Resilience as a Pathway to Joy in Dante's Purgatory - Amanda Quantz, PhD

Copping an Attitude: Resilience as a Pathway to Joy in Dante’s Purgatory
Presented by: Dr. Amanda Quantz, PhD
In Christian history, sometimes the difference between a heretic and a saint is about fifty years. True heresy and a saint is about fifty years. True heresy, however, occurs when we knowingly adhere to the wrong thing. The line between stubbornness and tenacity is especially intriguing in Dante’s descriptions of hell and purgatory. Pushing the “easy” button lands us in hell because joy is hard won. Love requires persistent work that is focused on the good of the other. Today the fate of countless marriages is sealed through at least one spouse’s lived response to a single question: Would you rather be right or married? A Third Order Franciscan, Dante’s worldview is oriented towards virtue ethics. Sin is sin. Full stop. Yet there is a wafer-thin attitudinal difference between those in hell and purgatory. Even if at the last nanosecond, the people Dante encountered in purgatory relinquished their need to justify and barrel through with poor decisions. Inspired by the Franciscan spirit of the Divine Comedy, this lecture focuses on tenacity as a habit that leads to joy.
Speaker bio: Dr. Amanda Quantz is a Professor of Theology at the University of Saint Mary in Leavenworth, Kansas. She teaches courses in systematics, church history and spirituality and has offered a continually evolving course on The Divine Comedy since 2003. She also mentors graduate students at Santa Clara University, helping them develop pastoral skills for chaplaincy in ever-evolving contexts. The author of Radical Hospitality for a Prophetic Church (Lexington Books, 2020), Amanda has served as a hospital chaplain and street minister in a range of settings, including shelters, food pantries, libraries, prisons, sidewalks and the (possibly hotter than hell) Nevada desert at Burning Man.
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