67 articles from the existing collection.
All childbirth involves some risk, and the merely possible danger would not oblige abstinence. Childbearing, too, is normally accompanied by pain. It is an inescapable penalty. “In sorrow she shall bring forth children.” Christ Himself has said that a woman, when she is in labor, is in distress; but that her sorrow is turned to …
Yes, according to the right interpretation of that expression. God says that that is how things began, and He must know. Thus we read, “My son, look upon heaven and earth, and all that is in them, and consider that God made them out of nothing, and mankind also.” II. Mach. VII., 28.
The appeal to the gallery in the mention of a menagerie and town, and then the omission of all names except crawlers, jumpers, and creepers, is evident. “This God stood by,” is another little lapse. Ingersoll falls down on the simplest Hebraism. The whole passage means that God gave Adam a knowledge suitable to man’s estate, and…
It has never been revealed that any particular soul is in hell. Christ said of Judas, “Better for him had he never been born.” That does not look too hopeful in his case, for no matter what a man has to endure, if he attains eternal happiness in the end, much better to have been born. However, even of Judas, no man has absolute …
Yes. In Gen. III., 15, God said to Satan, “I will put enmities between thee and the woman … thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” The radical enmity between Satan and that second Eve, the Mother of Christ, forbids her having been under the dominion of Satan, as she would have been had she ever contracted original sin in actual f…
Science has nothing very definite to say on the subject, and in any case, the age of the human race cannot be calculated from the Bible. I certainly believe the Bible account in its own proper sense. As far as that account is concerned, man could have been on the earth a hundred thousand years. No one can say with certainty exac…
Yes. Baptism was instituted by Christ for the destruction of original sin, and to restore that grace forfeited by our first parents which is absolutely necessary for the attaining of our eternal destiny. Christ Himself insisted that one must be born again of water and the Holy Ghost
Out of the past what? Man has evolved in many things. God meant him to do so. But he did not evolve out of nothing. Evolution supposes something evolving. We are forced to admit a Creator. If you will not admit that, you will have nothing turning its non-existent self into something.
I have never said that the Church legislates only in spiritual matters. Men are not purely spiritual beings, and in our composite nature, spiritual legislation must in some way affect our material being. The laws of the Church cover material things in so far as they affect our spiritual welfare. There is nothing spiritual about …
Genesis does not say that. It is impossible to calculate the age of the earth from the Book of Genesis. It could be millions of years old, without the Mosaic account being affected.
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…
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, …
Yes. Granted absolutely nothing, nothing could ever be at all. Nothing could never become something. Nothing has nothing to work upon, and no faculties with which to operate. We are therefore forced to admit an eternal God.
We are bound to believe that Eve was formed from Adam. It is revealed doctrine that “God hath made of one all mankind.” Acts XVII., 26. “For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man.” I. Cor. XL, 8. Nor has reason anything to say to the contrary. It is as easy for God to make a woman that way as to make Adam from th…
That would not be creation, but mutation of existent being. But God could not become what He was not before. Finite being cannot be made out of infinite being any more than infinite being can be made out of finite being.
No. God’s creative activity terminates in good only. But the soul cannot normally be infused into a child of Adam without its contracting the privation of the original gratuitous gifts it was destined to receive had Adam not fallen. I say normally because God did anticipate the merits of Christ in one case, preventing the soul o…
That so many have accepted the evolutionary theory does not make it true. If it were against God’s revelation the Catholic Church would condemn it no matter how many held it. The number who hold an error could never influence the Catholic Church; nor does she mind whether her decision be popular or not. She is concerned with wha…
When Christ promised that He would give His very flesh to eat, the Jews protested because they imagined a natural and cannibalistic eating of Christ’s body. Christ refuted this notion of the manner in which His flesh was to be received by saying that He would ascend into Heaven, not leaving His body in its human form upon earth.…
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…
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