Pope Francis is outspoken in his idea that “realities are greater than ideas”—that ideologies give us easy, pre-existing answers to challenging social questions, and prevent the social encounters and charitable love necessary to find new ways of proceeding in political life. We look at the problem with modern ideologies of all kinds, how they prevent us from living in accordance with truth, how they prevent political solutions, and why Catholic social teaching is not an ideology but rather represents a fuller, and human-centered approach to the full development of people. We include practical steps for how listeners can discern the ideologies in their own lives.

Brendan and I were delighted to speak with Sabrina Chiefari on May 13th about the question of ideology – what it is, where it manifests itself in our lives, how to spot it and combat it, and whether Christianity and Catholicism in particular constitute ideologies, in the pejorative sense.

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Sabrina M. Chiefari, BES, is a Catholic Environmental Educator from Tkaronto/Toronto. As Creation Care Animator for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto, she’s a long time proponent of Deep Ecology and Integral Ecology.

Since 2001, she’s used story-telling and a Socratic approach to help people from every walk-of-life understand how to act wisely towards our air, water and earth.

Her work, and the organizations she’s involved with can be found at the links below:

Faith Connections with the Sisters of St. Joseph Toronto
Theology on Tap, co-sponsored by the Archdiocese of Toronto