Quote of the Day (Fr. Andrew Greeley, on Bishops, Parish Priests, and the Media)

“Bishops are more important for the mass media and for those not of their denomination than they are for members of the denomination. The membership sees the parish clergyman on Sunday, and hence the bishop is not all that important a symbol to them. But the nonmembers and the media professionals don’t have a parish clergyman of that denomination, and so the bishops is ‘theirs’ in a sense that he is not to his own flock.” —Catholic sociologist, theologian, newspaper columnist, and novelist Fr. Andrew M. Greeley (1928-2013), "Church Leaders as Media Symbols," in A Piece of My Mind…on Just About Everything (1983)

Quote of the Day (Fr. Andrew Greeley, on How to ‘Make Holy the Secular Aspects of Christmas’)

"It might be easy to run away to a monastery, away from the commercialization, the hectic hustle, the demanding family responsibilities of Christmas-time. Then we would have a holy Christmas. But we would forget the lesson of the Incarnation, of the enfleshing of God—the lesson that we who are followers of Jesus do not run from the secular; rather we try to transform it. It is our mission to make holy the secular aspects of Christmas just as the early Christians baptized the Christmas tree. And we do this by being holy people—kind, patient, generous, loving, laughing people—no matter how maddening is the Christmas rush…"—Fr. Andrew Greeley, Woman’s Day, December 22, 1981