Reflection on the New Evangelisation

The trumpeting of the need for a New Evangelisation is a more than tacit acknowledgement that the novel project of the Second Vatican Councol failed. If we are to state that the objectives of the New Evangelisation are to present the Faith in a modern way for modern man, either the Council has not been implemented (however with much destruction) or it tended to disaster. On no possibility do the Roman Pontiffs emerge immune from culpability. 

Reflection on Racism

To the explicit racist and the race hustler pertain the same species of malice, where the most bitter animus is projected upon the perceived threat of another grouping. Both are alike tinged with self-righteous indignation yet the latter is all the more dangerous for appearing pure and often in the elitist of circles.  

The Fathers Speak...The Person of the Holy Spirit and the Filioque

Saint John Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa

''Likewise we believe also in one Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life . . . God existing and addressed along with Father and Son; uncreated, full, creative, all-ruling, all-effecting, all-powerful, of infinite power, Lord of all creation and not under any lord; deifying, not deified; filling, not filled; sharing in, not shared in; sanctifying, not sanctified; the intercessor, receiving the supplications of all; in all things like to the Father and Son; proceeding from the Father and communicated through the Son''

Reflection on the Sacraments

The sacraments have been fittingly ordained for the wayfarer in a redeemed world. While they purify the soul they cleanse the senses. They not only effect what they signify but they are constant reminders of how matter should be used, that is, in honouring the beauty and goodness of God whose secrets are made manifest by the things that are. 

Reflection on the Pope and the Faith

If you hang on to every word of the Roman Pontiff to discover what the latest attitude of the Church is, you have gone astray from Catholicism and instead have joined an esoteric cult. 

Reflection on Charity

Charity is the sweetness that transforms all other actions into great virtues inclining them to their only worthy end in God, the Supreme Charity. If man has not charity, all seemingly commendable acts are reduced to vice. The purification that is charity makes a man a companion of God and a true lover of self. 

Reflection on Religion as Divisive

The cardinal virtue of religion is that it is divisive. It separates good from evil, the elect from the reprobate, justice from oppression, heaven from hell, God from Satan. A unity without regard to these categories is a sham and a greater mythology than they could very accuse us of. 

Reflection on Individuality

The amusing aspect about the cult of individuality is that there is a parade of like minded souls parroting the same lines about choice and creativity unaware they each so mimics the other that none knows who has originated the trite catchphrases they incessantly declaim.

Reflection on Good Friday

From the eternal Father was begotten in the most intimate manner the Son, the perfect image and Word of the First. The entire divine nature was communicated to Him without lapse of time nor numerical division. The principle that goodness is diffusive of itself is persevered and perfected in the immanent notional acts. It was therefore not necessary at all for God to create anything as He was sufficient in the one society of the Blessed Trinity, lacking nothing and possessing all. He brought us forth not according to any essential emanation of His divine nature but according to the order of His absolute free and sovereign will. There was no compulsion in this decree which had its effect in time, as though God had a moral imperative to bring forth creatures to share in His essential goodness. It was not better that God should create. It pertained to His liberality and was merely fitting that we should be formed from nothing. His absolute will was subject to nothing other than His wisdom and justice.

 On Good Friday, we contemplate the binding of the God for the sake of those He created freely and with the utmost ease. There was no strain in creation. Even though the cosmos was brought forth from no pre-existing subject, and we were the most purest of potentialities, by a single decree of His divine will, all began to exist with time. With in the beginning, God gained nothing. In the fullness of time , He lost everything. The power that said 'Let there be light' and the light was made, descended into the darkness. The hands that could stretch across the horizon, directing, governing and moulding all that He brought forth freely, are now bound and He is left only to groan and writhe. The lifeless earth trembled while He who is essential Life, fell silent.    

The Doctors Speak

From the last good Jesuit besides Louis Cardinal Billot:

''God wanted man to know him somehow through his creatures and since no creature could fittingly reflect the infinite perfection of the Creator, he multiplied his creatures and gave a certain goodness and perfection to each of them so that from them we could judge the goodness and perfection of the Creator, who embraces infinite perfection in the perfection of his one and utterly simple essence, just as a gold coin contains the value of many copper coins. My soul, when anything seems wonderful strikes your eye or your thought, make it a ladder to recognise the Creator's perfection which is incomparably greater and more wonderful. This way created objects which have become a 'snare to the feet of the unwise' (Wis 14:11), as the Book of Wisdom teaches, will not mislead you but will teach you; they will not cast you down but direct you upward toward better things. Therefore, if you encounter gold or silver or jewels, you will say in your heart, ''My God is more precious, who promised to give me himself if I despise these things.'' If you marvel at kingdoms and earthly empires, say in your heart, ''How much greater is the kingdom of heaven which endures forever and which God, who does not lie, promised to those who love him.'' If pleasures and delights begin to titillate your sensuality, say in your heart, ''The pleasure of the spirit is much more enjoyable than the pleasure of the flesh, and intellectual delights are much more enjoyable than those of the belly.'' The first come from a perishable creature, the second come from the God of all consolation. He who tastes the latter can say with the Apostle, ''I am filled with comfort, and I overflow with joy in all our troubles'' (2 Cor 7:4). Finally, if you are offered something beautiful, new, unusual, great, or wonderful on condition that you desert your God, answer serenely, ''Whatever good they possess and much more and better are beyond doubt to be found in God.'' Therefore, it would be useless to trade a gilded coin for gold, glass for a precious gem, little for much, the uncertain for the certain, and the temporal for the eternal.

