Good Quotes, Chapter 5
“No person can love anything unless he can get his arms around it. But once God became a babe and was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, men could say, 'this is Emmanuel, this is God with us.' By his reaching down to frail human nature and lifting it up to the incomparable prerogative of union with himself, human nature became dignified. So real was this union that all of his acts and words, all of his agonies and tears, all of his thoughts and reasonings, resolves and emotions, while being properly human, were at the same time the acts and words, agonies and tears, thoughts and reasons, resolves and emotions, of the Eternal Son of God.” --Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Life of Christ)
“There are several ways to avoid loving God: Deny that you are a sinner. Pretend that religion is for the ignorant and the superstitious, but not for the learned such as yourself. Insist that the sole purpose of religion is social service. Judge religion by whether or not it is accepted by the important people of the world. Avoid all contemplation, self-examination, and inquiry into the moral state of your soul.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (God Love You)
"Let Congress or Parliament pass a law not only prohibiting fermented liquor, but practically everything else. Let the Government forbid bread, beef, boots, hats and coats; let there be a law against anybody indulging in chalk, cheese, leather, linen, tools, toys, tales, pictures or newspapers. Then, it would seem by serious sociological analogy, all human families will begin vigorously to produce all these things for themselves; and the youth of the world will really return."
WE can say that the family is the unit of the state; that it is the cell that makes up the formation. Round the family do indeed gather the sanctities that separate men from ants and bees. Decency is the curtain of that tent; liberty is the wall of that city; property is but the family farm; honour is but the family flag. In the practical proportions of human history, we come back to that fundamental of the father and the mother and the child. -- GK Chesterton
Three perpetually warring totalitarian super-states control the world:
Oceania (ideology: Ingsoc, i.e., English Socialism); its core territories are the Western Hemisphere, the British Isles, Australasia, and Southern Africa.
Eurasia (ideology: Neo-Bolshevism); its core territories are Continental Europe and Russia, including Siberia.
Eastasia (ideology: Obliteration of the Self, i.e., "Death worship"); its core territories are China, Japan, Korea, and Indochina.
Ever since the days of Adam man has been hiding from God and saying God is hard to find. The truth is that in each heart there is a secret garden which God made uniquely for Himself. The garden is like a safety deposit vault inasmuch as it has two keys. God has one key, hence the soul cannot let in anyone else but God. The human heart has the other key, hence not even God can get in without man’s consent. God is always at the Garden Gate with his key. We pretend to look for ours, saying we cannot find it, but all the while it is in our hand, did we but will to see it. The reason we are not happy is because we do not want God.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Modern Soul in Search of God)
The first reaction to truth is hatred -- Tertullian
"There is no temptation to which the Lord has not set a limit." ~St. Augustine
“To believe is nothing other than to think with assent... Believers are also thinkers: in believing, they think and in thinking, they believe... If faith does not think, it is nothing.” ~St. Augustine: “De Praedestinatione Sanctorum,” 7
“THE whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.” ~G.K. Chesterton: "The Illustrated London News," April 19, 1924.
"The great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer... Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists." -- Saint Pius X
bibliolatry: an excessive adherence to the literal interpretation of the Bible.
Just when the religious upheaval was at its height a Polish Canon, Copernicus, revived in a more precise form, the old Pythagorean doctrine of the earth's motion, and communicated to many his speculation that the sun was the center of our system and that the earth revolved. At last, as he died, he printed it, with a dedication to the Pope of the day. This new hypothesis—so typical of the Renaissance advance in discovery—excited in the heart of civilization the interest it deserved. It was lectured on in the Papal Schools, and the lecturers splendidly rewarded. It was taught at Bologna. But the Bible worshippers were furious. On the authority of "the Bible only" they denounced the movement of the globe. Luther's own University of Wittenburg expelled its professor of mathematics for teaching the evil thing. Luther, Melanchthon and their followers roared against the blasphemy of a moving earth in scores of broadsides, and the evil example spread so far that it even infected Italy at last, and at Rome itself Galileo was condemned a lifetime later; though not indeed for advancing the hypothesis but for quarrelsomely teaching it as proved fact, which, as yet, it was not.
Another dreadful consequence of Bibliolatry was the outbreak of vile cruelty in the persecution of witches. The hundreds of poor wretches—mostly women—who were tortured and burnt, or hanged (especially in East Anglia) during the worst of the mania owed their sufferings mainly to such inspiration. But indeed cruelty in general was fostered by the strange new fashion of accepting all the relations of the Old Testament as an infallible moral guide to the conduct of life. Another was the attitude towards the natives of new-discovered lands: your Bibliolater did not attempt their conversion but their extermination.
For he had read that those not "of the Law" were to be put to the sword, and as for those among whom he found himself he might massacre them cheerfully as so many Canaanites. Was he not of a Chosen Race, and was not everybody unlike himself an inferior in the eyes of the Creator?
For the dogma that this particular printed book was the sole and final authority upon all doctrine, morals, and the rest of it, meant that we are bound to imitate in every particular the deeds and the ethical code discoverable in that text.
