Everything we do seeds the future. No action is an empty one.

A bifurcation of loyalties that requires religious to put canon law above civil law and moral law puts us in a situation where the keepers of religion may themselves become one of the greatest dangers to the credibility - and the morality - of the church itself.

Internet has contributed to certainly a new kind of communication among us - not all of it good; a lot of it, dangerous. When we talk about human community, we certainly now have a tool in our hands that enables us to reach out as we never have before. It broadens our sense certainly of what community is and even of our own place in it.

Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.

Real failure comes when we consider ourselves good enough at something to be able to repeat it rather than to develop it. "Success is dangerous," the painter Pablo Picasso said. "One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility."

Humility is authenticity. It comes from the Latin word humus, meaning "earth." As the church has taught, we're made of dust, and unto dust we shall return.

A hard heart makes for hard judgments; a compassionate heart understands the humanity of the one we presume to judge.