Robert McAfee Brown

True patriotism is not worship of our nation but rather, in the light of our worship of the God of justice, to conform our nation's ways of justice.

One important aspect of justice, Jose Miranda reminds us, involves the restoration of what has been stolen. Giving food to the hungry or clothing to the naked is not a charitable handout but an exercise in simple justice - restoring to the poor what is rightfully theirs, what has been taken from them unjustly.