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But man would not love so much! You fail to grasp a fundamental point. It takes two to make a religion, God and man. God is a pure Spirit, but man is not. Man is a composite of the spiritual and the material. And he must worship God according to his twofold nature. Man not only possesses spiritual thoughts; he gives them express…
Never. The Catholic Church, subject to the Bishop of Rome, has the same constitution as that given her by Christ when He said to St. Peter, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I shall build my Church.” She has the same foundation as the one and only Church in England until the substitution of himself by Henry VIII. as the founda…
Is the Wesleyan religion not above board because the minister’s Manse is not open to public inspection? If women wish to live bad lives, could they not obtain such lives without bothering to enter convents, renouncing money and all worldly pleasures? The last thing an immorally inclined woman would think of would be to enter a c…
Granting that priests do have the power to forgive sins in the name of God, what advantage does confessing one’s sins to a priest have over confessing directly to God in private prayer?
The state holds the marriage to be valid in state law. And all Catholics hold the marriage to be civilly legal. But the state says nothing whatever about God’s view of the matter, and the Catholic Church declares the marriage null and void before God, and therefore in conscience. Even after that declaration, if the parties do no…
If I could not, that would but prove something wrong with my own ideas on the subject. For it is certain that God is loving, just, and merciful; and He has revealed that there is a hell. So the ideas cannot be repugnant. However God’s love, justice, and mercy demand that there be a hell. His love demands a hell, for the more He …
That is not true. The Catholic Church has never fostered mixed marriages, and barely tolerates them when she can do nothing else.
No. Some Catholic individuals have lost their own spirituality through political ambition, but this does not affect the Church. Christ promised that His Church would never go wrong, not that individuals in the Church would never go wrong. You cannot argue from bad fish in a net to the rottenness of the net. A very good net can h…
Purgatory is not a final destiny. Every soul that goes there is saved, and is ultimately admitted to the very Vision of God. Good Protestants as well as good Catholics will go there if they are not quite perfect at death. There is no dispensation. And where is the man who has not his imperfections?
I know of many Nuns who have left, even at times with a dispensation from final vows. Some were sane before they left, and remained sane after they left. Some were not quite well-balanced before they entered, were discovered not to be eminently sane, and were sent away without being allowed to take their final vows, or, if they …
Before you existed your consent could hardly be requested. Also I would not need to be asked if someone offered to invest a few thousand dollars for me before I was able to be consulted. Yet the gift of life with a prospect of eternal happiness is more valuable than any earthly fortune. After all, if God permitted original sin, …
The Pope is not carried in procession like some Eastern tyrant. He is carried in procession according to the custom proper to Popes. Would Christ permit Himself to be treated in such a way? Christ never refused any tribute to His divinity. He let people worship Him; a woman anoint His feet; the people of Jerusalem enter Jerusale…
If there be a conflict between the two interests, I put Church first. God comes before Caesar. The Church, as the Kingdom of God, is more important than any earthly kingdom. No country has rights against God. And in our own case, if there be a question of soul and body, the soul is the more important, and the body must give way …
Catholic Churches are still more open, and for longer hours. But convents are not churches, nor are they public institutions. They are the private homes of ladies who wish to live together in the service of God.
The Church has always consistently used what power she has in the cause of the worker. With the very rise of the present industrialism Pope Leo XIII. insisted on the rights of labor in a series of almost revolutionary Encyclicals. He insisted that in justice the workers must receive wages that not only provide moderate comforts …
It is possible precisely because we are mortal men and He is Almighty God. What is sin? Sin is a crime, and crime is a breaking of the law. Now God created us, and He certainly has the right to lay down laws according to which we must conduct ourselves. If men will not obey those laws they sin against God just as those who refus…
Natural religion is simply the religion a man would be obliged to practice, even if he never received a revelation from God. Man could know by reason alone that there is a God and that He must be acknowledged by a worship dictated by reason as to its form, and by obedience to the natural moral law as manifested by conscience. Bu…
Yes. Historically, it is certain that Christ really lived, really claimed to be God, proved that claim by His supreme command over the laws of nature established by God, taught the Christian religion, and obliged man to accept that religion. Philosophically, Christianity alone gives an adequate solution and explanation of the or…
Very often. But there is this difference. The Catholic who does not understand Protestantism does not know the wrong thing. The Protestant who does not know Catholicism does not know the right thing. I personally know both, having been brought up in Protestantism, which I renounced in favor of Catholicism.
Original sin does not brand you with the positive guilt of actual and personal malice. It is a privation of a grace and of a destiny to which no human being has a natural right. God offered that destiny to Adam and to all his children, regarding Adam as head of the human family. Were you a married man with a family, I could cert…
There are things in the New Testament just as hard to believe as many things in the Old Testament, and on your principle you should reject much of the New Testament itself. Yet let us act on your admission that you do accept the New Testament. Christ and the Apostles had the same Old Testament as we have today. They treat it alw…
Protestantism was not a true reformation of the Church. The identity of the Church is indissolubly linked with a continuous identity of doctrine, worship, and discipline. The so-called Reformation involved the abolition of essential doctrines, worship, and discipline, substituting completely different and humanly invented altern…
God is a spiritual, substantial, personal being, infinite in intelligence, in will, and in all perfection, absolutely simple or lacking composition, immutable, happy in Himself and by Himself, and infinitely superior to all that is or can be conceived apart from Himself. He is incomprehensible in His infinite perfection by all l…
He may read the correct Word of God in those translations which are approved by the Church. He is forbidden to read the Protestant versions in which there are many mistranslations, and in which the text is often distorted to suit the enemies of the Catholic Church. But then, distorted texts are no longer the Word of God.
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