Fading Summer Finding Fall: Quotes

1.

Natasha Carter [X/Twitter]: Can anyone pinpoint the exact moment when the world started to go to s**t?

Dr. Edward Feser [X/Twitter]: Not one moment but a progressive slide down deeper into the sewer that has accelerated at key moments and is still going on: Ockham → Luther → Descartes and Co. → “Enlightenment” → French Revolution → Communism and Fascism → Sexual Revolution → YOU ARE HERE

2.

Elise Ann Allen, Crux

As his Asian trip – the longest of his pontificate – comes to a close, Pope Francis asked young people a series of questions about what youth do, eliciting answers such as “proclaim Christ,” “proclaim the Word of God” and “love.”  Then, in an entirely off-the-cuff speech, Francis told them to also never forget to “wreak havoc, make a mess.”  He applauded the high number of youths in the country and said, “I will never forget your smile.  Don’t stop smiling.”

Comment. One could be forgiven for sighing heavily at the words "wreak havoc, make a mess."  Bad advice.  How about, "Keep the Faith," or "Those who love the Lord keep His commandments."  A younger generation of Catholics, having witnessed the plummet of an older generation into laxity and blandness, are present to the art of the Faith, e.g., traditional customs and devotions that enliven the imagination and dispose disciples to service. We are built with an innate desire to worship.  Unless we have a true focus, we regress into idolatry and despair. A tired and flaccid generation attached to mere politics and lacking imagination hinders an authentic renewal of the Church.)

3.

Robert Royal, The Catholic Thing

St. Thomas Aquinas – asked by St. Raymond of Peñafort, then head of the Dominicans, how to convert Spanish Muslims and Jews – wrote Summa contra Gentiles, counseling that with Jews, start with arguments from the Old Testament; with Muslims and pagans, who reject both OT and NT, “We must, therefore, have recourse to natural reason, to which all men are forced to give their assent.” (SCG I. ii. 3)

Thomas had no experience of our contemporaries, who have largely rejected even natural reason (without knowing it) and replaced it with self-validating emotion.  So, there’s another category now.  But like an alcoholic who has “hit bottom,” some now see that life is a mere frustration when the world is viewed through the peephole of purposeless matter and energy, and human beings – including themselves – are regarded as merely clever animals destined for extinction.

4.

Archbishop Emeritus Charles J. Chaput, OFM CAP, Southern Nebraska Register

The idea of wonder seems to be lost on so much of education these days, even at times within Catholic schools, and yet there is no genuine education, especially Catholic education, without the spark of wonder.  Children instinctively know there is something to which they are called that is greater than their experiences.  This is why good stories capture their imaginations.  They know there is a world outside of their limited knowledge and they want someone to lead them there.

This is what a good education does: it leads us out of our ignorance and puts us in touch with the spark of the Creator.  It enables the soul to sing.  Anything less is a failure that eventually leads the soul to a mere shadow of its potential, and this in turn impacts the immediate and global community.

5.

Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Hope for the World: To Unite All Things in Christ

We must return to our roots, to the foundations of our being, and therefore to metaphysics.  It is good to go back and reflect again on the meaning of existence, of family life, of life in society and in the world.  The human mind needs a realist philosophy to serve as a basis for its understanding of the mysteries of the faith.  God alone is the goal of our quest, and everything must lead to Him.  Contemporary man will recover from the current situation only with this theocentric perspective.