"Life is religion"

The late H. Evan Runner, professor of philosophy at Calvin College, is supposed to have coined the above-quoted aphorism, but the insight is not limited to this side of the Reformation. Here is Guzmán Carriquiry, undersecretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, who would appear to agree:

"The encounter with the Lord changes life, changes all the dimensions of life, despite our resistances and sins," he said.

"The encounter with Christ changes our relations with our spouse, with our children, the way of approaching our professional work, our leisure, the use of money, friendships. This encounter changes our lives, makes them more human," the undersecretary said.

"To reduce this experience to the private sphere is to put impossible limits on the grace of God, which changes life and the way of looking at reality, which commits us to live in all directions, which gives us a particular view of society, politics, culture and profession," he observed.

"Nothing of what is human can be foreign to that encounter with the Lord; consequently, those who wish to reduce it to churches and sacristies or to convert it into a social residue, are mistaken," Carriquiry contended. . . .

"We need to form a new generation that lives holiness in all the dimensions of life. . . ."

Here is a man who seems bent on displacing David L. Schindler as my favourite Catholic theologian.