At Avila University, we cannot be silent in the face of fear, division, and the diminishing of human dignity that we are witnessing across our country right now. As a Catholic institution founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, we stand firmly and unapologetically for the God given dignity of every person and against policies, rhetoric, and actions that treat anyone as less than fully human.
What follows is a declaration of our position in this moment: we will not sit quietly on the sidelines. We will stand firm, rooted in our mission and our theme We Are Community, and we will work to build communities where dignity is never negotiable.
Demanding Dignity in a Divided Time
Some days it feels like the loudest voices in our country are the ones trying to convince us to be afraid of each other. Afraid of our differences, afraid of our neighbors, afraid of anyone whose story does not mirror our own.
But if fear gets to decide who is worthy and who is expendable, we lose something essential not only about America, but about who we are called to be as human beings.
You can tell a lot about a culture by who is allowed to feel safe, seen, and fully human. When dignity becomes conditional tied to race, religion, gender, status, immigration papers, or political party we are no longer debating policy; we are quietly deciding who is disposable.
We are witnessing this play out in real time. The current administration’s approach to immigration enforcement has created what the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops calls “a climate of fear and anxiety” in communities across the country. Parents are afraid to take their children to school. Families are being separated. Houses of worship, hospitals, and schools that have always been sanctuaries are now feeling under threat.
In an extraordinary and nearly unanimous statement last November, the bishops declared: “We feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity.” They opposed what they called “indiscriminate mass deportation” and prayed for “an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence.”
Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, put it plainly: “People are to be respected and treated with dignity, whether they are documented or undocumented, whether they are here legally or illegally they don’t forfeit their human dignity.”
That is not a political statement. That is a foundational bedrock of Catholic social teaching, and it is woven into the DNA of every institution the Sisters of St. Joseph have ever touched.
At Avila, we have language for this that I carry with me every day. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet talk about serving the “dear neighbor without distinction” and living a charism of unifying love. Underneath that simple phrase is a radical claim about the sacredness of every person.
Catholic social teaching says that the dignity of the human person is the foundation for any moral vision of society people are always more important than things, power, or profit. When we forget that, institutions drift, politics harden, and real people are reduced to categories, labels, or enemies.
To love the dear neighbor without distinction is to say: no one is disposable, even when we disagree, even when it costs us something, even when it would be easier to stay silent.
This is where Brené Brown helps connect the dots between dignity and community. She writes: “True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.”
Think about that for a moment. So much of what passes for “community” today is really just pressure to fit in, to hide the parts of ourselves that might make others uncomfortable, to trade authenticity for acceptance. But fitting in by changing who we are is not belonging. It is, as Brown says, “a hollow substitute for belonging and often a barrier to it.”
True belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world and that can only happen in communities where dignity is not negotiable. Where you do not have to earn your right to be seen, heard, and valued.
That is why We Are Community is not just a slogan at Avila. It is a commitment to build the kind of place where belonging is real because dignity comes first.
Division is not an accident. It is a strategy. When leaders stoke fear of the “other” whether that other is an immigrant, a person of a different faith, someone who looks different, loves different, or votes different they are making a calculated bet that we will choose self protection over solidarity.
But communities built on fear cannot hold. They require an ever growing list of outsiders to blame, an ever narrowing circle of who counts as “us.” That is not the America we believe in, and it is not the kind of campus community that honors the Sisters’ legacy.
The bishops reminded us that we cannot say “the end justifies the means” when human dignity is at stake. There is no policy goal important enough to justify treating people as less than human.
So what does it mean to demand dignity right now not as a slogan, but as a way of leading, teaching, and living?
- It means refusing to let fear write the script of who belongs in our classrooms, boardrooms, pews, or neighborhoods.
- It means listening across real differences while remembering that listening is an act of respect, not automatic agreement.
- It means teaching our students that their worth is not up for negotiation and that the worth of the person they disagree with is not either.
- It means creating spaces where people can show up as their authentic selves and be valued for exactly who they are, not who we want them to be.
- It means using whatever influence we have to close the gap between our stated values and the lived experience of those at the margins.
None of that is abstract for the Sisters of St. Joseph. From their founding in 1650 to their ministries today, they have stepped toward unmet needs and toward those the world prefers not to see, in a spirit of loving unity.
Dignity will not trend. It will not always win the news cycle. But it has a quiet, stubborn power that outlasts fear, because it is rooted in something deeper than politics the conviction that every human person is created in the image of God.
In a season when so much energy is spent dividing us into camps, maybe the most countercultural thing we can do is simple and demanding at the same time: see the dear neighbor without distinction, protect their dignity as fiercely as our own, and build communities where no one has to earn their right to belong.
That is the kind of campus we are working to build. That is the kind of country many of us still believe we can be.
We Are Community.
And community begins with dignity.