I could talk until the cows come home about the minority status of Catholics in the North of Ireland. But that ground has been gone over a lot. I would say that the more important Catholic thing is the actual sense of eternal values and infamous vices which our education or formation gives us. There's a sense of profoundness, a sense that the universe can be ashimmer with something, and Catholicism - even if I don't like sentimentalizing it - was the backdrop to that whole thing. The world I grew up in offered me a sense that I was a citizen of the empyrean - the crystalline elsewhere of the world.
Seamus Heaney, Irish Nobel Laureate
The grudge against God is the keystone to all one's unhappiness. Follow all your petty, middling, and major grudges back to this keystone grudge, and then ask yourself the question, "Is it more likely that God was wrong to make the world this way, or that I am somehow wrong in the way I'm looking at it?" If you decide that God is wrong --- or that there is no God, just a faceless, mechanical universe that cares nothing about the human drama --- then there isn't much you can do. But if you realize that you can always adjust your perceptions of the world, you can start learning and contributing again. This seems to be the way to both humility and power. D. Patrick Miller, A Primer on Forgiveness, "The Sun", 9/94
When I fed the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why they were poor, they called me a communist.
Archbishop Dom Helder Camara, Brasil
The Latin Church, which I find myself admiring more and more despite its frequent, astounding imbecilities, has always kept clearly before it the fact that religion is not a syllogism but a poem. H. L. Mencken
The saints in heaven were hell on earth. Richard Cardinal Cushing
If you bungle raising your children, it doesn't much matter what else you do well. Jackie Kennedy Onassis
More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones. St. Teresa of Avila.
We, ignorant of ourselves, beg often our own harms, which the wise powers, deny us for our good;
so we find profit by losing our prayers. Shakespeare
"There are two kinds of people in the world; those who say to God, 'Thy will be done',
and those to whom God says, 'Go ahead, then, have it your way'."
The horror is we get what we want. Oscar Wilde (a deathbed convert to Catholicism)
The petition, then, is not merely that I may patiently suffer God's will but also that I may vigorously do it... "Thy will be done - by me - now" brings one back to brass tacks. C.S. Lewis
Boredom is rage spread thin. Paul Tillich
According to Aquinas, sin is always accompanied by: 1.) loss of splendor, and 2.) loss of proportion.
Sin is a disproportionate seriousness. Fulton Sheen
The one thing the devil cannot stand is laughter - especially when it is directed at him.
Don't dread sin. Dread is sin. Alan Watts
***
Matthew 5:43-48
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[a] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be complete, therefore, as your heavenly Father is complete.
Matthew 5:43-48
The Message
43-48 “You’re familiar with the old written law, ‘Love your friend,’ and its unwritten companion, ‘Hate your enemy.’ I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty. If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. If you simply say hello to those who greet you, do you expect a medal? Any run-of-the-mill sinner does that. “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”
***
If someone steals your cloak, give him your shirt as well.
I say to you:: this woman who has given two pennies has given more than all the others.
***
There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon the earth;
and I have sometimes fancied that it was his mirth.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Almost always, great men are bad men. Lord Acton
All Truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second, it is violently opposed, third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Arthur Schopenauer
...strange times are these in which we live when the old and the young are taught falsehoods in the schools of learning. And the one man that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and a fool... Plato
He who sings prays twice.
