Ask the Good Sisters
Would the re-sacralization of the priesthood pull the Church back from her work with the poor and the friendless? Would we become a house of self-regarding bourgeois pietism? Well, seek out for yourself a slum…
Category: Catholicism
Today’s One-Liner (#198)
Truth is so obscured nowadays and lies so well established that unless we love the truth we shall never recognize it. –Blaise Pascal, Pensées, translated by A.J. Krailsheimer
Today’s One-Liner (#197)
To pray the psalms with even half a heart was to be comforted and discomfited, set in motion, set in stillness, set free, set on edge, led outside, led within. –Daniel Berrigan, Uncommon Prayer: A…
“What’s Wrong with the World?”
Around the turn of the last century, a prominent London newspaper called The World put the following question to its readers, offering a prize for the best possible answer: “What’s wrong with the world?” Not the newspaper, of…
Today’s One-Liner (#196)
Even among the saints he has the air of a sort of eccentric, if one may use the word of one whose eccentricity consisted in always turning towards the centre. –G. K. Chesterton, from his…
Before Their Conversions
To become Christian is, fundamentally, to perceive that it isn’t just others who have scapegoats. And note that the two greatest Christians, the founders of the Church, Peter and Paul, were two converted persecutors. Before…
Today’s One-Liner (#195)
And how dare you say to your brother, “Let me take that splinter out of your eye,” when, look, there is a great log in your own? –The Gospel of Matthew, 7:4
Receive Peace
A certain brother inquired of Abbot Pastor, saying: What shall I do? I lose my nerve when I am sitting alone at prayer in my cell? The elder said to him: Despise no one, condemn…
Today’s One-Liner (#194)
The more those thinking about throwing the first stone perceive the responsibility they would assume in throwing it, the greater the chance they will let their hands fall and drop the stone. ––René Girard, I…
Naming
We named our firstborn after Maximilian Kolbe, because naming one’s children after saints is what Roman Catholics do. We believe doing so wins the newborn the patronage of the saint in heaven. But there was…