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He would sanction all prudent measures for the good of souls. In the Old Law God gave drastic laws and penalties affecting those of the true religion who tried to contract mixed marriages, and the Catholic Church is but similarly zealous for the true religion of Christ.
In other countries I would not have to deny that the temporal ruler was head of the Church. That anomaly seems to be peculiar to the British Empire. Of course it is no fault of our present good king. I think he must feel very uncomfortable about it at times.
No. You must be a non-Catholic to suspect that the Church did invent it. The idea that there is no purgatory is the invention of Protestants. The reformers corrupted the true doctrine, and many good Protestants, realizing this, are returning to the Catholic religion of their forefathers even as I myself have done. Meantime, if I…
That phrase must be correctly interpreted. God did not make the universe out of nothing as carpenters make tables out of wood. He did not make nothing into a universe. The sense is this: God made the universe, but did not make it out of any pre-existing thing. Apart from God, before creation, there was nothing. God willed, and t…
Because such services are not in the spirit of Christianity, nor included in the commission given to the Church by Christ.
All do not know that creed has nothing to do with conduct. In fact no man knows precisely what motive has moved men to do given things. God alone can read the heart. We have no experience save of our own interior dispositions. Religious people may sin. But they do not call vice virtue. They know they sin. Nor do their sins dispe…
If any discord arise, it is unavoidable. It is good to have peace, but not peace at any price; above all when the price is the violation of conscience. If Protestants are angry because Catholics will not do what the Catholic conscience forbids, then it is not the fault of Catholics. In any case, are not religious obligations gre…
The Committee or Congregation appointed to consider his teachings declared that his theory was wrong. In doing so, the members of the Committee were mistaken. But as no infallible decision was given on the subject in the name of the Church, infallibility is not involved in this matter. Meantime Galileo had advanced no really sat…
By reason alone any ordinary man can know that God exists, that He has given a revelation to man, and any ordinary man is capable of learning the fundamental teachings of Christianity. Yet the perception of the vital force and the sheer reality of the truths God has revealed, with consequent belief in them, requires grace from G…
The growth of misery and distress is not due to the multiplication of Churches. Many professing Christian Churches, of course, do not stand firmly for the true principles of Christ. And even the growth of the Catholic Church cannot influence much those who will not submit to her laws. As the Church grows, so does population, and…
All Anglicans at least accept an Erastian Church subject to political and parliamentary authority in England, and throughout the world they deny the necessity of submission to the lawful authority of the successor of St. Peter, the present Bishop of Rome. Again, half the members of the Anglican Church say that they believe in th…
The process is this. Catholic dogmas, being the truth, set the mind of man free from human errors on the subject of religion. And I argue that most normally intelligent men wish to be free from error. Again I reason that men of clean lives are well fitted to appreciate the lofty moral standards of Catholicism. The only type of w…
The Divine Mind does not “work.” God does not have to reason slowly and painfully to conclusions, as do men. His Divine Intelligence is a permanent and simultaneous act of perfect knowledge embracing all things, past, present, and future. We cannot fully understand God’s being, knowledge, and plans. However, St. Paul rightly sai…
This life is not the only one of which we have knowledge. We can have knowledge in two ways, experimental knowledge, or knowledge based upon reason and authority. I have experimental knowledge of America for I have been in America, but I have no experimental knowledge of Africa. Yet you cannot say that I have no knowledge whatev…
Absolutely speaking there could have been a Christianity without a crucifixion. God could have condoned the sin of mankind, and, without demanding just expiation, He could have sent His Son in human form to teach another type of Christian doctrine. But that is all in the realm of possibilities. We are concerned with facts, and a…
Protestants have not a true copy. Their copy contains many mistranslations and omits complete Books. The Catholic Church provides a substantially true copy or version in English for her own subjects.
You take up an extraordinary position. If you do not say that you are right, you cannot have definite grounds for your belief, and such belief is credulity. And do you really believe in everyone believing in his own belief? Whether that belief be right or wrong? If so, you believe in people believing in error. But Christ came pr…
Why have Catholic women traditionally worn hats in church? Are bareheaded women forbidden to enter Catholic churches?
It is not a question of the money. If the conditions demanded by the Church are not fulfilled, $100,000 would not secure the marriage according to Catholic rites. Nor is the Church afraid of losing one of her members. She is afraid that one of her members will lose the advantages of the Catholic faith and perhaps her soul. The l…
He has no link with them either by jurisdiction or by Holy Orders. He merely retains the name without the reality, and owes his position to the crown. All the privileges once granted to the Archbishops of Canterbury by Rome are now granted to the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. If the present Archbishop of Canterbury were co…
That is because you do not understand the Christian religion, nor the nature of the eternal moral law. Hell exists, and since it does exist, it is treason to the God of truth and treachery to man to try to blind men to the fact.
The first resurrection is the mystical resurrection from the death of sin. We rise with Christ in Baptism, and those who die still retaining the grace of their baptismal rebirth possess a permanent title to the glorious second and actual resurrection of the body at the last day. On such as these the second death will have no eff…
For some socialists it is all three. For others, it is a form of government leading to a state of society, either abstracting from religion altogether, or definitely hostile to it.
Such an admission would do violence to both reason and history. The invention theory supposes that the writers of the Gospel were liars, a theory abandoned by all the critics of Christianity worth while. The borrowing theory involves the old post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. That one thing is prior to another does not prove tha…
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