Father Ronan: When the Goin' Gets Tough

A weekly column by the pastor of St. Mary-St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Charlestown.

"When the goin' gets tough, the tough get goin'." It’s an old saying, and we have all heard it at one time or another. The implication seems clear: when one faces hard times, one shouldn’t cave, whine or falter, rather dig in and get to it! It is easy to like the statement, or at least what it implies. I think I apply it to myself often enough. And yet, there are times when I realize that nothing is as simple as it seems. For example, the statement “cut and run” hardly describes the reality of opposing significant public policy questions about the dignity of life, health care and more. Maybe this mind set is really more a veneer than the real thing. For after confronting a challenge and getting a sense of its difficulty, more often than …

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