The deaths of four U.S. churchwomen in El Salvador on Dec. 2, 1980, awakened the church and the nation to the violence exploding throughout the country and much of Central America. Here is a look at their lives.

From her mission deep in Panama's rainforest, Sr. Melinda Roper embraces a human rights focus much broader than the one that thrust her into the international spotlight nearly four decades ago. Roper was at the helm of the Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic on Dec. 2, 1980, when four U.S. churchwomen — two of them Maryknoll sisters — were murdered in El Salvador.

"For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced."

See for Yourself - A colleague involved with a scientific conference convinced me to take part for a brief time. I said, "What can I possibly get from being there?" but the colleague wouldn't take no for an answer.

As much as I lament the ways we have become polarized in the U.S., I myself participate in the creation of "information silos." But I recently took an opportunity to experience the vibrations at the other end of the spectrum.

"Everything counts. Everything we do matters. Every gesture of mercy, every compassionate act, every word of truth all contribute to the fund of goodness needed in the world."

School Sister of Notre Dame Rose Rita Huelsmann recently retired after 13 years as the coordinator of volunteers at the sister-run Criminal Justice Ministry, which provides services to currently and formerly incarcerated people in St. Louis.

Over her 36 years of prison ministry, the St. Joseph sister's work has chipped away at U.S. support for the death penalty, fellow activists say: "They don't get argued into thinking differently, they get storied into thinking differently." Sr. Helen Prejean said she never set out to be an activist, especially one advocating on behalf of death row inmates. She spent her early years as a sister working in the suburbs as a middle school teacher, director of religious education at a New Orleans parish and a director of her order's novices.

In this public morass, is there a contribution to be made by Dominican sisters who claim that their grounding principle is veritas (truth)? We might take a lesson from our Dominican brother Thomas Aquinas and his ideas on the discipline of study.