by Nancy Linenkugel
Contributor
A new year affords the opportunity to look forward to all the new things one can imagine doing, changing, or becoming. The new year also provides the chance to look back on life.
A wise person observed that in English the words "silent" and "listen" have the same letters. I recently heard a legislator say, "Silence is the most compelling problem in our world today." Oh, yes, we should certainly listen first, but making no response calls into question our ability to hear and to think.
One of the criticisms of the free world during World War II is that folks, including Catholics, stood by and did nothing to help the concentration camp victim Jews. Worse yet is the reality that some folks deny that this horror even happened. Those concentration camps came to a halt merely 70 years ago and what have we learned?
Blacks and whites can still be consumed by rekindled racism.
Religion can be a litmus test for who is allowed to enter our country. It gives me the power to say, "I'm holy but you're not."
We can readily and easily lump together all persons from an ethnicity or a religion and see them as evil.
Are we content to be onlookers, just like the world was 70 years ago? It's easier that way. It's easy to forget that when I meet another person I meet God.
[Sr. Nancy Linenkugel is a Sylvania Franciscan sister and chair of the department of Health Services Administration at Xavier University, Cincinnati Ohio.]