Seiren chruseien ex ouranothen kremasantes
Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of people in this world. The first kind of people are People; they are the largest and probably the most valuable class. We owe to this class the chairs we sit down on, the clothes we wear, the houses we live in; and, indeed (when we come to think of it), we probably belong to this class ourselves. The second class may be called for convenience the Poets;…
What disturbs the peace of unity is ambition, the vice that steals away from itself the soul which abandons itself to it, tearing it, as it were, in pieces, and dispersing it. The resplendent light of truth, who will not lose it in the mud, in the darkness of lust? Avarice and cupidity steal from us goodness, for it is the peculiar property of goodness to communicate to others the goods which it…
All things that are beneath God have an efficient, an exemplary, and a final cause. For from Him, and through Him, and for Him, are all things. If then we consider things as constituted by the efficient causality of God, we call them beings (entia), since it is because of this efficiency that they participate in being (esse). If we consider them as conforming to and according with the Divine…
There is nothing wrong, as such, with having an opinion because it is convenient; the vast majority of our opinions are had because they are convenient. We get problems when we treat such opinions as more than opinions. the bodily kinship of animal to animal (including human to nonhuman animal and human to human) as allowing a communication; given the generic commonality, we do something to make a…
Sonnet to the Month of August by Charles Leftley August, I welcome thee and all thy hours, The sun-burnt hours, that dance about thy car, Thy genial breezes, and refreshing showers, Thy morning pageantry, and evening star. Bright are thy smiles, and blithe thy votaries are, For thou dost bring them harvests, fruits, and flowers, Enlivening gifts, and more enlivening far, The laughing vine to glad…
Man is likewise, and this adds infinitely to his dignity, this sets him in his perfect light, man is the image of God. He is descended from him, is his offspring, and bears the visible traces of his derivation from heaven, and his communion with the Supreme Existence. His understanding is a ray of divine intelligence; his power an efflux from that of the deity; his activity something similar to…
Canova and anyone who delighted in scratching and drilling holes in his most accomplished statues would not both be called sculptors; Raphael and a desecrator of his painting would not both be called artists. It would never occur to anyone that such a contorted use of words could be justified by claiming that both Canova and the person who destroyed his statues, or Raphael and his assailant used…
I did a Georgette Heyer novel about a decade ago, A Civil Contract , usually considered her most Austen-ish work ; I have since wanted at some point to do her novel, An Infamous Army , which was one of her own favorites and which is sometimes regarded as the most historically accurate historical romance of all time. This seems as good a time as any. The book was published in 1937. It depicts…
Introduction Opening Passage: We are actually missing the original beginning of the work. The beginning we have is as follows (providing both the Castilian and the English for comparison): De los sos ojos tan fuertemientre llorando, tornava la cabeça e estávolos catando; vio puertas abiertas e uços sin cañados, alcándaras vazías sin pielles e sin mantos e sin falcones e sin adtores mudados.…
If you demand that the Church stay out of politics, the Devil will expand what people count as political until the Church suffocates. If you demand that politics be separate from anything religious, the Devil will expand what counts as religious until politics is separate from anything good. Many problems in society arise from the corrupt pursuit of justice. You learn to love everyone only by…
Today is the Feast of the Holy Transfiguration. And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves; and he was transfigured before them, and his garments became glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses; and they were talking to Jesus. And Peter said to Jesus,…
* Ed Simon, Charles Brockdon Brown Declares Independen ce, at "The Paris Review" * Liel Leibovitz, Christopher Nolan's 'Odyssey': Epic for Our Times or Epic Failure , at "The Tablet" * Theodore Nash, Apocalypse Troy: Nolan's Odyssey and the End of Civilization , at "Antigone" * Johann Go, Just Waiting: The Ethics of Queues and Waiting Lists , at "Political Philosophy" * Curt Jaimungal, The…
Seaspray The sea ascends on stone, the mist and spray upraised, in driven change, in tide, that ceaselessly with foam will never still nor stay; yet still the ocean wide beneath eternal sky is changeless in its way, with waves that shall abide. Red Mansions Bright red silk-work, like braided rope, such is time, which binds us. In blessed red pavilions, of finest wood, the festivals continue; like…
