Bill Mcnamara

Touch the Pain Bill Mcnamara 1. izdevums

"Touch the Pain" is an effort to inspire the readers, Catholic and non-Catholic, to go out to the side of the poor with compassion and resolve, as together they bring about change in systemic injustices. The charity of our society is applauded while the need for a distributive justice component is challenged, locally as well as globally. This challenge is made to the community, to the churches as institutions, to the clergy and laity-specifically to individuals in all vocations of life, without any exceptions of gender, age or religious persuasion. The author shares a multitude of true experiences from the better part of the twentieth century as a pre-Vatican Council Catholic as well as in the post-Vatican Council years. If we are to share the pain of the marginalized, the disfranchised, the wounded of our society, he urges the readers to begin at the foot of the Cross. He emphasizes the need to establish new priorities both in a detachment as well as attachment process to enable the readers to be free themselves before any efforts to free others from the chains that bind them. The Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount are identified in contrast with the cultures of today. In recognition of the need for formation, education and training with Judeo/Christian social justice values as a foundation, three Second Vatican Council documents come alive in the testimony's style of a dialogue with Jesus. The testimony concludes with the vision of the 21st century community, where the presence of God is with us today just as it has been since the Beginning.