‘Cardinal Dolan suggests another America, one in which people who disagree can still be friends…’

From John Allen yesterday, quoting something New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan said in an interview in 2009:

“My dad was a very upbeat guy, with a tremendous sense of humor, who would always see the best in people. The kind of people that others didn’t get along with, he liked. It was almost like he wanted to give them a chance … Dad’s philosophy of life was that if you can get somebody on a lawn chair, outside on a Sunday, while he was doing pork steaks in the barbeque pit, listening to Harry Caray and the Saint Louis Cardinals in the background with a bottle of Busch, you could win over anybody. There’s nobody that if you eyeball, and really start talking to … rare would be the person with whom you could not find common ground.”

Allen concludes:

In other words, Cardinal Dolan suggests another America, one in which people who disagree can still be friends, still talk to one another, still recognize one another’s fundamental decency, and where disputes don’t have to end in shoving matches and handcuffs.

You’ll want to read the whole thing.