Atheism is not a doctrine, it is a cry of wrath.
St. Augustine also states that, in a sense, shame is related to disobedience. Positively, this would mean that when there is perfect obedience to God, there is no shame. This confirms somewhat the spiritual truth that Catholic educators have observed, namely, that as obedience to the law of Christ increases, concupiscence or the passions actually diminish.
Pope John Paul II, who has a mystique without a politique. He has no armies, no publicity directors, no propaganda machine and comes from the smallest state in all the world.
The loves of all hearts are so many mirrors revealing their characters.
A man who makes himself a god must hide; otherwise his false divinity will be unmasked.
Truth never appeals to us unless it is personal.
Humility does not mean a submissiveness, a passiveness, a willingness to be walked on, or a desire to live in the doghouse. Humility is a virtue by which we recognize ourselves as we really are, not as we would like to be in the eyes of the public; not as our press notices say we are, but as we are in the sight of God when we examine our conscience.
Carnal love, despite its seeming intimacy, often can become an exchange of egotisms. The ego is projected onto the other person and what is loved is not the other person, but the pleasure the other person gives.
As Augustine observed: “Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty, so ancient and so new. Late have I loved Thee.
The Church knows too that to marry the present age and its spirit is to become a widow in the next.
God prefers a loving sinner to a loveless “saint.” Love can be trained; pride cannot. The man who thinks that he knows will rarely find truth; the man who knows he is a miserable, unhappy sinner, like the woman at the well, is closer to peace, joy and salvation than he knows.
It is a curious psychological fact that those who make their personal love public, and “dear” one another with saccharine epithets, are very often those who when alone quarrel and fight.
In vain will the world seek for equality until it has seen all men through the eyes of faith. Faith teaches that all men, however poor, or ignorant, or crippled, however maimed, ugly, or degraded they may be, all bear within themselves the image of God, and have been bought by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. As this truth is forgotten, men are valued only because of what they can do, not because of what they are.
It is possible to love more than we know. A simple person in good faith may have a greater love of God than a theologian and, as a result, a keener understanding of the ways of God with the heart than psychologists have.
Weak men in high positions surround themselves with little men, in order that they may seem great by comparison.
The pure in heart shall see God, because they always do His will. Purity does not begin in the body but in the will. From there it flows outward, cleansing thought, imagination, and, finally, the body. Bodily purity is a repercussion or echo of the will. Life is impure only when the will is impure.
The essence of obscenity is the turning of the inner mystery into a jest.
What the new morality resolves itself into is this: You are wrong if you do a thing you do not feel like doing; and you are right if you do a thing you feel like doing. Such a morality is based not only on “fastidiousness,” but on “facetiousness.” The standard of morality then becomes the individual feeling of what is beautiful, instead of the rational estimate of what is right.
These four effects of love are: unity, mutual indwelling, ecstasy, and zeal.
Politics has become so all-possessive of life, that by impertinence it thinks the only philosophy a person can hold is the right or the left. This question puts out all the lights of religion so they can call all the cats gray. It assumes that man lives on a purely horizontal plane, and can move only to the right or the left. Had we eyes less material, we would see that there are two other directions where a man with a soul may look: the vertical directions of “up” or “down.