John Adams: “We have no constitution that can function in the absence of a moral people.”
Modern broad-mindedness is that truth is novelty and hence “truth” changes with the passing fancies of the moment. Like the chameleon that changes his colors to suit the vesture on which he is placed, so truth is supposed to change to fit the foibles and obliquities of the age. The nature of certain things is fixed, and none more so than the nature of truth. Truth may be contradicted a thousand times, but that only proves that it is strong enough to survive a thousand assaults. But for anyone to say, “Some say this, some say that, therefore, there is no truth,” is about as logical as it would have been for Columbus who heard some say, “The earth is round”, and others say “The earth is flat” to conclude: “Therefore, there is no earth.” Like a carpenter who might throw away his rule and use each beam as a measuring rod, so, too, those who have thrown away the standard of objective truth have nothing left with which to measure but the mental fashion of the moment. And because they speak of a “fixed point”, they say we are behind the times, when it is really they who are beyond the times, mentally and spiritually. -- Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Old Errors and New Labels 1931)
“It is not hatred that is wrong, it is hating the wrong thing that is wrong. It is not anger that is wrong, it is being angry at the wrong thing that is wrong. Tell me your enemy, and I will tell you what you are. Tell me your hatred, and I will tell you your character. Do you hate religion? Then your conscience bothers you. Do you hate the wealthy? Then you are avaricious, and you want to be wealthy. Do you hate sin? Then you love God. Do you hate your hate, your selfishness, your quick temper, your wickedness? Then you are a good soul, for ‘if any man come to me… and hate not his own life, he cannot be my disciple’ Luke 14:26” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Victory over Vice)
C.S. Lewis was an atheist until he read "The Everlasting Man" by G.K. Chesterton. After reading it, he was no longer an atheist.
I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology. Mass psychology is, scientifically speaking, not a very advanced study, and so far its professors have not been in universities: they have been advertisers, politicians, and, above all, dictators. This study is immensely useful to practical men, whether they wish to become rich or to acquire the government. It is, of course, as a science, founded upon individual psychology, but hitherto it has employed rule-of-thumb methods which were based upon a kind of intuitive common sense. Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called "education." Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part. What is essential in mass psychology is the art of persuasion. If you compare a speech of Hitler's with a speech of (say) Edmund Burke, you will see what strides have been made in the art since the eighteenth century. What went wrong formerly was that people had read in books that man is a rational animal, and framed their arguments on this hypothesis. We now know that limelight and a brass band do more to persuade than can be done by the most elegant train of syllogisms. It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.
This subject will make great strides when it is taken up by scientists under a scientific dictatorship. Anaxagoras maintained that snow is black, but no one believed him. The social psychologists of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. Various results will soon be arrived at. First, that the influence of home is obstructive. Second, that not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten. Third, that verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. Fourth, that the opinion that snow is white must be held to show a morbid taste for eccentricity. But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.
Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen. As yet there is only one country which has succeeded in creating this politician's paradise. --Bertrand Russell.
“To the bad conscience God appears always the God of wrath. The boy who broke the vase by throwing a ball at it, says to his mother: Now Mummy, don’t get mad. Anger is not in the mother; anger is in the boy’s projection to his mother of his own sense of justice. Anger is not in God; anger is in our disordered selves.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Preface to Religion)
"MANY clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?" ~G.K. Chesterton: "The Napoleon of Notting Hill." (1904)
“THE things we vote on are very seldom the things we see and smell and eat and drink and do. These are more and more controlled by vast and vague central forces, at once autocratic and anonymous. This is the real modern problem, which has nothing to do with utopias; and until it is solved there will be a real satire in self-government for men who are invited to govern everything except themselves.” ~G.K. Chesterton: 'When Politics Was Private Business. ("Illustrated London News," Oct. 11, 1919.)
“Let those who think their work has no value recognize that by fulfilling their insignificant tasks out of Love of God, those tasks assume supernatural worth. The aged who bear the taunts of the young, the sick crucified to their beds, the street cleaner and the garbage collector, the chorus girl who never had a line, the unemployed carpenter – all these will be enthroned above dictators, presidents, kings, and Cardinals if a greater love of God inspires their humbler tasks than inspires those who play nobler roles with less love." Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Seven Capital Sins)
“At the time (1883), Rockefeller and Rothschild were competing as the world’s foremost oil and banking barons. But the two competitors each finally realized that competition was not a good thing. The more oil wells they drilled, the more oil was produced, the more the price of oil per barrel fell. This led a disgruntled John D. Rockefeller to exclaim, 'Competition is a sin!'
A solution, therefore, was soon brokered. It was decided that the world’s markets would geographically be carved up, with the two barons, Rockefeller and Rothschild, each having their separate, well-defined shares. Moreover, limits would be put on oil produced globally so as to keep the market price as high as possible. Under this arrangement, both Rothschild and Rockefeller would benefit.”
"The systematic errors in measurements from three ideally sited and maintained temperature sensors are calculated herein. Combined with the ±0.2 C average station error, a representative lower-limit uncertainty of ±0.46 C was found for any global annual surface air temperature anomaly. This ±0.46 C reveals that the global surface air temperature anomaly trend from 1880 through 2000 is statistically indistinguishable from 0 C" --Uncertainty in the Global Average Surface Air Temperature Index: A Representative Lower Limit
"Uncertainty in the Global Average Surface Air Temperature Index: A Representative Lower Limit" "...reveals that the global surface air temperature anomaly trend from 1880 through 2000 is statistically indistinguishable from 0 C"
There are several ways to avoid loving God (Archbishop Fulton Sheen)
- 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.
