Introduction to Lent: Almsgiving
Of the three marks of Lent — prayer, fasting and almsgiving — almsgiving is surely the most neglected.
Of the three marks of Lent — prayer, fasting and almsgiving — almsgiving is surely the most neglected.
Although conscience may seem to be a kind of feeling, the moral demands that it makes on us reveal that its seat is in reason.
In discussion, we deliberate for the sake of coming to the truth; in argument, we abandon the mutual pursuit of truth because our purpose is to triumph.
"It's medicine for my biggest problem — selfishness and lack of self-control."
Before fasting passes into prayer, and the one can no longer do without the other, it will have to burrow out new depths in a person's heart.
I think the Bishops should try to win this battle using any moral means necessary; and perhaps using the purely practical strategy of appealing to liberalism's own principles might work this time. But I fear that playing the religious-freedom card alone won't work again.
There is not a moment in which God is not present with us under the cover of some pain to be endured, some obligation or some duty to be performed, or some consolation to be enjoyed.
In one of the two greatest lines of world poetry, Dante bows gently toward "The Love that moves the sun and all the stars."
Every virtue has its bogus pretenders. But there is no counterfeit that is more successful in obscuring the genuine article, especially in the present era, than false compassion.
The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.