Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Year End Note from Gil & Randy

Thank you for making our work possible...

Saturday, December 24, 2011

A Rene Girard Christmas card...

courtesy of National Review Online - Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson...

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

David Walsh

‎"Liberalism in our own time has finally revealed its loss of spiritual direction and, as a consequence, its responsibility for the progressive destruction of human nature. In light of the bankruptcy now exposed at its core, it is difficult to claim that liberalism stands for any higher idea of the dignity and worth of the person. We recognize that the uneasy compromise at its inception, which has indeed been a source of stability for three centuries, is now on the verge of falling apart. Possessive individualism, the rights of an acquisitive self-interested liberty, and the pull of our true self, fidelity to the obligations of the natural moral order, could only be held together for so long." - David Walsh 

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 32



Preparing the disciples for the Lukan long haul...sending of the 12

Saturday, December 17, 2011

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 31

Herod 'sets eyes on' Jesus. but the ruler's epistemological handicap prevents him from seeing him.



Jesus before Herod continued...

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

George Marlin: Margaret Sanger

Margaret Sanger actually stated that: “Birth control does not mean abortion.” Here are her exact words:
“The real alternative to birth control is abortion,” wrote Dean Inge, [Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London]. It is an alternative that I cannot too strongly condemn. Although abortion may be resorted to in order to save the life of the mother, the practice of it merely for limitation of offspring is dangerous and vicious. [Emphasis added] I bring up the subject here only because some ill-informed persons have the notion that when we speak of birth control we include abortion as a method. We certainly do not. Abortion destroys the already fertilized ovum or the embryo; contraception, as I have carefully explained, prevents the fertilizing of the ovum by keeping the male cells away. Thus it prevents the beginning of life.
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Michael Knox Beran

"The primitive man famishes; the civilized man despairs," thus writes Michael Knox Beran here. It's well worth reading.

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from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 30


Herod's desire to see Jesus...

Monday, December 12, 2011

G. K. Chesterton

"... the very fitness of the new creeds [whether they are religious, political or "life-style" creeds] makes them unfit; their very acceptability make them inacceptable. Thus they all profess to be progressive because the peculiar boast of their peculiar period was progress; they claim to be democratic because our political system still rather pathetically claims to be democratic. ... These people merely take the modern mood, with much in it that is amiable and much that is anarchical and must that is merely dull and obvious, and then require any creed to be cut down to fit that mood." 
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Sunday, December 11, 2011

Blessed John Henry Newman

"Never do men come together in considerable numbers, but the passion, self-will, pride, and unbelief, which may be more or less dormant in them one by one, bursts into flame, and becomes a constituent of their union. Even when faith exists in the whole people, even when religious men combine for religious purposes, still, when they form into a body, they evidence in no long time the innate debility of human nature, and in their spirit and conduct, in their avowals and proceedings, they are in grave contrast to Christian simplicity and straightforwardness. This is what the sacred writers mean by 'the world,' and why they warn us against it; and their description of it applies in its degree to all collections and parties of men, high and low, national and professional, lay and ecclesiastical."

Please join us on Facebook, where I daily share quotations I have found helpful and interesting.  - Gil Bailie

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 29

Gil Bailie begins the 5th cassette tape from the Poetry of Truth series with this quote from Henri de Lubac:

“There is the hacknedely moralizing interpretation of those who have not studied the subject historically, and there is the narrowly historical interpretation of those who have not gone deeply into it spiritually. These are the alternating forms of mediocrity.”


With this he starts a prolonged excursus on the story of Herod, John the Baptist and Jesus. This will continue over the next few posted excerpts.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

From Henri de Lubac


"Do the unbelievers who jostle us at every turn observe on our brows the radiance of that gladness which, twenty centuries ago, captivated the fine flower of the pagan world? Are our hearts the hearts of men risen with Christ? Do we, in our time, bear witness to the Beatitudes? In a word, while we are fully alive to the blasphemy in Nietzsche's terrible phrase and in its whole context, are we not also forced to see in ourselves something of what drove him to such blaspheme?"
 

Friday, December 09, 2011

Mimetic Influence . . .

"Example is the sole eternal work by which one can influence souls whose attitude to Christ is one of complete rejection," wrote Charles de Foucauld. Likewise the faithful are inspired by example, but, as Hans Urs von Balthasar observed: "In this connection it may be affirmed, not as a daring conjecture but as a simple fact, that even the numerous canonizations make comparatively little impression on the faithful, as does everything, in fact, that can be effected by by organizational machinery. The faithful are impressed not by canonization but by sanctity ..."

Thursday, December 08, 2011

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 28

The Gerasene demoniac story continued...the cure for possession is possession

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Today's Anthropological Offering

"Modern civilization, especially as manifested in its most uncompromising form in the ideological mass movements, is not to be considered as either a purely secular phenomenon, a reversion to pre-Christian paganism, or a quest for wholly novel religious forms of its own. It is primarily a deformation of the Christian experience that redirects the eschatological transfiguration toward an innerworldly fulfillment within time." – David Walsh

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

From Facebook . . .

The one and only thing that my work and that of the Cornerstone Forum has in common with the gigantic theological contribution of Hans Urs von Balthasar is that what he said of his work in the following passage is true as well of our efforts:

"If there were nothing original in my work there would remain only the passion with which it hands on what it has received, because it is unknown to so many, and the assignment to do this for the missions one is given, more than one's talents, are what individuate the Christian."

Consider this post an "anthropological" one - according to the plan outlined in the immediately prior post - inasmuch the mission of "passing on what one has received" (1 Cor 11:23) fosters a form of individuation that conventional "individuality" cannot possibly achieve but which nonetheless satisfies the hunger of the human heart that "individuality" promises but never delivers.

Linking Facebook and Our Blog

Bestirring myself from assorted preoccupations, I plan to post more regularly to Facebook and to copy the posts here on our Blog.  
 
I apologize for being AWOL on Facebook in the last while. Other matters required my attention. Since my writing project involves a great deal of research and reviewing books which merit careful attention, the pace of the project is terribly slow, and I daily berate myself for that. By way of partial expiation of my sins in this area, I plan to better organize my Facebook postings in conformity with the brief description of the Cornerstone Forum that appears on our webpage:

According to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, the coincidence of theology and anthropology constitutes "the truly most exciting part of Christian faith." The Cornerstone Forum is a product of that excitement and an effort to communicate it to others.

With this theme in mind, I hope to post items - daily if possible - under the headings of theology and anthropology. In the interest of time, these posts will often be quotations taken from the books I am now reviewing, though interspersed with them will be miscellaneous items and links to matters of interest.

Thank you for your patience and for checking in on our efforts to understand the depth of the anthropological crisis that we now face while accounting for a hope (1 Peter 3:15) that no historical calamity can extinguish.

Monday, December 05, 2011

Friday, December 02, 2011

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 26



The parable of the sower and the seed explained...bearing fruit with patience