"WHAT embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism." ~G.K. Chesterton
“The ungodly like religion in the same way that they like lions, either dead or behind bars; they fear religion when it breaks loose and begins to challenge their consciences.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen
“The Cross is laid on the shoulders of our pride and envy, our lusts and our angers, until by its friction it wears them away, and thus brings us to the great abiding joys of life.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen
“If we Catholics believed all the lies and calumnies that are told about the Church, we would hate it ten times more than bigots do. The enemies of the Church often do not hate the Church: they only hate what they erroneously believe to be the Church.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Love One Another)
"CRUELTY to animals is cruelty and a vile thing; but cruelty to a man is not cruelty, it is treason. Tyranny over a man is not tyranny, it is rebellion, for man is royal. Now, the practical weakness of the vast mass of modern pity for the poor and the oppressed is precisely that it is merely pity; the pity is pitiful, but not respectful. Men feel that the cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is injustice to equals; nay, it is treachery to comrades. This dark scientific pity, this brutal pity, has an elemental sincerity of its own; but it is entirely useless for all ends of social reform. Democracy swept Europe with the sabre when it was founded upon the Rights of Man. It has done literally nothing at all since it has been founded only upon the wrongs of man. Or, more strictly speaking, its recent failure has been due to its not admitting the existence of any rights, or wrongs, or indeed of any humanity. Evolution (the sinister enemy of revolution) does not especially deny the existence of God; what it does deny is the existence of man. And all the despair about the poor, and the cold and repugnant pity for them, has been largely due to the vague sense that they have literally relapsed into the state of the lower animals." ~G.K. Chesterton
"The aim of most men esteemed conscientious and religious, or who are what is called honorable, upright men, is, to all appearance, not how to please God, but how to please themselves without displeasing Him. I say confidently,- that is, if we may judge of men in general by what we see,- that they make this world the first object in their minds, and use religion as a corrective, a restraint, upon TOO MUCH attachment to the world. They think that religion is a negative thing, a sort of moderate love of the world, a moderate luxury, a moderate avarice, a moderate ambition, and a moderate selfishness. You see this in numberless ways. You see it in the course of trade, of public life, of literature, in all matters where men have objects to pursue. Nay, you see it in religious exertions; of which it too commonly happens that the chief aim is, to attain ANYHOW a certain definite end, religious indeed,but of man's own choosing; not, to please God, and NEXT, if possible, to attain it; not, to attain it religiously, or not it all. ~Blessed John Cardinal Newman
"IF there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep." ~G.K. Chesterton: "The Everlasting Man"
THE point about the Press is that it is not what it is called. It is not the “popular Press.” It is not the public Press. It is not an organ of public opinion. It is a conspiracy of a very few millionaires, all sufficiently similar in type to agree on the limits of what this great nation (to which we belong) may know about itself and its friends and enemies. The ring is not quite complete; there are old-fashioned and honest papers: but it is sufficiently near to completion to produce on the ordinary purchaser of news the practical effects of a corner and a monopoly. He receives all his political information and all his political marching orders from what is by this time a sort of half-conscious secret society, with very few members, but a great deal of money. ~G.K. Chesterton: 'The Tyranny of Bad Journalism'
“The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The Tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Conviction)
"HEATHENISM held the individual as a mere muscle of the State; scepticism is restoring the conception. Therefore the modern sociologists are already beginning to dabble in that dreadful idea of which the old pagans drank deep. I mean Infanticide. Christianity stands in history between them, demanding justice though the heavens fall; and he that is not with her is against her."
~G.K. Chesterton: "Daily News", April 9, 1910.
If the manipulators of money get control of the Government of the State, then the Government will not be able to compel the bankers and the money-changers to practise the virtue of social justice, namely, that justice which has for object the Common Good, and the welfare of the whole nation will suffer grievously. Usury and alteration of the price-level will then be permitted to go unchecked, and the real Sovereignty in the State will inevitably pass into the hands of the manipulators of money. The next stage will be a move to bring national Sovereignty under the domination of some international organization subject to finance. That will make permanent and world-wide the present-day anti-Christian and anti-natural perversion of order involved in the subordination of human persons to the production of material goods and in the subordination of the production and distribution of material goods to finance. -- Denis Fahey, Money Manipulation and Social Order, first printed 1944
Two reasons why the Church canonizes Saints: First is to assure us that a canonized saint is infallibly in Heaven and, secondly, that we might, read, learn on how the saints thought, how they lived and imitate their virtues. -- Fr. Hardon
“Do you see this lantern?” cried Syme in a terrible voice. “Do you see the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You did not light it. Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats. You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind; you will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the wit to find it.” ~G.K. Chesterton: "The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare."
"Sanctity is not a question of relinquishing or giving up something for Christ: It is a question of exchange. In the spiritual world, I learn that there are many things that I can get along without, and as I grow in acquaintance with Christ, I find that I can get along without sin, but I cannot get along without His peace of conscience, and so I exchange one for the other. I find by a still deeper acquaintance that I can get along without the world’s goods, but not without the wealth of Christ’s grace, and so I exchange one for the other, thus the saint goes on exchanging one thing for another. And thus it is that in making himself poor, he becomes rich, and in making himself a slave, he becomes free.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Manifestations of Christ)
"THE real difficulty which confronts everybody, and which especially confronts doctors, is that the extraordinary position of man in the physical universe makes it practically impossible to treat him in either one direction or the other in a purely physical way. Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head. In neither case can we really argue very much from the body of man simply considered as the body of an innocent and healthy animal. His body has got too much mixed up with his soul, as we see in the supreme instance of sex. It may be worth while uttering the warning to wealthy philanthropists and idealists that this argument from the animal should not be thoughtlessly used, even against the atrocious evils of excess; it is an argument that proves too little or too much." ~G.K. Chesterton: "All Things Considered."
