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John Ryan is among the great heroes of the pro-life movement, and has been like a brother to me for decades. We disagree about many things, but no one ever should think that our disagreements reveal disrespect. I said I was ashamed for the pro-life movement when Trump spoke and pro-lifers cheered. John applauds Trump’s words, and thinks that if there’s room in the movement for a left-winger like me, I should be willing to make room for a right-winger like Trump. Words to that effect. Let me try to explain something. It’ll take a bit. I want to get several ideas across, if I can. As background to what I’m after: when I taught Shakespeare to high school kids, I used a technique borrowed from the Folger Shakespeare Library: to figure out what a word like “blood” means in a play, it’s worthwhile looking at every use of the word. Treat it as a word that you don’t understand at all, like “scloop,” and try to determine its meaning by context. Reach deliberately for the connotatio...

Hospitality in the Desert The stories and insights in this chapter are taken from The Wisdom of the Desert, by Thomas Merton (New York, NY: New Directions, 1960). In the third and fourth centuries AD, there was a new movement in Christian life that laid the foundations for a millennium of monastic life.  The “Desert Fathers” and mothers abandoned the wreck of the Roman Empire and fled into the wilderness to pray – some alone, some in small communities. There were hermits and monks scattered along a 250 mile stretch in the Egyptian desert, from the Mediterranean south toward Lycopolis on the road to Sudan. They were in the mountainous region in the northern end of the Aegean Sea, around Skete on Mount Athos. They showed up in the deserts in Palestine, Arabia, and Persia. For over a century, these fugitives from decadence, pioneers of Christian life, tended the fire of the Gospel. The paradox: solitude and hospitality In their lives, solitude was fundamental, indispe...

As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. “The Measure of a Man” – Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It seems that I can hear a voice saying to America: “You started out right. You wrote in your Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ But, America, you strayed away from that sublime principle. You left the house of your great heritage and strayed away into a far country of segregation and discrimination. You have trampled over sixteen million of your brothers. You have deprived them of the basic goods of life. You have taken from them their self-respect and their sense of dignity. You have treated them as if they were things rather than persons. Because of this a famine has broken out in your land. In the midst of all your spiritual wealth, you are spiritually and morally poverty-stricken, unable to speak to the conscience of this world. America, in this famine situation, if you will come to yourself and rise up and decide to ...

I had an unpleasant encounter yesterday. A group of pro-lifers were engaged in a debate about how pro-lifers should respond to Trump’s racism. It was a fiery and interesting debate. But there was a guy who participated, denouncing Trump – as I do – and his allies – which I consider a key battleground. After quite a bit of back and forth, it came out that this guy was not asking pro-lifers to pull away from Trump; he was asking pro-lifers to forget about abortion. He was strengthening the ties between pro-lifers and Trump, insisting that they are natural allies. I was appalled. Some pro-lifers stick to Trump because they believe that – like it or not – Trump is the key to stopping abortion in the USA, and to achieve that goal they will put up with just about anything. So telling pro-lifers to dump-Trump-and-forget-abortion strengthens Trump. I thought the guy was among the most effective pro-Trump voice I’d encountered. Let me clarify why I am a pro-lifer opposing Trump. This is a ...