Nathan Ormond

“In the year of our Lord 1432, there arose a grievous quarrel among the brethren over the number of teeth in the mouth of a horse. For thirteen days the disputation raged without ceasing. All the ancient books and chronicles were fetched out, and wonderful and ponderous erudition such as was never before heard of in this region was made manifest. At the beginning of the fourteenth day, a youthful friar of goodly bearing asked his learned superiors for permission to add a word, and straightway, to the wonderment of the disputants, whose deep wisdom he sore vexed, he beseeched them to unbend in a manner coarse and unheard-of and to look in the open mouth of a horse and find answer to their questionings. At this, their dignity being grievously hurt, they waxed exceeding wroth; and, joining in a mighty uproar, they flew upon him and smote him, hip and thigh, and cast him out forthwith. For, said they, surely Satan hath tempted this bold neophyte to declare unholy and unheard-of ways of finding truth, contrary to all the teachings of the fathers. After many days more of grievous strife, the dove of peace sat on the assembly, and they as one man declaring the problem to be an everlasting mystery because of a grievous dearth of historical and theological evidence thereof, so ordered the same writ down.”
― Francis Bacon

“I once criticized someone who said that he was interested in thinking about the word while I, like all these hermeneutic rascals, was content to think abou twords. The remarkable thing to me was that, after saying this, he continued to speak. To my astonishment, he continued to use more words, a flood of them, really, and sometimes - he is a fluent speaker and an eloquent writer - with dramatic emphasis on the word 'world'. The more he assured us that he was concerned with the world, not words, the more loudly he kept using the word 'world'.”
― John Caputo

“Migration is not a threat to Christianity except in the minds of those who benefit from claiming it is. To promote the Gospel and not welcome the strangers in need, nor affirm their humanity as children of God, is to seek to encourage a culture that is Christian in name only, emptied of all that makes it distinctive.”
― Pope Francis, Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future

“It was precisely here that the Church was born, in the margins of the Cross where so many of the crucified are found….This is why they followed Jesus. He gave them dignity….To do this Jesus had to reject the mindset of the religious elites of his day, who had taken ownership of law and tradition. Possession of the goods of religion became a means of putting themselves above others, others not like them, whom they inspected and judged. By mixing with tax collectors and ‘women of ill repute,’ Jesus wrested religion from its imprisonment in the confines of the elites, of specialized knowledge and privileged families, in order to make every person and situation capable of God. By walking with the poor, the outcasts, and the marginalized. He smashed the wall that prevented the Lord from coming close to His people, among His flock.

In showing God’s closeness to the poor and sinners, Jesus indicted the mindset that trusts in self-justification, ignoring what happens around them.”
― Pope Francis, Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future