Catholics From The United States

"To me it is an honor as well as a duty to defend him when so unjustly attacked, for in common with my fellow-Catholics all over the world I recognize in him the Vicar on earth of the Eternal Prince of Peace. I do not expect that my many non-Catholic friends will accept our belief, which is, however, so well grounded on the inspired words of Holy Scripture, regarding the Primacy of the Pope; but I would ask if it is too much to expect that they will do justice to his untiring efforts to secure peace and relieve some of the very distressing features of the war."

"No heresy has ever been so wholly and hopelessly false that it did not reflect at least some broken lights of truth. This we may rightly say of Socialism where truth and error, fact and fiction are forever blended in an indistinguishable confusion. What is good we must keep and perfect, what is wrong and evil we must relentlessly reject."

"Impartial observers of Indian affairs admit that the greatest good accomplished for the Indian has been through the agency of religious schools, and particularly of Catholic schools, and it is in this cause the Bureau has done its best work."

"Only those who unite scientific knowledge of morality with practice in its application may be trusted to solve promptly and safely problems of conscience. Personal, social, commercial, and political experience proves this abundantly. Moral education requires long, patient, and delicate training, and few acquire it without the aid of casuistry."

"No region has experienced so great changes within the last fifty years as has Western Pennsylvania."

"Ours is a decidedly non-philosophical, even anti-philosophical, age. This is not to say that we lack "philosophers," of a certain sort; indeed, we have only too many. ... While it may be the case that our age is more cerebral, more abstract, more preoccupied with brain power, with intellectual capacities and skills, than any other age in history, it remains true that we are not philosophical. Indeed, our very abstraction and preoccupation with intelligence is a sign of the "forgetfulness" of philosophy."

"Locke does not deny the existence of God or the truth of religion; indeed, he affirms these as indispensable, to the extent that atheists have to be excluded from toleration. What Locke does deny, ... is the actuality ... of any concrete, historical form that religion might take. But of course a religion cannot exist except concretely in history. If a religion, which means the effective manifestation of ultimate meaning, exists concretely in history, it necessarily makes a claim on me prior to my act of will, because it makes a claim on everything without exception. To recognize this claim is to see that actuality precedes potency, and if this is true ultimately, it will be true, so to speak, all the way down. And this will mean that freedom will necessarily have to be interpreted as sharing in actuality, a response to the good that precedes me and makes my choice of it possible; the actualizing of the will in this case comes to mean being brought into an actual world, a tradition, and a hierarchy of goods. Actual religion is therefore incompatible with an interpretation of freedom primarily as active power. Locke can affirm freedom as power only by transforming at the same time the status of religion. It can no longer be a single truth that precedes political agents, but it has to become an array of possibilities, any one of which individuals are free to accept, at least within the constraints of political order. Within these constraints, I am permitted to affirm any religion as true, and practice it thus in public, as long as I recognize that this has a new meaning that would strike an ancient thinker as confusing, if not simply confused: it is true "for me." Notice that the potentializing of religion in this way allows one to neutralize the implications of the existence of God without having to shoulder the burden of responsibility that would come with rejecting God outright. In short, the precondition for the emergence of the modern concept of freedom is not the denial of God, but the denial of his actual self-revelation in history. Modern liberty, at its core, is a rejection specifically of the incarnation, God's coming in the flesh."

"Contradiction constitutes the diabolical. ... The diabolical presents as essential what it simultaneously denies or renders impossible, so that we could say that it is the very essence of the diabolical, ontologically considered, to make "empty promises." The diabolical proffers an object of desire while at the same time undermining the conditions under which that object could be attained in actuality. It is not only perverse; it is perversity itself, because its turning toward what is other than itself is in fact nothing more than a turning toward itself. This is what we have meant by saying that it points in two directions at the same time: δια-βάλλω. The essential per-versity of the diabolical comes perhaps most intensely to light in the fact that it is, so to speak, precisely the nature of the diabolical to present just itself as the solution to the problem that it itself generates."

"This is the heart of the diabolical: an image that is not an image, but presents itself as the real thing—indeed, in a certain sense, as better than the real thing precisely because of the immediacy or the lack of transcendence that the dissemblance implies."

"The links between faith, the inherent dignity and rights of human beings, and a fair and peaceful society, were also understood by the founding fathers of the United States and these basic moral principles have shaped, over thousand of years, civilization."