It had another effect. What was not discoverable in the text must be abhorred. Thus the word "Mass" is not used for the Eucharist in the text—therefore it is an abomination. The war against the Mass had other origins, but this petty argument had strange force. Everything described by a word later than the words used in the latest book in the Canon must go.
It had another. Images were to be condemned; and art was suspect not only in worship but in all life—with consequences we can see around us.
Freemasonry, with all its international influence, is the organization principally responsible for the political ruin of Spain -- Francisco Franco
Evil habits are not driven out by our hate of them (for we do not always hate them properly). They are crowded out by our our love of something else.
Sexual guilt, festering in the souls of those who refuse to repent, invariably finds solace in the innocence of animals. Those burdened by the guilt of a life devoted to appetite are drawn ever closer to animals that possess the innocence they crave. Drawn to animals, they feel compelled to seek the animals' approval.
“Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.” (Blessed Teresa of Calcutta; National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C, February 5, 1994)
"THE woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. With us there is no nice enquiry as to its being formed or unformed. In this case it is not only the being about to be born who is vindicated, but the woman in her attack upon herself; because in most cases women who make such attempts die. The destruction of the embryo is an additional crime, a second murder, at all events if we regard it as done with intent." ~St. Basil the Great (c. 329-379): To Anfilochius, Bishop of Iconia; Letter 188, II.
“Natural law is what is common to all peoples, and what is observed everywhere by the instinct of nature rather than by any ordinance, as the marriage of man and woman, the begetting and rearing of children, the common possession of all things, the one freedom of all, and the acquisition of those things that are taken in the air, or on land, or on sea. Likewise the restoring of property entrusted or lent, and the repelling of violence by force. For this, or anything like this, is not considered unjust but natural and fair.” ~St. Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636): “Etymologies,” 5, 4, 1-2.
“In virtue of man’s dual nature, he is part of a whole, a citizen in the State, and yet possessed of rights independent of the State; a soldier in an army and yet a captain of himself; bound to the State and yet the State is bound to him; immanent in the social order, and yet transcendent to it. He is in the State but not of it – an entity belonging to two worlds; a political animal, and a theological creature.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Freedom Under God)
I believe that the Humanae Vitae is one of the great tests of the Church in our times. We live in days of moral laxity, where there is a shrinking from responsibility for rearing children and a love of carnal experience divorced from love of person. In that world where love and life are made discontinuous, Paul VI affirms the deep relatedness of one to the other. It was not an infallible decision; that would have too clearly separated sheep from goats; it was only a moral decision of the Chief Shepherd that the Vatican Council said the faithful should obey. -- Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Seven Words to the Cross)
"Submit to death—death of your ambitions, your favourite wishes, every day, and the death of your whole body in the end; submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours." -- Kreeft
Triangles can never be non-triangular, and rocks are always guaranteed to be rocky, and grass is always grassy, and dogs are always doggy, and cats are always catty, but humans can be inhuman. We alone can fail to achieve our nature. Our nature is a task given to us to achieve, not a fact given to us to simply receive. --Kreeft
In an age when revolution becomes tradition, tradition becomes revolution.
Boethius: “Whatever is must be good [ontologically good, he means, not necessarily morally good]. It follows from this that whatever loses its goodness loses its being. Thus wicked men cease to be what they were. To give oneself to evil is to lose one’s human essence. Just as virtue can raise a person above human nature, vice can lower those whom it has seduced from the condition of men, beneath human nature. For this reason, anyone whom you find transformed by vice cannot really be counted a man [or for that matter a Hobbit. Gollum is an ex-Hobbit, a failed Hobbit. And the Ringwraiths are ex-men, or ‘Un-men’, to use C. S. Lewis’s chilling term from Perelandra].” Boethius goes on, “the man who is driven by avarice … is a wolf. The restless, angry man who spends his life in quarrels we should compare to a dog. The treacherous conspirator who steals by fraud may be likened to a fox; the man who is ruled by intemperate anger is correctly thought to have the soul of a lion. The fearful and timid man who trembles without reason is like a deer; the lazy, stupid fellow is like an ass. The volatile, inconstant man who continually changes direction is like a bird; the man who is sunk in foul lust is trapped in the pleasures of a filthy sow.” Now those are not clever analogies. He’s not doing eisegesis, he’s doing exegesis. He’s looking at people who are addicted to a vice and saying: they’re losing their human nature. “In this way,” he concludes, “anyone who abandons virtue ceases to be a man, since he cannot share in the divine nature—becomes instead a beast.”
The worker is worthy of his wages.
There are only two ways of governing human beings: the first is called dogmatism and the second despotism. But despotism is easier. For if men are ruled by a king they can forget him; if they are ruled by a creed they have to remember it.
“A Bore has been described as a man who deprives one of solitude without ever giving company.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Thinking Life Through)
Immediately upon death each soul undergoes the particular judgment, and depending upon the state of the person's soul, goes to Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell.
The last judgement will occur after the resurrection of the dead and the reuniting of a person's soul with own physical body. The Church teaches that at the time of the last judgement Christ will come in His glory, and all the angels with him, and in his presence the truth of each man's relationship with God will be laid bare, and each person who has ever lived will be judged with perfect justice with those believing in Christ (and the unknown number of the righteous ignorant of Christ's teaching, but who are mysteriously saved through by Christ's atonement), going to eternal presence of God, and those who reject Christ going to eternal separation from God.
