—- See also, Dickens and Thomas Malthus, the father of global population control. Melvyn Bragg and guests (In Our Time, BBC) discuss Charles Dickens’ novella, written in 1843 when he was 31, which has become intertwined with his reputation and with Christmas itself. Ebenezer Scrooge is the miserly everyman figure whose joyless obsession with money… Read More Dickens and the meanings of ‘A Christmas Carol’. Melvyn Bragg.
Originally Titled ‘A Catholic Flavored Commentary on Romans 7. By Craig Truglia, Sept. 2015. With the help of Augustine, we undergo exegeting perhaps the most confusing chapter of the Bible. Does a Christian, who is dead to sin, still sin? Can he lose his salvation? Is he even the one sinning? What is the Flesh?… Read More Romans 7 and our Spiritual – Existential Predicament
By Father Gabriel of St Mary Magalene, 1953. O Lord, increase my confidence in Your help and grant that in this confidence, I may always find courage to begin again. What most distresses souls of good will who are seriously trying to live a spiritual life, is to find themselves falling so many times, despite… Read More The Courage To Begin Yet Again
“A good and devout man arranges in his mind the things he has to do, not according to the whims of evil inclination but according to the dictates of right reason. Who is forced to struggle more than he who tries to master himself? This ought to be our purpose, then: to conquer self, to… Read More Free from a multitude of opinions
“Today the first and perhaps the only duty of the philosopher is to defend man against himself: to defend man against that extraordinary temptation toward inhumanity to which—almost without being aware of it—so many human beings today have yielded.” —- Gabriel Marcel Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan… Read More Thomas Merton on Creation: The Rain is Not for Sale
“A major area of distress for [Dorothy Day] in the 1970’s was what seemed to her the erosion occurring in the spiritual life of her fellow Catholics, including those in the Catholic Worker movement. More than ever Catholics seemed attentive to social issues she had been raising for forty years, but they were increasingly neglectful of the… Read More Dorothy Day and Catholic Tradition
Neither Socialism nor lassez faire CapitalismOctober 1, 2001 | By Mark and Louise Zwick The following was a talk given at the American Chesterton Society annual conference in St. Paul, Minnesota, in June 2001. Dorothy Day and G. K. Chesterton were contemporaries. Both came into Catholicism in the 1920’s, Chesterton in 1922 at age 48… Read More G.K. Chesterton and Dorothy Day on Economics
And Fulton J Sheen on the meaning of Palm Sunday. Homily of Benedict XVI, Palm Sunday, 2006. To understand what occurred on Palm Sunday and to know what it meant not only for that time but for all times, a detail is important, which became for his disciples the key to understand that event when,… Read More “The Cross Is the Tree of Life” – Benedict XVI
“It is fashionable for Catholic liberals to decry the pre-conciliar Church as concerned with little more than personal piety and indifferent to the injustice and suffering in the world. This is a monstrous travesty of the truth as every adult Catholic must surely know. Never in the history of our planet has so much concern… Read More Michael Davies on the Merciful, Ever Welcoming Church
In this 1945 meditation on Christmas, Dorothy Day reflects that it is not too late for any of us to welcome Christ, “who is always asking for room in our hearts” in the guise of our contemporaries, especially the poor. — Catholic Worker.org It is no use to say that we are born two thousand years too… Read More Dorothy Day: It Is Not Too Late to Make Room for Christ
The most subtly banned Name in all of Social Media is the Name of Jesus Christ, the Christ of the Gospel, the Christ of history, and the Christ of Faith. This is true of the West in general. On the Internet we will find the ill-defined cover-all name-term “God,” and many other equally vague substitutes,… Read More Not ‘God’. God in Christ.
“O Lord, You are my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? You are the protector of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? If armies in camp should stand together against me, my heart shall not fear. If a battle should rise up against me, in this will I be confident. One… Read More Whom Shall I Fear? Expect the Lord.
National Catholic Register. With a saintly long-ranging spiritual vision, Ven. Fulton J. Sheen saw the roots of today’s crisis firmly planted and growing in 1974, but he gave us an antidote. Joseph Pronechen July 29, 2018 “First of all, we are at the end of Christendom,” Archbishop Fulton Sheen solemnly said during a television show in… Read More Archbishop Sheen’s Warning of a Crisis in Christendom. 1974.
