Quote: When sex gets the best of you
“What had happened to the human imagination, as a whole, was that the whole world was coloured by dangerous and rapidly deteriorating passions; by natural passions becoming unnatural passions. Thus the effect of treating sex as only one innocent natural thing was that every other innocent natural thing became soaked and sodden with sex. For sex cannot be admitted to a mere equality among elementary emotions or experiences like eating and sleeping. The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant. There is something dangerous and disproportionate in its place in human nature, for whatever reason; and it does really need a special purification and dedication. The modern talk about sex being free like any other sense… Continue reading ...
Top 10 thoughts for 2009
There’s something about the end of the calendar year that causes us to reflect on the year that has just casually slipped us by. Typically celebrated in a fluttering of fireworks (or dazzling summer lightening storms and resounding thunder – as was the case in Melbourne, Australia, this last New Year’s Eve) most people take the time to spend with family and friends, among who a great many of them still remember “last year’s New Year’s Eve” (or should that be “the year before last’s New Year’s Eve”?) as though it were yesterday.
Memories can be a curious thing. So it’s with similar curiosity that I’m posting a listing of my most viewed articles for 2009 on thoughts out !oud
Quote: the sorry goal of relativism
Having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labelled today as fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and ‘swept along by every wind of teaching’ looks like the only attitude [acceptable] to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.
~ Pope Benedict XVI… Continue reading ...
Is this fellow your friend or foe?
I am your constant companion. I am your greatest helper or heaviest burden. I will push you onward or drag you down to failure. I am completely at your command.
Half the things you do you might as well turn over to me and I will be able to do them quickly and correctly. I am easily managed – you must merely be firm with me. Show me exactly how you want something done and after a few lessons I will do it automatically.
I am the servant of all great individuals and, alas, of all failures, as well. Those who are great, I have made great. Those who are failures, I have made failures. I am not a machine, though I work with all the precision of… Continue reading ...
Quote: On facing up to and persisting against temptation
I know about the despair of overcoming chronic temptation. It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience, etc. don’t get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and clean clothes in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of his presence.
~ CS Lewis, from Letters of CS Lewis
(HT to Ryft for the reference)… Continue reading ...
Quote: we are too easily pleased
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
CS Lewis, from The Weight of Glory
Quote: Prayer is not a pokie machine
The reason that prayer doesn’t always get answered, or that we have a hard time even finding a mechanistic way of treating prayer, is because prayer is not a machine.
CS Lewis, CS Lewis, Mere Christianity
Quote: Hope, faith and love
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.
No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from ours. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love … which is forgiveness.
Reinhold Niebuhr, philosopher and theologian… Continue reading ...
Quote: Peter Kreeft on tolerance and acceptance
Here’s a great quotation from Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, on the topic of Moral Theology and Homosexuality^, taken from an address delivered to St Mike’s College in November 2002:
There is a distinction between tolerance and acceptance. Tolerance has a prejudicial term to it: we don’t tolerate good things, we tolerate bad things for the sake of good things. Catholics believe that homosexuals are good things and that homosexual acts are bad things. So they accept homosexual persons and they don’t accept homosexual acts. They tolerate homosexual acts but they don’t tolerate homosexual persons – they love them. (Emphasis mine.)
You can listen to other addresses that Peter Kreeft has delivered by downloading them from his website: www.peterkreeft.com.
^ This address can be downloaded from
Quote: Playing church is just not cricket
Some want to live within the sound of the church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell.
Charles Studd, missionary and English Cricketer in the 1882 match against Australia, the origin of The Ashes… Continue reading ...
Quote: Successors of spiritual failure
The Bible, the most honest book in the world, paints a terrible picture of the moral and spiritual failures of God’s chosen people, the Jews, throughout their history; and Christians are their successors.
Peter Kreeft, Professor of Philosophy at Boston College and King’s College; quote from Making Sense Out of Suffering
Quote: Denying God Imprisons Man
Whoever strikes against God strikes down himself. The atheist denying God degrades himself. The atheist exalting himself above God sinks below the level of animate and inanimate beings. Liberation from God is enslavement in creatures. Absolute humanism is the sure road to absolute despotism. Denial of God as truth begets the imprisonment of man in the self-imposed darkness of his own myths.
Vincent Miceli (priest, theologian and philosopher), The Gods of Atheism, 1971… Continue reading ...
Quote: The morality of conscience
Conscience is what enables man to rise above being a prisoner of his inclinations … Conscience enables us to go beyond what feels good and to do what is right
Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity
Quote: Former atheist speaks on cruelness and injustice
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private… Continue reading ...
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