The Doctors Speak

St. Robert Bellarmine

''Now it is the time for us to go up as well as we can to the fountain of wisdom. Ecclesiasticus says, 'the word of God on high is the fountain of wisdom'' (Sir 1:5). He rightly says ''on high'', because the fountain of wisdom richly and profusely flows out not only to the holy angels and to the souls of the blessed who live in heaven, but to us who are engaged as pilgrims in this desert, there comes not wisdom but a certain mist or scent of wisdom.
 For this reason, my soul, do not for now seek higher than you should. Do not be a 'searcher of majesty'' lest you ''shall be overwhelmed by glory'' (Prv 25:27). Wonder at his wisdom about which the Apostle Paul says, ''God who alone is wise'' (Rom 16:27). Congratulate the blessed spirits who drink from the fountain of wisdom, and although they cannot fully grasp God, which is a property restricted to the very fountain of wisdom itself, still they look into the face of God, the first cause, not covered by any veil, and understand aright all things in the flashes of his splendor. In that noonday light of wisdom they do not fear the darkness of error nor the obscurity of ignorance nor the fog of opinions.
 Aspire after this happiness: to obtain it with certainty, love with your whole heart the Lord Jesus Christ, ''in whom are hidden all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge'' of God (Col 2:3). He himself said in his Gospel, ''He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him'' (Jn 14:21). What does ''I will manifest myself to him'' mean except that ''I will manifest all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God which lie within me?'' Certainly every man by nature desires to know, and although in many people fleshly concupiscence now in a way puts this desire to sleep, still when we shall have put aside our body which decays and which now weighs down the soul, then the fire of this desire will blaze out beyond all other desires. How great will be your happiness, O soul, when Christ your beloved and lover shows you all the treasures of the knowledge and wisdom of God? Strive to keep the commandments of Christ so that you do not cheat yourself of this great hope. He said, ''If anyone love me, he will keep my word'' (Jn 14:23, 24). Meantime, let your wisdom be that which holy Job describes when he says, ''The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding;; (Jb 28:28). Recognise that any good you see in creatures flows from God, who is the fountain of goodness, so that you can learn with Blessed Francis to taste that fountain of goodness as it flows in individual creatures as in streamlets'' - ''God is the Fountain of Wisdom'', in ''The Mind's Ascent to God by the Ladder of Created Things''

Reflection on Reading as a Devotion

The driest and most dense tome of metaphysics may furnish as many graces and as much illumination as the reading of any spiritual text by the most mystical of ascetics for the one who is well disposed to discover God in all truth.

Reflection on the Cause of Evil

The very possibility of evil arises from the quality of all things besides the divine essence. Defectibility is an intrinsic and necessary possibility of all that is composed of act and potency. Goodness which is convertible with being is the material and accidental efficient cause of evil as without a subject in which to inhere it could not even be known.

Reflection on Thomist Metaphysics

Perhaps the key principle in Thomist metaphysics is that of the real distinction between act and potency. This principle readily presents itself to the mind and is fundamental if one wishes to distinguish the Actus Purus Who is God and the corruptible cosmos of creatures. The failure to have even any implicit understanding of this axiom will shatter not only a solid understanding of metaphysics or natural philosophy but will unhappily extend to every treatise possible of Sacred Theology. Grace, predestination, the human will and even the immanent notional acts of the Divine Trinity will be devastated. A sound cognisance of metaphysics will cover for a multitude of theological errors.

Reflection on the Fundamentals of Faith

The mystery of the Blessed Trinity and the Redemptive Incarnation are the fundamental dogmas of our Catholic Faith without which the while edifice of belief would crumble. Prescinding from these would lead us to a naturalistic philosophy based on sentiment and would not be more divine than any other fabrication of a lonely and needy soul. To put aside these dogmas as though they were hindrances to dialogue is to strip man of anything that could possibly save him and those he claims to love.

Reflection on Conscience

Conscience must be defined as knowledge of the natural law applied to some particular instance. It is foolish to give it a unique place in human judgement if we are to consider it instead as some form of manufactured imposition of one's preferences onto reality. What is pleasant and endearing should not necessarily be sealed with the sanction of individual conscience.

Reflection on Religious Liberty

Religious liberty necessarily is conducive to suppression of religion in the public sphere. While it attempts to protect individual freedom from coercion it reduces all religions to the same level of irrelevance. From the ashes of a fallen Christendom, a pathetic carcass of secular morality rises up due to the absence of a vital Catholicism. When all that matters is not the truths of religion but the mere option to choose, it should cause no surprises that when the content of one of these systems demands a bit too much to be comfortable for the rest, it will be ruthlessly put down.

Instead of promoting the rights of God, we have falsely adopted the right of man to form his own understanding of reality, which is of no more validity than anyone else's.

Reflection on Repentance

The vital difference between attrition and perfect contrition is that the former consists in how sin afflicts man while the latter considers how sin offends the All-Holy God. Only the saints have breached the chasm between the two. Sanctification may be said to be found in the transition from the first to the second.

Reflection on Traditional Catholicism

We must not foster a common notion that traditional Catholicism is intrinsically linked to various pet conspiracy theories incidental to the actual Faith. Too often "adherents" of our movement have made fools of themselves and the Catholic Faith by attributing divine approval and decree to what is frankly ridiculous and belongs in no way to the Deposit of Revelation.

Reflection on "Only God can Judge Me"

Those who proclaim "Only God can judge me" in the face of public criticism should remember that the former is a far stricter and more truthful Judge than any ignorant passerby.