"Because man has no relationship with anything—other people, the world, God—that is not mediated at some level through the will, a reinterpretation of the meaning of the will and its freedom will inevitably be what Nietzsche called a "revaluation of all values." What is at issue is not simply a new hierarchy of values, a replacement of higher values by things previously held in lower esteem, but indeed a transformation of what it means to value and be valuable tout court, ... a transformation of the meaning of goodness and its principal mode of manifestation. It has been said that Darwin's late modern interpretation of evolution stands as a "universal acid": the inner logic of his idea eats away at all other traditional ideas, not only on the biological level but also on all levels of human existence; it dissolves everything in its wake. One might say that the notion of modern liberty we are discussing is even more radical and therefore more subtle in its effects. It is not so much an acid as a sort of alchemical reagent. Instead of dissolving things, it leaves them standing, but eliminates their original essence, their native goodness, transforming realities into gold—that is, a conventional representation of value without any organic relation to its own given nature. There is nothing at all left untouched by this transformation."

"It is perhaps not an accident that stories often end with a marriage, since this provides a specifically dramatic conclusion that serves to gather together the infinite opposition of personalities into a single form. The fact that those who marry in so many traditional fairy tales disappear from the narrative into an implicit "happily ever after" perhaps betrays a sense deeply rooted in human culture that freedom and form belong together."

"The early history of the diocese is intimately bound up with the truly heroic labours of Father O'Reilly, and foundations of many of the present parishes were the results of his missionary zeal."

"Nietzsche represents an attempt to recover the "self-diffusiveness" of the good in spite of the good itself, because the good itself cannot be separated from the Christian Neoplatonic tradition that lies at the roots of Western civilization. He thus ends up, as Heidegger has compellingly shown, with an emptiness of the will to power, sheer willing, which does not overcome modernity but rather consummates it."

"We will not pursue the question here about ... whether it is in fact possible to find some objective standard for judgments of taste once one has interpreted beauty essentially as an event in the brain. Indeed, if beauty is nothing more than a subjective feeling of pleasure, which occurs under certain conditions, then the question concerning objective standards loses any real urgency. It seems to me that, if the question was still posed with such zeal in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it is due to a lingering sense that beauty is in fact something important, more than the mere turning of a screw in our mental machinery. If this is true, then the fact that people today seem less inclined to fight about judgments of taste, and show little interest in persuading others about what is beautiful, or learning to make good judgments, educating and forming their tastes, is something that should cause us great alarm. Our alarm ought to grow exponentially if it is in fact true that the way we experience and interpret beauty reveals an understanding of or disposition towards reality in general. In this case, to lose a sense of beauty's connection to reality is, I suggest, to lose a sense of the reality of reality tout court."

"Instead of enjoyment, there is labor, instead of goods, there are uses, instead of substance, we have property, instead of property, we have money, instead of bonds, we have boundaries, instead of connection, we have contract, instead of order, we have regulation, and so forth. Locke's political theory represents a conquest of the ordering principle of human life, which then allows that principle to retain its rule only if it changes its meaning."

"For all of their differences, Locke, Spinoza, and Kant ... share a common core in their conception of freedom, which we may justly characterize in general as "modern liberty": a view of freedom as spontaneous and unconditioned causality, or as active power that produces effects as a result of self-originating energy rather than receiving determination from outside of itself. What we wish to suggest ... is that such a conception of freedom, because it relentlessly separates potentiality from actuality, represents, in its depths, a flight from reality."

"There are some who confuse the phrase "official State religion" with the idea that "minorities do not belong here.""

"The Catholic Church is conspicuous in the United States. The number of her adherents, the wealth of her churches, the activity of her religious orders of men and women, her parochial schools, colleges, academies, and 'universities, her compact and widespread hierarchical organization, attract universal attention. Whether the observers be friends or foes, she cannot be and is not ignored. She is a huge fact in the life of the republic. Her present homogeneity is remarkable if we consider the various sources whence she sprang and the various elements of which she is composed."

"They put a hood upon his head And bound it with a thong. Then—England lost a ball of lead And Ireland lost a song."

"Motherhood is never honored by excessive talk about the heroics of pregnancy."

"People who believe in little laugh at little."

"The other day it was reported in the newspaper that a Maine hen had won a prize for having hatched nearly 200 pullets in the course of a single year. Now what ought the faithful youngster to remark on hearing that? He ought to remark that the hen deserved the Pulletser Prize."

"It would have been tragic if Leonard Feeney, the great apostle of salvation within the church, had died an excommunicate. ... There are certain texts from the Bible that I can never read without hearing, in my imagination, the voice and intonations of Leonard Feeney."

"The only thing worse than him on the radio is all static."

