The fresh devastation from the recent Los Angeles wildfires took center stage at the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ second annual Ethical Leadership Lunch, where local Catholic business leaders raised thousands for Catholic school students affected by the fires.
Scheduled to coincide with National Catholic Schools Week, the Jan. 29 event drew almost 400 business leaders, entrepreneurs, civic officials, and Catholic high school students to the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels’ conference center. A panel originally set to discuss ethics in sports and entertainment at the lunch ended up spending more time reflecting on the deeper meaning of the tragedy.
“At times like this, I’m not asking, ‘what started the fire?’ ” said panelist Anne Sweeney, a former Disney executive who now sits on the boards of Netflix and Lego. “I have very little time for who’s to blame. But I have all the time in the world for: ‘What can we do? How can we help? How can we restore people’s faith?’ ”
Following a video message and remarks from the leaders of the event’s lead sponsor, Farmers & Merchants Bank, school superintendent Paul Escala reported to the crowd that at least 915 students across 76 of the archdiocese’s schools had been displaced by the fires, leaving a need of more than $7 million in tuition relief.
To address the need, Catholic Education Foundation executive director Doug Cooper announced that proceeds from the lunch would go toward the newly created “Wildfire Catholic School Tuition Relief Fund.”
“As families are addressing housing and other basic necessities, there must not be a concern for our students to remain in our Catholic schools in our archdiocese,” Cooper said.
As of Feb. 2, the fund had received more than $31,000 in donations, according to CEF.
Later, the event’s panelists discussed the deeper questions posed by LA’s recent wildfire catastrophe.
“What does our faith require? What do we owe others? And is it still possible to lead with love in these uncertain times?” asked panel moderator and former CNN anchor Carol Costello. “Is all this happening for a reason?”
The event’s four panelists agreed that despite the unanswered existential questions posed by the fires, they had fostered a newfound sense of community.
“There are times when you may feel like you’re lapsing, but it’s your community that carries you forward,” said Sweeney, a parishioner of St. Monica Church in Santa Monica. “The community never really leaves you.”
Joe Davis, the TV broadcaster who calls games for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Fox Sports, said he was struck by how quickly friends and fellow parishioners at Holy Family Church in South Pasadena moved to offer support to victims of the fires.
“There’s zero good about it, but when you can focus on the galvanizing nature of it and the good that comes out of it, the way people are responding to help, that’s at least some meaning,” said Davis.
Another panelist, Renata Simril, noted that the two communities virtually destroyed in the fires, Pacific Palisades and Altadena, were particularly close-knit by LA standards.
“They did have a sense of community, their town square, Palisades Park, the library … the Fourth of July and Christmas parties in both communities. They’re similar that way,” remarked Simril, an alumnus of Loyola Marymount University who is now the president and CEO of the LA84 Foundation, which promotes youth sports in Southern California.
By contrast, Simril said, “I’ve lived in my neighborhood for seven years and I don’t even know my neighbor.”
Panelist Alessandro DiSanto, co-founder of the wildly popular Catholic prayer app Hallow, said that in the face of tragedy and Jesus Christ’s teaching in the beatitudes, “you are completely dependent on your very existence on God.”
“We have to recognize that nothing we have, we deserve,” said DiSanto. “Whether it’s our relationships, our families, our communities, our physical things. None of that is ours. Everything is a gift.”
“I think that’s the necessary posture with which we need to approach all things in life,” he added.
As the conversation moved to ethics in sports and entertainment, Sweeney was asked about Netflix’s recent film “Mary,” a dramatized account of the Blessed Mother’s journey to give birth to Jesus that has been criticized for departing sharply from the biblical narrative.
Costello, who said the film portrayed Mary as a “beautiful rebel,” asked Sweeney whether it’s “a good thing or a bad thing to embellish stories from the Bible to sell the show.”
Sweeney answered by suggesting that “Mary” was not so different from past productions about obscure figures in the Bible.
“Storytellers embellish, storytellers add the detail,” said Sweeney, who attends St. Monica. ”So I was heartened to see ‘Mary.’ We knew she was a brave woman, but no one ever said it in those terms.”
Legendary films like Charlton Heston’s “The Ten Commandments” are embellished as well, Sweeney said, “and sometimes that helps people connect with the story, with their faith.”
Turning to the theme of sports, Costello praised Davis for his memorable line “Gibby, meet Freddie!” while working as the commentator during Freddie Freeman’s walk-off grand slam for the Dodgers during Game 1 of the World Series last October.
“How do you do that? Because that’s a God-given talent,” Costello told Davis about the call, which referenced the obvious echoes of Kirk Gibson’s game-winning home run for the Dodgers in the 1988 World Series.
Davis acknowledged that the comparison was hard to miss during the postseason, given that Freeman was struggling through an injury similar to Gibson’s.
“So now it’s Game 1, we’ve watched Freddie be hobbled the entire postseason, chance to win it,” said Davis, a Catholic who attends Holy Family Church in South Pasadena. “So it’s all these things coming together and in these big moments … you have to be at your best.”
As the ball launched off Freeman’s bat, Davis said he noticed that even the flight of the ball was “identical” to Gibson’s home run.
“I guess that’s a way that God kind of works through me,” said Davis. “It’s all those things, all the work that I’ve done and everything … but then in the moment, you have to just sort of let it happen.”
