The Church1 min read
The concern of the Church is deep where the wrongs of the workers are concerned, and it has been uttered in anything but vague and general terms. Here are Pope Leo’s words: “It has come to pass that working men have been given over, isolated and defenceless, to the callousness of employers and the greed of unrestrained competiti…
Moral Life2 min read
They may have given that service in the past. You overlook that service, and see only their present wealth. But what obligation does civic service involve? A man is obliged to preserve the individual life God gives him, and if work is necessary for that, he is obliged to work. But if he is already provided for by lawful means, h…
Other Christians & Religions1 min read
There are many men such as Joseph McCabe who have given up their profession of a belief in God. But, they do not give up that belief because Agnosticism offers them a higher and holier life. They find Agnosticism less irksome, whether it be by emancipation from moral laws, or from the restraints of truth and logic. Nor should yo…
Sacraments & Worship1 min read
Yes. We call it the Limbo of unbaptized children. The word Limbo is derived from the Latin word Limbus, which means a bordering place. Limbo is an intermediate state of purely natural happiness. In that state unbaptized children will receive all the happiness proportionate to their natural capacity.
The Church1 min read
Christ did not say, “Learn of Me to be a man of great learning,” but to be “meek and humble of heart.” His religion was not intended to turn out men of great learning, but to turn out men of Christian virtue. Men have been endowed by God with brains for the acquiring of ordinary learning, and that learning is the fruit of deep s…
Sacraments & Worship1 min read
That is true. That offering of Christ in the Eucharist is known as the Mass, and the Mass is the Sacrifice of the New Law.
The Church1 min read
Bigotry is blind zeal. It is not bigotry to say that a thing cannot be true if its opposite is proved to be correct. Truth must exclude error.
Moral Life1 min read
A satisfactory explanation could scarcely be given, were this life all. But it is not. God permits these things only because He knows that there is a future life where He will rectify and compensate all inequalities. In the meantime He draws good out of these miseries, for they teach men not to set their hopes entirely upon this…
Moral Life1 min read
You are forgetting your own principles. We must do right always because right is right. If we do not, we shall be punished by God precisely because the right was right and we should have done it. It belongs to God to adjust all seeming inequalities in the next world, but that in no way exempts man from his present duties. Men mu…
The Church1 min read
That is not true. Non-Catholics, who are unaware of their errors and who are not subjects of the Church, do not incur the penalty of excommunication. I wonder what you would say of St. Paul’s words, “I have already judged . . . with the power of Our Lord Jesus Christ … to deliver him that hath so done … to Satan.” 1 Cor. V., 3-5…
The Church1 min read
That does not follow. A socialistic form of government may be quite wrong n itself, as violating the essential rights of man.
The Church1 min read
That again is just untrue enough to give a perfectly false impression. The Pope says that the worker may and should do all that is lawful in order to secure the fair treatment due to him. But even after a man has done all that he can, there will always be some troubles, and the Pope rightly says to the worker as to every Christi…
Moral Life1 min read
This is not always the case. However, when this does occur, it is not difficult to understand. The godless do not deserve to be invited to share with Christ in a life of suffering. Also, all men do some good in life sometimes. No one is entirely evil. God’s justice rewards natural good, therefore, by natural prosperity, and that…
Sacraments & Worship1 min read
If no law spiritual governs marriage, why did Christ say, “But I say unto you that whosoever shall put away his wife and marry another committeth adultery”? Christ was not the civil ruler, and He had said explicitly, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” If marriage belongs solely to civil authority, Christ woul< have…
The Church1 min read
The Catholic Church is not a kingdom of this world. It is the Kingdom of Christ in this world. And the Pope as Pope is not monarch of the Church in any national sense. No national considerations sway his rule over the millions of Catholics of every race and clime. He has temporal authority to-day in Vatican City, but that is mer…
Moral Life2 min read
It is far from strange. Australia was colonized chiefly by Protestants. And because 75 per cent, of the population happens to be derived from Protestant forbears you prove, not that the Catholic Church is wrong, but only that the majority in this country happens to be Protestant. Again, this Protestant majority has not become Ca…
Moral Life1 min read
Yes. When the Pharisees complained to Christ that His disciples did not fast, He replied that they did not whilst He was with them, but that they would when He had gone from them. Mk. II., 18. Now the Catholic Church, ordered by Christ to teach all nations whatsoever Christ had said to her, tells us that at certain times we must…
Moral Life2 min read
In Matt. V., 26, Christ, in condemning sin, speaks of liberation only after expiation. “Thou shalt not go out from thence till thou repay the last farthing.” In Matt. XII., 32, He speaks of sin which “shall not be forgiven either in this world or in the world to come.” Any remission of the effects of sin in the next world can re…
The Church1 min read
Catholics are human beings with souls devoted to the service of God according to their Catholic Faith, yet with bodies which link them with this world, and render them subject to social relations and duties. These duties are regulated to a great extent by civil law, and Catholics do their share as citizens in the making of those…
Sacraments & Worship1 min read
The natural law of morality does not forbid it, nor has God directly given a positive law in the matter. It is a disciplinary law of the Catholic Church, and a very grave one. The Church could suspend the law, and permit Cremation in certain circumstances, as in the case of an epidemic or in war time. But normally she insists up…
Moral Life1 min read
It is. Catholic schools were once maintained out of the ordinary taxation derived from Catholics. In England Catholics receive back their own share of the taxes in the shape of government support for their schools. But in America the government uses Catholic taxes for its own state system, and forces the Catholics to pay over ag…
Sacraments & Worship1 min read
The cases are not parallel. If a man enters that state which God ordains as the essential unit of society for the multiplication of the race, and if within that state he puts into operation those forces God intends to result in children, he is bound to accept the children in a spirit of service primarily to God, and secondarily …
The Church1 min read
The principles of the Catholic Church are not man-made, nor can her constitution, given her by Christ, ever be changed. But just as many small by-laws can be made and repealed in a country without any essential constitutional change, so in the Catholic Church special disciplinary laws can be enacted at special times to meet spec…
Mary, Saints & Angels1 min read
I accuse the founders of no conscious error. But I say that the system, whilst not positively teaching Satanic doctrine, is truly an agent of the devil rather than of Christ in so far as it omits religious formation as an integral part of its program. The child may be taught to be outwardly respectable, but he finds no adequate …
