“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
— G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value in any of them is that they bear the image of the King. This fact has been quite insufficiently observed in the study of religious heroes. Piety produces intellectual greatness precisely because piety in itself is quite indifferent to intellectual greatness. The strength of Cromwell was that he cared for religion. But the strength of religion was that it did not care for Cromwell; did not care for him, that is, any more than for anybody else. He and his footman were equally welcomed to warm places in the hospitality of hell. It has often been said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.”
— G.K. Chesterton
Direct abortion, that is to say willed as an end or as a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law. In affirming this, the Catholic Church is not lacking in understanding and mercy, also towards the mother involved. Rather, it is a question of being vigilant lest the law unjustly alter the balance between the right to life of the mother and that of the unborn child, a right belonging equally to both…
Sadly, especially in the West, one frequently encounters ambiguities about the meaning of human rights and their corresponding duties. Rights are often confused with exaggerated manifestations of the autonomy of the individual, who becomes self-referential, no longer open to encounter with God and with others, and absorbed only in seeking to satisfy his or her own needs. To be authentic, the defence of rights must instead consider human beings integrally, in their personal and communitarian dimensions.
“This is a march where nobody physically present stands to gain anything personally or financially. We aren’t trying to make our lives easier or more comfortable. Rather we oppose abortion simply because it is evil. That’s all. Our children cannot speak for themselves on this issue. They need us to do it for them. That’s the point of the March For Life.”
I watched some coverage of the ‘Women’s March’ in DC and I have to say: I saw and heard MORE foul language, MORE crude terms for female and male genitalia, MORE misogyny (and even misandry), MORE mockery, MORE derision, MORE thuggishness, MORE rudeness, MORE law-breaking and MORE lunacy in those few minutes than I ever saw from Donald Trump in the 18 months of his campaign.
“Despite your personal feelings on his coolness, his character, his charisma, or his competence, Barack Obama will forever be the president who worked diligently to put the gun of government to the heads of the Little Sisters of the Poor, demanding that they either pay to destroy children in the womb or be crushed.
You can’t candy-coat that. You can’t hide it. You can’t pretend it wasn’t what it was. For 177 years, the Little Sisters of the Poor has been a large Roman Catholic religious ministry that takes vows of chastity, poverty, obedience, and hospitality. Serving the Kingdom of God on earth in over 30 countries, they have one stated mission: to care for impoverished people as they near the end of their lives. As Ashley McGuire describes, “The only fight they go looking for is to make the last days of some very downtrodden people brighter and happier, to send as many people into the next life surrounded by love, not garbage.”
Barack Obama knew that, personally. And regardless, he instructed his administration to rewrite executive regulations nine separate times to ensure these nuns be forced to either violate their conscience by helping distribute abortifacients, or be fined $70 million a year and out of existence. Their beliefs, their ministry, their cause, and even the incredible work that they do was secondary to President Barack Obama’s devotion to funding and expanding the destruction of infants with tax dollars.
The President’s own lawyers admitted in court that there were compromises available that would have met their objectives while sparing the Sisters’ consciences. But President Obama refused. Using the coercive power of the state to compel nuns to pay for abortion drugs became an issue of pride for this small man.
His obsession was so out of touch that the Supreme Court, divided as it is, issued a unanimous ruling telling Obama that he must find another way. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg joins hands with Clarence Thomas to rebuke your fixation with forcing nuns to violate their consciences, you have reached the pinnacle of ideological extremism.
That President Obama failed to ever respect that eternal truth is both pitiful and shameful. And it’s why I’m beyond elated to bid him a permanent farewell.”
The man who is content to say, ‘We do not want theologians splitting hairs,’ will doubtless be content to go on and say, ‘We do not want surgeons splitting filaments more delicate than hairs.’ It is the fact that many a man would be dead today if his doctors had not debated the fine shades about doctoring. It is also the fact that European civilization would be dead today if its doctors of divinity had not debated fine shades about doctrine.
G.K. Chesterton: The Resurrection of Rome (via apesoformythoughts)
"Those who dislike definite religious systems often talk of people 'swallowing' doctrines, and there is a truth in the metaphor, though not as they commonly use it. There is no great harm in swallowing a thing if it feeds you. The great objection to swallowing a thing is that it generally chokes you. And that is exactly what happens to those eager idealists who merely accept words like 'truth' or 'life' or 'progress', as satisfying their spiritual hunger. The words do not so much nourish their spiritual bodies as stop their spiritual breath. Such ideal phrases really are what they say 'dogmas' are: a thing that stops the mind."
Those countries in Europe which are still influenced by priests, are exactly the countries where there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open-air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.
The Holy Gospel narrates that when Jesus was crucified “there was darkness over the whole earth” (Matthew xxvii. 45); a terrifying symbol of what happened and what still happens spiritually wherever incredulity, blind and proud of itself, has succeeded in excluding Christ from modern life, especially from public life, and has undermined faith in God as well as faith in Christ. The consequence is that the moral values by which in other times public and private conduct was gauged have fallen into disuse; and the much vaunted civilization of society, which has made ever more rapid progress, withdrawing man, the family and the State from the beneficent and regenerating effects of the idea of God and the teaching of the Church, has caused to reappear, in regions in which for many centuries shone the splendors of Christian civilization, in a manner ever clearer, ever more distinct, ever more distressing, the signs of a corrupt and corrupting paganism: “There was darkness when they crucified Jesus” (Roman Breviary, Good Friday, Response Five).
Pope Pius XII, Summi Pontificatus (via papalwords)
"To be merely modern is to condemn oneself to an ultimate narrowness; just as to spend one’s last earthly money on the newest hat is to condemn oneself to the old-fashioned. The road of the ancient centuries is strewn with dead moderns. Literature, classic and enduring literature, does its best work in reminding us perpetually of the whole round of truth and balancing other and older ideas against the ideas to which we might for a moment be prone. The way in which it does this, however, is sufficiently curious to be worth our fully understanding it to begin with.
AND for men too, there is, according to a famous authoress, a hope of freedom. Men are beginning to revolt, we are told, against the old tribal custom of desiring fatherhood. The male is casting off the shackles of being a creator and a man. When all are sexless there will be equality. There will be no women and no men. There will be but a fraternity, free and equal. The only consoling thought is that it will endure but for one generation.
To be all together in prolonged silence before the Lord present in his Sacrament is one of the most genuine experiences of our being Church, which is accompanied complementarily by the celebration of the Eucharist, by listening to the word of God, by singing and by approaching the table of the Bread of Life together. Communion and contemplation cannot be separated, they go hand in hand. If I am truly to communicate with another person I must know him, I must be able to be in silence close to him, to listen to him and look at him lovingly. True love and true friendship are always nourished by the reciprocity of looks, of intense, eloquent silences full of respect and veneration, so that the encounter may be lived profoundly and personally rather than superficially. And, unfortunately, if this dimension is lacking, sacramental communion itself may become a superficial gesture on our part.
Pope Benedict XVI, Homily for Corpus Christi (2012)
Joseph Maniaci @josephmaniaci - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
