They love [the truth] when it shines, they hate it when it reproves.

"Deep down, the issue is not reproach for its past history but the fact that as silent as it seems to remain, the Church reproves the customs or the decisions that disrupt or even prevent the hearing of the Gospel and access to the life of the Spirit.  Under the glaring light of this veritas redarguens, nothing is more normal than that a majority in every society, ourselves included, ceaselessly clamors for the Church to evolve and 'adapt,' for it finally to end up approving our habits, in short for it to leave us in peace with our evils and the words we use to justify them.  And if the Church refuses, as it cannot but do, the majority protests; but with a contradictory protestation, since it thus acknowledges an in fact inordinate importance in the judgment of an institution that it nevertheless claims to impugn and hold as null and void.  The Church cannot 'change with the times' because it cannot change anything about what happens to it, about the call that summons and stirs it.  On the contrary the Church's only ambition must be to change the world of its time, without ever knowing with what success, since that is not in its power.  It is, however, solely up to the Church to improve its response, not to the complaints of the world, but to the initial and final word that Christ puts forth."

     Jean-Luc Marion, A brief apology for a Catholic moment, trans. Stephen E. Lewis (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 2021), 18.  On "this veritas redarguens," see St. Augustine.

"Yet another effort, Frenchmen, if you would become tolerant!"

      Jean-Luc Marion, A brief apology for a Catholic moment, trans. Stephen E. Lewis (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 2021), 5.

"the word of the Lord is always fire"

Studies in Reformed Theology and History,
Princeton Theological Seminary

"semper ignis est verbum Domini".
"la parolle de Dieu soit tousiours feu".

      John Calvin, Harmonia ex tribus Evangelistis composita (1555 in both Latin (CO 45, cols. 809-810) and French) on Lk 24:32.

The ability to touch, share our food, and inhale and exhale our air

"the 'environmental senses' [of touch, taste, and smell] are essential to the Incarnation: . . . [the Son of God] had the ability to touch, shared our food, and inhaled and exhaled our air."

     José Granados, "The pandemic:  a sacramental reading," Communio:  international Catholic review 74, no. 3 (Fall 2020):  462 (455-470).

"each of us is an allegory, embodying in a particular tale and clothed in the garments of time and place, universal truth and everlasting life."

     J. R. R. Tolkien, Letter 163 to W. H. Auden, 7 June 1955.  I was put on to this by someone else, and have not yet read the whole letter.

"the understanding of human weakness. . . . never means compromising and falsifying the standard of good and evil in order to adapt it to particular circumstances."

"'. . . God's command is of course proportioned to man's capabilities; but to the capabilities of the man to whom the Holy Spirit has been given; of the man who, though he has fallen into sin, can always obtain pardon and enjoy the presence of the Holy Spirit.'
     "In this context, appropriate allowance is made both for God's mercy towards the sinner who converts and for the understanding of human weakness. Such understanding never means compromising and falsifying the standard of good and evil in order to adapt it to particular circumstances. It is quite human for the sinner to acknowledge his weakness and to ask mercy for his failings; what is unacceptable is the attitude of one who makes his own weakness the criterion of the truth about the good, so that he can feel self-justified, without even the need to have recourse to God and his mercy. An attitude of this sort corrupts the morality of society as a whole, since it encourages doubt about the objectivity of the moral law in general and a rejection of the absoluteness of moral prohibitions regarding specific human acts, and it ends up by confusing all judgments about values."

     St. John Paul II, Veritatis splendor 103-104, underscoring mine.

The intrinsic and indissoluble bond of conjoined coherence between faith and morality

"Also, an opinion is frequently heard which questions the intrinsic and unbreakable bond between faith and morality [(intrinseco atque indissolubili vinculo copulatae cohaerentiae fidem inter et rem moralem, the intrinsic and indissoluble bond of conjoined coherence between faith and morality)], as if membership in the Church and her internal unity were to be decided on the basis of faith alone, while in the sphere of morality a pluralism of opinions and of kinds of behaviour could be tolerated, these being left to the judgment of the individual subjective conscience or to the diversity of social and cultural contexts."

     St. John Paul II, Veritatis splendor 4.  Sec. 26:

"From the Church's beginnings, the Apostles, by virtue of their pastoral responsibility to preach the Gospel, were vigilant over the right conduct of Christians [(prospexerunt probitatis morum christianorum)], just as they were vigilant for the purity of the faith and the handing down of the divine gifts in the sacraments [(consuluerunt fidei integritati atque supernorum munerum traditioni per sacramenta)]. The first Christians, coming both from the Jewish people and from the Gentiles, differed from the pagans not only in their faith and their liturgy but also in the witness of their moral conduct [(non solum propter suam fidem suamque liturgiam, verum etiam ob testimonium moralis rationis agendi)], which was inspired by the New Law. The Church is in fact a communion both of faith and of life [(fidei simulque vitae communio)]; her rule of life is 'faith working through love' (Gal 5:6).
     "No damage must be done to the harmony between faith and life: the unity of the Church is damaged [(Nulla laceratio debet insidiari concordiae inter fidem et vitam: Ecclesiae unitati vulnus infligitur)] not only by Christians who reject or distort the truths of faith [(fidei veritatem respuentibus vel evertentibus)] but also by those who disregard the moral obligations [(moralia neglegunt officia)] to which they are called by the Gospel (cf. 1 Cor 5:9-13). The Apostles decisively rejected any separation between the commitment of the heart and the actions which express or prove it [(inter curam cordis dis[c]idium et actus eam enuntiantes et comprobantes)] (cf. 1 Jn 2:3-6). And ever since Apostolic times the Church's Pastors have unambiguously condemned the behaviour of those who fostered division by their teaching or by their actions [(doctrina sua suisque moribus)]."