Friday, Jan. 5, marks 200 years since my predecessor, Louis William Valentine
DuBourg, arrived in St. Louis.
 
When Bishop DuBourg arrived, St. Louis had but one church which could only
be described as “a kind of miserable barn falling into ruins.” Today, the
Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis boasts one of the largest collections of mosaics
in the Western hemisphere. In 1818, Bishop DuBourg was establishing a
headquarters for his new diocese. Now, in 2018, the city of St. Louis is
competing for a second headquarters of a major international corporation. We
can imagine that those early settlers would be proud to see their once-fledgling
frontier town transformed into a thriving, modern metropolis.
 
We’re passionate about baseball, beer, frozen custard and toasted ravioli, and
more importantly about helping our neighbors and improving our community. St.
Louis consistently ranks as one of the most charitable metropolitan areas in the
country. Last year our Annual Catholic Appeal raised over $15 million for the
first time. Those funds are used to assist the homeless and hungry, support
women and their children, and provide education to thousands of children in
more than 130 schools of the Archdiocese of St. Louis.
 
But our city, which has so much to be proud of, also has reasons to be humble.
Issues of income inequality and lack of access to quality education continue to
plague us. Racial disparity, gun violence and doubts about fair treatment under
the law weigh heavily on our consciences. These past few years have made us
consider more deeply just how systemic these injustices are.
 
We need to have honest, intelligent discussions about how to make things
better. But sadly our discourse today — in politics, in the media and in the digital
world — often boils down to a toxic combination of partisan distrust and a fierce
commitment to ideology. Conversations that could be part of a solution never
occur because a viewpoint with which we disagree is too often taken as a
personal affront.
 
Reasonable people can have a difference of opinion — the trick is to first be
reasonable. How do we do that?
 
I propose that each of us try to observe a new 24-hour rule. The current version
of it is: “If you don’t respond within 24 hours your input will no longer be
relevant.” But what has the culture of immediate response gotten us? It’s made
us less reasonable and more shrill. Too often we’re only concerned with how to
fire back instead of really listening to each other. Too often we’re not speaking
from the deepest places of our hearts and minds, just the most immediate place
of our feelings. Shallow root has borne shrill fruit.
 
The new version that I propose is this: “I will take at least 24 hours to think
about this issue before responding.” The power of this pause is that it allows us
to listen more deeply to each other, and to fashion a response from a deeper
place in our hearts. We have time to hear the pain in people’s words and see
the pain in their actions, and factor that into our response. We have time to see
and affirm elements of the truth in proposed responses, even when those
responses are imperfect. We have time to see further problems with greater
calm and clarity, and propose better solutions.
 
I’m confident that 2018 can be a great year for our city, state and nation. But in
order for that to happen, we’re going to have to have to start listening to each
other in a new and deeper way. I believe that the way to make it so can be
found in the joy of the Gospel message, especially in patience and charity. A
new 24-hour rule would allow us to find a deeper place in our hearts for listening
and speaking to each other. From that deeper place we can build deeper bonds
with each other. And with deeper, more joy-filled bonds we can rise higher
together.
 
Two hundred years ago, Bishop Louis DuBourg recognized something special
about St. Louis. In 2018, let’s prove that he was right.
Most Rev. Robert J. Carlson is the archbishop of St. Louis.