Radical tolerance is an act of non-violent resistance. You simply refuse to stereotype another person. The Church can’t stop people falling in love or getting sick or working too hard, but we can create a space where people can bring that stuff, the stuff of their lives. We can enable people to be all they can be. By saying to them, "You are created in the image of God, and you are acceptable as you are", you can deepen people’s sense of their own humanity.

St. Irenaeus of Lyons, a Christian of the third generation after Christ wrote, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive. The life of a human being is a vision of God". And it’s what you do with people like Joseph who plagues the life out of a Catholic priest friend that really matters in the end. "He smells, he shouts, he stares. He is a heavy drinker, a gambler, and has frequent brushes with the law. He barges into every conversation I try to have with parishioners before and after Mass. He mutters obscenities and will not be silenced. He rings me at all hours of the day and night. He wants me to vouch for his purchase somewhere in the city my heart sinks when he presses the doorbell continuously some time before evening Mass. I once chased him through the streets around our church to get rid of him - me, desperate; him, stubborn and defiant."

What we have to do he says, is honour Joseph when he comes, as a special guest, give him the front seat, cherish him as Jesus cherishes all outsiders, ‘the despised and often hated members of a society intent on destroying them. Soggy?

Many people, however, want a much more clear~cut God. A right or wrong God right from the word go God. A shoot first, listen later God. Not quite a God who cuts your hand off if you steal perhaps or is ready to have you stoned if you have a lusty gleam at a busty bust or a neat bum, but that sort of thing. Certainly a death penalty God, a help ‘em by hanging ‘em God. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth God.

Pause for thought. Gandhi said, "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind". To kill another is a most terrible thing (as many soldiers who are asked to do it in good faith and who suffer post-war-syndrome as a consequence, will tell). To have no sadness, no remorse about killing another is an even more terrible thing. But, for me, to write off another human being as totally and irredeemably evil with no hope of ever finding love and sorrow in their heart is the most terrible thing of all. That spells disaster for the whole human race.

"He should not be seen as the servant of darkness but as someone capable of conversion". Who said this? - Milan Machovec, a Marxist.

In the end I find a soggy God is quite a tough God, who gives me a hard time I can tell you. He/she never lets me down, never lets me go, but never lets me off. I would like an easier life. I would like to shut out certain ‘types’ of people, people like fellow-Christian George Bush and his entourage, who think the death penalty is a good thing, and that homosexuals and lesbians are irredeemably evil and an abomination. I do write people off quite a lot of the time anyway without even noticing -until later. As it is, in my sogginess, I must live with the temptation to be self-righteous and holier-than-thou till my last breath. Part of the sadness which never leaves me is how many times during a week, a day even, my intolerance writes another right out of the book of life. St. Antony the Great, one of the earliet and greatest of Christian teachers said "Our life and death is with our neighbour. If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ".