Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons^™

The Risk Of Memory, The Cost Of Forgetting, M. Shawn Copeland

Journal of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium

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 …