Aug 22

‘Mentality of dissent dominating the intelligentsia’

Church, Culture, Geopolitics, Politics, Society No Comments »

Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet has just been elevated to a more prominent and acutely consequential role in the church. He didn’t get there by mincing words for political correctness.

He’s used to the spotlight, and uses it well.

During Cardinal Ouellet’s eight years as the archbishop of Quebec City and primate of Canada, he has become known as one of the country’s greatest defenders of faith, life, and the family.

This past spring he drew sharp criticism, from within and outside the Church, after he reaffirmed the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of unborn life, even in cases of rape. He later unapologetically reiterated his views on abortion in a press conference arranged to address the controversy.

He has drawn attention and fire, and Ouellet has welcomed it. The head of the Quebec bishops’ assembly has criticized Ouellet for his public witness, saying: “There are times when it is more important to keep silent than to speak.”

It gave him the opportunity to respond

that in addition to fearlessly preaching the teachings of the Church, bishops must embrace them deeply.  “Then you have the power of conviction,” he said.
 
“If you state it only formally and in the end you do not really want to see it applied because you don’t believe that it is possible that people accept it, you are in trouble for the transmission of the message,” he added.

The cardinal, further, said the Church needs what [the Canadian Catholic News] called a “new intellectual dynamism” to “recapture the spirit of Christianity” and “create a new Christian culture.”
 
“We need intellectuals for that, theologians, philosophers, Christians who really believe in the Gospel and share the doctrine of the Church on moral questions,” he said.  “We have suffered from this mentality of dissent” that is “still dominating the intelligentsia.”
 
“There is no real discipleship there, real discipleship,” he added. “The discipleship that is emerging is from those who believe and who really love the Church.”

Oulett’s new job suits him and the church well.

In his new position as head of the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Ouellet will assist the pope in choosing the next generation of the world’s bishops.

In that role, he told [Canadian Catholic News], he will seek out bold “men of faith” with “the guts to help people live it out.”

Can’t come soon enough.

Tagged with: • • •
Jul 07

The ‘S’ in NASA

Geopolitics, Media, Politics, Society No Comments »

It stands for space, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This week, some people wonder whether it means sensitivity. Relatively few folks, actually…

Like those who are aware of President Obama’s commission to the new NASA director, and who maybe question what the space administration has to do with geopolitics.

But among major media….nada on NASA?

As for me, I intended to blog in mourning back when Obama defunded the program, because I’ve been a lifelong NASA follower, fascinated by space expeditions and eager to see it go further. When I was in grade school, I wrote in to ask politely for a photograph of an astronaut, if it were possible. What I received was breathtaking…..a large brown envelope that held a stack of 8×10 personally autographed color photos of each member of a team of astronauts, some already famous and some yet to be (but who would figure prominently in future missions). Wow.

Then when Tom Hanks did ‘Apollo 13′, the film rendering of the dramatic events astronaut Jim Lovell chronicled so well in his book Lost Moon….I was privileged to be invited to the premiere, met Lovell and got his autograph on my copy of the book, feeling very much the little girl I’d returned to in the moment.

So last February, I was crushed when news came out that Obama was drawing down the program.

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is canceling NASA’s current space shuttle replacement- and lunar exploration-plan and is prepared to fight any congressional effort to save it, the nation’s top budget official said Jan. 31. 

The president’s budget, officially sent to Congress Monday morning, confirms what officials had stated during a teleconference with reporters one day before: White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag and White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer stated Obama’s plan to kill NASA’s Constellation program, a five-year-old effort to replace the aging space shuttle fleet with new rockets and spacecraft optimized to return astronauts to the Moon.

These links are from stories I saved at the time to use here, but never got to. (It pays for a journalist to be fastidious.)

Eclipsed in Monday’s news of President Obama’s proposed $3.8 trillion budget – with its $100 billion marked for jobs creation and increased taxes on the rich – is the grounding of NASA’s program to return to the moon.

The budget, if passed by Congress, would scuttle funding the Constellation program, with its goal of returning a manned mission by 2010 to the moon, the site of NASA’s greatest achievement, the Apollo missions of the late ’60s and ’70s.