On Judgement Day those of us in purgatory will be released into Heaven. Judgement Day, being a point in time, can only affect those still experiencing time: the Church Militant and the Church Suffering.
“The mark of man is initiative, but the mark of woman is cooperation. Man talks about freedom; woman about sympathy, love, sacrifice. Man cooperates with nature; woman cooperates with God. Man was called to till the earth, to rule over the earth; woman to be the bearer of a life that comes from God.” (Venerable Fulton J. Sheen, The World’s First Love)
Armchair Scientist
A person who will lean back in their proverbial armchair and thoughtfully pontificate about topics they know essentially nothing about yet will attempt to position themselves has having expertise in the topic. By their conviction alone, they convince themselves they are correct, and ignore any criticisms or corrections by those who have a clue they're talking about.
The hallmarks of the Armchair Scientist are generally:
• Someone without an applicable formal background for their strong opinion on a topic
• Someone who's never been involved in any research involving the topic they're commenting on
• Someone who makes claims for which there's little or no science to support it, and or is unable to supply the data to support a position yet claims it's "well established" or uses other misleading terminology
• Someone who demonstrates their ignorance of the topic by failing to understand even the basic essential concept that the burden of proof is on he who makes the claim(s)
“It should be some consolation for those who are so unjustly attacked to remember that it is a physical impossibility for any man to get ahead of us who stays behind to kick us.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Seven Capital Sins)
“There is a vast difference between the individual who gets drunk because he loves liquor and the one who does it because he hates or fears something else so much that he has to run away from it. The first becomes the drunkard, the second the alcoholic. The drunkard pursues the exhilaration of liquor; the alcoholic pursues the obliteration of memory.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Lift Up Your Heart)
The Eagle does not fight the snake on the ground. It picks it up into the sky and changes the battle ground, and then it releases the snake into the sky.
The snake has no stamina, no power and no balance in the air. It is useless, weak and vulnerable unlike on the ground where it is powerful wise and deadly.
Take your fight into the spiritual realm by praying and when you are in the spiritual realm God takes over your battles.
Don't fight the enemy in his comfort zone, change the battle grounds like the Eagle and let God take charge through your earnest prayer. You'll be assured of clean victory.
Pray without ceasing.
"Boldness, and arrogance, and audacity belong to those that are accursed of God; but moderation, humility, and meekness to such as are blessed by Him."
~Pope St. Clement I: 'Epistle to the Corinthians,' 30.
THEN I suddenly saw, as in one obvious picture, that the modern world is an immense and tumultuous ocean, full of monstrous and living things. And I saw that across the top of it is spread a thin, a very thin, sheet of ice, of wicked wealth and of lying journalism.
“Technological society has succeeded in multiplying the opportunities for pleasure, but it has great difficulty in generating joy. For joy comes from another source. It is spiritual. Money, comfort, hygiene and material security are often not lacking; and yet boredom, depression and sadness unhappily remain the lot of many.” (Blessed Paul VI, Gaudete in Domino, Apostolic Exhortation, 1975)
In 1947, sociologist Dr. Carle Zimmerman wrote a text called “Family and Civilization.” He identified eleven ‘symptoms of final decay’ observable in the fall of both the Greek and Roman civilizations. See how many characterize our society:
- No-fault divorce
- “Birth dearth”; increased disrespect for parenthood and parents
- Meaningless marriage rites/ceremonies
- Defamation of past national heroes
- Acceptance of alternative marriage forms
- Widespread attitudes of feminism, narcissism, hedonism
- Propagation of antifamily sentiment
- Acceptance of most forms of adultery
- Rebellious children
- Increased juvenile delinquency
- Common acceptance of all forms of sexual perversion
God may exalt you in due time and fulfill your grand schemes. Then again, he may not. His glory, not yours, is the object, and he knows best how to put you to use. But remember this: If you never do anything in life but embrace the will of God revealed in the small and hidden duty of the moment, you can still be a saint, and a very great saint.
“THE whole series of divine Scriptures is interpreted in a fourfold way. In all holy books one should ascertain what everlasting truths are therein intimated, what deeds are narrated, what future events are foretold, and what commands or counsels are there contained.”
~St. Bede the Venerable (c. 672-735): ‘De Tabernaculo,’ 1.
Sex is a gift, and it’s widely abused.
"MEN thought mankind wicked because they felt wicked themselves. If a man feels wicked, I cannot see why he should suddenly feel good because somebody tells him that his ancestors once had tails. Man's primary purity and innocence may have dropped off with his tail, for all anybody knows. The only thing we all know about that primary purity and innocence is that we have not got it." ~G.K. Chesterton: 'Science and Religion.'
"IF Americans can be divorced for 'incompatibility of temper,' I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible." ~G.K. Chesterton: "What's Wrong with the World."
