“Listening makes us open to Christ, the Word of God, spoken in all things: in the material world, the Scriptures, the Church, and sacraments and, sometimes most threateningly, in our fellow human beings.”

And I have found that when we Catholics, in the spirit of love and charity, declare our faith boldly and with conviction, we are more likely to find kindred spirits.

The rosary is a weapon against depression and hopelessness.

This is how we must comport ourselves if we are to fulfill our Lord’s command in the Gospel of John (17:21), Ut unum sint, that all may be one.

We’ve all got a terminal illness. It’s called life.

To listen at prayer is to take the chance of hearing the voice of Christ in the poor, the weak, those whom we love and those whom we do not love.

The prayer of listening makes things simple but it also makes us vulnerable, and that is frightening.

The best gift anyone can give to a friend is to pray for him.

We are developing in the United States a huge underclass of unwanted people, many of them the descendants of the exploitation of the South American and Latin American countries by American piratical capitalism.

Not all capitalism is piratical, but some of it certainly is. And we have a fantastic gap beginning to exist between rich and poor.

After my varied and celebrated career in television, movies, publishing, and the lucrative world of corporate speaking, being a fellow at Harvard seemed, frankly, like a step down.

Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government asked me to serve as a fellow at its Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy.

It labels us, affords us kudos, and raises our profile in the “pecking order” of our fellow troglodytes. It says to others, “See, I’ve done so well that I can afford to do nothing at all whenever I so choose!

They tend to make us meaner rather than better human beings, less sensitive to the demands of justice, compassion and fellow humanity in our times.

I do strive to think well of my fellow man, but no amount of striving can give me confidence in the wisdom of a congressional vote.

In their country, two fellow coutrymen whose paths berely cross (or see each only only briefly) with inferrence, would effusively rush themselves up (or throw themselves) into each other arms if they would happen to meet in a desert, among Cannibles.

The natural sense of commiseration (or “sympathy”, – “commisération”, Fr.) for one’s fellow men – compassion, and the influence of education, by association of ideas (“par l’association d’idées”, Fr.) – habit.

When you got a job to do, you got to do it well. You gotta give the other fellow hell.