Here it is four days in the New Year and I am stuck on the same two issues of justice and peace as I was last year: Stop teaching of killing at Marquette University and for the Catholic church to hear the cry of the poor in Milwaukee. I am stuck on these two issues because they still are two local important efforts that I need to help break the silence and make a change.
But I need to ask, am I really ‘stuck’ or am I ‘struck’ by these two issues?

Stuck implies not moving on while struck implies some action. How can I move on when in my conscience these are two important issues that need local attention and action? Also I believe that moving on would be wrong when these two conflicts of value and belief system are not resolved.

Someone wrote me today that a person preventing the local Catholic Church from the hearing the cry of the poor and doing something about it had “really had the “poor at the heart of their giving.” The person who wrote to me and the person being talked about might really believe this. But I am of the ‘old school’ thinking of St. Ignatius of Loyola and our present Holy Father in the Catholic church in believe that “Love expresses itself more in deeds than in words.”

Stuck implies standing still, like stuck in the mud. Struck means taking some action and implies moving on although these may get messy and dirty at times.

Pope Francis talking about the Catholic Church says: “I prefer a church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security,”

I guess I am struck rather than stuck on these two issues for awhile.

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