Conversions are not more difficult in our times than before; but the approach must be different. Today, people are looking for God, not because of the order they find in the universe, but because of the disorder they find in themselves. They are coming to God through an inner disgust.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Priest is not His Own)
"Discussion is a most excellent means to avoid decision. The disciples on the way to Emmaus were talking, debating, discussing about happenings, but they missed Christ (Luke 24: 13-25). Discussions never obliged religious or priests to open their wounds to Christ, but only to reveal their points of view to one another. Whenever our Lord spoke about His Cross, the apostles discussed and dialogued. Interest revolved around renewal-centered novelties in liturgy, the size of the host, communion in the hand, and the dress of nuns, but not in Christification of the Spirit. Dare we expose our wounds to Him even though He is the Physician? We shrink from His demands of sacrifice we want healing without pain, knowledge without study, love without sacrifice." - Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Those Mysterious Priests)
Secret societies fail as all secrets fail, by creating a place for scoundrels to hide.
“Heaven is a city on a hill, hence we cannot coast into it; we have to climb. Those who are too lazy to mount can miss its capture as well as the evil who refuse to seek it. Let no one think he can be totally indifferent to God in this life and suddenly develop a capacity for Him at the moment of death. Where will the capacity for heaven come from if we have neglected it on earth?” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Seven Capital Sins)
We suggest several policy responses that can dampen the supply of conspiracy theorizing, in part by introducing diverse viewpoints and new factual assumptions into the hard-core groups that produce such theories. Our principal claim here involves the potential value of cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, designed to introduce informational diversity into such groups and to expose indefensible conspiracy theories as such. -- Cass Sunstein
“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
“This is the great beauty of the Catholic Faith: its sense of proportion, or balance, or should we say, its humor. It does not handle the problem of death to the exclusion of sin, nor the problem of pain to the exclusion of matter; nor the problem of sin, to the exclusion of human freedom, nor the social use of property to the exclusion of personal right; nor the reality of the body and sex to the exclusion of the soul and its function, nor the reality of matter to the forgetfulness of the Spirit.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Preface to Religion)
“The laity will have to come to a comprehension that our blessed Lord was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles but in the world, on a road way, in a town garbage heap…He placed Himself at the very center of the world, in the midst of smut, thieves, soldiers and gamblers.” -- Archbishop Fulton Sheen
“There is a law that is not in nature, at least not in raw nature, namely, We who are strong should bear the infirmities of the weak and not please ourselves. It is here that Christianity makes it most unique and distinctive pronouncement, and gives the supreme example of Divinity dying for the weakness and sinfulness of humanity. The Christian law is not the survival of the fittest but the survival of the unfit.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Guide to Contentment)
Sanctification does not depend on our geography or on our work or circumstances. Some people imagine that if they were in another place, or married to a different spouse, or had a different job, or had more money, they could do God’s work so much better. The truth is that it makes no difference where they are; it all depends on whether what they are doing is God’s will and done for love of Him.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Lift Up Your Heart)
“Sacrifice without love is pain
Pain with love is sacrifice.
Pain without love is misery.
Love without pain is Heaven.
Love with pain is purgatory.
Pain without love is hell.”
Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Wartime Prayer book)
“The only way to try love is in a trial which forces us to declare it. The only way for Adam and Eve as free moral beings to prove their love and gratitude to God was by choosing Him in preference to all else. The story of the Fall as recorded in Genesis is known to all. Satan, appearing in the form of a serpent, tempted Eve with the question that destroyed confidence, which is the root of all love. The lingering thought passes into a vivid imagination, the vivid imagination into a burning wish, the burning wish into a half-formed purpose, the half-formed purpose into a hasty act.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen
"Protestants, Jews and Catholics have God, morality, and religion in common. In the name of God, let us do two things: 1. Realize that an attack upon one is an attack upon all, since we are all one in God; it is not tolerance we need, but charity; not forbearance but love. 2. Begin doing something about religion, and the least we can do is say our prayers; to implore God's blessings upon the world and our country; to thank Him for his blessings; and to become illumined in the fullness of His truth. There is entirely too much talk about religion and not enough action." Archbishop Fulton Sheen
“You cannot always depend on prayers to be answered the way you want them answered but you can always depend on God. The loving Father often denies us those things which in the end would prove harmful to us. Every boy wants a revolver at age four, and no father yet has ever granted that request. Why should we think God is less wise? Someday we will thank God not only for what He gave us, but also for that which He refused.” -- Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Wartime Prayer Book)
Troll: Hell seems contrary to human freedom, for no one would freely choose hell over heaven if given a free and open choice. Thus, hell would have to be imposed upon us, since no one loves punishment, pain or privation of joy, which is what hell is. Hell would render religious and moral choice unfree, just as the threat of torture renders a forced confession unfree. "Repent, believe and be good, or you'll fry"means that your repentance, belief and goodness are forced, not free. Fry and free are opposites.
