Wise Words. Is anybody listening?

Anthony Esolen

What is that being in the womb? Not disorganized, like a wart; not inert, like an acorn on the sidewalk; not inanimate, like a crystal growth; not dead or merely alive in potential; not canine or feline or anything else but human, with all the powers of man latent yet unfolding with remarkable intricacy, exactitude, and speed; a child, our brother.

Gavin Ashenden

The Church is often behind the times. The tragedy at this juncture is that so much of the Church has bought into the flimsy therapeutic truisms which only mask and do not heal disorder. In doing so it is abandoning its own theological justification for existing – acting as an agent of the salvation of peoples’ souls. It has yet to notice that no one actually needs or wants it as a third-rate incompetent therapist-cloning agency of secularised spirituality.

It has yet to notice that behind the appealing frontage of the pseudo-niceness of diversity, inclusion and diversity, lies a ruthless determination to cancel Christ, His mission and His Church. What might the metaphysical implications of this be?

Evil never presents itself as evil. It always presents as a good. And that means that honing the capacity to engage in an act of discrimination between presentations of nice and good is essential to the Church’s task. It’s time the Church set out to recover the gift and practice of discernment and discrimination. If its own language of spirituality is now inaccessible to it, we may need to resort to secular terms. Would it help to suggest that if it wants to survive let alone flourish, it’s time “to wake up and smell the coffee” or even, “do the Math”.

George Weigel

By promoting a virtually unrestricted license-to-kill, Mr. Biden has declared himself outside the full communion of the Church. The priests and others who have told this shallow, ill-catechized man that his stance on abortion can be squared with being in full communion with the Catholic Church may well bear the greater burden of moral responsibility—as do the bishops called to exercise pastoral care for Mr. Biden’s soul. But there can be no doubt that, objectively, President Biden has put himself in a position of diminished, defective communion with the Church he loves. The pity of it all is that what he loves he does not know. And love without knowledge is mere sentiment.

The Mass takes place at the altar, bringing Heaven down to humanity, but the faithful are invited not to speak but to pray. In silence, God speaks to the individual soul. The music aids this time of prayer, with the organ once having been described by Roger Scruton as “our nearest equivalent of the voice of God”. It is ultimately in the serene calmness brought about by silence that we can allow God to speak in His own words.

Karl Gustel Wärnberg

The Mass takes place at the altar, bringing Heaven down to humanity, but the faithful are invited not to speak but to pray. In silence, God speaks to the individual soul. The music aids this time of prayer, with the organ once having been described by Roger Scruton as “our nearest equivalent of the voice of God”. It is ultimately in the serene calmness brought about by silence that we can allow God to speak in His own words.

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Negative theology can free us from our own conceptions of God, inviting Him to speak to us on His own terms as the revealed Christ. Scripture points us in precisely this direction: Jacob wrestled with an angel, yet the angel has invariably been identified with God. God speaks to those who are willing to listen, but listening also implies letting the speaker speak on His own terms, not ours.