293 articles from the existing collection.
It would not matter if the Bible did not forbid them. Not every detail of Christian practice is there. Christ gave the Church the power to make such legislation as she might think necessary at various times. However that God does not approve mixed marriages between people with the true religion and people without it is clear fro…
Ingersoll, as usual, makes many mistakes. Firstly, he forgot the theocratic nature of the nation of the Jews at that time. God was the direct ruler of the Jews, and idolatry was going over to the king’s enemies, and an act of treason, even in the temporal order. And God has full rights over life and death. Secondly, if Ingersoll…
CHAPTER 11. — PENANCE AND CONFESSION.
Would you condemn a whole family as criminal because one child went wrong? An unworthy Priest does not inspire you with half the indignation he inspires in Catholic hearts. But try to grasp this principle. I have never undertaken to defend the conduct of every individual Priest. Nor, for a moment, would I wish to defend the evil…
If everything is clean and upright in your own home, why do you not throw it open to public inspection, instead of regarding it as private premises? Why not ask all passers-by, complete strangers, to walk in and inspect your private rooms? If I came to your house and told you that I suspected you of leading an evil life, and tha…
Every human being has a conscience which dictates a natural law of moral obligation at least when he comes to the age of reason. If a pagan knows nothing of Christianity, and is ignorant of it through no fault of his own, he can at least repent of his personal sins against his conscience, and desire to do the right thing. God gi…
No. The Catholic Church is the greatest Church of all, and has preserved her unity despite her vast expansion. Those smaller Churches, on the other hand, which adopted national languages are divided one from the other; are national in character; and are splitting up into innumerable sects as their doctrines change with every cha…
Because they love their self-chosen life. Not one of the Nuns would have entered unless she had chosen to do so. Nor is any Nun allowed to take her final vows until after at least four years of experience of the life to see whether she is satisfied even after entering. You might as well suggest that no married woman remains fait…
The substance of Christ’s body is not subject to processes of digestion or to any chemical reactions. The qualities of bread of course behave in their normal way, undergoing a change as they are affected by digestion. Our Lord’s substantial presence ceases as these qualities cease to retain those characteristics proper to bread.
Such considerations cannot affect the question. They are based upon the evil principle that the end can justify the means. You think you have a good purpose-let there be less of us to enjoy more. With this good end in view, you think to justify birth-control even though by immoral means! It cannot be done. The Church can never t…
If the child is brought up as a Protestant it has the same chance as any Protestant in similar circumstances from other points of view. If brought up as a Catholic, it has the additional helfs of the Catholic religion just as any other Catholic child, except that it has the bad example of a non-Catholic parent ignoring obligatio…
Priestcraft is the product of man’s imagination, superstition, and perhaps fear. But priestcraft has nothing to do with the Catholic Church. The Catholic priesthood, a very different thing, is of divine institution, as can be proved to the hilt.
Who told you that the vows were dreadful? Have you tried them? I have taken exactly the same vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as the Nuns, and they are no more difl&cult for a Nun to keep than for myself. I do not find them dreadful. And the evidence of one who has experienced a thing is worth the assertions of ten milli…
You cannot know of convent scandals, not because convents are closed to public inspection, but because the scandals don’t happen. That you must believe in such scandals until you see otherwise looks fairly hopeless, since you intend to keep your eyes tightly shut against any good in the Catholic Church at all.
They sacrifice their tresses as a sign that they renounce worldly vanity. Their habit is designed according to the rules of complete Christian modesty, and is most successful in warding off evil attention. Half-dress in a loose immodest fashion, and see the attention, and the kind of attention, that a girl will draw upon herself…
That remark shows that you do not understand the nature of Mass offerings at all. Priests do not sell Masses, and the people do not pay for Masses. The Mass cannot be bought or sold. Even were I to say that the Priest offers the Mass and is paid, not for the Mass, but for his time and services, any evil element such as you sugge…
No. A civil divorce was granted in 1920, and both parties had married again before the case was put to Rome in 1926.
I have said that they can know if they wish, for they will find an English translation of the Mass in their prayer books. But even if they could not know, the Latin prayers could win for them the graces requested. If a German friend prayed for you in German, would that prayer be useless because you do not understand German?
St. Paul does not say that a Bishop must be the husband of a wife, but insists upon the expression “one wife.” Had he meant that it was necessary to have a wife, he would have been violating the law himself. In the early Church, owing to the scarcity of single men eligible for the Priesthood, married men who wished to be ordaine…
She gives him right ideas of man’s true dignity, of the law of God, of the rewards and punishments attached to the keeping or breaking of that law. A good Catholic has also the special graces dispensed through the Mass and the Sacraments, absolution for past sins in confession, and Holy Communion, or the reception of Christ’s mo…
“The lips of the Priest shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth.” Mai. II., 7. The married state is not exempt from God’s laws, and the Priests must know those laws. Every Priest studies all the possible duties of marriage from a moral point of view during a long course of theology before he enters a Confe…
I am not. But you are blind to the innate immorality of contraceptive practices, and your reasons are based upon expediency only. And if what is expedient is going to be lawful, then goodbye to morality. Slanderers of the Catholic Church have accused her of teaching the frightful doctrine that the end justifies the means. The Ch…
There is more than sufficient warrant for convent life in Sacred Scripture. But even were the only warrant to be found in Catholic traditions, that surely would be quite a natural place to seek a warrant for a Catholic custom. Where else would you want me to find a warrant for it? In Totemism?
Christ was baptized as an adult because only then did He institute this essential rite of the New Law. You could not expect Him to receive it before instituting it. Yet remember that He had received the rite of Circumcision which is figurative of the Baptism to be received by Christian children, and that rite He received in infa…
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