Reply: Distinguish, as Augustine does, the freedom of liberty from the freedom of choice (libertas vs. liberum arbitrium). Hell is contrary to liberty but not to free choice. Free choice is a means to the end of higher freedom, liberty from sin. Those who fail to attain heaven's liberty reached their eternal destination by the same means as those who attained that liberty: by their free will.
We do, and therefore can, freely choose hell over heaven. We do this in principle in every sin. We do not want or explicitly choose sin's "wages," sin's inevitable punishment-banishment from the paradise of God's presence-but we do choose the sin and hope to escape the punishment.
Does the fear of hell remove free choice? Does fry contradict free? No more than the fear of falling off a cliff removes the free choice to skate close to the edge or to avoid it. If the threat "repent or you'll fry" removed free will, then all would repent. But this is not so; the threat is issued, but some respond and some do not. So in fact the threat does not remove free choice.
“A man can join any other movement, group, or cult without provoking hostile comment from his neighbors and friends; he can even found some esoteric sun cult of his own and be tolerated as a citizen exercising his legitimate freedom and satisfying his own religious needs. But as soon as anyone joins the Catholic Church, hatred, opposition appear.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Peace of Soul)
"Unless the Local Universe has a significant anisotropic distribution of galaxy morphologies aligned with the orientation or the orbit of the Earth (which would be a challenge for the Cosmological Principle), our results show that there seems to be a systematic bias in the classification of galaxy morphological types between the data from the Northern and the Southern Equatorial sky. Further studies are absolutely needed to find out the exact source of this anisotropy."-- Anisotropy in the all-sky distribution of galaxy morphological types, Behnam Javanmardi1 and Pavel Kroupa
"IT is idle to talk against representative government or for it. All government is representative government until it begins to decay. Unfortunately (as is also evident) all government begins to decay the instant it begins to govern."
~G.K. Chesterton: "The Nameless Man."
"Though time is too precious to waste, it must never be thought that what was lost is irretrievable. Once the Divine is introduced, then comes the opportunity to make up for losses. God is the God of the second chance....being born again means that all that went before is not held against us." Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Peace of Soul)
"One celebrated critic, strongly associated with the popularizing of Ibsen in England, said, I think, the other day that Ibsen was aiming at asserting the relativity of truth. I cannot believe that Ibsen was so silly as all that. If truth is relative, to what is it relative? The same writer, I think, emphasized the matter still further by calling it the mutability of truth.'
"Philosophically understood, these phrases mean literally nothing at all; the quality of truth cannot be mutable; the element of actuality, if it is present, must always be the same. But symbolically understood, these phrases do mean something; they mean that Ibsen and many others honestly felt an irritation against all existing standards and ideals; spiritualist and materialist, revolutionist and reactionary. They really do mean with a lucidity varying with their mental capacity that there shall be no definable moral codes for the society of the future. In this they must be understood; and in this they must be fought." ~G.K. Chesterton: "Daily News," June 2, 1906.
"One of the very reasons why the devil has never been sufficiently visible to provoke revolt is the fact that some of the most honest of men have devoted their lives in all sincerity to the elaboration of this nevertheless dishonest system. Because they have rarely been over-greedy, they have worked the system sufficiently well to mask our decline to the servile state by imperceptible stages... The great joint stock banks have a probity over detail which is almost medieval in its honesty. But while they continue to work such a system, based upon power without responsibility and profit without production, misery and degradation have walked at the head of the procession of modern progress." -- Gerard Wallop (Alternative To Death)
“THERE are many who insist in all that was dark and gross or negligent in the conditions of early barbarism, so that modern civilization may for one wild moment take on a fanciful semblance of decency. But old things have to be made very black indeed, if modern things are not to look blacker.” ~G.K. Chesterton: “Generally Speaking.”
Great evils have resulted from the functioning of the Gold Standard and the control of the exchange-medium of countries by private individuals. To remedy these evils in a manner fully in accordance with the political and economic principles of St. Thomas, three points must be remembered. The first point of reform is that the creation or issuing of exchange medium must be taken out of private hands. The issuing of claims to goods and services valid and acceptable to all the citizens of a country is by right the prerogative of the authority exercising jurisdiction over the whole country. This is clearly seen by the fact that additional credit-money issued or loaned into existence, if it does not happen to coincide with a proportional increase of goods for sale, "will raise prices and make the value of everybody's money in the country worth less in goods, so repudiating part of the nation's debt in goods and services to the owners of money." To put this another way, whoever originates the exchange-medium must, by the very nature of money or exchange-medium, obtain something for nothing, that is, he must obtain the original purchasing power throughout the State, at a trifling cost. Again, whoever has the power to issue the exchange-medium controls the volume of it. Arbitrary changes in the volume of money cause prices to rise or to fall. Whoever originates and controls the volume of money thus controls every single economic operation. If a private group exercises the power to originate the exchange-medium and then manipulates the volume of it, that group becomes a power greater than the government itself. It becomes a super-government, paralysing the efforts of the lawful government for the Common Good.