“We are proposing canceling the program, not delaying it,” Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said in a conference call with reporters.

The White House drafted a space advisory panel to review the beleaguered Constellation program, which deemed the project unable to get out of orbit without a hefty $3 billion annual increase to its operational budget. The budget also shot down the planned Ares I rocket, the planned successor to the space shuttle, Reuters reported.

It was all over the media at the time, and I stored link after link.

American astronauts will not return to the moon as planned if Congress passes President Obama’s proposed budget…

On its Web site, the White House Budget Office says the program to send astronauts to the moon is behind schedule, over budget and overall less important than other space investments.

“Using a broad range of criteria, an independent review panel determined that even if fully funded, NASA’s program to repeat many of the achievements of the Apollo era, 50 years later, was the least attractive approach to space exploration as compared to potential alternatives,” the site says.

So now we know what one of the primary alternatives was for President Obama.

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Jun 14

Religious freedom on the back burner

Church, Culture, Geopolitics, Politics, Society 1 Comment »

Has President Obama squandered the opportunity to do more than President Bush to advance religious freedom in America?

I don’t know….I was on the South Lawn of the White House when Pope Benedict gave an address following President Bush’s, both invoking American ideals of liberty tied to the natural law and the Golden Rule. While Bendict quoted George Washington, Bush quoted St. Augustine.

But WaPo’s religion blog has some concern about Obama foregoing the opportunity to take this further…

…placing U.S. international religious freedom (IRF) policy on the back burner, subordinating it to other less compelling administration priorities, or clearing the deck for initiatives that might be complicated by a robust defense of religious liberty abroad (such as outreach to Muslim majority countries or promoting international gay rights).

If it is true that President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are backtracking on IRF, it would be somewhat ironic. The 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, passed unanimously by Congress, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. It was implemented in the early stages by Secretary Madeleine Albright, who has since written a book calling for greater attention to religion in American foreign policy.

Politics are nothing if not ironic.

For instance…

At this writing, the President is said to be about to nominate as ambassador a Baptist pastor who is well connected in the administration. But she also appears to lack any experience either in international religious freedom or diplomacy.

I re-read that twice to fully appreciate the irony. Or the folly.

But wait…there’s more.

Frankly, it didn’t seem that things could get much worse for the prospects of a revived IRF diplomacy. Then, last week, the Obama administration issued its National Security Strategy.

Ours is a world suffused with religious ideas and actors — some supportive of human dignity and ordered liberty, others driving bigotry and terrorism. There is growing awareness that religious freedom can buttress the former tendencies and discourage the latter.

In fact, pursuing religious freedom is a national security strategy unto itself. Both history and contemporary scholarship demonstrate that democracy cannot remain stable, or yield its benefits to all citizens, without religious freedom. The absence of religious liberty in a highly religious society leads to violence, extremism and, in some cases, religion-based terrorism, including the kind that has been exported to American shores.

This is some of the best analysis I’ve seen lately on WaPo’s religion blog. Follow the story:

In March, the bipartisan House IRF caucus told the President that promoting religious freedom “will lead to greater human freedom, economic prosperity and security throughout the world.”

The same month a bipartisan group of scholars and human rights experts organized by Freedom House was even more explicit. They urged the President to “articulate concrete connections and synergies … between religious freedom policy and other key foreign policy areas, including national security…

In May the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s annual report joined the chorus: “religious freedom should be increasingly more important as one of the core considerations in foreign policy and national security.”…

What did the President’s men do with all these ideas and advice? What does America’s new U.S. National Security Strategy say about the U.S. policy of advancing religious freedom?

Nothing. Zero. Nada.

As if that’s not bad enough…

…the new strategy simply ignores growing evidence that, in most countries of the world, none of these objectives is achievable without a robust regime of religious liberty.

But it gets worse. The National Security Strategy contains a five-page section entitled “Values.” It begins as follows, “The United States believes certain values are universal and will work to promote them worldwide.” Those values include democracy, human rights, and human dignity.

It seems unimaginable that any group of American officials – even the most secular minded realists – could pen five pages on American values, and how they might contribute to our security in a highly religious world, without significant attention to religious liberty. Our own history demonstrates that neither democracy, human rights, nor human dignity can be sustained without religious liberty.

