Engaging the Faith

On May 8, 2020, a document titled Appeal for the Church and the World: to Catholics and all people of good will was published [which this author signed]. Its initial signatories included, among others, three cardinals, nine bishops, 11 doctors, 22 journalists, and 13 lawyers.

Just as we are tired of hearing people say that Jesus would not recognize the Church [today], we are also tired of hearing people talk about “reimagining” the Church, as if the Church needs to be revamped for a new generation. We didn’t imagine the Church in the first place, so we don’t need to reimagine it (nor is it our place to do so).

I was raised in a home with a mother who desired sainthood, but unless I was paying attention, I didn’t notice. I’m remembering now, for what it’s worth, that I don’t recall her ever purchasing an item of clothing for herself. She loved the Catholic Faith of her childhood, her priests, her family, and jigsaw puzzles; that’s about it.

If multiculturalists had kept their promises, school and college curricula would have been enriched by the inclusion of the literature, ideas, values, and history of societies relatively ignored in Western education. As Camille Paglia puts it, “Multiculturalism is in theory a noble cause that aims to broaden perspective in the U.S. which, because of its physical position between two oceans, can tend toward the smugly isolationist.”

So what’s wrong with pleasures? Why not chase after them? Does Benedict want his monks to be miserable?

Parents: 1. See persecution as a grace from God for being purified and strengthened. 2. Root yourself in the Catholic faith through study of the catechism. 3. Protect your family’s integrity above all else. 4. Catechize your children as your first duty. 5. Pray with your children daily.

It is incumbent upon us in the panoramic overview of our life to analyze in great detail our social relationships, which consist most likely of both relatives and friends.

In Aquinas’ extensive treatment on depression [in the Summa Theologica], he at one point suggests a number of remedies. One of them is simply the contemplation of truth, since that is “the greatest of all pleasures.”

When one persists in evil, nothing can be done. I once asked a demon, “But you, if you could go back, would you do the same thing? Don’t you see that, before, you were happy in Paradise and now you are damned to Hell?” “

How in the world does an active family of eight, with children from teen to toddler, actually practice stillness?

A child’s brain can only receive what it is made to receive, and children’s brains change a lot as they develop. The littlest kids (toddlers and preschoolers) understand right and wrong as a matter of avoiding punishment or receiving rewards. As they get older (elementary school), they understand moral concepts like “fairness” or “justice” (consider how they protest an “unfair” rule).

First and foremost, a Catholic gentleman is a Catholic; that is, he is permeated to the core by the Faith handed down for twenty centuries, witnessed to by the blood of the martyrs, and embodied in the creeds and councils of the Catholic and apostolic Church.

Man, I have 1,000 great Confession stories for you, but one particularly comes to mind. Now, I won’t waste your time by telling you all that I did or didn’t do to get to that confessional kneeler.

To be worthy of the name Christian, then, means that we, too, must thirst for the spread of the divine love; and if we do not thirst, then we shall never be invited to sit down at the banquet of life.

All human beings, regardless of their religion, nationality, or circumstance, receive a sufficient amount of grace to be saved. God actively desires our salvation; it is incumbent upon us to respond to Him. At the same time, however, it is undeniable that God gives more grace to some than to others.

Our earthly life gives promise of what it does not accomplish. It promises immortality, yet it is mortal. It contains life in death and eternity in time, and it attracts by beginnings which faith alone brings to an end.

Because the natural law is accessible to everyone through the power of reason, it tells each one of us what ought to be done or what should not be done.

Only when our heart, our conscience, and our will are pure, free from the distractions of temptation and the stains of sin, can our intellects gaze clearly upon truth.