"ask grace, not doctrine; desire, not intellect; the groaning of prayer and not studious reading"

"seek the answer in God’s grace, not in doctrine; in the longing of the will, not in the understanding; in the sighs of prayer, not in research; seek the bridegroom not the teacher; God and not man; darkness not daylight; and look not to the light but rather to the raging fire that carries the soul to God with intense fervor and glowing love [(interroga gratiam, non doctrinam; desiderium, non intellectum; gemitum orationis, non studium lectionis; sponsum, non magistrum; Deum, non hominem, caliginem, non claritatem; non lucem, sed ignem totaliter inflammantem et in Deum excessivis unctionibus et ardentissimis affectionibus transferentem)]. The fire is God, and the furnace is in Jerusalem, fired by Christ in the ardor of his loving passion. Only he understood this who said: My soul chose hanging and my bones death. Anyone who cherishes this kind of death can see God, for it is certainly true that: No man can look upon me and live."

     St. Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum 7.6, as translated in the Liturgy of the hours, Office of readings for the Feast of St. Bonaventure.  Latin from p. 313 of vol. 5 of the Quaracchi edition as reproduced in Itinerarium mentis in Deum, trans. Zachary Hayes, Works of St. Bonaventure (Saint Bonaventure, NY:  Franciscan Institute Publications, 2002), 138.  (The translation in the heading, however, is taken from the one by Hayes.)

     Yet this comes, of course, at the end of a long and rigorous itinerarium.  "For Saint Bonaventure is an intellectual, although not an intellectualist; his vocation is that of a theologian who craves for understanding.  Intellectual activity is as necessary for him [(as distinguished from his master, Saint Francis of Assisi)] as his daily bread" (Philotheus Boehner, OFM, in the "Notes and commentary" (p. 220 of the Franciscan Institute edition given above)).

"much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue."

"The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness."

     Richard Horton, the Editor of The Lancet, on a "symposium . . . on the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research . . . held at the Wellcome Trust in London" the week previous.  "Offline:  What is medicine's 5 sigma?"  The Lancet 385, no. 9976 (April 11-17, 2015):  1380.

Halalization

     "Each of these views has problems, but it is the multiculturalist one that seems the least in touch with social and political reality today. Not because the French don’t need to learn to accommodate more differences, but because it refuses to recognize the very disturbing developments in the Islamic world today (which are anything but accommodating to differences) and how they have already affected French life. The current mantra, which President Hollande felt obliged to repeat, is that Islamic terrorism has 'nothing to do with Islam' and that the most important thing is not to 'make an amalgam' of all Muslims. (The Socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, went even further, declaring the terrorists to be “without faith”—in other words, infidels.) But this attitude only reinforces an institutional and intellectual omertà that makes it difficult even to discuss what is really going on in the schools.

     "The evidence has been there for anyone who cared to look for it, in books like those of Kepel and the growing literature of memoirs written by former teachers in the quartiers who gave up because they could not control their classes or enforce the principle of laicity."

     Mark Lilla, "France on fire," The New York Review of books 62, no. 4 (March 5, 2015):  16 (14-16).

"The troubles of the Muslim world, however, are not those of pre-Reformation Europe, but rather of the Reformation in full swing."

"It has become common in Western circles, infused by the Whig interpretation of history, to speak of the need for a Muslim Luther to induce liberalism in Islam.  The troubles of the Muslim world, however, are not those of pre-Reformation Europe, but rather of the Reformation in full swing.  Hundreds of splintering congregations are seeking to suppress the accretions of popular religion, and return to the letter of the original scriptures, denouncing and warring with one another and the resurgent hierocrats of Shia Islam in Iran.  Nobody speaks for all Muslims, and political power is sought on the back of religious piety.  If one is to engage in the prescribing of solutions for Islam—a presumptuous excursion into the realm of the hypothetical, and to be done with due humility—then the fall of the Ottomans inspires a different thought:  perhaps we should encourage our Muslim friends to seek not a Luther but a pope."

     Gerard Russell, "Jihad:  the lessons of the Caliphate," The New York review of books 62, no. 8 (May 7, 2015):  47 (46-47).

"if you see the cause of religion suffering anywhere, do not prize concord about truth, but make a noble stand even to death."

"If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peacably with all men. . . . And in what follows he limits his meaning well, by saying, If it be possible.  For there are cases in which it is not possible, as, for instance, when we have to argue about religion. . . . if you see the cause of religion suffering anywhere, do not prize concord about truth, but make a noble stand even to death [(εἰ δέ που τὴν εὐσέβειαν παραβλαπτομένην ἴδιος, μὴ προτίμα τὴν ὁμόνοιαν τῆς ἀληθείας, ἀλλ᾿ ἵστασο γενναίως ἕως θανάτου)]. . . . even then be not at war in soul, be not averse in temper, but fight with the things only. . . . in mind be friendly, as I said before, without giving up the truth on any occasion."

     St. John Chrysostom, Homily 22 (Greek:  23) on Romans, at Rom 12:18, trans. Morris, Simcox, and Stevens, NPNF, first series, vol. 11, p. 508.  Greek from In divi Pauli epistolam ad Romanos homiliae XXXIII, ed. (Oxford:  J. H. Parker, 1849), p. 375.

Give us the grace to be conspicuous for our adherence to the splendor of the truth

"O God, who through the grace of adoption chose us to be children of light, grant, we pray, that we may not be wrapped in the darkness of error but always be seen to stand in the bright light of truth.  Through. . . ."

"Deus, qui, per adoptionem gratiae, lucis nos esse filios voluisti, praesta, quaesumus, ut errorum non involvamur tenebris, sed in splendore veritatis semper maneamus conspicui.  Per. . . ."

O God, who, by the adoption of grace, have intended [(voluisti)] us to be sons/children of the light, grant, we pray, that we be not enveloped [(involvamur)] in the darkness of errors, but be conspicuous for our adherence [(lit.:  but, conspicuous, adhere)] to the splendor of the truth.  Through. . .

     Collect for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Roman missal, in 2015 the first Sunday after the Supreme Court holding on Obergefell v. Hodges.  According to Corpus orationum no. 6821 (vol. 11, p. 28), this is identical to no. 725 in the post-850 Bergomese Sacramentary (Sacramentarium Bergomense), no. 694 in the 10th-century Biasca, and no. 1750 in the early 11th-century Triplex.
     Voluisti can also be a perfect of (in)volvo.

"God who is beyond fullness did not bring creatures into being out of any need of his, but that he might enjoy their proportionate participation in him and that he might delight in his works seeing them delighted and ever insatiably satisfied with the one who is inexhaustible."

Οὐκ ὡς προσδεόμενός τινος ὁ ὑπερπλήρης θεὸς παρήγαγεν εἰς τὸ εἶναι τὰ γεγονότα, ἀλλ᾿ ἵνα αὐτὰ μὲν αὐτοῦ ἀναλόγως μετέχοντα ἀπολαύσῃ, αὐτὸς δὲ ἐυφρανθῇ ἐπὶ τοῖς ἔργοις αὐτοῦ, ὁρῶν αὐτὰ εὐφραινόμενα καὶ τὸν ἀκόρεστον ἀκορέστως ἀεὶ κορεννύμενα.

     Maximus the Confessor, Four hundred chapters on love 3.46, trans. George C. Berthold, in Maximus Confessor:  selected writings,Classics of Western spirituality (New York:  Paulist Press, 1985), .  Capitoli sulla carità, ed. Aldo Ceresa-Gastaldo, Verba seniorum n.s. 3 (Roma : Editrice Studium, 1963), 164; PG 90, col. 1029C.