Quotes from Charles J. Chaput

We're on a journey to a heavenly home, and we need all the help we can get. Societies

First, many of us are tempted to affirm whatever our favorite political tribe affirms, and deny whatever it denies. Nobody likes to risk losing friends and allies over a policy issue. So we're subtly pressed to believe what we're expected to believe as a good "conservative" or a good "liberal.

The political impact of new technologies has been massive. They shape the nature of our reasoning and our discourse. They've moved us away from a public square tempered by logic, debate, and reflection based on the printed word, to a visual and sensory one, emotionally charged and spontaneous.

And on that day, we'll see the beauty that God has allowed us to add to the great story of his creation, the richness we've added to the lives of our family and friends, the mark for the better we've left on the world, and the revelation of his love that goes from age to age no matter how good or bad the times. We are each an unrepeatable, infinitely treasured part of that story. And this is why our lives matter.

Mercy begins with a deep awareness of one's own need for it. Whereas Alinsky first sees injustice in others, the man of mercy first sees sin within himself.

The second way we lose the habit of truth is by refusing to think clearly when damaging cultural trends become political orthodoxies. The last thing too many people want is to be seen as retrograde in their views when the cost may be social exile. The same-sex marriage debate was, and remains, a classic case.

We've lost our ability to see anything sacred or unique in what it means to be human. And we've lost our capacity to believe in anything that we can't measure with our tools. As

Purity is about wholeness or integrity. It means that the body, mind, heart, and soul are rightly ordered toward God. Every element of who we are is doing its part to bring us to union with God, which is our ultimate happiness.

But purity of heart isn't limited to matters of sex. It's about not letting lesser loves or sins distract us from the Lord. We need to guard our hearts not just against lust and pornography, but also against gossip, anger, pride, greed, and selfishness. This keeps us on a path to God with his grace, and it leads us to the joy of one day seeing him.

When we no longer have the courage to live by the truth ourselves, when we no longer really hunger for it, then we no longer insist on it from others. The result is a culture of evasive unreality, a nation of alibis. And we come to accept more dishonesty and less integrity in our politics as unavoidable rules of the road. The

What people believe—or don't believe—about God helps to shape what they believe about men and women. And what they believe about men and women creates the framework for a nation's public life. Traditionally, a broad Christian faith has provided the basis for Americans' moral consensus. That moral consensus has informed American social policy and law.

It also attracts thousands of others to the faith. Bland secular platitudes, consumer junk, and cheap nihilism feed nobody's soul. These things strangle the heart.

One of Christianity's key contributions to Western civilization was to give men and women a sense of freedom from the whims of fate, a hope for life after death because of the victory of Jesus Christ. And

In fact for the Founders, under the natural law, even a sovereign people were accountable to God's judgment and had the duty to act in accord with the moral order of creation. As

We all sin, of course, but the unwillingness to take any responsibility for our sins implies a more deeply damaged spirit.

Christians have many good reasons for hope. Optimism is another matter. Optimism assumes that, sooner or later, things will naturally turn out for the better. Hope has no such illusions. That