The idea was that although a book was given to you for your personal use you were never to think that you actually owned it. Real ownership lay elsewhere. You were only a steward of someone else's property.[ ]
We get to have them, ad usam, but we should never nurse the illusion that we own them, that they are ours, that we can claim them by right.
On the other hand, one might cite library books, or rental cars, as examples of experience in the secular world showing we take better care of what we own, by right.
[November 16, 2009 column,
Milwaukee Catholic Herald,
November 27, 2008]
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