Quote for the Day: "A Church That Welcomes and Strives to Help the 'Outsiders' of Society, As Modeled by Our 'Outsider' Founder"

A moving appeal to Pope Benedict from his former colleague at Tübingen, Leonard Swidler, who has written an open letter to the pope as Benedict resigns his office: Swidler asks Benedict to make one more courageous step and send the cardinal-electors into the conclave with a statement of his vision for a renewed church:

In your vision I hope you will portray a Catholic Church which is also catholic with a small as well as a capital “C,” that is, a Catholic Church that not only holds to the best of its Catholic tradition, but also opens itself out to the entire kat’holos, the “whole” world. I and many, many other Catholics believe that vision must be of a Church that welcomes and strives to help the “outsiders” of society, as modeled by our “Outsider” Founder Rabbi Yeshua ha Notzri, Jesus of Nazareth.

Thanks to Michael Bayly for posting Swidler's powerful statement at the Progressive Catholic Voice blog.

The graphic is from Ryan Taylor's Tall Monastic Guy blog. Don't miss the wonderful posting, "The Hole in Our Discipleship," to which it's attached.