And in that visit to the U.S. in 2008, Pope Benedict said as much in his address to the United Nations General Assembly.

But the U.S. adminstration has only retreated since then. Things are much worse now.

The Obama administration has achieved the unimaginable. It turns out that the list of the most important American values includes things like ensuring transparency, refraining from torture, protecting privacy, and “promoting the right to access information.”

But not religious freedom.

The only hint of religious liberty in this section comes in a single reference to “an individual’s freedom … to worship as they please.” This is thin (and ungrammatical) tokenism. Not only is the phrase a brief, almost throw-away aside in an extended analysis of ostensibly universal American values, but the very concept of “individual freedom of worship” represents an impoverished understanding of religious liberty.

They hold Obama accountable here. By his own words.

One prominent American intellectual has put the issue this way:

“[S]ecularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King – indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history – were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

That intellectual was Barack Obama in his 2008 Call To Renewal speech. A year later, as President, he told a Muslim audience in Cairo that “freedom of religion is central to the ability of peoples to live together” and named religious freedom a key issue to be addressed by Muslim majority countries. Judged by his words, no President has had a more vigorous understanding of the meaning and reach of religious liberty in the lives of human beings and societies.

Rarely have word and deed been so estranged.

It turns out that a presidential speech, no matter how eloquent, is nothing but hot air unless it translates into policy.

And it has not.

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Jun 12

Spectacular sport

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Nike is running a cool commercial right now on the sports networks with a montage of scenes from across the world of athletes in the simplest surroundings going on to perform the most amazing feats in their particular arena of competition. It ends with the message: “Write the Future”.

I saw it just after tuning in World Cup coverage. Just a day after Chicago’s massive Stanley Cup celebration. Breathing has suddenly become a conscious exercise.

And whole countries will gasp and exhale collectively for the next month, with World Cup soccer underway. Nothing else is like it, this global test of skill and will and nerves. I love it. We often wound up on a summer vacation in Europe during World Cup when my sons were growing up, and there’s nothing like being in towns and villages, shops and restaurants, where everyone is gathered around televisions and and fixated on radios with rapt attention. It’s one of the great equalizers on the planet, crossing demographics like little else can.

I wonder why the men and women in the news and politics I follow as a profession can’t tap into this deeper human experience we know as ’sport’ and draw the greater lessons of integrity and goodwill from events like the Olympics and World Cup that would advance the purposes of the UN and Congress immensely.

Seriously.

But before the spectator sport known as the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan get underway, and while the president still wrestles with BP and the environmental disaster evolving from the oil spill, and state primaries pit anti-incumbent voters against incumbent politicians…this is a great diversion. In a rare opportunity to be together at home again, my family anticipated the big sports events by watching ‘Invictus’. It was more inspiring than I knew.

After Nelson Mandela won South Africa’s first fully representative democratic election, his decision as president to build up and support the hated Springboks rugby team was strongly protested by his own staffers. The Sprinboks represented apratheid to the African majority, and Mandela’s decision amounted to reconciling with the enemy. ‘We have to surprise them with compassion’ Mandela (or Morgan Freeman, who played him) told the protestors. ‘We have to show restraint and generosity. Forgiveness liberates the soul. It is a powerful weapon.’

The World Cup is now in South Africa, but Mandela had to miss the opening ceremonies because of a tragedy in his family. Prayers are needed.

Prayers are offered. The South African bishops conference created a special site, Church on the Ball, with their petitions to Almighty God for fairness and justice and peace.

The world is in this together. ‘Cheers for the World’, says the New York Times. The Atlantic says “connectivity is the only defense against madness.” In a post that mentions, as they all do, the ever present vuvuzela. Get used to the word, or at least the sound, if you watch any World Cup.

Unlike the whistles, chants and (in 2002, at least) dull, inflatable thunder-sticks you might hear elsewhere, the vuvuzela produces a consistent, more suffocating soundscape. It’s kind of a perfect sonic representation of how many of us will experience this World Cup. The vuvuzela produces a sound that is constant, unerring, temperate, insert winged insect reference here. Like the steady, never-asleep streams of data swarming through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.—this will be the first World Cup where we are this effortlessly linked—the vuvuzela’s buzz is only truly notable when it’s absent.

