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Do you think anyone is Vikely to pay §7,500 to enter a Death Order when one can so easily commit suicide for nothing? People do not save up cash for the joy of committing luxurious suicide! But let me explain the real facts. The Carmelite Nuns have to live. But according to their rule their life is devoted chiefly to the salvati…
If that were so, will you blame me for denying myself what you admit to b8 a happiness? However supernatural happiness more than compensates me for the loss of that natural happiness. No word of mine could make you think that I am gloomy or miserable. And I am sure that your estimate of me will make you admit that there is at le…
Do Catholics confess all the sordid details of their sins to the priest?
No. State laws control men in their capacity as citizens of the state. But a Priest does not hear confessions in his capacity as a citizen of the state. He is acting, not as a human being, but as an agent of God. You might as well oblige God, since He knows all things, to reveal all crimes to the police. The Priest would never h…
It is probably as new as the evidence the sciences of astronomy and geology have been able to provide. Before the evidence of geological stratification was available men could but conjecture. Some were erroneously of the opinion that they could calculate the age of creation from the Bible, but the Church has never embodied anyth…
That is but a concession to an unbelieving rationalism. And it is quite against the Word of God. Scripture insists that they are personal beings. Christ said, “Their angels always see the face of my Father, who is in heaven.” Matt. XVIII., 10. Messages and influences are not permanent, and don’t see. St. Peter says, “God spared …
The doctrine is contained in Christ’s words to St. Peter, and the early Church was well aware of the fact. TertuUian, about the year 200 A.D. wrote concerning St. Paul’s rebuke to St. Peter, “If Peter was rebuked by Paul, it was certainly for a fault in conduct, not in teaching.” St. Cyprian, about 256, wrote of the See of Rome,…
It is impossible to do so. But if some individuals seem to lack charity you will find that such conduct is opposed to the teachings of their Church. Such bitterness is not justifiable, and arises from human weakness and lack of self-control. But bitterness is not common amongst Catholics, though they suffer much from anti-Cathol…
The more you learn about diverse opinions, the more you will wonder at such diversity. The more you learn about the foundations of Christianity, the more you will wonder that men do not advert to its solidity.
I presume you are High Church because you think it right, and not Low Church because you think that wrong. If you think them equally right there is no reason why you should insist that you are High Church rather than Low Church. You could not defend your own position without criticizing the position you cannot accept.
That is a great compliment to the Catholic Church, when we consider the conditions others lay down as the basis of reunion. For it means that she is doing more than any other church to keep intact the religion entrusted to her by Christ, and that she steadily refuses to let her heart run away with her head by admitting that what…
Here is a dictionary definition with which I agree. Socialism is the name given to any one of various schemes for regenerating society chiefly by a more equal distribution of property possessed and regulated by state authority.
It is the Catholic Church, a Church which has its headquarters at Rome, subjection to the Bishop of Rome being the test of true Catholicity. Anglicans, or at least some of them, would like to pretend that we have the Roman form of Catholicity, and that they have the English form. But this is mere pretense. The Catholic Church is…
The present-day poverty is not due to the Cathedrals which were built long ago by others, who gave their time and services as a voluntary offering to God. The poverty due to modern industrial conditions should not be attributed to buildings erected in other and happier ages. Meantime those beautiful Cathedrals do no harm to men.…
He did not die that the unmitigated sensuality of these civilized times might continue. St. Paul chastised his body and brought it into subjection, and said that those that are Christ’s have crucified their flesh with its concupiscences. Do people crucify the flesh with cocktails and comic operas, soft linen and other luxuries, …
He must have Baptism at least of desire; he must be ignorant of the fact that the Catholic Church is the only true Church; he must not be responsible for that ignorance by deliberately neglecting to inquire when doubts have perhaps come to him about his position; and he must die with perfect contrition for his sins, and with sin…
What is science? It is knowledge proved by strictly logical demonstration from facts or from evident principles. In religion we start from the historical fact of revelation, and from principles guaranteed by God. By strictly logical demonstration we prove exactly what must be believed and what must be done if we desire to fulfil…
You will not get very far that way. Christ never said, “Blessed is the man who thinks for himself, for of such is the kingdom of Heaven.” If Christ has done the thinking for you on a given subject, all you have to do is to accept His teaching. How will you find it? He has left an authorized Church. Use your reason in order to di…
They should behave just as they would otherwise. If a Catholic did do a bad thing by employing a Mason, who are his fellow Catholics to judge him and inflict a penalty? They must leave that to God. But, as I have said, a Catholic does not do any evil by employing a Mason. In purely business matters we Catholics object to being a…
It would be arrogance did I pretend to be the legislator. But it is not when 1 simply declare what God demands. He, as Creator, has full rights over His creatureSj and the right to make conditions upon which they may use the faculties He gave them, forbidding their use in a way which offends and insults Him.
No. In his Encyclical Letter, Quadragesimo Anno, of May, 1931, Pope Pius XI. says that “all candidates for the sacred priesthood must be adequately prepared by an intense study of social matters. It is particularly necessary that those specially devoted to this work should show themselves to be endowed with a keen sense of justi…
Alone it will not. But since the Catholic Church is the true Church which Christ commands us to hear, the conscious and deliberate rejection of her dogmas can forfeit salvation.
One should follow a right conscience. But conscience can be warped just as xny other judgment. Therefore a man needs some test by which he can know his conscience is true. What is that test? He must see whether his conscience squares with the known law of God. The Church tells us clearly that law in this matter, and once we know…
When their bodies rise from the grave, each soul will be re-united with its own proper body, the body sharing the fate merited for it by the soul. On that last day, of course, which will be the day of judgment for all mankind, purgatory will cease to exist. Our Lord tells us that there will be but two sentences. Matt. XXV., 34-4…
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