It is perfectly idle to talk about a Democracy or a Republic, when the sovereign power is really being exercised by an individual super-group. In his excellent book, Economic Tribulation, Mr. V. C. Vickers points out this truth and its consequences. "Through our own base carelessness and ignorance," he writes, "we have permitted the money industry, by the very virtue of its business, gradually to attain a political and economic influence so wide and powerful that it has actually undermined the authority of the State and usurped the power of democratic government... This national and mainly international dictatorship of money, which plays off one country against another, and which, through the ownership of a large portion of the Press, converts the advertisement of its own private opinion into the semblance of general public opinion, cannot for much longer be permitted to render Democratic Government a mere nickname... The finance industry, the exchange bankers and the Stock Exchange grow rich upon the ups and downs of Trade, and are largely dependent on variations and changes of the price-level of commodities. But productive industry grows rich upon stable markets, a constant price-level, and the absence of violent economic fluctuations... Under such general conditions the Communist is naturally content to bide his time; for he observes that the trend of affairs is slowly converging towards the very conditions he most desires to see - a growing discontent with finance and the money system, an increasing weariness of the present form of party government, and an increasing poverty and loss of influence among those who have so recently been the mainstay and backbone of their country."
"As nations have to struggle to maintain their national sovereignty against the international manipulators of money, the sovereign authority in the nation must take over the creation of the entire medium of exchange, consisting of the lawful, physical or tangible money of the country. Private individuals engaged in finance cannot be entrusted with the struggle to safeguard national sovereignty against "the deadly and detestable international Imperialism of money," to use the words of Pope Pius XI. This is especially important since bankers in every country have already succumbed to its rule and are accustomed to look upon the trends favoured by it as indicative of the true line of progress for the world. They have hitherto conspicuously failed to practise the virtue of general or legal justice. Accordingly, the entire medium of exchange, consisting of the lawful money of each country, should be paid into use by the Sovereign Power in the country. No private promises to pay should be allowed to circulate as legal tender but should be subjected to the penalties applying to counterfeit money. The money created and paid into use by the Sovereign Power should be non-interest bearing at ths source and non-cancellable, except by recalling it through taxation. It should not be brought into existence as a loan. The whole amount of new money issued should be paid into circulation to defray legitimate government expenses or to pay off existing government debt. The people, as a whole, would thus share the benefits and advantages involved in a change in the volume of money in existence in a nation." By placing this first buying power in the hands of the government, the benefits fall to all the people, for by whatever amount the new money is issued, tax collections may be correspondingly reduced. -- MONEY MANIPULATION AND SOCIAL ORDER BY REV. DENIS FAHEY, 1944
"This kind of broadmindedness which sacrifices principles to whims, dissolves entities into environment, and reduces truth to opinion, is an unmistakable sign of the decay of the logical faculty."
A little boy who had been to Sunday School told his father that he learned that God the Father and Son were equal. The father said: “That is ridiculous. I am your father; you are my son. I existed a long time before you.” “No,” said the boy, “you did not begin to be a father until I began to be a son.”
At Christmas, He Who was eternally generated by the Father is generated in time, in the womb of a virgin Mary. The Son of God then becomes the Son of Man. As the word which I speak to you is not different because I give it breath and sound, so neither is the Word of the Son of God changed because He takes on a human nature like ours in all things except sin, “The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen – (Bishop Sheen Writes)
"If the Government controls the lending of money, it can determine who may or who may not borrow money and hence can control every single business in the country. Controlling every business means controlling every economic activity ; control of every economic activity gives power to control also the cultural and spiritual activities of the citizen. Lenin recommended Government origination and control of the medium for exchange. Unless the power to originate money is restricted to sovereignty and scientifically exercised, and lending is restricted exclusively to private, independent, State-chartered corporations, it is nothing short of childish prattle to talk about preventing the onrush of Socialism, Communism, or whatever name one wants to use to designate an anti-Christian State, in which all but the 'chosen few' are hopeless slaves." Coogan 1937
The creation of exchange-medium should be withdrawn from private individuals. It should be reserved to the National Government, but the lending of money should be completely divorced from money origination.
The lending of the lawful money issued by the governmental monetary authority should not be carried out by the governmental monetary authority, but by privately-owned Corporations erected into a Guild and functioning under a Guild Charter. -- MONEY MANIPULATION AND SOCIAL ORDER BY REV. DENIS FAHEY, 1944
“The Christmas message is not that peace will come automatically, because Christ is born in Bethlehem; that birth in Bethlehem was the prelude to His birth in our hearts by grace and faith and love. Peace belongs only to those who will to have it. If there is no peace in the world today, it is not because Christ did not come; it is because we did not let Him in.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Simple Truths)
"The mob has a curious way of being right by being wrong. It often champions the wrong person to punish the right person. It supports a true view by a false argument; or convicts a real criminal of an unreal crime." ~G.K. Chesterton: "William Cobbett." (1925)
“Humanism has been defined as ‘the endeavor to keep the best spiritual values of religion while surrendering any theological interpretation of the universe.’ In its broadest sense it is an endeavor to have Christianity without Christ, godliness without God, and Christian hope without the promise of another life.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Old Errors and New Labels)
“The root principle of birth-control is unsound. It is a glorification of the means and a contempt of the end; it says that the pleasure which is a means to the procreation of children is good, but the children themselves are no good. In other words, to be logical, the philosophy of birth-control would commit us to a world in which trees were always blooming but never giving fruit, a world full of sign-posts that were leading nowhere. In this cosmos every tree would be a barren fig tree and for that reason would have upon it the curse of God.”