But it won’t be, until nearly mid-July. Will the world be exhausted by then? Big question….will the US still be a player or long gone? Don’t rule us out, say these devoted fans in the unlikely post ‘Why You Should Root for the U.S.’

First of all, the Yanks are good…Perhaps the most telling sign of why we’re a team to beat was the frustration in [Landon] Donovan’s voice when he said in a post-game interview, “We are at the point where we don’t want respect. We want to win.”

Second, this is the World Cup. While professional leagues allow players to drift from one high-paying contract to another, this tournament of tournaments signals a moment in the sporting world when something much more valuable than money is on the table: national pride.

After game 1, it still is. Writing the future is and always will be a work in progress…

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Jun 10

Of trophies and triumphs

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What a season this is for great sports and great stories of victory, defeat and the lessons of human striving. A badly needed diversion from dreadful news and politics…

Just the other day, we were moved by a ‘perfect game’ in major league baseball made more perfect in the human error that punctuated it.

Tennis fans got to see a little known Italian woman knock off former and favored champions to win the French Open women’s singles championship, beating a little known Aussie who was not expected to make it past the early rounds.

World Cup Soccer is kicking off in South Africa, and people around the globe will join one massive, thrilling festival of hope, expectations, parties, frayed nerves, and intense drama as people gather around radios and televisions on just about every continent. Or maybe every continent…

But here in Chicago right now, the joy knows no bounds as the Blackhaks bring home the Stanley Cup. Explaining the magnitude of that to non-hockey fans is about as impossible as explaining the fervor for the  FIFA World Cup to people who don’t follow futbol, or soccer as Americans know it, to the degree Americans do…but that’s another story for another time.

Right now, it’s time for celebration in Chicago. Lord Stanley’s Cup has arrived. For fans, it’s bigger than the Super Bowl or the World Series.

“We just said we will remember this moment 10 years from now,” Tempesca said. “Like where were you when Chicago won the Stanley Cup?”

What I love about these games and series right down to the final tense, dramatic moments of championships is the stake we all have in it, those of us who participate in any way. The Olympics transcend global politics most of the time, as do other sporting events. World Cup, Tour de France, Wimbledon (next up in the tennis world), NBA championship (that’s still going on…), the Stanley Cup Finals, all give us great diversions and elevate us and inspire us to work hard, very hard, toward a goal and endure losses and even humiliations as challenges to rise above personal obstacles and to be better at what we do. Athletes like Detroit Tigers’ pitcher Armando Galarraga ennoble us in forgiving a costly human error that sometimes happens in sport. Others like Lance Armstrong inspire people battling cancer in embodying an indomitable human spirit that again and again propelled him to the first place finish in the Tour de France, more often than any other winner.

There are so many great sports stories and they all have lessons for life. Discipline, self-control, teammanship, noble ambition, fortitude, patience, honor, character and the will to strive for excellence at what you do….whatever you do….that’s what we take away from what is so simplistically called ‘games’.

Earlier this week, the no. 1 draft pick in baseball got his first chance to pitch in the majors, and he was under the spotlight of some major league hype. Stephen Strasburg’s performance under that pressure so stunned the press corps, they stopped paying attention to other news and collectively gasped at this phenom and the hope he brought to Washington, of all places. WaPo effused that they had certainly enjoyed their big moments in sports…

But this town has never had one game, one packed-house party, one continuous night-long celebration of possibility, one obliterate-all-expectations career launch that could even remotely approach the electric future that Strasburg’s 5-2 victory instantly foretold.

I like that…”celebration of possibility.”

Before Tuesday night, the 21-year-old rookie’s first game was a must-attend event or, at least, a must watch TV moment. His talent and the unprecedented hype surrounding his arrival demanded it. Now, hard to believe, that’s utterly changed. The anticipation, if anything, will go even higher. After allowing no walks, two runs and four hits in seven innings, while coming within one whiff of Karl Spooner’s all-time strikeout record in a big-league debut, what on earth comes next?

