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From the Lawrence D. Starr Center for Peace & Justice 

Reflections on Women’s Heritage Month

03/16/21

The month of March is Women’s Heritage Month.  From International Women’s Day on 8 March through the end of the month, the lives and achievements of women across the world are highlighted and celebrated.   

This March is also the 10th anniversary of the Syrian Civil War.  It is an opportunity to hold these two disparate anniversaries in our hands and hearts together, to consider Women’s Heritage Month in light of the Syrian Civil War.   To realize and reflect on how women in Syria have faced the brutal truths and experiences of that war in particular ways, as warriors, leaders, healers, teachers, journalists, scientists, daughters, mothers, wives, and sisters, speaking truth to power and seeking peace and renewal in the face of fear, destruction, grief, and death.   Women and girls resourcefully marshalling their strength to help journey through dangerous spaces to bring their families to better places.  Women as story-makers and storytellers.  

In this month of March, as we celebrate the accomplishments of women, it is important that we consider the lives of all women and girls.  To step back and listen, to allow the quiet voices to speak.  It is important to acknowledge spaces where women’s voices are often over-powered, whether that is a boardroom, classroom, zoom room, courtroom, or any room where men and women come together.   It is also important that women who are privileged step back to allow each woman and girl the platform to tell their own story and not speak a truth that is not our own. 

Who are the women in your life that have been influential?  Who are the women who are the pioneers in your field of study, women who have blazed the trail?  Who are the women storytellers of your family history?  As you reflect on these questions, think of where you might listen to new voices from women and girls telling the stories of their lives.   

In this month of March, please hold the women and girls of Syria in your prayers and pray for a just peace.

 

On this Juneteenth 2020

06/19/2020

On June 19, 1865 in Galveston, Texas – the 250,000 enslaved peoples of Texas learned of their emancipation, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation came into force and some two months after the end of the Civil War. 

The following year, in commemoration and celebration of their freedom, Juneteenth was born.    

The Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution ended legal slavery in America, but did not end the original sin of the founding of our country in the sale of persons, in the whipped, chained, and violated bodies of the enslaved.   It did not lessen the often bloody battles of freedom from Jim Crow, burning crosses, lynchings, and laws to prevent Blacks from participating in the political, social, and economic growth, prosperity, and promise of America.

Yet, the freedom celebrated by Juneteenth reminds us justice and dignity for all is not yet a reality in our country. The senseless murders of our black brothers, the continuing economic disparity cry to heaven for redress.  We must continue to demand justice and dignity for all and the full recognition of the God-given dignity of our black brothers and sisters.  The lives of too many have been sacrificed at the hands of the powerful and privileged. This evil, born of the insidious belief that one race is superior, must end now.   

We, the »¨½·Ö±²¥ and our Board of Trustees embrace and proclaim that BLACK LIVES MATTER. 

While we walk as sisters, and brothers in the celebration of freedom this Juneteenth, we are angered that we still live in a country that does not recognize and honor the God-given dignity of each black brother and sister. 

We grieve all of God’s children who have been murdered because of the color of their skin and we stand in solidarity with their grieving families.

We, as a Catholic university, commit ourselves to the hard work of eradicating discrimination within us, among us and around us. We believe all people are created in the image and likeness of almighty God and must be treated as children of God.  The gospel of Jesus to which we are committed demands no less.