“The Church fasts; the world diets. Materially there is no difference, for a person can lose twenty pounds one way as well as the other. But the difference is in the intention.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Seven Capital Sins)
"VERY few people ever state properly the strong argument in favour of marrying for love or against marrying for money. The argument is not that all lovers are heroes and heroines, nor is it that all dukes are profligates or all millionaires cads. The argument is this, that the differences between a man and a woman are at the best so obstinate and exasperating that they practically cannot be got over unless there is an atmosphere of exaggerated tenderness and mutual interest. To put the matter in one metaphor, the sexes are two stubborn pieces of iron; if they are to be welded together, it must be while they are red-hot. Every woman has to find out that her husband is a selfish beast, because every man is a selfish beast by the standard of a woman. But let her find out the beast while they are both still in the story of "Beauty and the Beast". Every man has to find out that his wife is cross—that is to say, sensitive to the point of madness: for every woman is mad by the masculine standard. But let him find out that she is mad while her madness is more worth considering than anyone else's sanity." ~G.K. Chesterton: 'Two Stubborn Pieces of Iron.'
"THE revolt against vows has been carried in our day even to the extent of a revolt against the typical vow of marriage. It is most amusing to listen to the opponents of marriage on this subject. They appear to imagine that the ideal of constancy was a yoke mysteriously imposed on mankind by the devil, instead of being, as it is, a yoke consistently imposed by all lovers on themselves. They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words—'free-love'—as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word. Modern sages offer to the lover, with an ill-flavoured grin, the largest liberties and the fullest irresponsibility; but they do not respect him as the old Church respected him; they do not write his oath upon the heavens, as the record of his highest moment. They give him every liberty except the liberty to sell his liberty, which is the only one that he wants." ~G.K. Chesterton: 'A Defence of Rash Vows.'
The System knows that people know that the System is corrupt. So, the only thing they can do now is use puppets to fake like they're fighting against the System, to get you to follow these puppets, which will then get you to follow down the wrong path and into their hands again. -- Red Silver J
Christ Is the Physician And the Church Is The Hospital
"Our noblest citizens are worried about America. They are not so much distracted by events from outside the country in the realm of international politics, but rather what is happening to the soul of America. Lincoln never feared that America would be conquered from the outside, but he dreaded decay from within. Of the two kinds of barbarism, external or invasion from without, and inner barbarism of spiritual dry rot, the second is the more subtle and dangerous. Snakes which attack put us on the defensive more quickly than cancer which unseen mines all within: 'It is easy to slide to hell'." Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Today sex is a great paradox in many countries of the Western world: One acts as though it's all that exists, and yet it means absolutely nothing. Overindulged in a Tinder-induced stupor of casual copulation, it weighs on the mind by its very vacuousness. Although Western females are regularly accosted by the unsolicited genitalia of sexting grade school football players as well as respected Congressmen, they are encouraged to bare their own “assets” on Instagram and Snapchat, in a social media stream of simultaneously narcissistic and desperate cries for validation.
“There is need for a Crusade of manliness and purity to nullify the savage work of those who think man is a beast.” St. Josémaria Escriva.
Indeed, follow your star if you want to head north and it’s the North Star. But if you want to head north and it’s Mars, you had better follow somebody else’s star... I am here to tell you that it is much less important how committed you are, than what you are committed to. If I had to choose, I would always take the less dynamic, indeed even the lazy person who knows what’s right, than the zealot in the cause of error. He may move slower, but he’s headed in the right direction. --Antonin Scalia
The error of Socialism lies in its cowardice; it seeks to hide individual responsibility in the collective will of a crowd.
While it is right, good and just to work toward defending Truth and the integrity of souls, it must be remembered that salvation cannot be found in the movement itself. A pro-life leader may do many great things to save the lives of children, but if he or she is engaged in an illicit sexual affair, their pro-life work will not save them. A priest may write and speak in defense of the most beautiful teachings of the Church, but if he is embezzling from the diocese, he will have to account for every penny before the Court of the Heavenly Father. Just remember that Henry VIII was once given the title “Fidei defensor,” Defender of the Faith.
146th Psalm: “Put no trust in princes, in children of Adam powerless to save.”
The Church makes no man less free than he was before. But we chiefly value freedom in order to give it away; every man who loves surrenders his freedom, whether his passion be the love of a woman, the love of a cause, or the love of God. . . Hence: "Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven". Everyone wants the things that only a love of God will bring to him, but most men today seek them in the wrong places. That is why no one comes to God without a revolution of the spirit; he must stop seeking his good in Godlessness. --Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Peace of Soul)
The slavemasters set up, fund and control both sides of a conflict. Their motive is not simply making money from the conflict. They see another advantage for themselves in using this tactic. They call this advantage “controlled opposition”. If there’s going to be a social movement against whatever you’re doing, it’s best if you secretly create and orchestrate that movement against yourself right away so that it never does any unintended damage to your personal fortunes.
"Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent" – Benjamin Disraeli, Speech in the House of Commons (5 February 1863)
“Whoever is not physically or mentally fit must not pass on his defects to his children. The state must take care that only the fit produce children.” – Ernst Rüdin at a speech to the German Society for Racial Hygiene, quoting Adolf Hitler.
