I sold life insurance for many years, and since that time I have presided at many funerals. Few of those souls knew when they were going to die. The elderly grandmother didn’t know that her grandson was going to kill her for some drug money. The three boys I gave diplomas to didn’t know that
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What was Mary doing when she had her angelic epiphany, the one that changed the world forever? Was she deep in meditation, as the medieval paintings suggest? Maybe not. She surely wasn’t mowing the lawn, but I like to imagine her kneading bread, chanting a psalm and listening for the divine
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A couple of months ago, my daughter, who has four children, two of whom are in Catholic school, asked me “Dad, why are my children in Catholic school?” I know it’s a struggle, even with a doctor’s income. She faces an incredible tuition when two are in Catholic high schools and two in grade
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When I was younger, I would mow the lawn with ear mufflers on. It was a time to be with God and my own thoughts. Quiet time with lawnmower accompaniment. Once–just once and barely for a minute–I had a very quiet Epiphany. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I had turned a corner on the
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The problem for Isaiah, however, is that the filth and corruption was not outside Jerusalem, it was in it, in the hearts and on the lips of his people. That was the reason for all the invasions of Assyria and Babylonia. The kings of the north would be a purifying fire that would purge the sin
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A CHRISTMAS STORY: FILLING THE HOLE
One of the most popular films [of this season] is a little vignette set in the 50s called A Christmas Story. In the plot, young Ralphie sets his heart on an air rifle for Christmas, enduring ridicule and scorn in his quest for this gift he believes will make him
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Herod, the usurper tyrant, learned neither from Aristotle nor Moses and is thus known more as a bloodthirsty murderer than as the rebuilder of the Jerusalem Temple. This unnatural act of mass murder, which our political leaders today imitate in the form of
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In the middle ages–another time of global warming, by the way–the Church imposed penalties upon those who warred in the forbidden times. There were periods of respite from combat, when warring
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In a climate of mutual trust, the market is the economic institution that permits encounter between persons, inasmuch as they are economic subjects who make use of contracts to regulate their relations as they exchange goods and services of equivalent value between them, in order to satisfy their
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in every cognitive process, truth is not something that we produce, it is always found, or better, received. Truth, like love, “is neither planned nor
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The human community that we build by ourselves can never, purely by its own strength, be a fully fraternal community, nor can it overcome every
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"The logic of gift does not exclude justice, nor does it merely sit alongside it as a second element added from without; on the other hand, economic, social and political development, if it is to be authentically human, needs to make room for the principle of gratuitousness as an
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Economic science tells us that structural insecurity generates anti-productive attitudes wasteful of human resources, inasmuch as workers tend to adapt passively to automatic mechanisms, rather than to release creativity. On this point too, there is a convergence between economic science and moral
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In other words, over the past half-century we have gained a lot of knowledge about human beings and human community, but the secular world has not listened to the Church’s words, to the Incarnate Word, and their actions have been like the madman who thinks he can make a slow watch run better by
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NO FUTURE WITHOUT FORGIVENESS
Archbishop Desmond Tutu cited the crucifixion as his inspiration. Tutu, daily living in the shadow of apartheid, said that the newly empowered South African blacks readily forgave their white persecutors, because they followed "the Jewish rabbi who, when he was
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Violence puts the brakes on authentic development and impedes the evolution of peoples towards greater socio-economic and spiritual well-being. This applies especially to terrorism motivated by fundamentalism[69], which generates grief, destruction and death, obstructs
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PUTTING THE BRAKES ON
"Violence puts the brakes on authentic development and impedes the evolution of peoples towards greater socio-economic and spiritual well-being. This applies especially to terrorism motivated by fundamentalism, which generates grief, destruction and death, obstructs dialogue
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“The number of hungry people in the world rose to 1.02 billion this year, or nearly one in seven people, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture
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“Hunger is not so much dependent on lack of material things as on shortage of social resources, the most important of which are institutional. What is missing, in other words, is a network of economic institutions capable of guaranteeing regular access to sufficient food and water for nutritional
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