A Quote by Pope Francis
Today, we need a Church capable of walking at people's side, of doing more than simply listening to them.... At times we lose people because they don't understand what we are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity and import an intellectualism foreign to our people.... We cannot keep ourselves shut up in parishes, in our communities, when so many people are waiting for the Gospel.
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We cannot keep ourselves shut up in parishes, in our communities, when so many people are waiting for the Gospel!
Today, we need a Church capable of walking at people's side, of doing more than simply listening to them; a Church which accompanies them on their journey.
There are so many people in the communities in need and so many organizations in need. People are doing amazing, beautiful things just to keep the world from not hurting more today than yesterday.
I want to see the church get closer to the people. I want to get rid of clericalism, the mundane, this closing ourselves off within ourselves, in our parishes, schools or structures. Because these need to get out!
Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed We need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds — because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.
We have to understand in order to be of help. We all have pain, but we tend to suppress it, because we don't want it to come up to our living room. the most important thing is that we need to be understood. We need someone to be able to listen to us and to understand us, then we will suffer less, but everyone is suffering, and no one wants to listen. We don't know how to express ourselves so that people can understand. because we suffer so much, the way we express our pain hurts other people, and they don't want to listen.
[America has to import so many workers because] for the last 35 years we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce.
The family we choose for ourselves is more important than the one we were born into; that people have to earn our respect and trust, not have it handed to them simply because of genetics.
There are some communities that feel you shouldn't give them the publicity, because it's just going to make people curious. There are communities who feel we need to fight them tooth and nail. What we have seen, though, is that ignoring them does not make them go away. If we sit back and let them have free reign, we lose members of our community.
I understand that actors lose their looks, they change over time, but people don't lose their talent. I think that, as people get older and the people who make the decisions get older, they don't like hiring people much older than them because it reminds them of their fathers, and they don't like telling people older than them what to do. It makes them uncomfortable. I think that happens a lot.
I try to keep in my mind the simple question: Am I trying to do good or make myself look good? Too many of our responsibilities get added to our plate when we are trying to please people, impress people, prove ourselves, acquire power, increase our prestige. All those motivations are about looking good more than doing good.
Sometimes, we feel like we don't want to offend people, but there are times that we need to express ourselves without fear that somebody is going to shut us down simply because we have differing opinions. That's how we grow.
Those people who espouse conservatism that causes them to be under permanent attack by the left gay activists cabal, those people are in need of a protection. They're not doing that because it's fun. They're not taking that stand because it's fun, they're taking that stand because that's what they believe in, and they need to have somebody standing up for them, and I'm more than happy to do so.
It is true, there are many bad people; there are more of them than in the past, but that is because there are more people, meaning the population has tripled; there must be three times more bad people.
Personally I was just sick of the mimicry of American culture that was going on because it wasn't natural for us. We had grown up listening to reggae music in our communities. People were enjoying what we were doing with out music - we didn't have to work to sell it to them.
If churches saw their mission in the same way, there is no telling what might happen. What if people were invited to come tell what they already know of God instead of to learn what they are supposed to believe? What if they were blessed for what they are doing in the world instead of chastened for not doing more at church? What if church felt more like a way station than a destination? What if the church’s job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?
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