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Where There's Hope There's Life: Women's Stories of Homelessness and Survival, by Anthony J. Gittins. Liguori, 2006.
This is a story of twelve homeless women who tell their readers what it means to be without a home and poor on the streets of the cities. The pain of these women shows also their inner strength and their beauty. Gittins does not try to elicit guilt or pity; rather he intends that readers come away from this book with compassion, understanding, and even some kind of a concrete response.
Gittins offered a small stipend to every women who was willing to tell her story. This brought some women to a new kind of courage in facing their own situation, and even trying to improve what life seemed to have cast their way. Each brave woman seems to have had an abiding
belief in God’s love and didn’t blame God for their situation. Even though the stories are all tragic, the women find courage to continue, even affording humor in their desolation.
The author hopes that the reading of his story will cut some readers to the bone, and expose the many sins of those who are prejudiced against the homeless. “Isn’t it their own fault?” “No, most of the time it isn’t their own fault.” Gittins hopes that justice and decency will
live again and teach us anew about Eucharist and a deeper love of God and neighbor.
One reviewer says, “Oh, how the Church needs this book”. The Church needs its honesty, its challenge, its wisdom, and its wit. (We are that church). Jesus invites us to take up this challenge now.”
- Thanks to Sr. Irene Hartman, OP for this review
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Blessed Adolph Kolping: December 10. 1816-65.
The rise of the factory system in 19th-century Germany brought many single men into cities where they faced new challenges to their faith. Father Adolph Kolping began a ministry to them, hoping that they would not be lost to the
Catholic faith, as was happening to workers elsewhere in industrialized Europe.
Born in the village of Kerpen, Adolph became a shoemaker at an early age because of his family’s economic situation. Ordained in 1845, he ministered to young workers in Cologne, establishing a choir, which by 1849 had grown into the Young
Workmen’s Society. A branch of this began in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1856. Nine years later there were over 400 Gesellenvereine—workman’s societies—around the world. Today this group has over 450,000 members in 54 countries across the globe.
More commonly called the Kolping Society, it emphasizes the sanctification of family life and the dignity of labor. Father Kolping worked to improve conditions for workers and greatly assisted those in need. He and St. John Bosco in Turin
had similar interests in working with young men in big cities. He told his followers, “The needs of the times will teach you what to do.” Father Kolping once said, “The first thing that a person finds in life and the last to which he holds out his hand, and the most precious that he possesses, even if he does not realize it, is family life.”
Blessed Adolph Kolping and Blessed John Duns Scotus are buried in Cologne’s Minoritenkirche, originally served by the Conventual Franciscans. The Kolping Society’s international headquarters are located across from this
church.
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