And most of the people I met in Europe were left-leaning people. So I continued with that same ideology. And to me, it was absolutely normal.
It was not something that I questioned, because it was part of my virtue signaling, probably, and altruism of my Catholic upbringing. And when I came to this country much later, in 1988, as I was saying, I came to pursue a PhD at UCLA. And I was even more radicalized in Los Angeles, not only at UCLA, but I did a lot of community work.
And mostly in a parish in downtown LA, in East LA, called Dolores Mission. And a Jesuit priest was the priest of this parish, and he did a lot of work with the community and a lot of work with what they called the Sanctuary Movement, which was opening up the churches during the early 80s for the people who left the wars of Central America who they hosted, those people. And they slept, mostly men, and they slept inside the church.
And they also gave them food and they fed them. So I was totally immersed in that. And in the whole, in the early 90s, with the cultural wars in academia, and that's when critical race theory and gender studies became very, very prominent.
And I'm a product of that. I'm a product of that critical race theory and pro-immigration and liberation theology, all of that. Let me say this, because I think we've got some people coming in and out.
Just so you guys know, this is a story that is both a journey that involves both politics and Christianity. So rather than doing two separate spaces on that, I decided to have the doctor come in here and talk about both because they're both intertwined, both with each other, and they're sort of a parallel tract here. Because once you, I think one sort of shapes the other.
Because when you go from, once you develop your overall theology, not putting down people who don't adhere to a systemic theology, I'm just, systematic theology, I'm just LA rule. Once you develop that, you will then get into the political philosophy that it gives birth to. And so that's sort of the connection, that's why we're covering both at the same time, because it's all intertwined into one story.
Yes, it's a God story. It is most definitely a God story, because you can see how, just so far, you can see how you had an upbringing that, even though things didn't, they put you on a certain path with everything that was going on with Vatican II, and some of these ideologies and theologies you were taught and you were surrounded by. But eventually, though, you walked away from it, and we're going to get to that.