August's Here by Charles Frederick Forshaw Ripeness abounds, for August's here, To fill us with a joy sincere: The field, the glen, the wood, the shade, The barren moors, the blossomed glade, All, all foretell that she is near. A golden glory fills the earth, And hails with joy blest August's birth; Luxurious gladness fills the land, For, touched by August's mellow hand, It basks no more in…
If truth and certainty had been committed to the care of human free will, they would have languished and in all probability soon been annihilated by human perversity. For this reason we saw that the first truths were entrusted by creating Providence to human nature, not to an individual human being. Human nature, essentially intelligent, sees the first truths essentially. Human beings cannot but…
All accounts of sensation are in terms of action, passion, and object; they just differ on how these interrelate. The pleasures we take in things are heavily modulated by both habit and context. What God accounts as being, is. All arguing has a measure of performance and self-presentation to it. myths as mnemonics for rites Experimentation has an internal morality that involves carefulness,…
Today is the feast of St. Peter Chrysologus, Doctor of the Church. We have heard, my brothers, how high God's graciousness have brought us, and how high the celestial paternity has exalted us. Let us believe that we are sons of God, let us prove equal to our lineage, let us live for heaven, let us represent our Father by our resemblance so that we do not destroy with our vices what we have…
Let us imagine something that we have never known either through perception, or by likeness, analogy of nature, or relationship with any other thing we have perceived. What we are imagining is altogether unknown to us. But its existence is then revealed to us. We begin to know something about it, without however knowing anything of its essence. In a word, we know that something unknown to us…
Not only did God create man in his image and likeness, but also he modeled human society after the society of the Persons in the most holy Trinity. For this reason, just as in that adorable society, the Father loves his Son as himself, and loves himself in his Son, and the same is true for the love of the Son toward the Father and toward the Holy Spirit, and for the love of the Holy Spirit toward…
I was thinking about the Witch of Endor today, which is an entire story with many layers, and many more, I think, than appear on the surface. You know the basic story: Samuel has died, and Saul still has to deal with the Philistines, but he is afraid of them, and no longer has Samuel to advise him. So, despite the fact that it is illegal, he sends his servants out to find an 'owb, which literally…
Today is the feast of St. James the Greater, Apostle of the Lord, who according to tradition was beheaded by King Herod Agrippa I on July 25, AD 44. He was the first of the Twelve Apostles to be martyred; he is also the only Apostle whose actual martyrdom is explicitly recorded in the New Testament. According to Acts 12, Herod Agrippa was trying to curry favor with the local rulers, so he arrested…
You can always find disagreement if you search for it. We make-believe manyt hings, and some of them we confirm to be real, and some of them we make to be real. To be baptized is to be covenantal; to be confirmed is to be prophetic; to be ordained is to be angelicized. But there are covenant breakers, false prophets, and fallen angels. global moral anti-realisms (1) morality is a model, useful for…
Upon Leaving the Black Hills by A. Jean Holmes Beautiful hills, beneath whose shadows I have dreamed dreams, have loved, have gained, and failed, Have watched the sunsets pale, and breathed the pine, And sung by lonely campfires to the stars: Yet going, as I am, beyond the reach Of finger-tips of fragrance in the winds, And sight of brave, black hills against the sky, I need not say good-bye; for…
I saw The Odyssey the other day, and am still mulling it over; I may or may not say something about it this weekend. But as part of mulling, I was thinking of all of Christopher Nolan's movies and how I might rate them. This, I think, is the order in which I would rate them, at least at the moment. 1. Inception (2010) -- This is one of my favorite movies of all time, and, despite the respect it…
The perception of the natures which compose the universe has been justified in the preceding chapters. These nature are not being, but have being. Thus they receive being, because all that is not being (but nevertheless has being) must receive it from whoever is being. Therefore, whoever is being must give being to the natures which compose the universe and are perceived by us. But that which is…
Today is the feast of St. Lawrence of Brindisi, Doctor of the Church. From his Mariale , a work highly influential on modern Catholic views of the Holy Virgin (Sermon 1), discussing the vision of the Woman and the Sun in Revelation 12: By this heavenly vision God wanted the orthodox Church to demonstrate the divine wonders of Mary and to reveal to the faithful those things hidden in the Virgin,…