The irony is that plugging one’s ears and screaming “Bigot!” at someone who is trying to present a reasoned argument is, of course, itself a kind of bigotry -- perhaps the worst kind, insofar as someone self-righteously in love with the idea that he is the paradigmatic anti-bigot is the least likely of all bigots to see his prejudices for what they are.

-Edward Feser

From Jeff Miller:

“Too many inveigh against the evils in society because it take their mind off the evil in themselves. They feel better, as if they had done something: just indignation gives the illusion of justice. So with the reprobation of other’s sins, which happen not to be our own. One can work oneself up to a high state of indignation and return to the enjoyment of one’s own sins with a sense of the good fight well fought”.

Frank Sheed - Christ in Eclipse

Before this he quoted Samuel Butler’s lines about people who:

Compound for sins they are inclined to By damning those they have no mind to.

A reminder to himself he references.

[T]he man who makes a charge without knowing it to be true, falsifies as much as he who knowingly tells a falsehood

-Abraham Lincoln (from the first of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates)

[Something to remember especially on social media]

I find it particularly ironic that the same people who look down their noses at the Middle Ages are quick to criticize nothing about foreign civilizations and spout platitudes such as "We can't judge them by our standards. We don't understand their culture fully; if we did, we'd see how great it is."

So the response to those complaining about the Middle Ages should be "Did you just assume your culture is superior? You can't judge the Middle Ages by your cultural standards."

Of course, spotting the pattern, the accepted biases are generally just veiled anti-Christianity and/or misguided belief in the noble savage...

-commenter LugNut22 on John C. Wright's blog

If today is always the best of times, then it must be better than yesterday, and the best always yet to come. All is progress: Rome never fell; it ascended. Humans never sinned; they discovered. The dog never returned to its vomit; it upcycled and reused and reduced its footprint until the world became better than Eden could ever have been.

-commenter Josh on John C. Wright's blog

Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.

-"Iowahawk"

(via Mike Flynn)

My dear Wormwood,

I am delighted to hear that your patient's age and profession make it possible, but by no means certain, that he will be called up for military service. We want him to be in the maximum uncertainty, so that his mind will be filled with contradictory pictures of the future, every one of which arouses hope or fear. There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human's mind against the Enemy. He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.

Your patient will, of course, have picked up the notion that he must submit with patience to the Enemy's will. What the Enemy means by this is primarily that he should accept with patience the tribulation which has actually been dealt out to him- the present anxiety and suspense. It is about this that he is to say "Thy will be done," and for the daily task of bearing this that the daily bread will be provided. It is your business to see that the patient never thinks of the present fear as his appointed cross, but only of the things he is afraid of. Let him regard them as his crosses: let him forget that, since they are incompatible, they cannot all happen to him, and let him try to practice fortitude and patience to them all in advance. For real resignation, at the same moment, to a dozen different and hypothetical fates, is almost impossible, and the Enemy does not greatly assist those who are trying to attain it: resignation to present and actual suffering, even where that suffering consists of fear, is far easier, and is usually helped by this direct action.

-C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (excerpt from "Letter 6")

But nature gives most of her evidence in answer to the questions we ask her. Here, as in the courts, the character of the evidence depends on the shape of the examination, and a good cross-examiner can do wonders. He will not indeed elicit falsehoods from an honest witness. But, in relation to the total truth in the witness’s mind, the structure of the examination is like a stencil. It determines how much of that total truth will appear and what pattern it will suggest.

-C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image

[H/T Rebekah Valerius]

Apart from sin, anxiety is the soul's greatest enemy. The devil does not hesitate to fish in troubled waters....When you become aware of a growing anxiety, commend yourself to God, and make up your mind not to take any steps until your mind is calm again....Examine whether your heart is under complete control. If it has strayed, quietly lead it back to the presence of God, placing all your hopes in obedience to his holy will.

-St. Francis de Sales

"...nothing would be done at all, if a man waited till he could do it so well that no one could find fault with it."

-Bl. John Henry Newman, Lectures on Present Position of Catholics in England (1851)

[I]t may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis: Laudamus te, benedicamus te, adoramus te, glorificamus te, gratias agimus tibi proper magnam gloriam tuam. We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendour.

And in moments of exaltation we may call on all created things to join in our chorus, speaking on their behalf, as is done in Psalm 148, and in The Song of the Three Children in Daniel II. PRAISE THE LORD...all mountains and hills, all orchards and forests, all things that creep and birds on the wing.

-Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 310

[The Church] was not intended by Our Lord to be static or remain in perpetual childhood; but to be a living organism (likened to a plant), which develops and changes in externals by the interaction of its bequeathed divine life and history- the particular circumstances of the world into which it is set. There is no resemblance between the 'mustard-seed' and the full-grown tree. For those living in the days of its branching growth the Tree is the thing, for the history of a living thing is part of its life, and the history of a divine thing is sacred. The wise may know that it began with a seed, but it is vain to try and dig it up, for it no longer exists, and the virtue and powers that it had now reside in the Tree. very good: but in husbandry the authorities, the keepers of the Tree, must look after it, according to such wisdom as they possess, prune it, remove cankers, rid it of parasites, and so forth. (With trepidation, knowing how little their knowledge of growth is!) But they will certainly do harm, if they are obsessed with the desire of going back to the seed or even to the first youth of the plant when it was (as they imagine) pretty and unafflicted by evils.

-Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 306