“The press and sometimes theologians said that the Holy Father should never have issued the letter Humanae Vitae because it divided the Church. Of course it divided the Church as Elijah divided those who had to choose either Baal or God; it divided the Church as the Lord divided it: He that gathereth not with Me, scattereth.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Those Mysterious Priests)
“Christ says to Saul: Why persecutest thou Me? Precisely, the Church is Christ and Christ is the Church – such is the Divine equation. Saul learned a lesson which he afterwards taught as Paul: The Church is the body of Christ. This new body, sometimes called the mystical body, is to be understood after the analogy of the human body which is made up of many members performing different functions and yet all cooperating toward the harmony of the whole. The hand is not the foot, the eye is not the ear, the heart is not the lung. So, too, the priest is not the layman, the apostle is not the disciple, the Vicar of Christ is not the deacon – and yet all are one in the same spirit.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen
“God does not frown on your complaint. Did not His Mother in the Temple ask: ‘Son why hast Thou done so to us? ‘And did not Christ on the Cross complain: ‘My God why hast Thou abandoned Me?’ If the Son asked the Father, and the Mother, the Son – why should not you? But let your wails be to God, and not to man. And at end of your sweet complaining prayer you will say: ‘Father into Thy Hands I commend my spirit.’ They who complain to others never see God’s purposes. They who complain to God find that their passion, like Christ’s turns into compassion.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Lenten & Easter Inspirations)
“A few decades ago, nobody believed in the confession of sins except the Church. Today everyone believes in confession – with this difference: some believe in confessing their own sins; others believe in confessing other people’s sins. The popularity of psychoanalysis has nearly convinced everyone of the necessity of some kind of confession for peace of mind. This is another instance of how the world, which threw Christian truths into the wastebasket in the nineteenth century, is pulling them out in isolated secularized form in the twentieth century, meanwhile deluding itself into believing that it has made a great discovery. The world found it could not get along without some release for its inner unhappiness. Once it had rejected confession and denied both God and guilt, it had to find a substitute.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Footprints in a Darkened Forest)
"Yoga is incompatible with Catholicism because the best known practice of Hindu spirituality is Yoga. 'Inner' Hinduism professes pantheism, which denies that there is only one infinite Being who created the world out of nothing. This pantheistic Hinduism says to the multitude of uncultured believers who follow the ways of the gods that they will receive the reward of the gods." --Father John Hardon.
"There is no real possibility of getting out of pantheism any special impulse to moral action. For pantheism implies in its nature that one thing is as good as another; whereas action implies in its nature that one thing is greatly preferable to another. If we want reform, we must insist on the transcendent deity. By insisting specially on the immanence of God we get introspection, self-isolation, quietism, social indifference—Tibet. By insisting specially on the transcendence of God we get wonder, curiosity, moral and political adventure, righteous indignation—Christendom. Insisting that God is inside man, man is always inside himself. By insisting that God transcends man, man transcends himself." --G. K. Chesterton (from Orthodoxy, 1908)
"A COSMIC philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon." ~G.K. Chesterton: Introduction to 'The Book of Job'.
“Contentment is not an innate virtue. It is acquired through great resolution and diligence in conquering unruly desires; hence it is an art which few study.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Way to Happiness)
“Courtesy is not condescension of a superior to an inferior, or a patronizing interest in another’s affairs. It is the homage of the heart to the sacredness of human worth.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Thoughts for Daily Living)
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1)
"[...] the chief difficulty with the contemporary world is that so many people are adopting very obvious and facile ideals in order that they may be very easily and obviously attained. And out of this arises [...] an even subtler and more poisonous delusion. We not only think that because the ideals are so easy to attain that they must be right; but we think that because the ideals are so easy to attain, we must have attained them. We think this even when, easy as the ideals may be, we have not. [...] It is not very easy to persuade ourselves that we do passionately and directly love all our fellow-men. But it is very easy to persuade ourselves that we are broad-minded, and have no bigotry, and of that, consequently, we do persuade ourselves." ~G.K. Chesterton: "Daily News", Aug. 6, 1904.
“If the new crime be to believe in God, let us all be criminals.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen
“The less we think we are, the more good we do…reducing themselves to zero they leave room for infinity, whereas those who think themselves infinite, God leaves with their little zero.”Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Seven Capital Sins)
“All of a sudden the world has become filled with a race of people called the ‘I am not’. Our Divine Lord seven times said ‘I am’ e.g. ‘I am the Good Shepherd’, 70x7 these people say ‘I am not’ e.g. ‘I am not a believer because.’ Their words tell how empty they are and how they hunger for the Eucharistic Bread that makes us one. They talk as if they were disappointed in love – and everyone is who has only the world to love. That is why they warn everyone against falling in love with Christ’s Mystical Body. Like a man who missed the boat, they tell others never to go to sea for a rest. They admit their thirst, but they do not want others to drink.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Rock Plunged into Eternity)
“Bad temper is an indication of a man’s character; every man can be judged by the things which make him mad.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Love One Another)
"It is important to understand that silence, like all the tools of the spiritual life, is not an end in itself. It is a means—a method for coming to know Jesus Christ."
