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Not necessarily. Tf an anti-Christian law is proposed the Priest would probably warn his people publicly from the pulpit. In such a case he should do his best to persuade them to be true to God and vote against any law which God would forbid, repeating the words of Christ, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to G…
It is opposed to the natural dictates of morality. It is obvious, for example, that the accompanying pleasure in eating and drinking is secondary and in view of the primary end, that the individual life may be preserved by due nourishment. We have supreme contempt for the glutton who does not eat to live, but rather lives to eat…
They do not. A Priest will accept an offering on the understanding that he will say a special Mass for the intentions of the person making the offering. In accepting an offering from one person he forfeits the support he would receive from another in exercising his ministry on that other’s behalf.
If you mean that there are good men and bad men in all religions, you are right. But if you mean that the teachings of all churches, including the Catholic Church, are partly true and partly false, you are wrong. The teachings of all non-Catholic churches are partly true and partly false. Partly true, for a religion consisting w…
Not in the sense in which birth-control is forbidden. Birth-control affect, those who enter married life, or those who live as married people without warrant. If people use privileges proper to the married state, they sin if they deliberately frustrate children. But there is no obligation to enter the married state.
The Catholic Church is infallible in her official teaching on faith and morals. But she does not claim to be infallible in making people live up to those teachings. Her infallibility does not deprive her subjects of their freewill. After all, you yourself would admit that God is infallible, yet you would not account for people w…
Senator Delpech, President of the Grand Orient in France, said on September 20th, 1902, “The triumph of the Galilean has lasted many centuries, but now He dies in His turn. He passes away to join the dust of the ages with the other divinities of India, Greece, and Rome, who saw so many deceived creatures prostrate before their a…
You have not understood the Catholic attitude. But, in any case, if you see a drunken man, it should affect your faith in that man, not your faith in Christianity. If the man professes to be a Christian, you must blame him for not living up to his belief. But Christianity is all right. If it told him to get drunk, it might be di…
He did not. St. Peter presided. Acts XV., 7, says, “After much disputing Peter rose up and said”; he then solved the question. Verse 12 tells us that after Peter had spoken all held their peace. James then spoke in support of Peter’3 decision, as much as to say, “Peter is right. I too think that the Gentiles should not be disqui…
With the assistance of the Holy Spirit, she can and does know. She knows God, and knows what holiness is. She examines the life of a holy person, and says that such a life certainly could not lead a soul to hell. The Church canonizes only those whose heroic virtue has been proved. And perfect charity before death destroys all si…
There are many indications, the chief of which I shall give you very briefly:
Catholics kiss the Pope’s ring out of reverence for the office which the Holy Father holds. No one has ever died from such a procedure, and a man who feared risk of infection from that might just as well give up eating, drinking, and breathing, for all the time he is taking in germs by the thousand. There is much more risk in ki…
We must disinguish between God’s positive will, and His permissive will. He positively wills all the good that happens. Suffering He permits to occur, and this only when he foresees that good can result from it. He positively wills that I should be holy. If He foresees that I will make use of good health to sin and to lose my so…
The right of private property is a natural right and has always been held by the Church. When God gave the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” He acknowledged that men could acquire property to which others had no right.
We all wish, perhaps, to go to the same place. But the difficulty is as to the right road to that place. One man says one way; another maintains that another way is the correct path. All sick men wish to get better. But you do not argue, “After all, they all hope to attain the same health, therefore let this sick man drink anyth…
It extorts nothing. The truth revealed by God inspires Catholics to have Masses offered for their departed friends and relatives. And those Catholics, who can afford to do so, desire by personal sacrifice to render the offering of the Sacrifice of the Mass their own special offering to God.
We do not fear rationalism. We do fear lest some individual Catholics be takes in by its sophistries, thinking that, because they themselves do not see the solution of difficulties proposed, there is no solution. Rationalistic writings constitute a danger for shallow and untrained minds, and rather a waste of time for educated m…
No. The Catholic Church would have been very foolish to have copies multiplied only to destroy them. When the printing press was invented by the German Catholic Gutenberg in 1445, the first book printed was a Bible, before Protestantism had come into existence.
He lived poorly Himself, but He never commanded others to follow His own example in this matter. Meantime He did not aim at having no means of support. St. Luke, VIII., 3, speaks of many who ministered to His needs and those of His Apostles out of their possessions. He accepted their offerings, and we know that Judas carried the…
Christ’s real body is present. Anatomical structure and physiological modifications belong to qualities possessed by substance. After the consecration we have the substance of Christ’s body present without any external manifestation of His anatomical or physiological appearances, and the qualities of bread remaining as the objec…
Everything is not hard. Some things are. The things that are difficult are made easier by the grace of which so many people deliberately deprive themselves. All difficulty cannot be removed, for God has a right to ask us to overcome at personal cost our self-inflicted bad habits, sins, and other injuries. Men’s complaints are of…
No. They are gifts of the people, and if people wish to dedicate tokens of gratitude to the House of God, no one has any right to their possession. People are not free to distribute what is not their own to the poor. There were many poor in Israel when God demanded the dedication of a richly ornamented Temple to His worship.
Proportionately to their numbers that averages a penny per week from individual Catholics, and yields about sixty cents per week to the individual Priest
You must remember the sense of the discussion. Peter was not necessarily the greater from an aspect of grace and holiness. Eternal rewards depend rather upon Christian virtue than upon earthly office. St. Peter was chief in earthly office, although we know that St. John was called the beloved disciple.
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