Despotism and democracy

It would seem that if despotism were to be established among the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them. ....

It covers the surface of society with a net-work of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting

[I]t is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life... Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will.

-- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Found via Mike Flynn's blog

A perfect description of today's society...

The devil Screwtape:

We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is least in danger and fix its approval on the virtue nearest to that vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running about with fire extinguishers whenever there is a flood, and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under.

-The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis

"But while they desire to set aside that true Council, they endeavor to give that name to their own unlawful combination; while they are unwilling that the decrees of the Council should be enforced, they desire to enforce their own decisions; and they use the name of a Council, while they refuse to submit themselves to one so great as this. Thus they care not for Councils, but only pretend to do so in order that they may root out the orthodox".

No, that's not an orthodox Catholic from EWTN commenting on a "spirit of Vatican 2" type (the latter needing to be dealt with by Geistbusters. Heh. :-) . Rather, that is a quote from St. Athanasius's Apologia Contra Arianos dealing, of course, with how the Arians tried to hijack the First Council of Nicea. But since today many try to hijack Vatican 2, I guess that only goes to prove Ecclesiastes 1:10-11 correct.

"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, 'See, this is new'? It has been already in the ages before us."

"What a strange world we moderns have created, where everything is permissible, and nothing is forgivable"

What a strange world we moderns have created, where everything is permissible, and nothing is forgivable

-commenter on Mark Shea's blog a couple of years ago

Found in a post on the Catholic Answers forums (forums.catholic.com)

I remember years ago Mother Angelica getting a call from a woman complaining about the issue of Hypocrisy. The woman told Mother Angelica, "I don't go to Mass because I don't want to be surrounded by all those hypocrites." Mother replied, "Don't worry there is always room for one more."

Or, in other words, "he who is without hypocrisy, let him cast the first stone."

"...Bill and Ted's Excellent Bible Shack..."

While reading this post by science fiction author Mike Flynn (which I would highly suggest reading in its entirety), I came across this quote that I enjoyed in particular. :-)

Atheists and other fundies often forget about the Orthodox Church, but it is the second largest Church in Christendom. Together with the largest, the Roman Catholic, they comprise better than 63% of all Christians. Throw in the third largest - the Anglican Communion - and we've got two-thirds of all Christians, well before we get down to the more exotic and idiosyncratic sects. If I want to know "what Christianity teaches," I would be inclined to ask the Orthodox or Catholic churches, as they have near 2000 years of noodling over it. Yet when the Coynes of the world want to tell us 'what Christians believe,' they agitate over the idiosyncratic beliefs of Bill and Ted's Excellent Bible Shack, whose teachings go back to last Tuesday. Go figure.

The Church is intolerant in principle because she believes; she is tolerant in practice because she loves. The enemies of the Church are tolerant in principle because they do not believe; they are intolerant in practice because they do not love.

~Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange

If Jesus came back now....

...sometime in the Late Middle Ages six men went to visit a very famous monk. The six were men of wealth, position, and prestige. The monk was a man known first for his holiness and then for his wisdom. When they arrived at the monastary they inquired after the whereabouts of the monk. They thought they would find him either in chapel or in the scriptorium reading the Scriptures. Instead, they found him hoeing vegetables in the monastary garden. (The rule of his religious order prescribed two hours of manual labour a day for each monk.)

They introudced themselves and talked with him for a while. Finally, one of them asked the holy monk, "If you discovered that the Lord Jesus was coming at this hour, what would you do?" The monk leaned on his hoe and said, "I'd keep hoeing a straight row. Our rule calls for me to work for one more hour today, and my superior has assigned me to hoe this garden."

The educated wealthy gentlemen were shocked. They had anticipated that he would have said he would rush to the chapel to await the Lord. Sensing their consternation the monk said to them.

"In obeying the rule of my order I am obeying God. I fulfill my duty to God. I show my true love for God. If I would do something different if I discovered the Lord was coming at this time, then there is something wrong with the way I am living my life right now. If there is, I should change it right now. I should always live my life as if the Lord were coming for me right then. But right now I am supposed to be hoeing vegetables. So if the Lord comes right now, He is going to find me doing my job well, hoeing a straight row."

