"All the baptized in the Church have citizenship, on their sharing [1] the Creed and [2] the morality that comes from it."

 "Nella Chiesa tutti i battezzati hanno cittadinanza, se ne condividono il Credo e la morale conseguente."

      Robert Cardinal Sarah, as interviewed by Giacomo Gambassi on 12 September 2025.  Avvenire; Rorate Caeli.

A wilde faith

"The Catholic church is for saints and sinners [alone].  For respectable people, the Anglican church will do."

      Oscar Wilde, as quoted by Richard A. Kaye in "The path to Rome:  investigating the deathbed conversion of Oscar Wilde," Times literary supplement no. 6386 (August 22, 2025), 8 (7-8).  Richard Ellmann adds "alone", citing an undated letter of Reginald Turner to T. H. Bell "in Bell's unpublished MS. on Wilde (Clark)" (Oscar Wilde (New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1988, 583 and 621).  I have followed this trail no further.

Ouch

Source

     "Do you want to honor Christ’s body? Then do not scorn him in his nakedness, nor honor him here in the church with silken garments while neglecting him outside where he is cold and naked. For he who said: This is my body, and made it so by his words, also said: You saw me hungry and did not feed me, and inasmuch as you did not do it for one of these, the least of my brothers, you did not do it for me. What we do here in the church requires a pure heart, not special garments; what we do outside requires great dedication.
     "Let us learn, therefore to be men of wisdom and to honor Christ as he desires. For a person being honored finds greatest pleasure in the honor he desires, not in the honor we think best. Peter thought he was honoring Christ when he refused to let him wash his feet; but what Peter wanted was not truly an honor, quite the opposite! Give him the honor prescribed in his law by giving your riches to the poor. For God does not want golden vessels but golden hearts.
     "Now, in saying this I am not forbidding you to make such gifts; I am only demanding that along with such gifts and before them you give alms. He accepts the former, but he is much more pleased with the latter. In the former, only the giver profits; in the latter, the recipient does too. A gift to the Church may be taken as a form of ostentation, but an alms is pure kindness.
     "Of what use is it to weigh down Christ’s table with golden cups, when he himself is dying of hunger? First, fill him when he is hungry; then use the means you have left to adorn his table. Will you have a golden cup made but not give a cup of water? What is the use of providing the table with cloths woven of gold thread, and not providing Christ himself with the clothes he needs? What profit is there in that? Tell me: If you were to see him lacking the necessary food but were to leave him in that state and merely surround his table with gold, would he be grateful to you or rather would he not be angry? What if you were to see him clad in worn-out rags and stiff from the cold, and were to forget about clothing him and instead were to set up golden columns for him, saying that you were doing it in his honor? Would he not think he was being mocked and greatly insulted?
     "Apply this also to Christ when he comes along the roads as a pilgrim, looking for shelter. You do not take him in as your guest, but you decorate floor and walls and the capitals of the pillars. You provide silver chains for the lamps, but you cannot bear even to look at him as he lies chained in prison. Once again, I am not forbidding you to supply these adornments; I am urging you to provide these other things as well, and indeed to provide them first. No one has ever been accused for not providing ornaments, but for those who neglect their neighbor a hell awaits with an inextinguishable fire and torment in the company of the demons. Do not, therefore, adorn the church and ignore your afflicted brother, for he is the most precious temple of all."

     St. John Chrysostom, Homily 50 on Matthew, as trans. Liturgy of the hours for Saturday of Week 21 in Ordinary time.  Ed. Field (1839), vol. 2, p. 64 ll. 15 ff.(57-66) = PG 58, col. 508 ll. 46 ff.  NPNF 10 (1844), trans. Prevost:

