Advice to Christians and the Church – Archbishop Oscar Romero

I just started reading a new book that is a collection of quotes from Archbishop Romero’s sermons. It is eye opening reading and very relevant to these times when religion is being used as a cudgel or club to beat people into submission.

The common good will not be attained by excluding people. We can’t enrich the common good of our country by driving out those we don’t care for. We have to try to bring out all that is good in each person and try to develop an atmosphere of trust, not with physical force, as though dealing with irrational beings, but with a moral force that draws out the good that is in everyone… Thus, with all contributing their own interior life, their own responsibility, their own way of being, all can build the beautiful structure of the common good, the good that we construct together and that creates conditions of kindness, of trust, of freedom, of peace. — The Violence of Love, p. 3 (Kindle Edition)