188. These considerations help us recognize the urgent need to combat all that threatens or violates fundamental human rights. Politicians are called to “tend to the needs of individuals and peoples. To tend those in need takes strength and tenderness, effort and generosity in the midst of a functionalistic and privatized mindset that inexorably leads to a ‘throwaway culture’… It involves taking responsibility for the present with its situations of utter marginalization and anguish, and being capable of bestowing dignity upon it”. It will likewise inspire intense efforts to ensure that “everything be done to protect the status and dignity of the human person”. Politicians are doers, builders with ambitious goals, possessed of a broad, realistic and pragmatic gaze that looks beyond their own borders. Their biggest concern should not be about a drop in the polls, but about finding effective solutions to “the phenomenon of social and economic exclusion, with its baneful consequences: human trafficking, the marketing of human organs and tissues, the sexual exploitation of boys and girls, slave labour, including prostitution, the drug and weapons trade, terrorism and international organized crime. Such is the magnitude of these situations, and their toll in innocent lives, that we must avoid every temptation to fall into a declarationist nominalism that would assuage our consciences. We need to ensure that our institutions are truly effective in the struggle against all these scourges”. This includes taking intelligent advantage of the immense resources offered by technological development.
Every two months I post an article in The Record, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Louisville. Here is a link to the latest article which was published today.
This morning I presided at mass at St. Augustine parish, a predominantly black church in Louisville. 45+ years ago, we had our Catholic Deaf Office located in the school (closed) building there and on Sunday afternoons had our deaf mass in sign language when the masses for the hearing community were finished. It was great to be back at St. Augustine. It is a warm and welcoming community!
After 42 years in Asia, I returned home to Kentucky. But it isn’t the home I left. Things I saw THEN are different NOW. Life HERE is different from life THERE. Here is another sample of the differences.
THEN
When I left the US in the early 1980s, everyone on the TV commercials spoke “Murican”.
NOW
Now it seems it’s almost the norm to have an accented English for the voices.
After 42 years in Asia, I returned home to Kentucky. But it isn’t the home I left. Things I saw THEN are different NOW. Life HERE is different from life THERE. Here is another sample of the differences.
THERE
I had really good friends in Cambodia, even though for the group above I was their boss. They went out of their way to get together with me for lunch when I visited Phnom Penh in April.
HERE
Today I had lunch with a group of guys who were with me at St. Thomas Seminary in Louisville in the early 1960s. Some of them I didn’t know so well because they were three, four, five years ahead of me. But we all shared the common experience of a minor seminary pre-Vatican II. That created an enduring bond that brought us together 65+years later. And overlaying that was the common language, the experience of living together away from home for years, a common goal in our youth, and the shared studies, meals, sports, and pillow fights in the dorm. That all makes these friendships significantly different from those of Cambodia.
After 42 years in Asia, I returned home to Kentucky. But it isn’t the home I left. Things I saw THEN are different NOW. Life HERE is different from life THERE. Here is another sample of the differences.
THEN
Back in the 1970s when I was bicycling in Louisville, I don’t think there were any dedicated bike lanes or routes THEN.
NOW
I was greatly and pleasantly surprised to see many bike paths, routes, and lanes as part of the Louisville roadway system when I returned. And now Google Maps and Apple Maps indicate the official bike ways or direct me to less busy, less dangerous streets when on a bicycle.