After the destruction the Nationals rookie wreaked on the Pittsburgh Pirates lineup, every one of his games now falls into that can’t-miss category. The excitement that started two hours before the game, then extended through warm-ups with fans craning over the Nats bullpen to smell the Strasburg smoke, to the standing-room-only crowd’s curtain call for the town’s new star, will be recreated with vast variation many a time.

The New York  Times gushed.

“A year ago at this time, everyone was focused on the money, is he going to sign, what kind of guy is he,” [Hall of Famer Tony] Gwynn said. “And a year later, I’m just sitting here proud as heck, because he’s done exactly what I thought he would do. He gets it. He’s very humble, a workaholic — all the things that you want in a player. The same kind of effort you got tonight, you’ll get five days from now and five days after that.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Strasburg looked calm amid the swirl…It is rare, now more than ever, for a player or event to exceed such hype. But Strasburg has.

And he has elevated everyone else with him, it appears.

Strasburg changed more than one game in June. Nothing will ever be the same for Washington baseball. There is a real foundation for hope, and expectations from everybody but Strasburg. He has no reason to limit himself.

“I definitely think anything’s possible,” he said.

That’s the spirit, the human spirit.

Go World.

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Jun 06

Witnesses to peace and charity

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Two ‘old men’, in a brief and little noticed exchange on a distant island, show the way to get along.

The Roman Catholic pontiff slipped away to a meeting with an Islamic leader, to share some mutual goodwill.

Pope Benedict held a surprise meeting with a Turkish Cypriot Islamic leader from the divided island on Saturday, underscoring his view that inter-religious dialogue should be used as an inspiration for reunion.

Benedict had a brief encounter with Sheikh Nazim, the 88-year-old head of the Islamic Sufi Naqshbandi sect based in northern Cyprus, the Vatican said…

“I am happy to come here to visit a great man …. may Allah grant him a good life here and hereafter,” Nazim told reporters as he arrived at the Church complex which has served as the residence for the pope during his three-day trip…

“I am happy … I hope that despite our faults our hearts are moving in the same direction,” said Nazim…

I’m glad Reuters noticed, and ran this, but I like the VIS account even better.

The brief meeting took place outside the apostolic nunciature, before the Holy Father’s Mass in the church of the Holy Cross. Sheikh Al-Haquani explained how he lived in northern Cyprus and had come especially to greet the Pontiff. According to Holy See Press Office Director Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J., the sheikh had excused himself for awaiting the Pope seated. “I am very old”, he said, to which the Pope replied, “I am old too”.

Sheikh Al-Haquani gave the Pope a cane, a plaque with the word “peace” written in Arabic and a Muslim rosary. For his part, the Pope gave him a medal of his pontificate. The two men then exchanged an embrace. Before separating, the sheikh asked the Pope to pray for him, to which the Pope replied: “Of course I will, we will pray for one another”.

Sweet.

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May 12

“Forgiveness does not replace justice”

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Big statement by Pope Benedict, who answered journalists questions on the plane as he traveled to Portugal, a now familiar habit of his on these journeys. They’re spontaneous encounters, Benedict and the press, and always yield interesting thoughts and sound bites. This one had a bunch of them…

First, on the secularization of Europe (extend that to other societies). He says ‘build bridges and create dialogue’, but takes it further, returning to his frequent call to join faith and reason as the common ground of human dignity. Build communication on that, he says.

Thus I would say that secularism is normal, but separation and contrast between secularism and the culture of faith is anomalous and must be overcome.

Next, the economic crisis, and here’s an interesting reflection:

“ethics are not something external, but inherent to rationality and economic pragmatism. … Catholic faith, Christian faith, has often been too individualist, it left concrete and economic matters to the world and thought only of individual salvation”, he said.

Yet “the entire tradition of the Church’s social doctrine has sought … to widen the ethical and faith-related dimension, over and above the individual, towards responsibility for the world, towards a rationality ‘moulded’ by ethics. Moreover, events on the markets over the last two or three years have shown that the ethical dimension is inherent and must become part of economic activity, because man is one, and what counts is … a sound anthropology that embraces everything.

