Oneing: Innocence

In his introduction, Richard Rohr writes, “Maturity will normally help one see that innocence can also have a dangerous and debilitating meaning, which we would normally associate with naïveté, gullibility, and lack of experience or guile. This type of innocence can prevent people from seeing evil, or evil motives, even when they are obvious to others.”

This edition of Oneing invites us to rethink the word “innocence,” especially as we read Jennifer Thompson’s article, “Presumption,” on the long-term consequences of her ordeal as a rape victim, and Carolyn Metzler’s article on the death penalty, “Presumed Innocent: The Myths outside the Death House,” which describes that law’s damaging effects on all involved—from the perpetrators to the prosecutors.

Yet we do find that, in the midst of our “troubled and confused times,” there are often experiences of deep redemption and transformation. Or, as Ruth Patterson writes so eloquently in “Pink Rabbits and Dispossession,” “We may also, without us being fully conscious of what is happening, become agents of transformation in this shining, wonderful, terrible world that is gift to all of us.”

—From the Editor’s Note by Vanessa Guerin

This issue of Oneing includes articles by Richard Rohr, Ruth Patterson, Diarmuid O’Murchu, Catherine Dowling, Enrique Lamadrid, and others.

Paperback