If you’re doing the work that’s given you for the glory of God your work is just as important as the Prime Minister’s. And it ought to be a consolation to those of us whom ill-health has knocked out of life’s battle altogether, so that God seems to have no work for us to do [...]
For the wage-earner of today, access to the resources of nature can be had only through wages. This means that the industrial community in which he lives, and for which he labors, shall provide him with the requisites of a decent livelihood in the form of living wages. When we consider man’s position in relation [...]
It requires no great zeal in us, no great charity, to come to you at no risk, and entreat you to turn from the path of death, and be saved. It requires nothing great, nothing heroic, nothing saint-like; it does but require conviction, and that we have, that the Catholic Religion is given from God [...]
The truth is that philosophy is not the apanage of the few. All may be equipped with the science of living, and one cannot be so equipped without a right, if inadequate, knowledge of the nature of things—at least, that is, of their nature as affecting human conduct. One who knows the ten commandments and [...]
The sacrifice of Christ was totally effective. It could not be otherwise, given that He Who offered it was God. But it is important to grasp what it effected. Whatever it was meant to effect, it did effect. But what was it? At the moment of His death on Calvary, Christ Our Lord said, “It [...]
At Easter in the year 432, in the village of Slane, Ireland, Saint Patrick declared: “There is no better day for my task. I will announce my mission by lighting the Paschal Fire at this place on Easter Eve!” One day in Lent, a boat sailed up the winding reaches of the Boyne, past the [...]
A political system, however efficient, cannot be good if it clashes with ethics. We have to work for the restoration of local autonomy. There are things in which centralized control is necessary and beneficent; but there is a vast multitude of things in which it is unnecessary, and derogatory to human freedom and responsibility. Man [...]
The essence of the attitude of the believer lies in the obduracy with which he approaches the real, and in the firmness of his determination to keep up the struggle. If faith is still developing, there comes a time when the believer considers his faith as the most securely anchored reality of all, sure to [...]
It is not only the beginning and the end of our history that consist in actions on a cosmic scale. The central point is also a creative act, the resurrection of Christ, himself the Word of God, by whom all things were made, who is to come in the fullness of time to make all [...]
Under what conditions is an aggressive war justified as punishment for a violation of the international order or as a redress for an injury suffered? Defensive war offers fewer problems. We have already pointed out that the justice of the cause of war must be certain for the public authority. Hence, the other party, in the dispute is [...]
A hero is someone you admire to the point of losing sleep over. A hero is one the ancients were tempted to worship, with the ardent hope that some of the strength from his dead body would seep into the ground and make their crops fertile. A hero, you admit, is better than you are, [...]
The Church is like an old schoolmaster, the schoolmaster of the centuries, and as such it has seen so many students pass before it, cultivate the same poses and fall into the same errors, that it merely smiles at those who believe that they have discovered a new truth. One of the catchwords which keeps [...]
The first and most fundamental principle, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property. The main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected. The fact that God has given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race can [...]
Father Nussbaum was under no illusion. Like all great missionaries he was thinking of martyrdom. He accepted it in advance, and even, deep in his great Christian heart, he hoped for it. He remembered all those who before him had wet this hostile soil with their blood. He thought of Father Mussot who, on April [...]