Edward Bernays: the propaganda man "is often forced to enact combats and create issues. He stages battles against evils in which the antagonist is personified for the public".
"ABOUT sex especially men are born unbalanced; we might almost say men are born mad. They scarcely reach sanity till they reach sanctity." ~G.K. Chesterton: 'The Everlasting Man,' Part I, Chap. VI.—The Demons and the Philosophers.
The three temptations of Christ were three ways to run from the Cross:
“Feed the Hungry” – Be a social justice Christ.
“Do breath-taking wonders” - be a scientific Christ.
“Be a social revolutionist” – Be a communist Christ.
The rejection of God that began with Machiavelli finds its logical conclusion in Nietzsche. In him we see the full implications of godlessness: a world without good and evil, a world ruled by the will to power, a world of immense suffering, cruelty and man’s inhumanity towards man seen on a level never before witnessed in history.
“Humility is not self-contempt but the truth about ourselves coupled with a reverence for others; it is self-surrender to the highest goal.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Thoughts for Daily Living)
We may make war in defense of the Faith; we may make war against a direct denial of definable justice in a particular instance; but we may not say to the poor: "You have a right to fight the rich merely because they are rich and in order to make yourselves less poor." We may say: "You have a right to fight to prevent the conditions of your life becoming inhuman," but we may not say, "You have a right to fight merely because you desire to have more and your opponent to have less." It has been wittily and truly said that there has been only one Christian Socialist in history, and that even he did not try to be Christian and Socialist at the same time-----the said individual being the penitent thief. He had the good fortune to be, while he was yet alive, promised Paradise by God Himself-----but that was only after he had given up his Socialism.
Industrial Capitalism came into existence through Calvinism, which was the vital principle informing all the revolt against the Faith at the origin of modern times. Yet there is no specific principle in Industrial Capitalism which can be doctrinally condemned. No Catholic can deny the rights of property, or of free contract. The disagreement between Catholicism and Industrial Capitalism is based upon Usury, Just Price, Panis Humanus (our daily bread), Justice in Negotiation, and Free Will. For out of the doctrine of Free Will grows the practice of diversity, which is the deadly enemy of mechanical standardization. Everything about Industrial Capitalism-----its ineptitude, its vulgarity, its crying injustice, its dirt, its proclaimed indifference to morals [making the end of man an accumulation of wealth, and of labor itself an inhuman repetition without interest and without savor] is at war with the Catholic spirit.
Yet what is called vaguely "Socialism," of which the only logical and complete form worthy of notice in practice is Communism, directly contradicts Catholic morals and is at definable and particular issue with them in a more immediate way than is capitalism. Communism involves a direct and open denial of free will; and that it has immediate fruits violently in opposition to the fruits of Catholicism there can be no doubt. To put it more plainly, a Catholic supporting Communism is committing a mortal sin.
The solution must include: (1) the sharing of the profits by the worker, and (2) the achievement of the worker's security by the stabilization of his economic position under such profit sharing. Guilds were the traditional organizations that provided the framework and enforced these elements. Today's unions (what is left of them) have enshrined the worst abuses of the system, and blotted out anything that remained of the good.
Consider what happened to the institution of slavery. The Church, when it began on earth its militant career, found slavery in possession. The antique world was a servile state; the civilized man of the Graeco-Roman civilization based his society upon slavery; so did [this must always be insisted upon because our textbooks always forget it] the barbarian world outside.
There were plenty of revolts against that state of affairs; there was to our knowledge one huge servile war, and there was protest of every kind by the philosophers and by individuals. But they had no success. Success in this field, though it came very slowly, was due to the conversion of the Roman Empire to Catholicism.
The Church did not denounce slavery, it accepted that institution. Slaves were told to obey their masters. It was one of their social duties, as it was the duty of the master to observe Christian charity towards his slave. It was part of good works [but of a rather heroic kind] to give freedom in bulk to one's slaves. But it was not an obligation. Slavery only disappeared after a process of centuries, and it only disappeared through the gradual working of the Catholic doctrine upon the European mind and through the incompatibility of that doctrine with such treatment of one's fellow men as was necessary if the discipline of servitude were to remain efficient. The slave of Pagan times was slowly transformed into the free peasant, but he was not declared free by any definite doctrine of the Church, nor at anyone stage in the process would it have entered into the Catholic mind of the day to have said that slavery was in itself immoral. The freedom of the peasant developed as the beauty of external art developed in its Christian form, through the indirect working of the Catholic ethic.
In the absence, the gradual decline [where it is declining] of the Catholic ethic, slavery is coming back. Anyone with eyes to see can watch it coming back slowly but certainly-----like a tide. Slowly but certainly the proletarian, by every political reform which secures his well-being under new rules of insurance, of State control in education, of State medicine and the rest, is developing into the slave, leaving the rich man apart and free. All industrial civilization is clearly moving towards the re-establishment of the Servile State.
To produce the opposite of the Servile State out of the modern inhuman economic arrangement, the Church, acting as a solvent, is the necessary and the only force available. The conversion of society cannot be a rapid process, and therefore not a revolutionary one. It is therefore also, for the moment, an unsatisfactory process. But it is the right process. There is a very neat phrase which expresses the whole affair, "in better words than any poor words of mine," as the parson said in the story. These words are to be found in the vernacular translation of the New Testament. They are familiar to many of us. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its justice and all the rest shall be added unto you."
