Nein!

Because "'a man without limits is as incapable of satisfaction as a man without hope'", "a culture of permission promises happiness but delivers [only] dissatisfaction.  In such a culture—our culture—the greatest gift we can give our fellow man is the word that limits.  That word is 'No!'"

     [R. R. Reno,] quoting John Waters.  "While we're at it," First things no. 297 (November 2019):  70.

An Enlightened utilitarianism

"Let one not allow oneself to be moved at all by the air of cruelty that one might think one finds in this.  A man is nothing by comparison with the human species; a criminal is even less than nothing."

"Qu'on ne se laisse point émouvoir par l'air de cruauté qu'on pourroit croire trouver ici.  Un homme n'est rien, comparé à l'espèce humaine; un criminel est encore moins que rien."

     Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, proposing experimentation on the brains of living convicts (for "the good of society" (77), the larger purpose, say, of uncovering the "bonds" that account for the "marvelous union of body and soul"), Lettre sur le progrès des sciences (1752), 83-84 ("Utilités du supplice des criminels").  I was put onto this by William J. Hoye, "Muss man wählen zwischen Frieden oder Wahrheit?  Begründungen der Toleranz bei Ulrich Beck und Thomas von Aquin," Theologie und Philosophie 84 (2009):  376 (374-393).  Moreau de Maupertuis:  one should proceed "sans scrupule", having begun with cadavers and moved up to animals.  Hoye (who thinks Moreau de Maupertuis was serious about this):  "That this, too, was [a] part of the historic Enlightenment is [all too] easily forgotten."

"and some of you they will put to death; . . . But not a hair of your head will perish."

Adam Elsheimer,
The Stoning of Saint Stephen (1603/1604),
Scottish National Gallery

"and some of you they will put to death [(θανατώσουσιν)];… But not a hair of your head will perish [(ἀπόληται)]."

Lk 21:16, 19 RSV. "By your endurance [unto death] you will gain [(κτήσασθε)] your lives [(ψυχὰς)]" (v. 18); "whoever loses [(ἀπολέσῃ)] his life [(ψυχὴν)] for my sake will find it" (Mt 16:25); etc.

Attentive stability

"if one's sight is clear and if one stays on and works well, one's love gradually responds to the place as it really is, and one's visions gradually image possibilities that are really in it."

     Wendell Berry, "People, land, and community," In The art of the commonplace:  the agrarian essays of Wendell Berry (Washington, DC:  Counterpoint, 2002), 187, as quoted in Norman Wirzba, "Attention and responsibility:  the work of prayer," in The phenomenology of prayer, ed. Bruce Ellis Benson and Norman Wirzba (New York:  Fordham University Press, 2005), 98 (88-100).

Redeeming the time

"The future of prediction, dreary with anxiety or buoyant with hope, has to be held at bay, so that we may use this moment of time to do something, however modest, that is worthwhile and responsible, something to endure before the throne of judgment."

     Oliver O’Donovan, Self, world, and time (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 2013), 17, as quoted in Andrew Errington, "Wakeful communities and digital sociality:  social media and the life of Christian communities," St. Mark’s review no. 233 (October 2015):  43 (42-59).

True indifference

     "False indifference is the scourge of a domesticated Christianity, tired and worn-out, readily accommodating itself to its culture, bowing to the social pressures of the status quo.  It remains so tame as to fear nothing so much as the disdain of sophisticated unbelief."

     Belden C. Lane, "Desert attentiveness, desert indifference:  countercultural spirituality in the desert fathers and mothers," Cross currents 44, no. 2 (Summer 1995):  201 (193-206).  Lane might take this in one direction, but I would add another.

"the Father, the Father's Name, and the Father's Kingdom"

"the words of the [Lord’s] prayer point out the Father, the Father’s name, and the Father’s kingdom to help us learn from the source himself to honor, to invoke, and to adore the one Trinity.  For the name of God the Father who subsists essentially is the only-begotten Son, and the kingdom of God the Father who subsists essentially is the Holy Spirit.  Indeed, what Matthew here calls the kingdom another evangelist elsewhere calls Holy Spirit:  'May your Holy Spirit come and purify us.'"

     Maximus the Confessor, Commentary on the Our Father, First Petition.  Maximus Confessor:  selected writings, trans. George C. Berthold, Classics of Western spirituality (New York:  Paulist Press, 1985), 106.  The quotation is from the famous variant on the Lord’s Prayer in Luke, ἐλθέτω τὸ πνεῦμά σου τὸ ἅγιον (ἐφ' ἡμᾶς) καὶ καθαρισάτω ἡμας.