‘My father left the Church, or it left him, I can’t be sure which. He could not stay in an institution that had Father Kelly in it. But one evening after dinner he set me a question. “What if,” he said, “what if it’s the people that have a higher sense of what’s right and wrong than those conscripted to enforce it?”’ The doctor paused. He drew his forefinger across the spittle on his moustache, then asked: ‘To love the stranger, isn’t that what God wanted?’ ‘You can’t put yourself on God’s level.’ ‘That would be easy. God knows all the answers. I’m trying something more difficult, the human
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