Capitalism places power in the hands of the few rich who actually own capital. Socialism places complete power in the hands of the government, which leads to individual freedom being subordinated to the will of the State. Both the plutocracy of the Capitalist state and totalitarianism of the Socialist state are particular manifestations of an oligarchy. The rich are always the privileged few, just as it is the few who hold real power in a totalitarian state. The common man, which is the mass of men, lose in either case, even if Capitalism is to be preferred to Socialism."
"I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act."
~G.K. Chesterton: 'Illustrated London News,' April 29, 1922.
“It is the weakness of the man who is not self-possessed, who uses his fist instead of his mind, who resorts to violence for the same reason the ignorant man resorts to blasphemy; namely, because he has not sufficient intellectual strength to express himself otherwise.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Cross and the Beatitudes)
"If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself..."
The Godfather says "They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls..."
“The preservation of innocence is not due to prudery, to fear, to love of isolation, but to a passionate desire to preserve a secret until God gives the one to whom it can be whispered.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Three to Get Married)
This figure upon the Cross is not a Gestapo inquisitor, but a Divine Physician, Who only asks that we bring our wounds to Him in order that He may heal them. If our sins be as scarlet, they shall be washed white as snow, and if they be as red as crimson, they shall be made white as wool. Was it not He Who told us, “I say to you, that even so there shall be more joy in Heaven upon one sinner that doth penance than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance” (Luke 15:7)? In the story of the prodigal, did He not describe the Father as saying, “Let us eat and make merry: because this my son was dead and is come to life again; was lost and is found” (Luke 15:23, 24)? Why is there more joy in Heaven for the repentant sinner than for the righteous? Because God’s attitude is not judgment but love. In judgment, one is not as joyful after doing wrong as before; but in love, there is joy because the danger and worry of losing that soul is past. He who is sick is loved more than he who is well, because he needs it more. Some will feign sickness to solicit love and pretend wounds that the beloved may bind them. --Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Peace of Soul)
The eagle was the symbol of the Roman Empire. Albania is predominantly Muslim and atheist, yet they still have retained a double-headed eagle on their flag from the days of the Byzantine empire. From the time the Roman Empire adopted Christianity it had two capitals; elder Rome and new Rome (Constantinople). Eventually a double-headed eagle became prominent, the one head overlooks the west with its capital in Rome, the other head overlooks the east with the capital in Constantinople. It also represented religious and secular power that the Byzantine emperor held over the empire. When the Holy Roman Empire adopted it in the 13th century it exclusively symbolized church and state.
“WHAT we are fighting is a new and false religion... It may almost be called a religion of irreligion. It trusts itself utterly to the anarchy of the unknown; and unless civilisation can sober it with a shock of disappointment, it will be for ever inexhaustible in novelties of perversion and pride.” ~G.K. Chesterton: ‘Illustrated London News.’ (June 14, 1916)
“Pleasure is associated with the body; for instance, we feel pleasure after a good meal. Joy is of the heart, and it comes from a good conscience. Joy hears music on the inside even when discords are ringing outside. Pleasure depends on outward circumstances, for example, wealth, friends, and wine, and therefore it can be obliterated by the slightest toothache. Joy is independent of outward circumstances; it can be felt even in adversity and pain.” Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen
“BISHOPS must not rashly assail kings, if there be no grave sins for which the latter deserve reproach; but, if there be grave sins, the bishop must not spare, that offenders may be corrected by his remonstrances.” ~St. Ambrose (c. 340 – 397), Bishop of Milan: ‘In Ps. 37 Ennarr. 43.’
The sign of a totalitarian or authoritarian state is a media that feels no responsibility to investigate and to find the truth, accepting the role of propagandist instead. --Paul Craig Roberts
The 9/11 Commission did not investigate but merely sat and wrote down the story told to it by the government. Afterwards, the Commission’s chairman, co-chairman, and legal counsel wrote books in which they said that information was withheld from the Commission, that the Commission was lied to by officials of the government, and that the Commission “was set up to fail.” Despite all of this, the presstitutes still repeat the official propaganda, and there remain enough gullible Americans to prevent accountability. --Paul Craig Roberts
What disturbs me is that no one in authority or in the mainstream media has any interest in checking the facts. Instead, those who raise awkward matters are dismissed as conspiracy theorists. --Paul Craig Roberts
The government’s story of 9/11 is a story of a conspiracy as is the government’s story of the Boston Marathon Bombing. These things happen because of conspiracies. What is at issue is: whose conspiracy? We know from Operation Gladio and Operation Northwoods that governments do engage in murderous conspiracies against their own citizens. Therefore, it is a mistake to conclude that governments do not engage in conspiracies.
One often hears the objection that if 9/11 was a false flag attack, someone would have talked.
Why would they have talked? Only those who organized the conspiracy would know. Why would they undermine their own conspiracy?
