Among traditional religion’s strongest resources are precisely its ability to create and validate occasions for silence, contemplation, emptiness in the sense of cessation from activity and worldly meaning. –James Hitchcock, The Decline and Fall of…
In retrospect it is easy to see what was not perceived at the time — that no conservative body with an ancient and sacred system of symbols can alter these significantly without a severe spiritual…
In some radical circles the vehemence of one’s feelings against the hierarchy is taken as an index of genuine Christianity. –James Hitchcock, The Decline and Fall of Radical Catholicism, 1971
The institutional Church is the most economical and efficient means by which the Christian reality can be made accessible, at least minimally, to masses of people. –James Hitchcock, The Decline and Fall of Radical Catholicism,…
Rigid reactionaries and rigid innovators…have constantly fed on each other, each serving as a bogey which gives the other a certain credibility. –James Hitchcock, The Decline and Fall of Radical Catholicism, 1972
Sohrab Ahmari, The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ Wendell Berry, Blessed are the Peacemakers: Christ’s Teachings of Love, Compassion, and Forgiveness…