’ve lived within this community for 63 years. Our history is so rich, and capturing it in a book filled with research means so much to us and our community.”

These Catholic historians, theologians, poets, and activists fought against issues in the early to mid-1900s that still exist today, said Moore, including European xenophobia and racism in the United States. Among them are Harlem Renaissance poet Claude McKay and Gabriela Mistral, the first Nobel prize laureate from Latin America. Their friendships with like-minded colleagues took place not only in person, but also in other forms of consciousness, like memory, imagination, and prayer. In a Q&A with Fordham News, Moore describes how these spiritual friendships fueled their activism and how today’s activists can learn from their predecessors who lived more than a century ago. 

How is your book relevant to today’s world?

The people in my book took stands on many issues that are still with us today. For example, poet Claude McKay was a Black Catholic who wrote prolifically about police brutality and white “friends” who are sympathetic with their Black friends, yet do nothing to help. He wrote about this more than 80 years ago in ways that are remarkably descriptive of our own time. Another example is in chapter three, where I write about a group of activists who countered anti-Islamic sentiment among Catholics and tried to come up with a more humane and sophisticated way of understanding Islam. Many of these issues continue to assail us today, but they were engaged very creatively by this early generation of activists and thinkers. As we work today to create a more inclusive world, we don’t have to start from scratch. We should look at some of the experiments that took place in the earlier part of the last century and learn from their mistakes and successes.

What can they teach us about navigating today’s politics? 

It’s really tough to engage in today’s politics. But the Catholic activists were very clear and convinced that to do the difficult work of political solidarity and making a change in the world, you have to be energized and animated by feelings of love, support, joy, pleasure, and interpersonal connection. They were very explicit that friendship was the fuel for their work. Their political organizations included the word amitié, which means friendship in French. Their political work, art and writing, and even their religious lives were sustained by what they called “spiritual friendship.” There was no way to do their work without that. 

Do they have any advice about negotiating one’s faith? 

There are those of us—myself included—who have a complicated relationship with Roman Catholicism. We are members of the Catholic church, yet we are disappointed by the church hierarchy and clerical culture, especially in the wake of the sexual abuse crisis. But these Catholic artists and activists also felt, at times, incredible disappointment and frustration with their church leadership. They often spoke out against racism, European colonialism, and anti-Semitism, in contrast to a church leadership that too often stayed silent, advocated obedience, or upheld violent societal structures. They reclaimed our Catholic heritage and made it more multicultural and just, and they point a way forward for people who might feel similarly today. 

Spiritual friendship was an important part of the activists’ lives. How did they maintain those relationships? And how did they enhance their work?

I discovered this world of friendship while reviewing some historical archives. I found some of the activists’ files, and I could see and touch all the letters that they wrote to their friends. But they weren’t simply letters. Many had sacred objects tucked inside: holy medallions, little crosses made of twigs, pictures that they painted or drew. There was a sacred materiality to both the letters and objects. Letters to friends weren’t just a casual thing—this was how holiness was communicated to one another, in these things that were touched, felt, and mailed back and forth, sometimes across the Atlantic. 

One friendship I might highlight is the friendship between Gabriela Mistral, a poet who became the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and Jacques Maritain, a Catholic philosopher. They first met in Paris, where people gathered from all over the world. Gabriela was a writer who was seeking intellectual collaboration in the interwar period. She became friends with Jacques, who shared similar values, including rejecting typical heterosexual matrimony and having children. Jacques was married to a woman, but they shared a vow of celibacy and never had children. Gabriela was a gay woman who never married and raised the son of a family member who had died. They both lived their lives in disjunction from the mainstream family norms at the time. 

Gabriela was very involved in bringing Jacques’ ideas about democracy and antifascism for Catholics into Latin America. She ensured that his publications were translated into Spanish and disseminated in Chilean universities, seminaries, and bookstores and helped to develop a more liberal Catholicism during this period. Her name is hidden in the history of Catholic thought, whereas Jacques is very famous. But it is through their friendship, especially their long distance correspondence, that his ideas became internationalized. 

How does your book connect to Fordham and its Jesuit mission? 

I believe the women and men in my book model the kind of Catholicism that Fordham would be proud of. They shared a passion for connecting with the long roots of the Catholic heritage, but in a way that cultivated openness to difference and courage to disrupt the status quo. These men and women took personal risks to live lives of solidarity with those who were vulnerable in the 20th century. This is the kind of faith we talk about a lot at Fordham. 

You’ve said that these friendships were sustained over long distances and long periods of time. Did that remind you of our attempts to stay connected during the pandemic? 

