Education follows the same law as the physical universe, which is sustained and carried on in dependence on certain centres of power and laws of operation. Education has its history in Christianity, and its doctors or masters in that history. A Benedictine Education, by John Henry Newman (160 pages, Cluny Media) As the physical universe [...]
It is our business to give up all for whatever is truth, whether it appeals to our emotion or not; whether we have others with us or not; whether our mood concurs or repels. The intelligence is absolute in its own sphere. Intelligence commands us to accept the truth, and for the truth a man [...]
If our hearts were truly not in this world but in heaven, all the torments that the world could devise would give us no pain. Let us therefore send our hearts to heaven by sending our wealth there. A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation, by Thomas More (248 pages, Cluny Media) XIII. Concerning the wise [...]
The final word on the legacy of John Fisher and Thomas More, and the final judgment (under God) on why we should see them as heroes, is given by G. K. Chesterton, a man who proves in his very self that the killing of More and Fisher did not kill learning, laughter or holiness: "There [...]
If Western Civilization is to recover, it must enter into itself, i.e., respect the true nature of man. It must also have a recognition of a “sense of need”; for unless it feels its own inadequacy, its own insufficiency, its own hunger, how can it aspire or even yearn for the Bread of the Father’s [...]
I asked the old priest about what is called “Quietism.”A friend had given me an old copy of Molinos’ Spiritual Guide, and I knew that the writer had been condemned and imprisoned for life, and yet I could not understand in what lay his crime. “It is difficult to put into words,” said the priest, [...]
Men need an image, single, coloured and clear in outline, an image to be called up instantly in the imagination, when what is Catholic is to be distinguished from what claims to be Christian or even what in one sense is Christian. Now I can scarcely remember a time when the image of Our Lady [...]
Michel de la Tour D’Auvergne gave his horse to his servant. He watched the man take the two animals to the head of the bridge over the Grosne, and then with a sudden gesture of complete release he threw himself down on the river bank and gave himself up without reserve to the scene before [...]
Had Our Lord’s offering been by way of some human act of little cost, then one would feel that humanity’s part in the expiation was barely more than a fiction. In fact Christ’s humanity gave all it had to give, for a man has not more to give than his life. What divinity gave was [...]
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 [...]