Article Title
Abstract
This article, a revision of the Raymund Schwager, S.J., Memorial Lecture, given at the Colloquium on Religion and Violence, July 10, 2015, St. Louis University, focuses on the risk of memory and the cost of forgetting. Memory, and the act of remembering both individually and collectively as a society, involves risk to a society’s present, past, and future. Forgetting comes at a price exacted by the past, but paid in the present for the future, even as nations sometimes choose to forget. This thesis is developed in three parts – common meaning and memory as grounding a community; the cost of forgetting so as to erase memory of wrongdoing; and the terrible implications of the cost of forgetting in the context of the shooting at Mother Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church on June 17, 2015 in South Carolina. When we risk memory, we collectively take responsibility to embody ethical responsibility for the past, in the present, and for the future.
Recommended Citation
Copeland, M. Shawn
(2016)
"The Risk of Memory, The Cost of Forgetting,"
Journal of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium: Vol. 9, Article 9.
Available at:
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/jbcts/vol9/iss1/9
Included in
Catholic Studies Commons, Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons
Comments
In 2023, all issues of the Journal of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium became available electronically on this site with the permission of the original publisher, Fortuity Press/Hamilton Publishing. All articles now carry the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives License (CC-BY-NC-ND).