The book does not evoke pity; it’s not intended to evoke pity. It undermines the very foundation of the category “less fortunate” by deconstructing the front row conceit that everyone in the back row wants to be in the front row.
Our human dignity is founded upon the Word of God that lives in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. And that Word is dynamic and living, never static or flat.
In a section of the Summa on prayer, St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) alerts us to three perennial errors, pitfalls at the intersection of prayer and theology.
Reason, the thing that separates us from brute beasts, does not liberate us from animality, but it liberates animality itself, for the actualization of a potential that cannot be actualized without reason.