“The search for peace within the self is always doomed to fail; the two loneliest places in the world are a strange city and one’s own ego. When a man is alone with his thoughts, in false independence of the Love Who made him, he keeps bad company. No amount of psychoanalysis can heal the uneasiness that results, for its basis is metaphysical, its source the tension between the finite and infinite.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Lift Up Your Heart)
“Democracy needs religion more than religion needs democracy. A religion can live without democracy; it can live under tyranny, persecution and dictatorship – not comfortably, it is true, but heroically and divinely. But democracy cannot live without religion, for without religion democracy will degenerate into demagogy by selling itself to the highest bidder.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Whence Come Wars)
“Dictators are like boils, superficial manifestations of an inner rottenness. They would never have come to the surface if there had not been the proper conditions in the world from which they came.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (God and War)
"You've got to have a supernatural sense of humor." -- Father Hardon
"Though there be such things as deathbed conversions, nevertheless as the tree falls, there it lies. One man who led an evil life always boasted of the fact that he needed never worry about his soul when time would end, for he could save it with three words which he quoted in Latin: "Miserere mei Deus" [-- God have mercy, on me]. He was right about saying three words at the moment of his death, but they were not the words he expected to say, for his life had not been lived as to pronounce them from his heart. As his horse threw him over the cliff he said: "Capiat omnia biabolus," which means, "I'll be damned." Archbishop Fulton Sheen (On Being Human)
"What makes a thing bad? A pencil is a good pencil because it does what it was made to do. It writes. Is it a good can opener? It certainly is not! Suppose I use the pencil as a can opener. what happens? First of all, I do not open the can. Second, I destroy the pencil. Now if I decide to do certain things with my body which I ought not do, I do not attain the purpose for which I was created. For example, becoming an alcoholic does not make me happy. I destroy myself just as I destroyed the pencil in using it to open a can. When I disobey God, I do not make myself very happy on the inside, and I certainly destroy any peace of soul that I ought to have." Archbishop Fulton Sheen
“He came on His own, and His own received Him not. As a symbol of the world’s contradiction of His life-giving message, they gave Him a Cross, in which one bar is at contradiction with another. The Horizontal bar symbolizing death for all, for all death is flat and prostrate, the vertical bar symbolizing life, for all life is upright and erect. By a Divine act, He made the sign of contradiction the sign of Redemption, and converted the Cross into the Crucifix. The Cross is the problem of pain and death, but the Crucifix is its solution, for once the God-man ennobled it by His Presence He reveals that pain is the condition of pleasure, death the prelude to life and that unless we take up our cross and follow Him we cannot be His disciple.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Stations of the Cross)
"For he makes his prayers more powerful in his own behalf, who offers them also in behalf of others. For that sacrifice of prayer is more willingly received, which, in the sight of the merciful Judge, is flavoured with love for one’s neighbour. And a person then truly adds to its amount, if he offers it even for his enemies." ~St. Gregory the Great (c. 540 - 604): "Morals on the Book of Job," XXXV, 21.
EVERY ONE of the popular modern phrases and ideals is a dodge in order to shirk the problem of what is good. We are fond of talking about "liberty"; that, as we talk of it, is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of talking about "progress"; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of talking about "education"; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. The modern man says, "Let us leave all these arbitrary standards and embrace liberty." This is, logically rendered, "Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it." He says, "Away with your old moral formulae; I am for progress." This, logically stated, means, "Let us not settle what is good; but let us settle whether we are getting more of it." He says, "Neither in religion nor morality, my friend, lie the hopes of the race, but in education." This, clearly expressed, means, "We cannot decide what is good, but let us give it to our children." ~G.K. Chesterton: "Heretics," Chap. II.-On the Negative Spirit.
"BUT the man we see every day—the worker in Mr. Gradgrind's factory, the little clerk in Mr. Gradgrind's office—he is too mentally worried to believe in freedom. He is kept quiet with revolutionary literature. He is calmed and kept in his place by a constant succession of wild philosophies. He is a Marxian one day, a Nietzscheite the next day, a Superman (probably) the next day; and a slave every day. The only thing that remains after all the philosophies is the factory. The only man who gains by all the philosophies is Gradgrind. It would be worth his while to keep his commercial helotry supplied with sceptical literature. And now I come to think of it, of course, Gradgrind is famous for giving libraries. He shows his sense. All modern books are on his side. As long as the vision of heaven is always changing, the vision of earth will be exactly the same. No ideal will remain long enough to be realized, or even partly realized. The modern young man will never change his environment; for he will always change his mind." ~G.K. Chesterton: "Orthodoxy," Chap. VII.
Poor foolish slaves of the world, says St. Augustine, where do you think that you are going to satisfy your hearts' desires?
"The personal is not a mere figure for the impersonal; rather the impersonal is a clumsy term for something more personal than common personality. God is not a symbol of goodness. Goodness is a symbol of God." ~G.K. Chesterton: "William Blake."
"IF I had only one sermon to preach, it would be a sermon against Pride. The more I see of existence, and especially of modern practical and experimental existence, the more I am convinced of the reality of the old religious thesis; that all evil began with some attempt at superiority; some moment when, as we might say, the very skies were cracked across like a mirror, because there was a sneer in Heaven." ~G.K. Chesterton: "The Common Man."
The Western post-Christian civilization has picked up the Christ without His Cross. But a Christ without a sacrifice that reconciles the world to God is a cheap, colorless, itinerant preacher who deserves to be popular for His great Sermon on the Mount, but also merits unpopularity for what He said about His Divinity on the one hand, and divorce, judgment, and hell on the other. This sentimental Christ is patched together with a thousand commonplaces, sustained sometimes by academic etymologists who cannot see the Word for the letters, or distorted beyond personal recognition by a dogmatic principle that anything which is Divine must necessarily be a myth. Without His Cross, He becomes nothing more than a sultry precursor of democracy or a humanitarian who taught brotherhood without tears.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Life of Christ)
Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.
Postman distinguishes the Orwellian vision of the future, in which totalitarian governments seize individual rights, from that offered by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, where people medicate themselves into bliss, thereby voluntarily sacrificing their rights. Drawing an analogy with the latter scenario, Postman sees television's entertainment value as a present-day "soma", the fictitious pleasure drug in Brave New World, by means of which the citizens' rights are exchanged for consumers' entertainment.