Many of my characters had close friendships, but they spent years apart. Some were sent into exile in Brazil; others returned to Harlem during World War II. Yet they sustained friendships over long periods of time through the realm of memory, imagination, and correspondence. It was possible for them to sustain friendships that weren’t face to face, the way many of us did during the pandemic, and that was comforting to me. 

What is a key takeaway from your book, especially for a non-religious audience? 

The people in this past world, although chronologically distant from us, address many issues that face us today. They were often critical of the church, state, and racist institutions, but they experimented with other modes of belonging, connection, and solidarity. 

Some of their utopian experiments failed, and they didn’t always live up to the ideals they had for themselves. One example is Maison Simone Weil, founded in 1962 by Nazi resistor Marie-Magdeleine Davy. It was a utopian international dormitory and summer community where students from all over the world would gather in rural France to discuss many of the pressing ideas of the 1960s: peace, war, global spirituality, existentialism. The goal was to forge relationships among international students and contribute to peacemaking. It was a successful project while it lasted, but shuttered its doors after only a few years.

Yet the activists in my book constantly experimented with alternative modes of living, in connection to one another and to God. These are people who attempted to change the world because they were dissatisfied with the status quo—the way many of us still are today.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

“‘Father D’ was a dedicated, gregarious teacher renowned for his wit and his sense of joy, as well as an academic adviser and mentor known for the pastoral care and concern he generously gave to so many students,” said Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham.

Father Denniston was raised in Westbury, New York, and was ordained a priest in 1979. He served at St. Mary’s in Manhasset, St. Anne’s in Garden City, Notre Dame in New Hyde Park, and as pastor of St. Patrick’s Church in Huntington.

He began his teaching career in 1984 as a member of the faculty at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, New York. In 1991, he earned his Ph.D. in theology at Fordham’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences with a dissertation titled “An examination of Calvin’s Theory of Knowledge in His Theology and Exegesis.” He joined the theology department as an adjunct assistant professor in 1996 and was an integral part of the teaching staff until his accident last year. He was the author of Give Them What You Have: Interpreting the New Testament for Today (Ligouri, 2008).

Beloved in the Classroom

Though he was an accomplished scholar and author, Father Denniston was best known for the classes he taught.

Faith and Critical Reason, a required course for all incoming first-year students, was his specialty. He taught three to four classes of 30 students per semester, a course load that never ceased to amaze J. Patrick Hornbeck, Ph.D., who was the chair of the department from 2013 to 2020.

“The amount of energy that he must have had to be able to do a high level of teaching multiple times in a row was always very impressive to me,” he said.

“You couldn’t know John and not know that he was a humorous, tongue-in-cheek, delightful man who really enjoyed life, and I think that he got a tremendous amount of energy out of his interactions with students.”

Brenna Moore, Ph.D., an associate professor of theology who served as associate chair of undergraduate studies in theology, said what was even more remarkable about this workload—he also taught classes about the Book of Revelations and apocalyptic themes in film—was how he managed to pay so much attention to individual students. They were not, he often reminded her, simply passive recipients of theology research.

“It was very transformative and very healing for me to start thinking about what I was doing in a very different way. He helped me just by telling me stories about his students, and asking me about my stories about students,” she said. “He also had hilarious stories about things students would say.”

Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J., a professor of theology who was on the faculty when Father Denniston defended his dissertation in 1991, said that calling him the “pied piper” of the department would be no exaggeration.

“His courses, even one as recondite as Eschatology, would fill up minutes after enrollment opened,” he said.

James Burris, a first-year student at Fordham College at Rose Hill who took Faith and Critical Reason with Father Denniston last fall, said even an 8:30 a.m. start time didn’t dull the experience.

“Father D loved to joke around and incorporate a lighthearted environment into his classes but I always walked away feeling like I had learned something from his lectures. He was an example of the Jesuit values of the magis and cura personalis through his devotion to his students and his University,” he said.

Making Connections Around Campus

Father Denniston split his time between residences at the Rose Hill campus and in Long Island, and as such, was a presence in many lives outside of the academic setting.

He served as chaplain for the men’s football team; former coach Joseph Moorhead, FCRH ’96, called him “a tremendous man of God whose intelligence, sense of humor, empathetic nature, and true care for the students of Fordham and Bronx Community will always resonate with me.”

Anne-Marie Sweeney, who was the theology department’s secretary from 2003 to 2020, said one of her fondest memories will always be when Father Denniston presided over her son’s wedding in 2016.

“I told him a few times that he not only taught the students about religious faiths but also gave them the tools that would help them through life’s journey, wherever it would take them. He was kind, humble, and had a great sense of humor and always had a smile on his face,” she said.

He made connections as well with his fellow priests at Rose Hill. He lived at the Salice-Conley residence hall, but Associate Professor of Theology Thomas Scirghi, S.J., said he joined the Jesuit community for dinner once a week.

