Saturday, July 28, 2012

Tocqueville on the careless usufruction unworthy of a free man

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"It profits me but little . . . that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly averts all da...

Tocqueville on the "two distinct kinds of centralization"

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"I cannot conceive that a nation can live and prosper without a powerful centralization of government [(centralisation gouvernementale)...
Friday, July 27, 2012

"uni deo, una & eadem formula, preces, & laudes adhibendi"

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"to one God, with one and the same formula, let prayers and praise be addressed".      Brevarium Romanum (1568), 3, as translat...
Thursday, July 26, 2012

"What was England, before Wolsey? A little offshore island, poor and cold."

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          Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall:  a novel  (New York:  Henry Holt and Company, A John Macrae Book, 2009), 213.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Williams on the "nonsense . . . written about 'Celtic Christianity'"

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"A great deal of nonsense has been written about 'Celtic Christianity', as if this were an intelligible designation for some se...
Sunday, July 15, 2012

"'the Devil is stupid.' Because of that, the Devil can only get his way with the help of stupid Catholics."

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     George W. Rutler, quoting St. John Vianney, in "Post-comfortable Christianity and the election of 2012," Crisis magazine, Ju...
Monday, July 9, 2012

"laws and decrees enacted in contravention of the moral order, and hence of the divine will, can have no binding force in conscience"

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"The doctrine on the necessary conformity of civil law with the moral law is in continuity with the whole tradition of the Church. Thi...