Carla Mae's Blog

  On we go as we explore Pope Francis’ Fratelli tutti . Last month we saw that he dared to suggest doing a new kind of politics. This month we will explore what he calls “Dialogue and Friendship in Society” (#198-224). Don’t be deceived. What he suggests is more challenging than politics! Real dialogue is quite different from debate. In debate there is competition, and someone wins and someone must lose. Not in dialogue. Genuine dialogue means we respect another’s point of view even if we disagree, and we admit that it may have some real truth I need to attend to (#203). This dignity that we accept in the other is not something we have invented. Every human being possesses an intrinsic worth. As we speak with them they will sense that we do or do not honor this (#213). Ignoring this intrinsic worth will eventually erupt in some form of violence, verbal or worse (#219). We have a lot to learn from people who are very different from us: indigenous people, those of another race or re...

  The Church, in this Green Time has been focusing on the Bread of Life. The life won for us on the Cross is kept growing by this Bread. It is Love’s final step down into the struggle of our daily existence…to become for us what we eat.   Now we enter autumn. The harvest ripens. The leaves begin to show their colors. The days are a bit cooler. The Church gives us the Feast of the Holy Cross. On either side of September 14 are two Feasts of Mary, her birth and her sorrows. Is there any connection here? I think so.   Why did Mary have to suffer so much when she had no sin? Her sorrows are celebrated the day after the Feast of the Holy Cross. She, along with her Son, are figures for us of all those innocent ones who get caught up in the evils that plague the human family. This presents us with one of the deepest mysteries of our faith…innocent suffering.   In her wisdom, this may be why the Church presents these feasts before us in this harvest time. The ...