Whistleblowers pay a high price. Many of them are in prison. Obama has prosecuted and imprisoned a record number. Once they are thrown in prison, the question becomes: “Who would believe a criminal?”
As for 9/11 all sorts of people have talked. Over 100 police, firemen and first responders have reported hearing and experiencing a large number of explosions in the Twin Towers. Maintenance personnel report experiencing massive explosions in the sub-basements prior to the building being hit by an airplane. None of this testimony has had any effect on the authorities behind the official story or on the presstitutes.
There are 2,300 architects and engineers who have written to Congress requesting a real investigation. Instead of the request being treated with the respect that 2,300 professionals deserve, the professionals are dismissed as “conspiracy theorists.”
An international panel of scientists have reported the presence of reacted and unreacted nanothermite in the dust of the World Trade Centers. They have offered their samples to government agencies and to scientists for confirmation. No one will touch it. The reason is clear. Today science funding is heavily dependent on the federal government and on private companies that have federal contracts. Scientists understand that speaking out about 9/11 means the termination of their career.
The government has us where it wants us—powerless and misinformed. Most Americans are too uneducated to be able to tell the difference between a building falling down from asymmetrical damage and one blowing up. Mainstream journalists cannot question and investigate and keep their jobs. Scientists cannot speak out and continue to be funded.
Truth telling has been shoved off into the alternative Internet media where I would wager the government runs sites that proclaim wild conspiracies, the purpose of which is to discredit all skeptics. --Paul Craig Roberts
“Humanity cannot lift itself by its own bootstraps; there is no such thing as spontaneous generation; life does not come from crystals; poetry does not come from donkeys; international peace does not come from wars; social justice does not come from selfishness. With all our knowledge of chemistry we cannot make a human life in our laboratories because we lack the unifying, vivifying principal of a soul which comes only from God. Life is not a push from below; it is a gift from above. It is not the result of the necessary ascent of man but the loving descent of God.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Prodigal World)
A soul, according to the original Catholic Encyclopedia is "the ultimate internal principle by which we think, feel, and will, and by which our bodies are animated." In this case, the Catholic Encyclopedia is referring to human souls. A soul may be, for lack of a better term, "made up" of spirit or of matter. Human and angelic souls are spiritual souls; human souls differing in that they are embodied in matter while angelic souls are pure spirit. For human and angelic souls, the term spirit can either be a synonym for the term soul or it can refer to the soul's composition. Animal and plant souls are material, which means that they cease to exist when the animal or plant dies. Since they are material souls, one would not use the term spirit in reference to animal or plant souls.
“The death of our Lord on the Cross reveals that we are meant to be perpetually dissatisfied here below. If earth were meant to be a paradise, then He who made it would never have taken leave of it on Good Friday. The commending of the Spirit to the Father was at the same time the refusal to commend it to earth. The completion or fulfillment of life is in heaven, not on earth.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Seven Capital Sins)
"I HAVE myself, for instance, been sternly rebuked of late for saying that what I wanted was not votes, but democracy. People spoke as if this were some sort of awful apostasy from the Liberal Position; whereas, it is a humble remark of exactly the same sort as saying that I want, not the Brighton express, but Brighton; not the Calais boat, but Calais; not a Polar Expedition, but the North Pole. The test of a democracy is not whether the people vote, but whether the people rule. . . . Votes may be the most convenient way of achieving this effect; but votes are quite useless if they do not achieve it. And sometimes they do not."
~G.K. Chesterton: 'Illustrated London News.' (Oct. 2, 1909)
“The ancient goldsmith who refined crude gold ore in his crucible burning away the dross in intense heat to recover the pure gold, like the goldsmith, God keeps us in the smelting furnace until He can see the reflection of the Face of the Lord Jesus in our lives. He is not so much interested in the work we do, but rather in how much we resemble His son.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Lenten & Easter Inspirations)
And yet at that moment when a tree of his own creation turned against Him and became a cross, when the iron of His earth reacted against Him and became nails, when roses rebelled against Him and became thorns, at that second when a sickle and a hammer combined to cut down the weeds on Calvary’s hill to erect a gallows and drive nails through hands to render impotent the blessings of love incarnate, He, like a tree which bathes in perfume the ax which kills it, lets fall from His lips for the earth’s first hearing the answer to the riddle of hate and anger: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do. -- Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Seven Riddles of Life)
Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices. ~CS Lewis Mere Christianity
The Worshipful Master sits in the East of the lodge room, chairs all of the business of his lodge, and is vested with considerable powers without further reference to the members. He also presides over ritual and ceremonies.
"Vaccine Hesitant"
“And to the Cross He went, crucified by the liberty of a decaying democracy which is indifferent to truth…Calvary on that day is the picture of the modern world. The crisis of that day, as that of our own day, is the crisis of liberty. As Christ was crucified on Good Friday by false liberty, so is man crucified today. Liberalism and capitalism which were indifferent to morality and truth did not give us liberty but only the right to be individually selfish. Freedom is not the right to do whatever we please; neither is it the right to do what we must; it is the moral right to do what we ought.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen
"...the fruit of our first and most natural sin — the habit of regarding ourselves as conjurers rather than priests, for the definition is that a conjurer is apart from his audience, while a priest is a part of his. The conjurer despises his congregation; if the priest despises any one, it must be himself. The curse of all journalism, but especially of that yellow journalism which is the shame of our profession, is that we think ourselves cleverer than the people for whom we write, whereas, in fact, we are generally even stupider." ~G.K. Chesterton: 'On the Cryptic and the Elliptic.'
