The impossible dream that really happened

By Tom Quiner [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quS6lhyhz7M&feature=related] Pope John Paul II’s life was a miracle. A Slavic Pope? Impossible! The fall of communism?  Impossible! This man was perhaps the most beloved human being of my lifetime. This video pays homage to the drama and beauty of his life. Someone posted this comment on YouTube below the video: “I…

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November 9th, 1989

By Tom Quiner [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKJgA2tS3LE&feature=related] Three giants of the 20th century collaborated  on a miracle, the fall of communism. Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan. Margaret Thatcher. They each shared a unique character quality: conviction. They didn’t follow the crowd, they led the world based on the courage of their conviction. The Berlin Wall came down…

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The Pope of the People

By Tom Quiner Regular readers of this blog may have detected my affection for the late Pope John Paul II. I have posted seven different commentaries on JPII over the past several months. What is there about John Paul II that so inspires the young and the old? For me, his trips to Poland and…

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A voice of peace

By Tom Quiner Is there a single voice today who speaks for Christianity? Obviously the Pope speaks for the Catholic world.  But in a sense he is the de facto Christian voice to the world on “big picture” issues even if all Christians don’t agree with all Catholic doctrines. So in 1985 when Pope John…

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Auschwitz vs. Ground Zero

By Tom Quiner Edith Stein was executed at Auschwitz on August 9th, 1942, for the crime of being a Jew.  This 68th anniversary of her death is relevant today. Some background is in order.  She was born into a devout Jewish family on Yom Kippur, the youngest of eleven children.  As a teen, she moved…

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The Summer of Hope

By Tom Quiner As seen in the Des Moines Register on Saturday, July 24, 2010 It began on June 2nd.  The year was 1979 when the Alitalia jetliner set down in a land that history forgot for 123 years of its thousand year history.  A Man in White with kind eyes stepped onto the tarmac. …

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Modern Auschwitz

By Tom Quiner The Nazis exterminated 4 million human beings in Auschwitz. Pope John Paul II visited the site on June 8th, 1979.  His remarks are immediately relevant.  The late-great John Paul said: “Can it still be a surprise to anyone that the Pope born and brought up in this land, the Pope who came…

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Do you believe in miracles?

By Tom Quiner A miracle may have recently taken place. I will tell you about it in a moment.  But first, I’d like you to ask yourself:  are miracles really possible?  And if they are possible, have they ever really occurred? There are four possibilities as postulated by Dr. Peter Kreeft, professor of philosophy at…

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Be not indifferent

By Tom Quiner “Never again.” That was the pledge the world made following the Holocaust.  Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime in the late 1930’s through 1945.  They were killed out of hatred. Even the moral relativists of today grudgingly admit that the Holocaust was an evil act. Has the civilized world…

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Hope for Tomorrow

By Tom Quiner A proud country has been crushed by an evil adversary, beaten into the ground, one-fifth of their population killed in a mere six years. It gets worse. The county is then taken over by another, equally sinister country, one that, much like the soul-sucking Dementors in a Harry Potter book, attempts to…

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