“But when one searches for the reasons why Christian art should have pictured Joseph as aged, we discover that it was in order to better safeguard the virginity of Mary. Somehow, the assumption had crept in that senility was a better protector of virginity than adolescence. Art thus unconsciously made Joseph a spouse chaste and pure by age rather than virtue...To make Joseph appear pure only because his flesh had aged is like glorifying a mountain stream that has dried. The Church will not ordain a man to the priesthood who has not his vital powers. She wants men who have something to tame, rather than those who are tame because they have no energy to be wild. It should be no different with God.
...Joseph was probably a young man, strong, virile, athletic, handsome, chaste, and disciplined; the kind of man one sees sometimes shepherding sheep, or piloting a plane, or working at a carpenter's bench. Instead of being a man incapable of love, he must have been on fire with love....Instead, then, of being dried fruit to be served on the table of the king, he was rather a blossom filled with promise and power. He was not in the evening of life, but in its morning, bubbling over with energy, strength, and controlled passion.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (World’s First Love)
People avoid Christ to avoid seeing their own personal sins. The more important it is to them to hide rather than confess their sins, the more vehement they become in their rejection of the Saviour.
“Any cross would be easy to bear if we could only tailor it to fit ourselves. Our Lord’s cross was not made by Him, but for Him. Crosses and burdens are thrust upon us. Our acceptance makes them personal. Our Lord even said that there would be at least seven crosses a week: ‘Take up your cross daily and follow Me.’ Crosses are of two kinds: pure ones, which come from the outside, such as pain, persecution, and ridicule; and inner, or impure crosses, which come as the result of our sins, such as sadness, despair, and unhappiness. These latter crosses can be avoided. They are made by contradicting the will of God. The vertical bar of the cross stands for God’s will; the horizontal bar stand for our wills. When one crosses the other, we have the cross. Our Lord never promised that we would be without a cross; He only promised that we would never be overcome by it. St. Peter so loved the cross, that when the time came for his execution he asked to be crucified upside down. May He who was found guilty of no other crime than that of the excess of love, make us hate the load of sin that made His cross. The whole cross borne in union with His will and following in His footsteps is easier to bear than the splinters against which we rebel.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (The Fifteen Mysteries)
The necessary solution prescribed by Bahá'u'lláh is the union of the peoples of the world in one common order. The call is not one for the reform of the present order, or for attention to be given to any of the particular ills afflicting it. Rather it is a call for the replacement of that present order. It has outlived its usefulness to humanity and carries within the seeds of its own destruction. Human society, Bahá'u'lláh says, must be either reborn or perish. His emphatic promise is that such a rebirth will occur, to be incorporated in a new global system which will deservedly warrant the title of a "new world order". To use His words:
"Soon will the present-day order be rolled up, and a new one spread out in its stead ... The day is approaching when We will have rolled up the world and all that is therein, and spread out a new order in its stead" (Gleanings, pages 7, 313).
The Bahá'í view essentially envisages the world as concurrently undergoing a two fold process - disintegration and integration. On the one hand, the present world order is gradually being disrupted and deranged. On the other, that existing system is gradually being replaced by a new system based on the values to be found in the Bahá'í teachings. Each of these processes necessarily interacts with the other.
"The world's equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of this most great, this new World Order. Mankind's ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System - the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed." (The Kitáb-i-Aqdas, page 85).
Masonic Science: Earth curvature drop in one mile = 0.666ft
We're told the earth's axial tilt is 23.4°, the remainder of the angle after subtracting 23.4° from the 90° quadrant we're left with 66.6°.
We're told earth orbits 584,000,000 miles around the sun in a full year. Now to divide that by the 365 days in the year and you get 1,600,000 miles per day. Then we divide that by 24 hours in a day and we get a speed of 66,666 mph.
“If you say the Rosary faithfully until death, I do assure you that, in spite of the gravity of your sins you shall receive a never-fading crown of glory. Even if you are on the brink of damnation, even if you have one foot in hell, even if you have sold your soul to the devil as sorcerers do who practice black magic, and even if you are a heretic as obstinate as a devil, sooner or later you will be converted and will amend your life and will save your soul, if — and mark well what I say — if you say the Holy Rosary devoutly every day until death for the purpose of knowing the truth and obtaining contrition and pardon for your sins.” -- St. Louis de Montfort, "The Admirable Secret of the Rosary" (d. 1716)
“There was a whole tribe of men who made their living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being nonexistent persons." -- George Orwell, 1984
Rumiyah is a new Islamic State magazine that is shorter than the previous magazine, Dabiq. It focuses on putting forward the group’s political and theological stance, explaining why opposition to the group is heretical and gloating about terrorist attacks.
The title refers to Rome, which the Islamic State wishes to conquer, both as a political goal but also as a symbolic one, since they view Western civilization as a continuation of the ancient Roman Empire, against which the early Muslims fought.
“If the basis of Christianity were anything else than a God Who came from a tomb, then we would be without hope. If He were a worldly success, then we would have to imitate Him in worldliness. If He were a failure, and never rose from defeat, then we would be vindictive, and hate who symbolized the world that crucified Him. If He were only a man, He would be forgotten as all men are. If He wrote a book, we would all have to be professors, but since he came into this world to bring victory out of defeat, then the more hopeless the situation, the more certainly does the Divine Power operate.” Archbishop Fulton Sheen (Lenten & Easter Inspirations)
"Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter." - Roger Scruton