A Word on Wednesday, Wednesday, October 12, 2011

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This is from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton.  It seems appropos in light of the so-called "Wall Street" protests going on across the country.  While the protests are not specifically against the Church, I'd think it a pretty safe bet that most of those involved are not great supporters.  It seems to me the point of their protest is simply to break down society in whatever way they can, not to replace it with something better, but to leave it broken down.  Not a good thing.

Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church. This is no exaggeration; I could fill a book with the instances of it.  I have known people who protested against religious education with arguments against any education, saying that the child's mind must grow freely or that the old must not teach the young. I have known people who showed that there could be no divine judgment by showing that there can be no human judgment, even for practical purposes. They burned their own corn to set fire to the church; they smashed their own tools to smash it; any stick was good enough to beat it with, though it were the last stick of their own dismembered furniture. We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all. 

Too Much Technology?

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Bevil Bramwell, OMI, has a very interesting column that appeared Sunday on the Catholic Thing web site. Here’s an excerpt:

Thomas Aquinas makes a striking comment about imagination: “because a man seeks to occupy a higher grade as to accidentals, which can increase without the destruction of the subject, he can also seek a higher grade of nature.” Here is the heart of the problem: for all its usefulness technology is accidental, peripheral.

Yes, I too appreciate twenty-first century medicine and the car and other technological gains. But that is not the real business of becoming more human. It’s telling how many people show an odd identification with Steve Jobs. The BBC calls it a cult. Some people built their lives around Apple technology. This is not like a locomotive driver whose life depends on the locomotive. The driver still produces useful services for society. But those in a cult? Not so much. The focus of the Jobs cult seems not the great spiritual struggle, but simply a fashionable way to fill time, to connect with people who are not here (perhaps while not connecting with people who are here), to get caught in the flow of facts and not to achieve real knowledge.

It ties in to something I’ve felt for a long time, that technology has become for many people a means of escape from real life.

Listening to Tradition, Sunday, October 9, 2011 – Isaac of Stella

Incited by something external
Is like a small lamp
Whose flame is fed with oil,
Or like a stream fed by rains,
Where flows stop when the rains cease.
But love whose object is God is like
A fountain gushing forth
From the earth.
Its flow never ceases,
For He Himself is the source of this love
And also its food,
Which never grows scarce.

An Early October Morning

This was the scene just outside my backdoor around 9:00 AM.  It was supposed to snow overnight, actually a "rain/snow" mix was called for, at 8:00AM it was still snowing, and I took this picture an hour later.  It shows little sign of letting up for the moment.  Ah, just another day in Colorado!

Founders Friday, Friday, October 7, 2011

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Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian Nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.

  

                                            John Jay

A Word on Wednesday, Wednesday, October 5, 2011

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'Why should we be attached to this world, where we can breathe only air poisoned by so many crimes?'


St. Paul of the Cross

Listening to Tradition, Sunday, October 2, 2011

A Song

Lord, when the sense of thy sweet grace
Sends up my soul to seek thy face.
Thy blessed eyes breed such desire,
I dy in love's delicious Fire.
     O love, I am thy Sacrifice.
Be still triumphant, blessed eyes.
Still shine on me, fair suns! that I
Still may behold, though still I dy.

     Though still I dy, I live again;
Still longing so to be still slain,
So gainfull is such losse of breath.
I dy even in desire of death.
     Still live in me this loving strife
Of living Death and dying Life.
For while thou sweetly slayest me
Dead to my selfe, I live in Thee.

Richard Crashaw