"Ceremonies are employed to embellish and adorn sacred functions; to excite in the faithful sentiments of respect, devotion, and religion, by which the honour of God is increased and the sanctification of the soul is obtained, since these constitute the principal object of all liturgical acts; to lead the illiterate more easily to a knowledge of the mysteries of religion; to indicate the dispositions necessary to receive the sacraments worthily; and to induce the faithful to fulfil with greater docility the obligations which the reception of the sacraments imposes on them."

"Though art be on vacation, The studio remains; The well of inspiration Is backing out of drains. Come, let us daub, my crazys, Surrealize the thrill Of soapsuds on the daisies And skylarks in the swill. Ours not to reason whether Surprise surpasseth wonder, When man hath joined together What God hath rent asunder."

"Join in prayer with the men and women who throughout history spread the Gospel and put into practice Christ's call to serve the last even in the toughest conditions."

"As good a pun as was ever spoken, to my memory, was made by a young English Jesuit now teaching at Wimbledon College. He met in a railway train a young man who said he was constructing a philosophy of his own. The young man declared that he set the foundation of his private philosophical system in the following epistemological principle: "I am, therefore I think!" "Oh," replied the young Jesuit, "isn't that putting Descartes before the horse?""

"It is hard to believe that he chops nearly as much wood as he pretends to, or that cows, hens, and barnyards are his chief loves. He has been known to enjoy the tea life of social England and is at present a professor of poetry in a college."

"Do you know a good way to convince ladies who adore he-men that you are a he-man and not a sissy? Raise a challenging mustache, write a humorless book full of unabridged hells and damns and kindred phrases in the field of sex, and then come out blatantly in favor of the Loyalists' cause in Spain."

"I feel like one who has charge of a vessel. There are numbers of men aboard who work, one for one purpose and another for another purpose. He who guides the vessel has the whole credit, and still he but represents the whole. And so it is with him at the head of the diocese. If I have done anything for which I should take credit to myself, it is, as I say, owing to my clergy, and also to the laity. I have simply to hold the rudder strongly, give the vessel the right direction, and the winds and waves will carry it where I wish it to go. They simply require a hand to guide them and to restrain them."

"Our country has liberty without license, and authority without despotism. She rears no wall to exclude the stranger from coming among us. She has few frowning fortifications to repel the invader, for she is at peace with all the world."

"The only merit which I can at all lay claim to is that while with you I had a sincere desire to see you and your families advance in virtue, and that, from day to day, as the occasion arose, I was willing to labor with you, in my own poor way, for the advancement of your congregation in religion, in knowledge, and in the doing of works of charity."

"Bishop McFarland displayed rare wisdom in the administration of his see. His zeal and self-sacrifice carried him everywhere, preaching, catechizing, lecturing, moving among priests and people as a saint and scholar. He was a man of fine intellect and commanding presence. Austere and thoughtful, he always preserved a quiet dignity and the humility of the true servant of Christ."

"Healy died 5 August, 1900, respected and beloved by priests and people, as a scholar, a master of oratory, and a man of sanctity."

"It is surprising (I would observe) to reflect how many forms of spirit and idol-worship are (to their degradation be it said) common with Malaysian and Caucasian. (See in our own periodicals, published presumably by bright-minded, clean-souled Christian philosophers, yes, see in these oracles of our fireside, advertisements of magicians, diviners, fortune-tellers, charm-workers, not to speak of other law breakers, whose mere self-interest seems to have dulled all true intellective sense.)"

"If there is an enemy here, it's violence. We need to protest and boycott violence because we eat, drink and sleep it in our country; we are entertained by it. If we don't stop, we're just going to join in an unending cycle of violence, like an escalator that keeps going up and up and up."

"I consider it an honor to be going to prison as a result of an act of conscience in response to a moral imperative that impelled and obligated me to speak for the voices silenced by graduates of the School of the Americas... We're doing acts of civil disobedience in the tradition of our democracy."