"Wouldest thou do honor to Christ’s body? Neglect Him not when naked; do not[,]  while here thou honorest Him with silken garments, neglect Him perishing without of cold and nakedness. For He that said, 'This is my body,' and by His word confirmed the fact, 'This same said, “Ye saw me an hungered, and fed me not;' and, 'Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.' For This indeed needs not coverings, but a pure soul; but that requires much attention.
     "Let us learn therefore to be strict in life, and to honor Christ as He Himself desires. For to Him who is honored that honor is most pleasing, which it is His own will to have, not that which we account best. Since Peter too thought to honor Him by forbidding Him to wash his feet, but his doing so was not an honor, but the contrary,
     "Even so do thou honor Him with this honor, which He ordained, spending thy wealth on poor people. Since God hath no need at all of golden vessels, but of golden souls.
     "And these things I say, not forbidding such offerings to be provided; but requiring you, together with them, and before them, to give alms. For He accepts indeed the former, but much more the latter. For in the one the offerer alone is profited, but in the other the receiver also. Here the act seems to be a ground even of ostentation; but there all is mercifulness, and love to man.
     "For what is the profit, when His table indeed is full of golden cups, but He perishes with hunger? First fill Him, being an hungered, and then abundantly deck out His table also. Dost thou make Him a cup of gold, while thou givest Him not a cup of cold water? And what is the profit? Dost thou furnish His table with cloths bespangled with gold, while to Himself thou affordest not even the necessary covering? And what good comes of it? For tell me, should you see one at a loss for necessary food, and omit appeasing his hunger, while you first overlaid his table with silver; would he indeed thank thee, and not rather be indignant? What, again, if seeing one wrapped in rags, and stiff with cold, thou shouldest neglect giving him a garment, and build golden columns, saying, 'thou wert doing it to his honor,' would he not say that thou wert mocking, and account it an insult, and that the most extreme?
     "Let this then be thy thought with regard to Christ also, when He is going about a wanderer, and a stranger, needing a roof to cover Him; and thou, neglecting to receive Him, deckest out a pavement, and walls, and capitals of columns, and hangest up silver chains by means of lamps, but Himself bound in prison thou wilt not even look upon.
     "And these things I say, not forbidding munificence in these matters, but admonishing you to do those other works together with these, or rather even before these. Because for not having done these no one was ever blamed, but for those, hell is threatened, and unquenchable fire, and the punishment with evil spirits. Do not therefore while adorning His house overlook thy brother in distress, for he is more properly a temple than the other."

Ales diei nuntius lucem

          Prudentius.  Inge B. Milfull, The hymns of the Anglo-Saxon church:  a study and edition of the 'Durham hymnal.'  Cambridge studies in Anglo-Saxon England 17 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1996) no. 18, pp. 149-150.

Jesus associated with the established just as much as with the outcast

     "This royal [Paulino-Lutheran] freedom governs also Jesus’ relation to the drive for profit, which he[, too,] quite obviously considers a behavior consistent with the [(zum . . . gehörendes)] the essence of man.  Characteristic in this respect is the Parable of the Talents, in which the rich man rebukes the servant who, having not made a profit on [(mit dem . . . nicht gewuchert hat)] the money entrusted to him, behaves so wholly uncapitalistically, and says to him, 'you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and . . . I should have received what was my own with interest.'  Not less characteristic is the fact that Jesus associated with the established [(den Etablierten)] just as much as with the outcast.  It was above all [(Erst)] this, that he associated with the former just as unreservedly as with the latter, that was the real provocation [presented by] his behavior (Mt 27:57; Lk 7:36 ff., 11:37, 14:1-14, 19:1 ff.; Mk 14:3 ff)."

     Eberhard Jüngel, "Gewinn im Himmel und auf Erden:  theologische Bemerkungen zum Streben nach Gewinn," Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 94, no. 4 (Dezember 1997):  551 (532-552).  Though this paragraph must be read in the light of those both before and after, the whole of section IV, and indeed the article at large, it is nonetheless a striking one.

"I'm standing my ground on the verge."

     Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) in In the loop (2009).

God is still, and will be forever incarnate

"The condescension of that Union, whereby His Divine and Human Natures are never to be divided, is for Eternity.  In all Eternity we shall, in the Light of the Godhead, see the especial lustre of those glorious Suns, the sacred Five, the Blessed Wounds, which for us He received.  In all Eternity, it will be a special glory to us, that it is our Nature, which forever exists enGodded, the own Body and Soul of God."

     E. B. Pusey, Address III, "God’s Love for each soul in the Incarnation," Eleven addresses during a retreat of the Companions of the Love of Jesus engaged in perpetual intercession for the conversion of sinners (Oxford:  James Parker, 1868), 26.  This, as I've said earlier, is an occurrence of the verb engod six years earlier than that (also from Pusey) in the OED at the moment (though I just submitted the correction).

Not mysteries (plural), but the mystery, one and whole

     "Our nature, in Jesus, was engodded, deified.  It shines throughout all space with the ineffable Glory of the Indwelling Godhead; but it was our nature, not ourselves.  And now, as the counterpart and complement of the Incarnation, as He took our manhood into God, He has sent His Spirit, The Holy Ghost, to dwell in us.  Truly it has been said, that men do amiss speak of mysteries of revelation.  For all is one mystery; all is one mysterious whole, of which you cannot detach part from part, without deforming the whole.  As well detach, if it were possible, one of the prismatic colours, and think that the light would remain ever the same, as think to sever from the rest one truth of God, the Father of lights, and think that the other truths would remain harmonious."

     E. B. Pusey, "[Grieve not the Spirit of God]," Sermon 14 in Sermons preached before the University of Oxford between A.D. 1859 and 1872 (Oxford:  J. Parker, 1872), 338-339.  Currently the OED gives Pusey 1874 as the first occurrence of the verb engod.  But here it is in 1872, also in Pusey.  Does it occur any earlier?  Yes, Pusey uses enGodded here in 1868, an "antedating" that I've just submitted via the OED's online form.  (But we need a far more sophisticated search than the rough-and-ready Hathi Trust searches I've just run.
     Interestingly, this was the Pusey's friend Newman's contention as well.)
     This by the way, is on the whole a good sermon, and would bear a re-reading.

"It is from us what befalls us"

      Mohammad Taqi Bahar (1884–1951), “It is from us what befalls us [(Az mast keh bar mast)],” as trans. Abbas Amanant in Iran:  a modern history (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2017), chap. 6, p. 377.  Amanat cites Mohammad Taqi Bahar Malek al-Sho‘ara, Divan-e Ash’ar, ed. M. Bahar, 5th ed. (Tehran: Entesharat Tus, 1368/1984) 1:261–62.  I was put onto this by the Eli Lake podcast "Restless nation:  the making of modern Iran (Part 1)," Breaking history.  Beautiful poem.

"the higher you rise in your craft, skill or profession, the more you will be removed from its performance in order to manage it"

"since the Industrial Revolution, but particularly in the last fifty years, we have created a world around us which, in contrast to the natural world, reflects the left hemisphere’s priorities and its vision. Today all the available sources of intuitive life – the natural world, cultural tradition, the body, religion and art – have been so conceptualised, devitalised and ‘deconstructed’ (ironised) by self-consciousness, explicitness and the systems and theories used to analyse them, that their power to help us see intuitively beyond the hermetic world that the left hemisphere has set up has been largely drained from them. . . . The cerebral and the abstract – for example, management and its systems – have become more highly valued than the hands-on task that management exists to serve, with the odd effect that the higher you rise in your craft, skill or profession, the more you will be removed from its performance in order to manage it. . . ."

     Iain McGilchrist, "Preface to the new expanded edition," The master and his emissary:  the divided brain and the making of the modern world, New expanded edition (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2019 [2010]), xxiii.

The unicorn and his lion, the anima and his animus

". . . [the left hemisphere] works its necessary effects at an intermediate stage. Problems arise when this is treated as the end stage. . . [T]he Master realises the need for an emissary to do certain work on his behalf (which he, the Master, must not involve himself with) and report back to him. That is why he appoints the emissary in the first place. The emissary, however, knowing less than the Master, thinks he knows everything and considers himself the real Master, thus failing to carry out his duty to report back. The right hemisphere’s view is inclusive, 'both/and', synthetic, integrative; it realises the need for both. The left hemisphere’s view is exclusive, 'either/or', analytic and fragmentary – but, crucially, unaware of what it is missing. It therefore thinks it can go it alone. . . .
". . . reductionism has become a disease, a viewpoint lacking both intellectual sophistication and emotional depth, which is blighting our ability to understand what is happening and what we need to do about it. My current thoughts are directed towards illuminating what I see as a truer picture, a more helpful and, I believe, a more hopeful way of seeing our situation here on this planet, while we still have time.
". . . There are, it seems to me, four main pathways to the truth: science, reason, intuition and imagination. I also believe strongly that any world view that tries to get by without paying due respect to all four of these is bound to fail. Each on its own has its virtues and its vices, its gifts and its inherent dangers: only by respecting each and all together can we learn to act wisely. And each is a blend of elements contributed by either hemisphere.
     "However, the same proviso applies in each case, namely that for each to be successful, what the left hemisphere can offer must be used in service of what the right hemisphere knows and sees, not the other way round. This is as important in the case of science as in that of imagination, in the case of reason as in that of intuition. The left hemisphere is a wonderful servant, but a very poor master.
     "We also need to be aware of the sheer extent to which the left hemisphere is, in the most down-to-earth, empirically verifiable way, less reliable than the right – in matters of attention, perception, judgment, emotional understanding, and indeed intelligence as it is conventionally understood. And that means that we should be appropriately sceptical of the left hemisphere’s vision of a mechanistic world, an atomistic society, a world in which competition is more important than collaboration; a world in which nature is a heap of resource there for our exploitation, in which only humans count, and yet humans are only machines – not even very good ones, at that; a world curiously stripped of depth, colour and value. This is not the intelligent, if hard-nosed, view that its espousers comfort themselves by making it out to be; just a sterile fantasy, the product of a lack of imagination, which makes it easier for us to manipulate what we no longer understand. But it is a fantasy that displaces and renders inaccessible the vibrant, living, profoundly creative world that it was our fortune to inherit – until we squandered our inheritance.
Time is running out, and the way we think, which got us into this mess, will not be enough to get us out of it. . . . We need, I believe, to see the world with new eyes. . . ."

     Iain McGilchrist, "Preface to the new expanded edition," The master and his emissary:  the divided brain and the making of the modern world, New expanded edition (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2019 [2010]), xxiv-xxvi.  Headline:  Fr. M. C. D'Arcy, The mind and heart of love:  Lion and unicorn:  a study of eros and agape (1947), not cited by McGilchrist.

Up with the binarchy

"Recognizing valid differences between two elements of a system is not to 'dichotomise.'  Some people fear dichotomies are simplistic.  But it is also simplistic to reject a perfectly valid dichotomy just because you happen to have a thing against dichotomies when they occur."

     Iain McGilchrist, "Preface to the new expanded edition," The master and his emissary:  the divided brain and the making of the modern world, New expanded edition (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2019 [2010]), xvi.  Undoubtedly I'm misusing McGilchrist prematurely.

"The trees were passive to Orpheus; that's why they danced"

"the crucial point to observe here is that Mary is judged to have been purely receptive in relation to God and to God's reconciling purposes.  And yet, her receptivity is to be understood as active, not passive.  She 'goes forth to receive the Lord.'  And that is a point of considerable significance.  Emphasis is laid here on the active obedience of Mary, on her (human) power to receive the Holy Spirit rooted in her holiness.  To be sure, the 'person-forming' power (if I can again borrow a Christological caegory) remains God's.  Mary is given the power of 'Divine Maternity.'  She 'becomes heaven, and Her womb becomes the place of the overshadowing.'  Indeed, what she receives in her virginal conception is not a gift of grace so much as it is 'the Holy Spirit Himself in all the fullness of His divine nature.'  And so she was made the fit instrument of the incarnation of the Logos.  But she must voluntarily receive for any of this to happen.  A hierarchy of wills is envisioned; the lesser 'follows' the greater.  The same holds true in the hypostatic union itself - which brings us, in the second place, to Jesus."