“He’s a gregarious fellow. He walks into a room, he’s kind of like a Jay Leno smile that lights up a room, and he really enjoys meeting people and being with people,” he said.

“He was just one of the guys. He’s a diocesan priest but he fit in here so well, and so he’s remembered well by the Jesuit community here.”

Father Scirghi concelebrated a wedding in Stony Brook with Father Denniston in late September, and he said Father Denniston was determined to bring joy to the setting, even in the midst of a pandemic.

“The couple originally had a guest list of 250 and now it was whittled down to 50. So it was kind of sad, a little somber, but he helped raise the tone there to help make it a joyful occasion,” he said.

Father Denniston is survived by his nieces Melissa Paladino and Erin Crosby; nephew John Denniston; great-nephews James Wallace, Joseph Wallace, Ethan Paladino, and William Crosby; and great-niece Sophia Paladino.

Gifts in honor of Father Denniston may be made to the Rev. John J. Denniston, Ph.D., GSAS ’91 Memorial Fund.

Information on services can be found here.

—Chris Gosier contributed reporting.

On a rainy Wednesday night this month, Moore, an associate professor of theology at Fordham, spoke about her friends to a few dozen recent Fordham graduates who filled the brick-walled backroom of a Midtown Manhattan pub for the Young Alumni Committee’s annual Faith on Tap event.

Moore called her lecture “Spiritual Resistance: Lessons from the 1940s,” and she used her years of research and writing on Catholic French Resistance figures to inspire attendees feeling appalled by the politics of today and hoping to be a force for good in the world.

While philosophers Jacques Maritain and Simone Weil and Jesuit priest Henri de Lubac aren’t widely read and discussed outside theology and philosophy classrooms these days, Moore said the three have a lot to offer modern Americans. “They sort of saw these storm clouds gathering [in Europe] with the ascendency of anti-Semitism, xenophobia in the 1930s, and were clearly able to name everything that was happening,” she said.

In today’s political moment, with its increase in public demonstrations of racism, xenophobia, and nationalism, Moore said that her research subjects became more real.

“They were like these dreamlike people, occupying my imagination, warning me of a sort of dreamlike, nightmare future,” she said. Now, they “seem much more kind of human and down to earth. … They really are men and women that can simply offer their direct instruction for us today.”

The ‘Nourishing Food of Greater Unity’

Even in years of great violence and political division, thinkers like de Lubac, Weil, and Maritain practiced a nonviolent “spiritual” resistance, Moore said. They organized, they protested, and they wrote—very carefully.

“They were extremely vigilant about language. They were always on the lookout for how easily language could be distorted in ways that would misinform, seduce, and weaken people’s ability to think critically and clearly,” Moore said. “They knew that language changes not only what we say and write, but how we feel, or how we interpret reality.”

Moore referenced Marie-Madeleine Davy, a French Catholic philosopher who would always classify other, marginalized groups as part of the same human race—“Some of us are Jews. … Some of us are Muslims,” she’d note, Moore said.

Henri de Lubac, who became a cardinal of the Catholic Church in 1983, called this use of the first-person plural “a way to distribute spiritual food.” Or, in Moore’s words, “the nourishing food of greater unity,” as opposed to “the junk food of language that divides us.”

But the French Resistance figures Moore discussed weren’t solely focused on other faiths. They felt a connection to Catholics around the world, despite racial or national boundaries. After all, “catholic means universal,” Moore said, and she told Fordham alumni they can apply that lesson, especially if they’re interested in volunteering or joining an advocacy group.

“I feel like sometimes it can be embarrassing—what are you going to do, just call a nonprofit and ask to volunteer?” Moore said. But she said that going to a Jesuit school and taking theology classes—even for those who aren’t Catholic or even religious—can provide a common ground and a common language for getting involved with a faith-based organization. “It gives you a little foot in the door,” she said.

‘No One Acts Alone’

Moore also noticed that her subjects wrote about friendship as much as they did spirituality.

“It was a more interpersonal, warmer way of engaging the political world,” she said. “We tend to think of the [French] Resistance or any of the heroes in history as kind of courageously facing the immensity of anti-Semitism or racism, facing the immensity alone. But that’s not true. They did all this work in the context of intimate friendships, even families. … No one acts alone.”

Moore closed the lecture by giving attendees a high grade.

“The other thing that [the French Resistance figures] did was have a civil society,” Moore said. “Even just coming out on a rainy night to talk about ideas—this is really important stuff.”

—Jeff Coltin, FCRH ’15

Watch Brenna Moore’s spring 2016 “Fordham Mini Lecture” on mysticism and spirituality in religion and politics.