Controversy should be permitted on controversial issues.
My sins are, I hope, all forgivable.
Toward the end of her life she said: “The Gospels alone are enough for me. I no longer find anything worthwhile in other books.” Before she entered Carmel she read a few books, but most of them were of no great merit. —John Beevers, Saint Thérèse the Little Flower: The Making of a Saint, “Gospels alone”
A fellow customer at the car wash asked me what “dubia” meant. Born in Israel, he had just returned from a visit there. I mentioned that I heard that Israelis weren’t polite because in Hebrew “toilet” and “service” were the same word. Of course he knew the word and laughed.
A sleeping person remains a person, I hope.
Egg, nymph, adult: one praying mantis.
Assigning sex seems a bad use of the word “assign”, since the assignment doesn’t make a person male or female. What would be a better word?
At the northern end of the Tomhannock Reservoir.
HABITUAL GRACE: Constant supernatural quality of the soul which sanctifies a person inherently and makes him or her just and pleasing to God. Also called sanctifying grace or justifying grace. —Catholic Dictionary
In social and cultural relations the law rarely intervenes effectively; the protection of rights and feelings only comes from decency and self-restraint. —Jacques Barzun, Race: A Study in Superstition
Judas may be in heaven, but art cannot put him there.
Rodney Stark: Myths too precious to surrender
I am competent to reveal that the Crusades were legitimate defensive wars and that the Inquisition was not bloody. I am not competent to explain why the pile of fine research supporting these corrections have had no impact on the chattering classes. I suspect that these myths are too precious for the anti-religious to surrender. Interview with Rodney Stark
Are there any of us who have not heard it said or implied some time somewhere that the people’s Communion is the high point of the Mass? —Philip Trower, “The Divorced — Remarried. What Can the Church Do About It?"
What Mr. Trower wrote here also applies to other people than the divorced-remarried.
We have eaten and drunk in thy presence. Luke 13:26
The Eucharist will not save you, if you do evil.
I never knew you. Sc. 31, Matthew 7:23, Luke 23:25, 27
Spend some time today making yourself known to Jesus.
To most men argument makes the point in hand only more doubtful, and considerably less impressive. John Henry Newman, The Tamworth Reading Room and Grammar of Assent
When men understand each other’s meaning, they see, for the most part, that controversy is either superfluous or hopeless. John Henry Newman, Oxford University Sermons, Sermon 10. Faith and Reason, contrasted as Habits of Mind
Intentional ambiguity makes it impossible to understand with certainty the other person’s meaning.
Blessings on Philip Trower and Dunstan Thompson
God often makes unexpected appearances, He did so in their lives as well. Philip and Dunstan were visiting Walsingham one weekend, not far from where they lived, when a procession of the Blessed Sacrament passed by. Dunstan suddenly fell to his knees and made the sign of the Cross – all before his shocked companion. Philip immediately sensed there was something much greater than his earthly relationship with Dunstan, and that it would have profound consequences for their lives. It did. After Dunstan told Philip that he had made a complete confession and reconciled with the Church, Philip knew that meant an immediate end to their sexual relationship. At first, Philip felt isolated and abandoned, but soon realised it was a great blessing, for it liberated him from a life of sin which he always knew to be wrong. Better yet, Dunstan’s Catholic reawakening led Philip to become a Catholic as well, discovering what he had providentially been told, by a friend, as a young man: “You will never find love until you find it in the tabernacle.” The two remained very close companions (Philip served as Dunstans’ literary executor after the poet’s death in 1975) but, faithful to Catholic teaching, never sinned with one another again. —William Doino Jr., “A Catholic gentleman: the inspiring life of Philip Trower”
The action or suggestions of the devil is like water dripping on a stone. An aggravating drip, drip, drip, drip. The action of the Holy Spirit is like water gently falling on a sponge. —Advice from Fr William of Farm Street to Philip Trower