Discerning Our Role Amid Political and Social Crises

Ep. 203 (Part 2 of 2) | In this rich, delightful, and profound conversation, Integral Theory informed Father David McCallum, SJ, currently serving the Catholic Church as executive director of the Program for Discerning Leadership, leads us into a world filled with mission, purpose, and service, foundational to which is the practice of discernment. David describes discernment as the capacity to exercise good judgment, hold complexity, and wait for clarity. This is not only a practice for individuals, he explains, but also a communal one, providing a way for communities to discern and design together the future they want to create—through listening, dialoguing, participating. Discernment is a way of knowing and making sense of reality, David continues, and especially important now in this era of changes and choices to be made.

David enlightens us as to the beautiful and far-sighted reforms proposed by the late Pope Francis, who was all for changing the balance of authority and participation in the Church; for people to have direct experience of Presence and the capacity to practice discernment; who also advocated for taking swift action on behalf of our planet, even calling out the part in the Bible that says man has dominion over the Earth. From David’s description of “the journey worth making”—surrendering, opening, accepting divine grace and love—to using Otto Scharmer’s U Process to help find the courage to change and simplify our lives for the benefit of all, to the Church’s relationship with A.I., David provides us with an extraordinarily mind-broadening, motivating, and spiritually fulfilling perspective. Recorded July 10, 2025.

“Disasters and oppression today are by-products of a spiritual crisis… We don’t see the unity of all.”

Topics & Time Stamps – Part 2

• Turning inward for guidance: making discernment practices & skills available to all (01:07)
• The hunger to get back to direct experience (04:04) 
• Practicing with the Ignatius exercises including contemplation: the path of silence (06:40)
• Pope Francis’ call out for action on behalf of the Earth (09:39)
• Using Otto Scharmer’s U Process to gain the courage to simplify our lives and make the commitment to change (12:11)
• Pope Francis’ challenging the idea that men should have dominion over the earth (13:30)
• Disasters and oppression today are by-products of a spiritual crisis; we don’t see the unity of all (15:13) 
• Liberation theology: awakening the poor to their plight, giving them tools to remediate systemic injustice (16:52)
• Why Jesuits were killed in El Salvador (19:28)
• In the current situation in the U.S., what shape will/should religiously motivated resistance take? (20:23)
• The church, A.I., and the danger of losing our human competencies to machines (27:32)

Resources & References – Part 2

• Father David McCallum, SJ, The Program for Discerning Leadership
• The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola
• Jesuit Roshi Bob Kennedy; award-winning documentary film about a 90-year-old Zen master who also happens to be a Jesuit priest (trailer)
• Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations
• Connecting to Source: The U Process (The Systems Thinker website)
• Otto Scharmer, action researcher, author of Theory U, co-author of Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-system to Eco-system Economies
• Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’
• Daniel Berrigan, Jesuit anti-war activist
• Pope Leo XIV’s message concerning AI at the United Nations’ AI for Good Summit (Vatican News)
• The Friar Who Became the Vatican’s Go-To Guy on A.I. (New York Times article)
• Yuval Harari on AI and Human Evolution, WSJ Leadership Institute (YouTube video)
• Mustafa Suleyman, The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century’s Greatest Dilemma
• They Asked ChatGPT Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling (New York Times article)
• ChatGPT is Becoming a Religion with Taylor Lorenz (YouTube video)
• Thomas Hubl, collective trauma expert, see also Deep Transformation podcast Healing Collective Trauma with Thomas Hubl, and Discerning Leadership’s Trauma Informed Leadership with Thomas Hubl (YouTube video)

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Fr. David McCallum, S.J., Ed.D, is a Jesuit priest from the USA who serves as the founding Executive Director of the Program for Discerning Leadership, a special initiative of the Society of Jesus headquartered in Rome. The Program provides leadership formation and organizational development support for senior Vatican officials and major superiors of religious orders headquartered in Rome and internationally. From 2021 through 2024, Fr. McCallum has worked with the Secretariat for the Synod of Bishops on the Commission on Methodology, as a member of the international group that developed the synthesis of the National and Regional Bishop’s Conferences reports at Frascati, and as a facilitator expert at the Synods in October 2023 and 2024. 

Formerly, Fr. McCallum served as faculty member and then the Dean of the Madden School of Business and as the VP of Mission Integration and Development at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY. His doctoral research at Teachers College, Columbia University, focused on the implications of developmental diversity in meeting the leadership challenges of conflict, complexity, and ambiguity.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell