The indispensibility of the insight articulated by the proofs to "truly creative science"

"the history of the classic proofs of the existence of God viewed in relation to the development of science. . . . shows that all attacks on those proofs when unfolded in their full implication became attacks on the epistemology and world view which proved themselves to be essential ingredients in truly creative science."

     Stanley L. Jaki, citing his Gifford Lectures The road of science and the ways to God, in "Theological aspects of creative science," in Creation, Christ, and culture:  studies in honour of T. F. Torrance, ed. Richard W. A. McKinney (Edinburgh:  T. & T. Clark Ltd., 1976), 165 (149-166).

Our hearts have been rendered (inviscerated) restless until they rest in thee

     "One will rightly object that such [an] absolutization of the means [of inducing euphoria] is not new in history, and that hedonism is not unique to our epoque:  from Epicurus to Ronsard one has always noted hedonistic tendencies and whiffs [(relents)] of [the] absolutization of pleasure.  The fact is undeniable.  But what is new is the amplitude of a [(du)] movement well on its way to becoming a cultural characteristic [(fait)].

     "This is because, between [the period of] Greek thought and our own, Christianity hollowed out new desires, and because, when its cultural influence subsides, it leaves the [human] heart more empty than ever.  'This world, such as it is, is not tolerable.  Therefore I need the moon, or happiness, or immortality, I need something which is perhaps demented, but which is not of this world,' Albert Camus' Caligula [(as trans. Justin O'Brien)] tragically exclaims.  Christianity has, in effect, inviscerated the human heart [with] an unimaginable [or unprecedented] desire for [(impulsion au)] bliss, to the point that it inverted the Greek and naturalistic ideal.  For Aristotle, man is in fact the artisan of his [own] destiny:  he will find his happiness in an activity that he engages in by himself and for himself:  only the life of contemplation [(étude)] accomplishes it, [a] life reserved, moreover, for an elite.  The [Christian] theologians will correct [him]:  the beatitude of the other life, made for us, is a gift of God:  only there, where there will be no more tears or misery, will man find his true happiness and his perfect liberty.  Here man will never be able to avoid the invasion of misery; here happiness, though a participation in beatitude [(fût-il une participation à la béatitude)], is imperfect.  Christianity 'breaks the aristocratism in which the Greeks had taken pride; . . . the good old Christian woman knows more about God than all [of] the philosophers put together.'  'Thus are found [to be] reconciled the Aristotelian affirmation of a happiness in this life and the Christian affirmation of the misery of this earthly life:  the happiness of this life, as treated by Aristotle, is not a vain dream.  This happiness exists, but it is an imperfect happiness which does not do away with misery and which leaves the heart of man unsatisfied' [(René-Antoine Gauthier, “Trois commentaires ‘averroïstes’ sur l’Ethique à Nicomaque,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 22/23 (1947/1948):  187-336, here 253, 268).

     "Christianity has promised an unheard-of happiness, though [(un bonheur si inouï, que)] our cultural tradition has come to take it for granted.  But, disappearing, Christianity has opened up a breach which has been transformed into a yawing chasm [(béance)].  And] this is why the [euphoric] compensations must be [(se feront) so much] more 'intense [(vives)]'.  In giving it this impetus towards beatitude, Christianity has dug [(labouré, plowed)] the human heart out so profoundly that, when the social influence of Christianity subsides, we seek in particular goods something that can satisfy the [(un)] desire for infinity that it has elicited.  Th[is] inflammation [(irritation)] of the heart has (thanks also to our immense progress in techno-scientific mastery) left contemporary man more dissatisfied than ever:  a new and [much] more powerful impetus has been imparted to it, but the answer has, in the end, eluded it [(la réponse a fini par lui échapper)].  The desire for happiness, because it is the desire for the vision of God seen face-to-face, has hollowed the human heart out to an infinite degree, and caused it to hope [for something] beyond all human expectation."

     François-Xavier Putallaz, "La tentation de l’euphorie:  peut-on vivre heureux aujourd’hui?," Nova etvetera:  revue trimestrielle 83, no. 4(2008):  407-408 (399-411), translation mine.

“In the narrative of Genesis, Adam does not create Eve. He discovers and welcomes her, along with the mystery of communion with which she comes loaded [(dont elle est porteuse)].”

     "Éditorial:  La théorie du Gender:  quels présupposés anthropologiques?," Nova et vetera:  revue trimestrielle 86, no. 3 (Juillet-Août-Septembre 2011):  265 (261-266).  But neither does Eve create herself, à la Simone de Beauvoir (264.6, 265.3).

God is more, even, than physical survival

"the moral calculus involved in balancing goods must respect a final limit. There are goods that are never subject to trade-offs.  There are values which must never be abandoned for a greater value and even surpass the preservation of physical life. There is martyrdom. God is (about) more than mere physical survival. A life that would be bought by the denial of God, a life that is based on a final lie, is a non-life.  Martyrdom is a basic category of Christian existence."

"die Moral der Güterabwägung eine letzte Grenze respektieren muß. Es gibt Güter, die nie zur Abwägung stehen. Es gibt Werte, die nie um eines noch höheren Wertes wegen preisgegeben werden dürfen und die auch über dem Erhalt des physischen Lebens stehen. Es gibt das Martyrium. Gott ist mehr, auch als das physische Überleben. Ein Leben, das durch die Leugnung Gottes erkauft wäre, ein Leben, das auf einer letzten Lüge beruht, ist ein Unleben. Das Martyrium ist eine Grundkategorie der christlichen Existenz."

     Benedict XVI, "The Church and the scandal of sexual abuse" ("Die Kirche und der Skandal des sexuellen Mißbrauchs"), 11 April 2019, I.2.

Oscar Wilde, predator

Trinity College, Dublin

"although Wilde has long been acclaimed as a gay martyr and hero, he needs to be treated with care.
"we should be cautious about adopting a new double standard, and judging more leniently a writer who bought the bodies of penniless young boys in late-nineteenth-century Algiers or Naples than we would a businessman who buys the bodies of penniless young girls in early-twenty-first-century Bangkok or Manila. . . .
"One London reviewer of [Matthew] Surgis's book [Oscar:  a life] said that 'if these and all the others had been young women rather than young men, Wilde would today be seen not as an icon, but as a predator.'  But shouldn't we see him as a predator anyway?  We may be dismayed by Wilde's sufferings in prison, but a hundred years later he would likely have received a longer sentence. . . .
"the law to which [the Labouchere amendment] was appended, the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, was in its main purpose wholly commendable. . . .  the act was intended to suppress that evil [(child prostitution in London)].  Wouldn't most of us admire that, and the aim of protecting young girls—or boys—then or now?
"however gaudy and extraordinary [Wilde's] life was, we honor him more by remembering not the man but his work. . . ."

     Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "'Feasting with panthers,'" The New York review of books 66, no. 5 (March 21, 2019), 41 (40-41).  If I understand him aright, Wheatcroft is implying that when, "At his first trial as a defendant, Wilde gave an impassioned spontaneous speech . . . about 'the "Love that dare not speak its name,"' he was surreptitiously enlisting the love of Jonathan for David in support of the love of men for—not men but—boys.

Bolshevik intolerance

"'in conditions of fierce class struggle, in a large Party intimately connected to the broad masses, . . . the personal can become the political. . . .  When we fight, we do not fight the way liberals do.  They are the ones who separate the personal from the political.  Among us, it does not work that way:  if your politics are lousy, then you are a lousy, good-for-nothing person, and if your politics are wonderful, then you are a wonderful person.'"

     The "disgraced" Mikhail Pavolovich Tomsky, "in his confession to the Sixteenth Party Congress" of 26 June-13 July 1930, as translated by and quoted in Yuri Slezkine, The house of government:  a saga of the Russian Revolution (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 2017), 304.

John Calvin's prayer before going to work

Prayer [to be said before doing one's work]

     "Our good God, Father and Savior, since You have pleased to command us to work to meet our needs, by Your grace may You so bless our labor that Your benediction may extend to us:  without it we cannot continue to live.  And may [Your] favor serve us as a witness of Your goodness and presence, that by it we may recognize the fatherly care You have for us.
     "Moreover, O Lord, please grant us aid by Your Holy Spirit, so that we may faithfully work in our place and vocation, without any fraud or deception; may we pay attention to following Your ordinance rather than satisfying our own lust for gain.  And if it please You to prosper our labor, may You also give us the heart to support those who are in need according to the ability You have given to us—but always without our wishing to set ourselves above those who have not received such generosity from You.  And where You choose to give us greater poverty and lack than our flesh would like, You, O Lord, grant us the grace to acknowledge that You always feed us by Your goodness, so that we may not be tempted to defy You.  But may we wait with patience for You to fill us not only with Your temporal graces but also with spiritual ones, so that we may always have greater reason and occasion to thank You and to repose entirely on Your goodness alone.  Hear us, most merciful Father, by Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord.  Amen."

     John Calvin:  writings on pastoral piety, ed. Elsie Anne McKee, Classics of western spirituality:  a library of the great spiritual masters (New York:  Paulist Press, 2001), 215-215.  According to McKee  (210), this, the second of the two such prayers (hence the square brackets in the heading), appeared first in  L'ABC françois of 1551 (I know of only the 1553 online (which doesn't contain the prayer), though there does seem to be a 1551 in the full-text  Brill collection Huguenots Online), and then again in "some [1561] editions of the liturgy and catechism", including the 1561 Forme des prières.  Cf. CO 6 =CR 34, 137-138, where it appears as a variant.  John H. Leith reproduced the so-called Beveridge translation in The Christian life (Cambridge, MA:  Harper & Row, Publishers, 1984), 79-80, as follows, though I have yet to find it in the work cited by Leith, Beveridge's 19th-century edition of the Tracts and treatises:

     "Our good God, Father and Savior, since thou hast commanded us to work in order to meet our needs, sanctify our labor so that thy blessing extends even to us, without which no one can ever prosper well.  Let such favor attend us as a witness of thy goodness and help, making us aware through it of the fatherly care thou hast for us.  Also, Lord, be pleased to assist us through the Holy Spirit to the end that we are able faithfully to fulfill our calling without any deceit or fraud, that we regard ourselves as following thy law rather than fulfilling our desire to enrich ourselves.  Nevertheless, let it please thee to prosper our labor.  Give thou also to us a good heart to supply those who are poor, maintaining us in all humility to the end that we may never exalt ourselves over those who have not received such largesse from your liberality.  Now if thou should call us into greater poverty or need than we humanly desire, let us not sink into defiance but rather let us wait patiently for thee to replenish us not only with temporal grace but also with thy spiritual grace to the end that we may always have more ample cause and occasion to thank thee and to rest entirely upon thy goodness.  Grant this to us, Father of all mercy, through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Savior.  Amen."