But there’s more. Like the ‘Third Secret of Fatima,’ the suffering of the pope, which has been taken to explain the shooting of John Paul II. Benedict says yes, it was that. But it’s more… It’s the suffering of the pope beyond that pope, the need for a ‘passion of the Church’. Yes, the pope has been under attack, from the media and high profile dissidents and atheists…..though he didn’t say that part. Here’s what he did say:

“…attacks against the Pope and the Church do not only come from outside; rather, the sufferings of the Church come from inside the Church, from the sin that exists in the Church. This was always common knowledge, but today we see it in truly terrifying form: the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from external enemies, but is born of sin within the Church. Thus the Church has a profound need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn forgiveness but also the need for justice. Forgiveness does not replace justice”.

He would go on, later, to talk about where justice ultimately comes from.

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Apr 29

Where the ‘oughts’ come from

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Activists have been trying to drive religiously informed voices out of public debate for a very long time, with some success. But what’s their basis for arguing what we ought to do?

The Church holds that it’s the natural law, expressed in the Golden Rule attributed to Augustine of Hippo. And also holds that it shapes everything we do, or should.

The pope said as much when he met with the new ambassador from Belgium, assuring that the Church would serve all sectors of Belgian society. But he was talking about a much larger society in his message.

Look, he said, (actually, I added that part)….the Church is actively contributes through educational institutions and social services, among other ways.

“Nonetheless”, he continued, “it is worth pointing out that the Church, as an institution, has the right to express herself in public. … She respects the right of everyone to think differently from herself, and would like to see her own right to expression respected. … The Church, having the common good as her objective, wants nothing other than the freedom to be able to present this message, not imposing it on anyone, and respecting people’s freedom of conscience”.

It was his religious roots that inspired St. Damien to devote his life to lepers shunned and marginalized by society, showing that “the Gospel is a source of power [people] need not fear.”

Benedict took the opportunity to bring up a point he makes often: political consensus can’t replace the truth, because

“without truth, without trust and love for what is true, there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power, resulting in social fragmentation, especially in a globalised society at difficult times like the present”.

The logic of power, we have plenty of that. We need the power of logic. And reason and the natural law.

Or…’what you can’t not know.’

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Apr 27

If these people are running Ukraine

Geopolitics, Politics, Society No Comments »

Think the Brits have the corner on parliamentary antics?

Along comes this….

Amid smoke bombs and flying eggs hurled by enraged opposition deputies, Ukraine’s parliament on Tuesday controversially agreed to extend the Russian Navy’s lease on the Crimean port of Sevastopol for 25 years in exchange for billions of dollars worth of discounted Russian gas.

Video of this melee has been playing on news shows all day. And I keep wondering…..what’s that big parachute looking thing doing in parliament, and….how did eggs get in there? And, who brought the smoke bombs?

And we thought our Congress was bad.

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Apr 21

Remember your identity

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I’ve been going over Pope Benedict’s messages in Malta, short as that trip was, and appreciating the depth of his message. He does so much with brevity.

Pope John Paul II so often urged his audiences to recognize and claim their identity as Christians made in the image of God, never to allow themselves to be redefined or demeaned by cultural or political forces. His book ‘Memory and Identity’ is outstanding.

Pope Benedict has told Europeans the same thing repeatedly in his pontificate, urging them to recall their Christian roots as they re-shape their political identities and government. Tough message for populations who’ve strayed so far from those roots their government didn’t want to acknowledge it in the European Constitution.

But no matter the political and cultural forces, Benedict keeps encouraging his listeners with the same message in the voice of the gentle shepherd. Be aware of your identity. And…

“…embrace the responsibilities that flow from it, especially by promoting the Gospel values that will grant you a clear vision of human dignity and the common origin and destiny of mankind…

“Unity, solidarity and mutual respect stand at the basis of your social and political life. Inspired by your Catholic faith, they are the compass that will guide you in the search for authentic and integral development. The treasure of the Church’s social teaching will inspire and guide these efforts. Never allow your true identity to be compromised by indifferentism or relativism. May you always remain faithful to the teaching of St. Paul”.

Amen to that.

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