605 articles from the existing collection.
No. Long hypocritical prayers are condemned. Prayer may be prolonged, but it must not be hypocritical, mechanical, or insincere. Christ said, “We ought always to pray, and not to faint.” Lk. XVIIL, 1. Again, “Watch ye therefore, praying at all times.” Lk. XXL, 36. He himself “went out into a mountain to pray, and he passed the w…
All the faith in the world could not save a sinner who intends to go on sinning. A man must repent of his sins, and try to live a good life.
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 follows that meat is not evil in itself, and that the Church does not forbid meat on Fridays because she thinks that meat will defile men. That should be evident from the fact that the Church permits meat on other days, as she could not do if she believed meat to be evil. Therefore it must be a question of the day, and not of…
It would be. But no mingle mangle occurs in the baptism of children. Mingle mangle means a meaningless jumble of formulas. But every least item in the baptismal rite is full of meaning and significance. And it is to God’s honor and glory to use the holy ceremonies instituted by the Church of Christ with the authority of Christ. …
That may be true of many Protestants who know that their ministers forbid such things unreasonably, and therefore give up going to church at all. It does not affect Catholics. We have easily the largest number of church-going people, even though we refuse to adopt the man-made prescriptions of Protestant ministers.
No. The command as given by Moses in the Name of God to the Jews was that the Sabbath, and not Saturday, should be kept holy. The word Sabbath means rest. The law includes two elements; one essential, that one day in seven should be dedicated to God; the other ceremonial, that the particular day should be chosen. The Jews select…
CHAPTER 6. — OUR FIRST PARENTS. — ORIGINAL SIN.
They are not inspired by love for Christ, or for the mother of Christ, or for Scripture in their doctrine. Their main desire is to maintain a doctrine differing from that of the Catholic Church. But it is a position, which is rapidly going out of fashion. Learned Protestant scholars to day deny as emphatically as any Catholic th…
We must all keep on praying as indefinitely as this life lasts. Always to pray and not to faint is Our Lord’s command. As for denying oneself indefinitely, many people do in this matter, and have to do so, when circumstances forbid anything else. Self-denial is burdensome. Children are burdensome. The choice allowed by God depen…
Some Protestants believe that. Many do not. Good Protestants can be saved, but if they are good they are Protestants in good faith who have the will to do God’s will, and are not Catholics merely because they do not realize their obligation to join the true Church.
It is to be found whole and entire only in the Catholic Church, as a Church, for the Catholic Church is holy in her Founder, in her teachings, worship and discipline, and can alone inspire a completely Christian spirit in men of goodwill. This, however, does not imply that every member of the Catholic Church is holy. Many, to th…
Sincere religion spells freedom—freedom from vice, from all injustice and want of charity. There is no absolute freedom. You must be free from vice and subject to virtue, or free from virtue and subject to vice.
The term servile refers, not to the time spent in the work, but to the nature of the work. If the work is of a servile nature in itself, it cannot be done even for ten minutes without genuine necessity. If not servile of its very nature, it would not become servile if done for ten hours.
He has never dispensed from such laws as involve the principles of natural morality. The violation of some laws is wrong because God has forbidden a thing, or commanded some disciplinary measures. But contraception is not wrong because God forbids it. Rather God has forbidden it because it is wrong in itself; and God could not d…
Love of my mother would take me to the funeral; love of God would prevent me from joining in the rites of a false religion.
No. The Freemason may have no personal antipathy towards Catholics at all, and even if he had, the law is, “Do good to those who hate you.” If a competent Catholic applies for a position together with a Mason, a Catholic may employ his fellow Catholic by preference because he wants to do a good turn to a fellow Catholic from a m…
The Church devotes her energies to the assisting of men in their spiritual needs. But since they are human beings in this world, these spiritual needs are often bound up with earthly cares. For men’s bodily needs the Church has inspired the construction of institutions, homes, orphanages, and hospitals, throughout the world. In …
You are over-stating your case. The workers are not expected to be curs in any sense of the word. They should be reasonable enough to view the case as it is, instead of working themselves up into a fanaticism based upon fictitious and exaggerated description. They should be men enough to unite and labor by all lawful means to re…
The Irish element does not prevail. If the ten million Irishmen in the world were to die to-morrow the Catholic Church would not be affected as a Church. In this country the majority of Catholics are of Irish descent. But to judge from these local conditions is as absurd as the conduct of an Italian who would regard the world as…
Because Our Lord did not add those words to the prayer as He taught it There is nothing wrong with the words in themselves. In fact, they are very beautiful. But they are not Sacred Scripture. Some early Catholic copyists wrote those words in a margin; later copyists mistakenly transcribed them into the text; and the Protestant …
If you were true to the Bible, no one could prove you wrong. But you are most unbiblical. Your very system leaves you without any real proof that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. It cannot say what is the real sense of all that is contained in the Bible. It concentrates upon a few misinterpreted texts, and ignores the whol…
There would be, if I could take part in a religious service conducted in the name of a religion opposed to the Church established by Christ. It would be disloyalty to Christ, and I cannot sin even for the sake of my mother. She would not be my mother but for the love of God, and the more we appreciate God’s gifts the less right …
He may not make a false oath to anyone on behalf of anything. The mere fact of calling upon the God of truth to witness to a falsehood is a grave sin under any circumstances, and a sacrilege. NOT is this true only for a Catholic. It is true for any man at all. Every Catholic knows that it is never lawful to tell a deliberate lie…
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