“AN honest man falls in love with an honest woman; he wishes, therefore to marry her, to be the father of her children, to secure her and himself. All systems of government should be tested by whether he can do this. If any system—feudal, servile, or barbaric—does, in fact, give him so large a cabbage-field that he can do it, there is the essence of liberty and justice. If any system—Republican, mercantile, or Eugenist—does, in fact, give him so small a salary that he can’t do it, there is the essence of eternal tyranny and shame.” ~G.K. Chesterton: ‘Illustrated London News,’ March 25, 1911.
"THERE are only two kinds of social structure conceivable—personal government and impersonal government. If my anarchic friends will not have rules—they will have rulers. Preferring personal government, with its tact and flexibility, is called Royalism. Preferring impersonal government, with its dogmas and definitions, is called Republicanism. Objecting broadmindedly both to kings and creeds is called Bosh; at least, I know no more philosophic word for it. You can be guided by the shrewdness or presence of mind of one ruler, or by the equality and ascertained justice of one rule; but you must have one or the other, or you are not a nation, but a nasty mess." ~G.K. Chesterton: 'What's Wrong with the World,' Part Two, Chap. IV—The Insane Necessity.
“THE old order has been reversed. The people, instead of surveying the world from their doorsteps, survey their mortgaged doorsteps through a vague and hazy mental screen compounded by international misunderstanding and national mistrust. . . . The disintegration of rational society started in the drift from the hearth and the family; the solution must be the drift back.”
~G.K. Chesterton: ‘G.K.’s Weekly,’ March 30, 1933.
“DO NOT imagine that you will overwhelm the demon of fornication by entering into an argument with him. Nature is on his side and he has the best of the argument. So the man who decides to struggle against the flesh and to overcome it by his own efforts is fighting in vain. The truth is that unless the Lord overturns the house of the flesh and builds the house of the soul, the man wishing to overcome it has watched and fasted for nothing. Offer up to the Lord the weakness of your nature. Admit your incapacity and, without your knowing it you will win for yourself the gift of chastity.” ~St. John Climacus: ‘The Ladder of Divine Ascent,’ Step 15—On Chastity
The Easter season is a sublime and sacred time in which our heart sings: "The Lord is risen!" The wondrous mystery of the resurrection and eternal life awaits! Sustained by this wondrous and astonishing promise that Christ himself has won for us, our life ought to be re-energized with a new and lasting hope that transforms us beyond what we formerly were: "Indeed, the Lord is risen!"
The Tax Wall Street Party perspective has always consisted of the extinction of the Republican Party as a national force, followed by the split of the Democratic Party into pro-Wall Street and anti-Wall Street factions.
An examination of the recurring patterns of American history shows a succession of political systems or political climates characterized by a majority party and a minority party, with each of these systems lasting 30 - 40 years. The dividing lines between these political systems are represented by the so-called watershed elections, and sometimes involve the collapse and extinction of one or even two major political parties.
Suppose a golden chalice is stolen from an altar and beaten into a large ash tray. Before that gold can be returned to the altar, it must be thrown into a fire, where the dross is burned away; then the chalice must be recast, and finally blessed and restored to its holy use. Sinful man is like that chalice which was delivered over to profane uses. He lost his Godlike resemblance and his high destiny as a child of God.
Since the year 2012 almost all of the supposed terror attacks in Western nations are confirmed and proven hoax events. This is the new model. The early indications are that the Brussels attacks were of the same genre. Fiction. Joining the entire wave of Euroterror that has taken place over the past 14 months at Charlie Hebdo and the Kosher Delicatessen, in Copenhagen, in Paris on Black Friday and in the genuinely hilarious French train psyop.
Gladio was the cold war synthetic terror/ strategy of tension, Gladio B as coined by Sibel Edmonds was similar to the original but with Muslims replacing communists as the enemy.
Gladio C is very similar to Gladio B but instead of false flag terror attacks such as 911, Bali and London 7/7 the events are entirely staged. These are drills that are enacted, filmed and sold to the public as authentic terror attacks.
Whether or not it is tactically intelligent to make the hoax argument when people are likely to be more receptive to a false flag narrative is a completely separate issue. The false flag attack narrative is no longer the truth when it comes to modern psyops and those who cling to the false flag narrative and pretend that these events are real, are not telling the truth.
“An educated man will seek truth. The purpose of education is to acquaint us with truth. One basic truth that we have to learn is the truth of our own existence. We would not have a gadget in our house five minutes without knowing the meaning of that gadget and yet some people will live ten-twenty-fifty-sixty years without knowing why they are here or where they are going. What is the use of living unless we know the purpose of life.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen
"WE have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget." ~G.K. Chesterton: "Orthodoxy," Chap. IV-The Ethics of Elfland