As St. Paul concludes his letter to the Romans he adds this thought: “I myself am convinced about you, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness.” He is addressing this to a community where there are tensions between the Jewish and Gentile Christians. He implies that if we have as our starting point the goodness of people with whom we have differences of opinion then it will be possible to find unity even in the midst of the differences. How important that message is in our hyper-partisan world where it becomes easy to demonize someone who looks at things differently that you do. Once we presume the basic goodness of our dialogue partners there is a path toward common ground.