     Bruce Lindley McCormack on Sergius Bulgakov, The humility of the eternal Son:  Reformed kenoticism and the repair of Chalcedon (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2021), 134.  The headline is from Austin Farrer.

Doomed to mistake it

"This solidarity of the ages is so effective that the lines of connection work both ways.  Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past.  But a man may wear himself out just as fruitlessly in seeking to understand the past, if he is totally ignorant of the present."

     "Aussi bien cette solidarité des âges a-t-elle tant de force qu’entre eux les liens d’intelligibilité sont véritablement à double sens. L’incompréhension du présent naît fatalement de l’ignorance du passé. Mais il n’est peut-être pas moins vain de s’épuiser à comprendre le passé, si l’on ne sait rien du présent."

     Marc Bloch, The historian's craft, trans. Peter Putnam (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2024 [1954]), 36; Apologie pour l'histoire; ou, Métier d'historiene, Cahiers des Annales [3] (Paris:  Librairie Armand Colin, 1949), 13.  I was put onto this by Richard Davenport-Hines, "A Stalinist chump at Oxford:  the Civil War historian who misjudged his own times," Times literary supplement no. 6364 (March 21, 2025):  21.

"I would rather account to God for too great gentleness than for too great severity"

"I would rather account to God for too great gentleness than for too great severity. Is not God all love? God the Father is the Father of mercy; God the Son is a Lamb; God the Holy Ghost is a Dove, that is, gentleness itself. [. . .] And are you wiser than God?"

     Saint François de Sales (?), as translated, only possibly (!), by Henry Sebastian Bowden (1877).  The original French that I reproduce below comes from p. 383 of tom. 2 of the Vie de Saint François de Sales, évêque et Prince de Genève (1854), by André Jean Marie Hamon (1795–1874), who cites pt. IV sec. xxxii of the 1639-1641 Esprit de saint François de Sales, evêque et prince de Genêve:  recueilli de divers écrits de M. Jean-Pierre Camus, evêque de Belley, by Jean-Pierre Camus (1585-1652):

Ah ! leur répondait-il, il vaut mieux avoir à rendre compte de trop de douceur que de trop de sévérité. Dieu n’est-il pas tout amour ? Dieu le père est le père des miséricordes ; Dieu le fils se nomme un agneau, et Dieu le Saint-Esprit se montre sous la forme d’une colombe, qui est la douceur même. S’il y avait quelque chose de meilleur que la bénignité, Jésus Christ nous l’aurait dit; et cependant il ne nous donne que deux leçons à apprendre de lui : la mansuétude [(sometimes douceur)] et l’humilité de cœur. Me voulez-vous donc empêcher d’apprendre la leçon que Dieu m’a donnée, et êtes-vous plus savant que Dieu ?

I have yet to find this passage (considered as a exact quotation) in any version of the Esprit de saint François de Sales that I've managed to locate online so far.  E.g. This printing of 1727 not only lacks a pt. XIV chap. xxxii, but is unsearchable.  On the other hand, this one of 1865/66 offers, without returning the key phrases, both a pt. XIV sec. xxxii and, at precisely that point in particular, an appeal to St. Anselm to that very same effect.  This 1865/66, not to mention other 19th-century printings, might therefore be used more successfully than I've been able to use it so far to find at least the appeal to St. Anselm in variously numbered chapters or sections in the other, much earlier digitized printings that I've tried so far.
     I would note also in passing that, though I have not conducted any significant research into the personalities involved (Hamon, who was born about 173 years after de Sales' death; Camus, who knew him well; etc.), this 2001 article by Alexander T. Pocetto, O.S.F.S., first published in 2001, while concluding in favor of Camus (in whose Esprit I, however, have, again, yet to find the very passage in question), grapples with his reputation for unreliability.
     Clearly there is more work to be done on this one!

Grammatical gender

"Gender has the same root as genre and genus, so, in a grammatical context, refers to the category [or class] of a noun. . . .  English speakers, accustomed to a mother tongue without such noun classifications, may find it difficult to divorce the idea of [grammatical] gender from concepts of male/female, let alone avoid the temptation to find significance in a word's gender.  But many nouns belong to a gender category at complete variance with their meaning:  the Spanish word for masculinity (la masculinidad) is feminine because -idad is a feminine ending.  In contrast, el feminismo (feminism) is masculine because -ismo is a masculine ending.  Nor is it only in Romance languages where such discrepancies occur; like its Spanish and French counterparts, the German word for 'manliness' (die Mannlichkeit) is feminine."

     While the German word for feminism (Feminismus), I would add, is masculine, and the Latin word for manhood or masculinity (virilitas), feminine.  Etc.  Rory McDowall Clark, "Masculine and feminine," letter to the editor, Times literary supplement no. 6371 (May 9, 2025), 6.  More profoundly, though, perhaps, why is -idad "feminine," and -ismo "masculine"?  Etc.

My flesh (viscera), summoned to the resplendent (ignea) stars

Ian Norman

"Yea, it is even granted to restore the dead flesh [(viscera)] after its decease, and once again from its tomb the old form [(effigies)] is reborn, when the mouldering dust [(pulvereo)] comes together.  I indeed believe (and my faith is not vain) that bodies [(corpora)] live as does the soul; for now I bethink me it was in bodily [(corporeum)] form that God returned from Phlegethon with easy step to heaven.  The same hope awaits my members, which, though they are bidden to rest scented with spices in the tomb of death, Christ my leader, who rose from the like earth, calls to the glowing stars."

     Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (348-c. 410), "Hymnus ante cibus," Liber Cathemerion III, trans. Thompson, LCL, Prudentius I (1949), 31.  This is followed by a "Hymn after meat" as well.  Trans. Eagan, FC 43 (1962), 23:

Yes, I believe, and my faith is not vain,
Bodies live always along with their souls;
For I reflect that from Hades' abyss,
Christ in body came back from the dead,
Mounting with joy to His heavenly throne.

Laid up for me is the glorious hope
That the still body consigned to the tomb,
Fragrant with funeral balms, will arise,
Called to empyreal stars by our King,
Christ, who arose from a similar grave. 

"a deficiency inherent to the Latin races"

"The condition of Mexico, little satisfactory as it may appear, when compared to our own Republic, is greatly improved from what it was a few years ago; and there is no man living to whom the country is as much indebted as to Juarez for that improved state of affairs.  We Americans generally, in our estimate of that country and its people, commit the error of judging them from our own standpoint, making ourselves the standard, without duly taking into account the disadvantages and drawbacks under which they are laboring.  We are a people among whom republicanism is more fully understood than almost anywhere else in the world.  It almost seems instinctive with us; hence the respect for the Constitution and laws enacted by the majority of the sovereign people.   This respect for the laws is one of our distinctive features, and is in fact the chief guarantee for the duration of the republic:  but we cannot wonder to find the Mexicans as inferior to us in this point as in many others.  Their comparatively low state of civilization, the demoralizing influence of long continued Spanish tyranny, and perhaps a deficiency inherent to the Latin races, have been as many drawbacks to the full comprehension of the principles of republicanism.  In most of the South American republics we notice the same condition."

     [Frederick Douglass], "Our southern sister republic," The new national era, ed. Frederick Douglass, vol. 2, no. 31 (Thursday, August 10, 1871), p. 2, col. 3.  I was put onto this by (and am "quoting" very selectively “from”) Adam Hochschild, “One brief shining moment,” The New York review of books 72, no. 9 (May 29, 2025), 42 (41-42).

Martin Luther on the deserving and undeserving poor

      "In the second place, this '[Give to] everyone' [(Mt 5:42)] does not mean someone who has or can have enough.  There are, especially in our age, a great number of wicked scoundrels who pretend to be poor, needy beggars and deceive people; they ought to receive their 'alms' with a rope and sack from Master Hans—if only the authorities were not so lax and negligent and did not let the gallows stand idle on the streets as if on holiday.  Similarly, there are a good many loafers these days who, being active, healthy, and strong, might well work, serve, and make a living.  But they rely on Christians and pious people being glad to give.  And where there is not enough giving or people do not give adequate amounts, they supplement it by stealing—indeed, by taking things openly in yards, on the street, and even in houses.  The end of it is that I am in doubt whether there was ever such a time when stealing and taking was so common, and yet all the gallows stood all empty and, as it were, on holiday all the year round.  Here Christ commanded you to give not to these kinds of people but only to the needy in your city or around you, as Moses teaches, who are unable to work, serve, or make a living, or else do not make enough money despite their constant labor and service.  In these cases one is to give aid, gifts, and loans whether it is a friend or an enemy.  A Christian can certainly do this and will not find it too difficult, especially when those in charge restrain foreign beggars and vagabonds or strangers and loafers."

      Martin Luther, "To pastors, that they should preach against usury" (1539), trans. Matthew Carver, LW 61, Theological and polemical works, ed. Benjamin Mayes (2021), pp. 308-309.  =WA 51, pp. 383 l. 17-384 l. 3.  I was put onto this by Eberhard Jüngel, “Gewinn im Himmel und auf Erden:  theologische Bemerkungen zum Streben nach Gewinn,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 94, no. 4 (Dezember 1997):  541 (532-552).

"Man's greatness even in his concupiscence, from having known how to draw an admirable moral order from it and make it into an image of charity"

"Man's greatness even in his concupiscence.  He has managed to produce such a remarkable system from it and make it the image of true charity" (Krailsheimer 118 (Lafuma)).

"Man's greatness even in his concupiscence, from having known how to draw an admirable moral order from it and make it into an image of charity" (Levi 150 (Sellier)).

"The greatness of man even in his lust, to have known how to extract from it a wonderful code, and to have drawn from it a picture of benevolence" (Trotter 402 (Brunschvicg)). 

"Grandeur de l’homme dans sa concupiscence même, d’en avoir su tirer un règlement admirable et en avoir fait un tableau de la charité."

     Pascal, Pensées:  Faugère I, 225, CLV / Havet XXIV.80 ter / Brunschvicg 402 / Tourneur p. 197-1 / Le Guern 109 / Lafuma 118 / Sellier 150.

 

"Greatness:  Causes and effects show the greatness of man in producing such excellent order from his own concupiscence" (Kraisheimer 106 (Lafuma)).

"Greatness:  The law of cause and effect demonstrates man's greatness through the construction of such a fine moral order drawn out of concupiscence" (Levi 138 (Sellier)).

"Greatness.—The reasons of effects indicate the greatness of man, in having extracted so fair an order from lust" (Trotter 402 (Brunschvicg 403)).

"Les raisons des effets marquent la grandeur de l’homme, d’avoir tiré de la concupiscence un si bel ordre."

      Pascal, Pensées:  Faugère I, 220, CXXXVI / Havet XXIV.80 bis / Brunschvicg 403 / Tourneur p. 194-3 / Le Guern 97 / Lafuma 106 / Sellier 138.

 

     I was put onto this by the American economist Albert O. Hirschman via Peter Schallenberg, "'Christliche' unsichtbare Hand des Marktes?  Socialethik und Finanzethik," Catholica 76 (2022):  72 (69-76).  Apparently Hirschman traced also the concept of "the invisible hand" to Montesquieu and the thirst for honor rather than money.

"When he took our flesh he dedicated the whole of its substance to our salvation”

"quod de nostro assumpsit, totum nobis contulit ad salutem."

What he assumed of ours, the whole [of it] he bestowed upon us for [our] salvation.

