My Interview with Father Xavier

In choosing to do this project, I had attempted to manifest something impressive. My vision had originally encompassed interviewing the Archbishop of San Francisco, making the trip to the Cathedral and getting insight from many of the clerics there. Unfortunately, I realized that my personal status probably was not conducive to securing an audience with one of the highest ranking prelates in California, though the spirit of my original aim was there, even if it was not exploring the most abstruse ecclesiastical politicking that typically defined Catholic hierarchy.

I found it immensely valuable, still, to minimize the scope of my project to uncover what was most valuable and pressing to people and their relationship with the Church. I revised my original question set to a few key inquiries with which I directed to the head pastor of the Catholic community in Berkeley who was more than willing to hear my impassioned request for insight into high-impact topics like abortion, Palestine, and political polarization.

I had a pleasant time with the Father. He is of the Dominican order with a long career as a cleric, and was responsible for administering parishes from the heart of San Francisco, to the Palo Alto, to Berkeley. The parish is a few minutes walk from campus, a beautiful brutalist structure that cuts a commanding presence on Dwight Way, the exterior opening up to a cozy chapel that exudes a certain old world charm, one that transports you back to ancient Judea with its rough cut stone altar.

The Interview itself was an illuminating one, the Father proved to be a scholar that questioned me as much as vice versa, "How do you know that somebody loves you?" was a question I was not personally prepared for. His scholastic approach was evident in his response as he drew a comparison between his apotheosis into the priesthood to knowing whether someone loves you. The analogy being that there are a number of reasons, all interconnected together, that combined holistically, cements an intuitive realization that, "Ah, she loves me."

"Washington was right about factions," he said, his unifying rhetoric consistent throughout the interview. "The initial institution of the Constitution did not really envision a double party system, that's not what it was looking for. It was looking for people who really were in conversation." With the antagonistic manifestations of collective action on both sides of the aisle inflamed by polarized political discourse, a poignant reminder of historic unity offers an opportunity for reconciliation.

His words echoed in the sentiments of the Catholic Church's new synodal way, a paradigm that may go a long way into mending the divide that has only grown in recent years, "The Synodal Way is based on first of all, listening, understanding what the problem is what people's plight are, and saying, 'How might God be speaking through our hearing and listening,' and then create solutions et cetera."

Additionally, alongside grappling the difficult questions, he shared with me his own experiences participating in social movements, "Civil Rights era... I was out there, I was protesting for the farm workers. I, you know, worked in a shelter one summer," he said, no doubt privy to the social upheaval that defined the late 20th century, which I believe would lend to the gravitas of his observations into the current discursive shifts. He ended.

We ended the interview with the proverb, "He who troubles his own house shall inherit the wind," he opined that it was from a movie about the Scopes trial with Spencer Tracy known as "Inherit the Wind." I folded that proverb in with the main takeaway and that was pondering as to the sheer extent that churches, faith groups, prayer circles, played in being a spring board for social actions. In choosing to do something smaller, I noticed something that may have been overlooked had I met a high ranking cleric to banter jargon over Canon Law. Perhaps it is God's will.