Absurdity

There is nothing so absurd or incredible that it has not been asserted by one philosopher or another [Descartes]

Destroying the Church

Napoleon said to Cardinal Consalvi that he would destroy the Catholic Church; Cardinal Consalvi laughed at him and responded "Sire, if immoral priests, and bad popes, and countless sinners in the church have not been able to destroy Her from within...you surely will not destroy Her from without".

Pakistan

Most countries have armies. Pakistan is often said to be an army that has a country.

Instant Christianity

It is hardly a matter of wonder that the country that gave the world instant tea and instant coffee should be the one to give it instant Christianity.

USCCB

The misinterpretation found in a July 2002 newsletter from the USCCB’s own liturgy committee, which stated that “kneeling is not a licit posture.” It is now quite clear that kneeling to receive Communion is a licit posture and not one of disobedience, as some had previously thought.

GKC on Macaulay

He was the son of one of the first "friends of the negro," whose honest industry and philanthropy were darkened by a religion of sombre smugness, which almost makes one fancy they loved the negro for his colour, and would have turned away
from red or yellow men as needlessly gaudy.

GKC on the romantics

There had been about these great poets a young and splendid sterility.

Individuality

It is useless for the æsthete (or any other anarchist) to
urge the isolated individuality of the artist, apart from his attitude to his age. His attitude to his age is his individuality: men are never individual when alone.

California

The self-licking ice-cream cone that is California.

Fr. Neuhaus

The late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus used to say that, when the Church is not obliged to speak, the Church is obliged not to speak;

Godfather

A broad shouldered man in a double-breasted suit and sunglasses holding a baby over the font with a priest standing nearby. The caption read something like, “Perhaps I should explain the meaning of the term Godfather…”

Education

A graduate of the public school educational drivel factory.

Plumbing lawyers

"Nobody has told the law schools that the $160,000 jobs are dying out. Tuition has skyrocketed and wages are collapsing. Take it from a 2007 graduate, get thee to plumbing school. "

Joseph, San Francisco

San Francisco

A new study shows that nearly half the young families who live in San Francisco are planning to move within the next three years. The city already has the lowest population of children per capita of any big U.S. city.

China and Tibet

The Chinese Government has prohibited the living Buddhas of Tibet from reincarnating without government approval.

Jewish blessing before meals

They tried to kill us: they failed: let's eat.

Cops

If you hate cops so much, then next time you get robbed, call a hippie.

Bureaucracies

A bureaucracy is fundamentally incapable of fulfilling the regulatory responsbilities it assumes.

Religious orders

A Franciscan noted that “Dominicans are great preachers and Jesuits are brilliant, but when it comes to humility we’re tops”.

Judging others

Cavalier condemnation, so easy for someone who has had the bramble-free path,

German

Like one of those German compound nouns that rumble past like a line of boxcars.

Cheap grace

"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession."

TIME Magazine

TIME Magazine, ever limping behind what it saw as progressive opinion on matters of taste...

Elections

IF YOU VOTED FOR OBAMA IN 2008 TO PROVE YOU ARE NOT A RACIST,
VOTE FOR SOMEONE ELSE IN 2012 TO PROVE YOU ARE NOT AN IDIOT

U.S. Senate

As the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid bears special responsibility for failing to direct attention to the central challenges of our time. His floor strategy seems to be focused on saving Democrats more than democracy.

Causes

Nelson Algren once said that every movement begins as a cause, becomes a business and ends up as a racket.

Rebuking

Rebuke cannot be given without first expressing love

Sword of Constantine

"A lengthy book that actually argues little but avers grandly".

