If God to you is where science has yet to tread, then God is an ever-receding pocket.
In the Vatican, if you don't get something new done quickly you may not get it done at all.
The colossal mess in Vatican finances that [Pope] Francis inherited has been cleaned up, and cleaned out. Real budgeting and accounting procedures are in place; so are real professionals, not somebody's nephew.
The most important appointment Pope Francis has made is the appointment of the Australian cardinal, George Pell, as the Vatican's financial overseer.
The emphasis on the "peripheries" is also a distinctively "Franciscan" way of expressing the pope's respect for untutored popular piety - a respect, I might add, that was shared by St. John Paul II.
The "encounter" with the people on the peripheries is intended to draw them into the circle of common care and concern - that call to encounter is, to use a favorite world of John Paul II's, a call to solidarity. And that means, it seems to me, aggressive Catholic efforts to empower the poor - and a profound Catholic challenge to all those cultural forces that are eroding stable families, which are the elementary schools where we learn to take responsibility for our lives, which is the highest exercise of freedom.
The world needs a pastor, whether it knows it or not.
When the voices of democracy are silenced, freedom becomes a hollow concept. No man or woman should be sentenced to the shadows of silence for something he or she has said or written.
What's cooler than being cool?
Quotes from the Underground is a remarkable resource and must-read for writers, researchers, activists and indeed anyone who embraces progressive values and hopes to rescue politics from corporate control.
When people begin to understand that whatever they think and feel happens, then the psychic phenomena begin to rise, which is what's happening now.