-Desmond Birch, Trial, Tribulation, and Triumph: Before, During, and After Antichrist

"The mission of the Church is not to crouch in a defensive posture behind the walls of Fortress Catholicism, but to take the fight to the enemy."

I’m always delighted to see it when people get excited about the word of God and see in the revelation of Christ the power of liberation. My reader gets it: The mission of the Church is not to crouch in a defensive posture behind the walls of Fortress Catholicism, but to take the fight to the enemy. “The gates of hell” is imagery from siege warfare. You do not attack with a gate. You hide behind it while the attacking army deploys battering rams to smash it to pieces. We, the Church, are the attacking army against the gates of hell, with Jesus as our captain. The weapons of our warfare are not violence but the testimony of Christ, charity, and our own blood and suffering, offered in union with His sacrifice. We do not fight because we are sinless and perfect, but because grace enables us. We defeat our enemies by making them our brothers and sisters and no longer enemies. We can’t be defeated, because even death is on our side now, having been taken prisoner and made the conquered slave of the Risen One. The only thing hell can do is lie and plant thoughts of despair or presumption in our minds to turn us from Hope. If we accept these thoughts, either by bitterly embracing the lie that there is no hope for the Church or by drunkenly concluding that we need not fight since the battle will be won someday, then we turn from Hope. But if we remain in Christ and keep putting one foot in front of the other in obedience, we have every reason to rejoice as we keep battering at the gates of hell in his Name and Power.

-Mark Shea

"... But the greatest of these is Funding. "

Now abide these seven elements of Modern Science: Time, Space, Matter, Energy, Power, Prestige, and Funding. But the greatest of these is Funding.

-Mark Shea

"I feel about Catholicism as G.K. Chesterton did — that it encourages an exuberance, a joy about the gift of life."

I feel about Catholicism as G.K. Chesterton did — that it encourages an exuberance, a joy about the gift of life. I think my conversion was a natural growth. Even in the darkest hours of my childhood, I was an irrepressible optimist, always able to find something to fill me with amazement, wonder and delight. When I came to the Catholic faith, it explained to me why I always had — and always should have — felt exuberant and full of hope.

-Dean Koontz

"It is convenient because it tends to turn our eyes away from ourselves and our own faults to find a scape-goat."

...You speak of 'sagging faith', however. That is quite another matter. In the last resort faith is an act of will, inspired by love. Our love may be chilled and our will eroded by the spectacle of the shortcomings, folly, and even sins of the Church and its ministers, but I do not think that one who once had faith goes back over the line for these reasons (least of all anyone with any historical knowledge). 'Scandal' at most is an occasion of temptation- as indecency is to lust, which it does not make but arouses. It is convenient because it tends to turn our eyes away from ourselves and our own faults to find a scape-goat. But the act of will of faith is not a single moment of final decision: it is a permanent indefinitely repeated act > state which must go on- so we pray for 'final perseverance'. The temptation to 'unbelief' (which really means rejection of Our Lord and His claims) is always there within us. Part of us longs to to find an excuse for it outside us. The stronger the inner temptation the more readily and severely shall we be 'scandalized' by others. I think I am as sensitive as you (or any other Christian) to the 'scandals', both of clergy and laity. I have suffered grievously in my life from stupid, tired, dimmed, and even bad priests; but I now know enough about myself to be aware that I should not leave the Church (which for me would mean leaving the allegiance of Our Lord) for any such reasons: I should leave because I did not believe, and should not believe any more, even if I had never met any one in orders who was not both wise and saintly. I should deny the Blessed Sacrament, that is: call Our Lord a fraud to His face.

If He is a fraud and the Gospels fraudulent- that is: garbled accounts of a demented megalomaniac (which is the only alternative), then of course the spectacle exhibited by the Church (in the sense of clergy) in history and today is simply evidence of a gigantic fraud. If not, however, then this spectacle is alas! only what was to be expected: it began before the first Easter, and it does not affect faith at all- except that we may and should be deeply grieved. But we should grieve on our Lord's behalf and for Him, associating ourselves with the scandalizers not with the saints, not crying out that we cannot 'take' Judas Iscariot, or even the absurd & cowardly Simon Peter, or the silly women like James' mother, trying to push her sons...

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 250