James Carroll

James Carroll is a professional anti-Catholic

State Dept. and Israel

The State Department has been the locus of anti-Israel -- and anti-Jewish -- sentiment since long before Secretary of State George C. Marshall sulked and pouted through the Cabinet sessions leading up to the recognition of the Jewish state in 1948. Mr. Marshall threatened to resign if President Harry S Truman accorded recognition, finally agreeing, reluctantly, to stay in his job only as a courtesy to the president. The Foggy Bottom establishment has never quit sulking since, patiently waiting for the opportunity to exact revenge. Finally the Foggy Bottom wise men have a friendly president at their back.

Poverty

In the 1960s, we fought a war on poverty; poverty won.

Immigrants

Yet whatever the degree of assimilation, most accepted a fundamental truth: that whatever affection they had for their homes, for their native tongue, or for their old ways and customs, those cultures had in some significant way failed them.

Harvard

Respect for merit remains, but it wavers and yields to the conventions of flattened self-esteem in which everyone is entitled to a point of view—and, need I add, a high grade.

Mr. Obama

President Hopey Changey

Life

Enjoy life NOW .. it has an expiration date

French

The French are never happy unless they're unhappy.

Atheists

Atheists, I have heard, are smart folks; which says a thing or two about mere human intelligence left on its own.

Osama and Obama

The cadaver of Osama and the palaver of Obama

New bishop of Berlin

plain text Catholicism

French bishops supporting abortion

The page advertises INDESO Mujer’s participation in the annual September 28th Campaign for the Depenalization of Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean, and offers a an online “book” on “sexual and reproductive rights” which advocates the slogans “sexual education to decide, contraceptives to avoid abortion, and legal abortion to avoid death” and “legal, safe, and free abortion”. (p. 21, 19 of pdf).

The same manual claims that people have a right to “sexual relations independently of age, civil state, or family model” and a right to “a pleasurable, recreational sexuality, independently of reproduction.” (p. 24, 22 of pdf)

In addition the organization links to an edition of its magazine “La Chancleta,” which is devoted to advocating “sexual and reproductive rights,” including abortion.

Charity

“I beg you not to criticize me by invoking charity, because the greatest charity is to deliver souls held fast by Satan in order to win them over to Christ.” – Saint Padre Pio

"Law fare"

Liberals, when threatened with contradiction, always call in the lawyers. It is called "law-fare".

The Soft Man

The Soft Man is intellectually at ease. Having been to college he believes all the right things.

Beauty and the good

Pulchrum et bonum sont idem subiecto sola ratione differunt. Thomas S.T.

Hume

There can be no demonstrative argument for a matter of fact or existence.

Los Angeles archbishops

L.A. archbishop Gomez refused to join in the 2011 May Day march of immigrants because it has been co-opted by socialists, gay priders, and the like, using the problems of immigrants to cover and further their own causes, which were anti-Catholic, at the least. Abp. Cardinal Mahoney was a regular attendant.

Defoe

Defoe said that around that most Englishmen were ready to fight against popery without knowing whether popery were a man or a horse.

Bertie Wooster

If things had been different...but then they never are.

Jesuits

"NONE OF THE MEN I know cares about being a priest," reports a man in charge of theological training. "What matters is being a Jesuit."

Jesuit colleges

The single most important post-conciliar change in the command structure of American Jesuits: the shift of de facto power from the formal hierarchy (rectors, provincials) to university presidents. On paper, the presidents remain subject to their religious superiors; in reality the presidents set the tone by which Jesuit life is lived and, on the occasions of a conflict between presidents and superiors, the presidents win hands-down.

Gay Jesuits

In 1999 the American Jesuits decided to give priority to the recruitment of gays (under the rubric of "men comfortable with their sexuality"), and the majority of American formatores, Jesuits in charge of training, are homosexual as well.

Liberalism

Liberalism had been seen to foster tolerance and mutual respect in pluralist secular communities. Yet, being purely negative in content and procedural in application

James on the Swiss

Henry James on the Swiss: “The want of humour in the local atmosphere, and the absence, as well, of that aesthetic character which is begotten of a generous view of life.”

Insults

I told him I had been a frequent visitor to his mother’s whorehouse when I was young.