In the gay (Catholic) community, it would seem, the maxim is: love the sin and love the sinner, but hate anyone who calls it a sin or him a sinner.

Politics is chiefly a function of culture, at the heart of culture is morality, and at the heart of morality is religion.

The first thing to say about politics is that politics is not the first thing.

Every day of the year is a good day to think more deeply about Good Friday, for Good Friday is the drama of the love by which our every day is sustained.

Optimism is a matter optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Hope, on the other hand, is a Christian virtue. It is the unblinking acknowledgment of all that militates against hope, and the unrelenting refusal to despair. We have not the right to despair, and, finally, we have not the reason to despair

My hope that the Church will emerge as a strong leader in society is just that a hope. What I described in The Catholic Moment is not a prophecy but the outline of a possibility. There are no guarantees that my hopes expressed in The Catholic Moment will ever be realised.

If the cause of poverty is marginalization, the cure is inclusion.