The longest shutdown in government history ended less than two weeks ago amid much ballyhoo about who won or lost in this “epic” battle between Democrats and Republicans.  Yet now, with only a two-week separation, the commotion and consternation seem but a fading and somewhat inconsequential memory.  At the time and for the 43 days of the shutdown, it was anything but.  It dominated the news and our thinking.

I am choosing to view the end of the shutdown in a way that I fervently pray is not naïve but a sign of hope that the common good is not dead in our political life.  Rather than heap abuse on the eight Democratically caucusing Senators who built the bridge between the two camps, I applaud them.

Most of us are probably relieved the shutdown is over.  I certainly am.  My reasons are multiple, not the least of which is that benefits, such as SNAP (food stamps), and other protections for those in need and marginalized are again available.

I am glad, too, that Federal workers will again be paid for being our dutiful civil servants.  I was travelling for a good portion of the shutdown, and every time I saw a TSA worker helping keep my fellow travelers and me safe, I thought about these Federal employees as mothers and fathers working hard to provide for their families during this manufactured crisis.  How demoralizing, if not dehumanizing, to be nothing more than pawns in the tribal warfare that our national politics has become?

For a long time, secular observers of our government have been lamenting the lack of compromise and true bipartisanship.  As faith leaders with a social justice perspective, we would call this an unwillingness to seek the common good.

Vincent J. Miller, a professor at Dayton University, has written very thoughtfully about this in an essay entitled “The Disappearing Common Good as a Challenge to Catholic Participation in Public Life.”  He does not place the full blame on our leaders, but also on the disconnected way we live – in our own silos, in our suburban enclaves isolated from community, and, now, in my own words, before our digital screens.

More than ever, we must now build new, strengthen existing, and revitalize old communities of commitment, a concept with a long tradition in Catholic Social Thought. Communities of commitment link faith, action, and social justice.  Think the Catholic Workers Movement, or an organization to which I have long belonged, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.  In these settings, people from various backgrounds, educational levels, life experiences, sexual orientations – you name it! – come together in common action and concern for those on the fringes. Solutions are sought.  Help is rendered.  Action is taken.  Companionship is given.

Let’s think, then, of those eight Senators as the first builders of a little Congressional community of commitment at the end of a polarized 2025.  Why must we insist they are renegades, traitors, or backsliders?  Are we so blinded by our tribal mindset that we cannot see potential wisdom and even courage in their actions?  Couldn’t they be trailblazers for a different 2026?

From a faith perspective, I find their actions to be wholly consistent with what I understand, and with what Catholic Social Thought teaches: namely, that governing is the persistent dogged pursuit of a consensus on the common good based on just principles found in natural or God’s law.  It is an understatement of the greatest magnitude in our polarized society to say that it is not easy today.

The contest cannot continue to be who wins/who loses, or who caves/who stands unmoved.  The focus must be on forming consciences, borrowing a phrase from the title of the Catholic bishops’ seminal teaching document on participation in political life.  Hearts must be changed.  Laws and policies will then inevitably follow.

I, too, fervently want health care premiums to be affordable for those in need, and I want many other benefits for those who are disadvantaged – better housing options, help with home energy costs, better educational opportunities, improved job training, access to mental health counseling, etc.

But what I want most from my political leaders is for action motivated by moral values and a hope-filled political imagination of what the common good could and should be.  None of that is possible while we remain in separate camps, a house divided against itself.

Dialogue must occur.  In a thoughtful Op-Ed in The Boston Globe, a psychologist asked, “What kind of conversation can save a democracy on the brink?”  It is not, Op-Ed columnist Professor Peter Coleman adamantly states, “viral clips of rhetorical takedown packaged for clicks,” which he rightly asserts has become “the lifeblood of a political culture addicted to outrage.”

Professor Coleman describes the dialogue he believes will be healing and hope-filled as a “process of speaking openly, often personally, and listening carefully.   It is a means of communication that allows for genuine reflection, mutual learning, and discovery.”

Our eight Senators who broke the logjam were certainly speaking “personally,” as Professor Coleman demands, and not as part of a tribe that has already vilified them as traitors.   In faith-based terminology, they might be described as trying to discern the way forward, or again using Professor Coleman’s terms, by engaging in “genuine reflection, mutual learning and discovery.”  Much more of that is needed, not less!

They may be trying to spark the political imagination that people of good faith, with diverse viewpoints, can nonetheless come together through the instrument of government for the common good.  Indeed, they broke a barrier and opened what was closed for too long and for too many.

What can we do now?  We can press our elected officials to abandon “viral clips of rhetorical takedowns” and be serious instead about engaging in dialogue that leads to a good-faith search for the common good.  We should couch our pleas, indeed our demands, in the spiritual language of our respective faiths.  That will provide both safe and inspiring context, and it will uplift the most noble values and aspects of ourselves, our faith, and our country – the seeking and finding of common goods.