     And what he assumed (assumpsit) of ours was, according to the previous sentence, our nature (nostram naturam).  St. Thomas Aquinas, First reading In primo nocturo, Officium "Sacerdos in aeternum" (Officium Sacerdos, noct. 1 l. 1), Officium de festo Corporis Christi (the Office, not the Mass "Cibavit eos").  According to Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino:  his life, thought, and work, 400, at least, the "grounds for denying" that it was Thomas of Aquinas who "wrote new hymns and prayers for th[is] occasion" "are not sufficient," and Corpus Thomisticum considers it "Sancti Thomae Aquino . . . authenticitate probabile".  Paraphrase above from the second reading for the Office of readings for Corpus Christi, Liturgy of the hours, vol. 4, p. 610.  Note that assumpsit and contulit are perfects:  "What he assumed of ours once for all time, the whole [of it] he bestowed upon us permanently for our salvation."

How reliable was Mrs. Norman P. Judd, reminiscing approximately twenty six years after the event?

"'Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day!  No, no, . . . man was made for immortality.'"

     Abraham Lincoln in 1856, according to Isaac N. Arnold, on p. 28 of  The layman's faith:  "If a man die, shall he live again?":  a paper read before the Philosophical Society of Chicago, Saturday, December 16th, 1882, and, of course (re-contextualized), Disney.  Arnold was channeling Mrs. Norman P. Judd, who, however, wrote only (without ever pretending to quote Lincoln),

"[Lincoln] speculated on the possibilities of knowledge which an increased power of the lens would give in the years to come; and then the wonderful discoveries of late centuries as proving that beings endowed with such capabilities as man must be immortal, and created for some high and noble end by him who had spoken those numberless worlds into existence; and made man a little lower than the angels that he might comprehend the glories and wonders of his creation."

     Mrs. Norman B. Judd, "An evening with Mr. Lincoln," in Osborn Hamiline Oldroyd, ed., The Lincoln memorial:  album-immortelles.  Original life pictures, with autographs, from the hands and hearts of eminent Americans and Europeans, contemporaries of the great martyr to liberty, Abraham Lincoln. Together with extracts from his speeches, letters, and sayings. With an introd. by Matthew Simpson, and a sketch of the patriot's life by Isaac N. Arnold (Boston:  D. L. Guernsey, 1882), 522 (520-524), where there is much more, though no occurrence of infinit* specifically.  According to Don E. and Virginia Fehrenbacher, "Mrs. Judd's vagueness about the date and circumstances casts some doubt upon the reliability of this interesting [specifically Mrs. Judd's] recollection" (Recollected words of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Don E. and Virginia Fehrenbacher (Stanford, CA:  Stanford University Press, 1996), 271).  Recollected words of Abraham Lincoln, by the way, is a very handy work of reference that places the "recollected words" under the names of those who recollected them, arranged alphabetically, and rates each recollected statement from A to E.  This one gets a D for "A quotation about whose authenticity there is more than average doubt" (liii).  The more expansive recollection of the words of Lincoln on this same occasion as set down by Arnold (above), by contrast, does not appear along with the other recollections subsumed under his name at almost the head of the alphabet on pp. 18-19.
     On the other hand, Isaac N. Arnold could, I suppose, have been present himself that evening, and therefore capable of elaborating on Mrs. Judd's account on the basis of his own memory of the conversation.
     Compare also this account from 1886, which quotes and actually cites "An evening with Mr. Lincoln" (above).
     Militating against the authenticity of this report, however, would be testimony like this, quoted on p. 50 of the 1999 edition of Guelzo's Abraham Lincoln:  redeemer president (Guelzo's source, Stevens' Reporter's Lincoln, 12, attributes it to the young Lincoln, from 1831-1837 resident in [New] Salem, IL, i.e. still nineteen years or more before 1856):  Lincoln "at least once admitted that he could not believe in the personal immortality of the soul.  'So you really believe there isn't any future state?' asked Parthena Hill.   'Mrs. Hill, I'm afraid there isn't,'  Lincoln replied.  "It isn't a pleasant thing to think that when we die that is the last of us.'"
     With thanks to my friend and colleague Dr. Ben McFarland for the diversion.

Pseudo-St. Augustine

Though I have done little more than search the English of the Past Masters version of the New City Press Works, I would be very surprised to be shown that this popular prayer was indeed composed by St. Augustine.  Surely it's just too unimaginative!

"Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy. Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy. Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy. Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy. Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy. Amen."