But it is also true that the West could never have realized some of its most cherished values without the process of secularization. Humanists, he realized with the force of sudden insight, do not run leprosariums. To offer humane treatment to humanity’s outcasts, to overcome their lifetime experience of petty human cruelties, requires more than mere humanity. He had always imagined secular humanism to be the ideal worldview but realized, while strolling through this facility, built with love for those whom no one wanted, that no merely humanist vision can take account of lepers, let alone take care of them. Malcolm Muggeridge, the supremely secular British curmudgeon, who cast a cold eye over so many contemporary efforts and enterprises, was brought up short while visiting an Indian leprosarium run by the Missionaries of Charity, the sisters founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta. It has also produced, repeatedly and in the oddest circumstances, the loving-kindness of the first Christians. Through the history of the West since the time of Jesus, there has remained just enough of the substance of the original Gospel, a residuum, for it to be passed, as it were, from hand to hand and used, like stock, to strengthen, flavor, and invigorate new movements that have succeeded again and again – if only for a time – in producing alteri Christi, men and women in danger of crucifixion. Here's a quote from Thomas Cahill's book, Desire of the Everlasting Hills:
True religion, the taking care of widows and orphans sort, is the only way to win over a jaded skeptic.
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