"Chaplain Liteky distinguished himself by exceptional heroism while serving with Company A, 4th Battalion, 12th Infantry, 199th Light Infantry Brigade. He was participating in a search-and-destroy operation when Company A came under intense fire from a battalion-size enemy force. Momentarily stunned from the immediate encounter that ensued, the men hugged the ground for cover. Observing two wounded men, Chaplain Liteky moved to within 15 meters of an enemy machine-gun position to reach them, placing himself between the enemy and the wounded men. When there was a brief respite in the fighting, he managed to drag them to the relative safety of the landing zone. Inspired by his courageous actions, the company rallied and began placing a heavy volume of fire upon the enemy positions. In a magnificent display of courage and leadership, Chaplain Liteky began moving upright through the enemy fire, administering last rites to the dying and evacuating the wounded. Noticing another trapped and seriously wounded man, Chaplain Liteky crawled to his aid. Realizing that the wounded man was too heavy to carry, he rolled on his back, placed the man on his chest and through sheer determination and fortitude crawled back to the landing zone using his elbows and heels to push himself along. Pausing for breath momentarily, he returned to the action and came upon a man entangled in the dense, thorny underbrush. Once more intense enemy fire was directed at him, but Chaplain Liteky stood his ground and calmly broke the vines and carried the man to the landing zone for evacuation. On several occasions when the landing zone was under small-arms and rocket fire, Chaplain Liteky stood up in the face of hostile fire and personally directed the medivac helicopters into and out of the area. With the wounded safely evacuated, Chaplain Liteky returned to the perimeter, constantly encouraging and inspiring the men. Upon the unit's relief on the morning of 7 December 1967, it was discovered that despite painful wounds in the neck and foot, Chaplain Liteky had personally carried over 20 men to the landing zone for evacuation during the savage fighting. Through his indomitable inspiration and heroic actions, Chaplain Liteky saved the lives of a number of his comrades and enabled the company to repulse the enemy. Chaplain Liteky's actions reflect great credit upon himself and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Army."

"It's difficult to be an iconoclast. It's much easier to go along. Men like Liteky are people who should force us to pause and think. They should not be ostracized and criticized. They are entitled to their views, and perhaps if we listened, we'd be better off."

"An authoritative mission to teach is absolutely necessary, a man-given mission is not authoritative. Hence any concept of Apostolicity that excludes authoritative union with the Apostolic mission robs the ministry of its Divine character. Apostolicity, or Apostolic succession, then, means that the mission conferred by Jesus Christ upon the Apostles must pass from then to their legitimate successors, in an unbroken line, until the end of the world."

"Some misinformation is funny and really harmless. The blabber merchants have always trumpeted show-biz salaries as feverishly as if the security of the commonwealth depended on the revelations. They have never given the public the right information. I, for example, was widely reported to be making twenty-five million when in my best year I was making five. (There is a question, which I have considered elsewhere, whether the press ever gives us reliable information on anything.)"

"Have I changed with the passing years? No. I do talk less because the sound of my voice saying over and over the things I said years ago embarrasses and depresses me. Why do I say the same things over and over? Because I have never changed my opinions about anything."

"We must look beyond our enemies - to God's honor & our profit - winning us back from Sin. - We come to Rejoice in God's protection. Christ in His sorrows was filled with joy at the good that was to result."

"What about the press generally? Standard and tabloid, vulgar and obscene, the papers run rumors daily about people in show business, tales of wicked ways and witless affairs, inanity and misbehavior. Reporters develop these stories from tips and yarns they pick up, or buy, in hallways, parking lots, costume and makeup rooms, bars and toilets. They also reprint "releases" from press agents, although release stuff is always laudatory, tepid and bland. Army Archerd at Variety is the only columnist I know who checks his tips and rumors by making personal phone calls. He is a respectable reporter and commentator, and his specialty is straight news from authentic sources. In the main, show-biz buzz-artists, discovering that celebrities are dull, not vivacious and absorbing, do not hesitate to rush misinformation into print, usually adding a soupcon of scandal. Some celebs, being witless, are not disturbed; they are getting the publicity they crave, and if it causes the world to marvel at them, their hearts are glad. Not all celebrities are dunces. Many get upset when misrepresented, misinterpreted and misquoted, but their anger gets them nowhere. The eminent hournalists who wronged them assume a posture of plumb disbelief. The ungrateful staggering wounded are actually complaining about valuable publicity!"

"Unity is secured by the hierarchical organization of the ministry and the due submission of inferiors to authority. On this point the teaching of the Apostolic Fathers seems to stand for a marked development in advance of the practice of the Apostolic period. But it is to be noted that the familiar tone in which episcopal authority is treated precludes the possibility of its being a novelty."

"The complete results of Bishop Allen's pro sperous administration are best noticed by a comparison between the standing of the diocese when he assumed control and its existing admirable state."

"In the soul of Cardinal McCloskey, where Christian virtue had solid roots, they coexisted in a wonderful manner. In him were coupled the majesty of a prince, which inspired no fear, but exacted the reverence of all, with the simplicity and amiableness of a child. Well may we say of him that he was "Beloved of God and men.""

"It is the low-grade civilization of the steppes of Turkestan made permanent on the former site of supreme Hellenic refinement of life and of Christian sublimity of teaching and virtue. And it is universally admitted that only a recolonization from Europe can restore its original felicitous conditions."