“AT least 750,000 people are on the brink of starvation and death in Sudan, where a devastating civil war has left over half the country’s 48 million people in a situation of chronic hunger, the global authority on famine says. At least 14 areas across the country are near famine, including some in the capital,… Read More Ongoing Starvation and Persecution in Sudan
First, the Problem. The famous Thomist philosopher Etienne Gilson writes, surely accurately, in his Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, “… at the very place where the Summa of Alexander and the Commentary of St. Bonaventure undertake to show that the existence of God is evident, St. Thomas devotes an article to proving that it… Read More Gilson, Saint Thomas and The Self-Attesting God
On overcoming. St. Augustine teaches, “When the unlawful pleasure of concupiscence tempts you, fight, resist, do not consent; and the saying is fulfilled, Go not after thy desires.” Still further, he says elsewhere that of two persons who have the same temptation to impurity, it sometimes happens that one consents to it and the other… Read More Predominant Sin of Our Times
Romans 8: 18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of… Read More Holding On, Pressing On
The trials of St. Thomas More. “I am the King’s true subject, and pray for him and all the realm…I do none harm, I say none harm, I think none harm. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live…’ — Words of St. Thomas… Read More The King’s Good Servant
‘The West believes man’s destiny is prosperity and an abundance of goods. So does the Politburo.” –Whittaker Chambers “A communist spy himself, Chambers had a Christian conversion and declared that in 1937, he began “like Lazarus, the impossible return.” His return to the principles of freedom made him one of the most forceful anti-communists of… Read More Why Whittaker Chambers Matters
Updated. Is the local government and local church involved in seeking to help? Why do some US cities struggle more with homelessness? A new book explores a key component of the issue: housing supply. [ Note / SH]: Illegal Substance Use Data also “show high rates of comorbid disorders such as anxiety disorders—which include generalized… Read More Homelessness, Housing Supply — and Co-morbid Disorders.
“The Order of the Parts of the universe to each other exists in virtue of the Order of the Whole universe to God.” — St. Thomas Aquinas, C.G.1,83 By Malcom Muggeridge First Lux! “From its triumphant opening: In the beginning was the Word,and the Word was with God,and the Word was God,” to its beautiful… Read More Into the Darkness Comes the Light.
The American Solidarity Party is based in the tradition of Christian democracy. We acknowledge the state should be pluralistic while upholding a vision of the common good of all and of each individual conscience informed by Christian tradition and acknowledging the primacy of religion in each person’s life. Our Principles 1. Sanctity of LifeHuman life… Read More An Alternative to Trump-Biden-Harris. The American Solidarity Party.
Overcoming Dark Emotions. St. Francis de Sales’ wrote, “The persons for whom I write are those only who are determined not to commit any fault deliberately, though many [fall into] them through surprise, inadvertence, and weakness, notwithstanding their resolution. It usually happens that such persons are astonished and troubled at their faults, conceive a false… Read More Discouraged?
By Karl Keating, New Oxford Review “…I have a favorite line from Pope Leo XIII. It’s from Rerum Novarum (1891), the first of the social encyclicals. Nearly every pope since his time has written one or more social encyclicals. The line I remember isn’t quite as Leo wrote it. Often we remember lines a little… Read More A Life’s Worth of Failure, an Abundance of Gratitude
How To Cope Practically, Emotionally, and Spiritually When Your Loved One Is Seriously Ill “If you’ve picked up this book, chances are good that someone you love is seriously ill – and you have been thrust into the role of a caregiver. Like most caregivers, you probably feel scared, anxious, and maybe even a little… Read More Walking the Way of the Cross for Caregivers
James 4:2: “you have not, because you ask not.“ The great Doctor of the Church, Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, wrote, “The absolute necessity of prayer is taught throughout the Holy Scriptures, and by all the holy Fathers; while, on the other hand, I see that Christians are very careless in their practice of this great… Read More “Those who pray will be saved, those who do not will be lost”
By Malcolm Muggeridge. Some eight decades ago I came into the world, full of cries and wind and hiccups; now I prepare to leave it, also full of cries and wind and hiccups. Whence I came I cannot know, least of all in the light of contemporary myths like Darwinian evolution, Freudian psychology, situational ethics,… Read More As daylight hours draw to a close
“The Christian may not despair; i.e ., he may not give up hoping that God will forgive his sins, or help him in adversity. Cain despaired when he said: “My sin is too great to be forgiven” ( Gen . iv. 13 ). Saul despaired by throwing himself on his sword when hard pressed in… Read More The Christian may not despair.
Our Lord Jesus Christ gives up(1) on none. Nobody. God help us from ever holding on to any Pharisee within. Brennan Manning writes of brokenness, “My life is a witness to vulgar grace — a grace that amazes as it offends. A grace that pays the eager beaver who works all day long the same… Read More Vulgar Grace
Neither Socialism nor Laissez Faire Capitalism Pope Pius XI in 1931 warned of International Finance, the grave dangers of ‘economic domination’ accumulated in the hands of the few He warned in Quadragesimo Anno of the dangers of international finance controlling credit, crushing competition and families. And this message flows directly and seamlessly from the teachings of Christ… Read More Despotic Economic Dictatorship — Pope Pius XI
By Saint Louis de Montfort, Doctor of The Church, great luminary of St. John Paul II, writes, “If you say the Rosary faithfully until death, I do assure you that, in spite of the gravity of your sins “you shall receive a never-fading crown of glory” (1 Pet. 5:4). Even if you are on the… Read More The Rosary, Hope Even for Great Sinners
Fr. Robert Reed [today auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston and the president of the television network CatholicTV] prays the Sorrowful Mysteries for all who are physically or mentally suffering in our time, and for the dying.
St. Alphonsus de Liguori, Doctor of the Church, teaches, “Brother, when the devil tempts you again to sin, if you wish to be lost, you have it in your power to commit sin; but do not then say that you wish to be saved. As long as you wish to sin, regard yourself as damned,… Read More St. Alphonsus de Liguori on Judgment and Mercy
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