In the course of a family household, there are characteristically two most demanding, most rewarding relationships: the relationship of marital partners and the relationship of parent and child.

Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time; for it is an evil time (Amos 5:13).

It is staggering to ponder the opportunity and freedom to choose “new gods.” Such choosing requires the renunciation and rejection of old gods as inadequate and unreliable and inclined to oppressiveness. My comment on the notion of “new gods” is in three parts.

The “Doctrine of Discovery” is constituted by a series of papal teachings in the 15th century, culminating in 1493, the year after Columbus’s “discovery” of the New World. This series of papal declarations asserted that the “New World” rightly belonged to White Europeans and was to be divided between Spain and Portugal, two states fully supportive of the Vatican. That teaching, over time, provided cover and justification for White occupation of the New World with an eager readiness to convert, enslave, or kill the indigenous population.

The Greek term is apographo, that is, “written down.” All were to be “written down” under imperial auspices in the same way I had been “written down” by the church and by the government. Joseph and Mary, vulnerable peasants from the shabby village of Nazareth, were ‘written down” by the empire in its long reach into the peasant economy.