Editorials

It's not about the sisters. It's not about the bishops. It's about the Church.

The recent Vatican-led doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents leaders of communities of women religious, has somehow morphed into a proverbial line in the sand, with Catholics and non-Catholics alike taking sides on the matter.

Blessed John Paul II, an avid sportsman in his youth, once lauded the moral value of sports. "They are a training ground of virtue," he said.

His wisdom is worth contemplating during a busy summer that, in addition to the usual menu of baseball, football, tennis, golf, etc., offers the Olympic Summer Games in London.

Unfortunately, virtue can sometimes be difficult to find in modern sport. Multimillion-dollar professional salaries, bloated TV ratings and lucrative endorsements frequently breed a cult of celebrity that often spawns immoral behavior both on and off the playing field.

Last week community leaders and social service providers in St. Charles County attending a forum on childhood hunger had a clear message -- poverty is real and it hurts, even though it may be invisible to many of us.

Generosity, love and care. You don't see those words reported very often in the news.

Yet those words describe what happens every day through the Latin America Apostolate of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, as priest missionaries and the women religious and others who assist them in Bolivia carry out their work.

You, too, are a part of this work.

It is with grateful and joyous hearts that we are able to reflect on the often overlooked and unsung heroes in our midst -- those men and women who have quietly and faithfully lived out their vocations, their gift of self, for many years.

As we approach the Fourth of July, the annual celebration of our heritage as a new and independent nation, it is only natural that we feel a justifiable pride and respect. The foundation of our nation was a bold and courageous voyage into new and uncharted waters as a nation whose very existence was founded not upon a structure of royalty or nobility but of governance by the very citizenry itself and upon faith in God as the Lord of all creation