“Lorsque notre haine est trop vive, elle nous met au-dessous de ceux que nous haïssons.”
La Rochefoucauld “Réflexions morales #338” in Maximes
“Here’s another one, in some ways summing it up, when we find in the first letter of John this very peculiar claim that God is love. I’ve said to you many times before, I think, that every religion, every philosophy of religion, would talk about the love that God has, that love is an attribute of God, that God loves some, or he loves as a typical activity or whatever. But there is no religion or philosophy that makes the truly strange claim that God is love, except Christianity.”
Bishop Robert Barron in an otherwise excellent sermon “To the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit - Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermon” posted June 3, 2023 [https://youtu.be/Ey2A8bvUk8Y?t=212] but for once I think he is wrong; I never heard that love is an attribute of God from the Aztecs, or even the ancient Greeks
“The proponents of the so called ‘new natural law theory,’ or ‘basic goods theory,’ say that we shouldn’t speak of the natural purposes of things. For example, we shouldn’t say that the natural purpose that anchors the sexual powers is procreation, because this ‘instrumentalizes’ and ‘depersonalizes’ us – it makes us tools for making babies. This is absurd. One might as well say that it depersonalizes us to say that the natural purpose of the intellectual powers is deliberating and knowing the truth.”
J. Budziszewski “The Underground Thomist” April 17, 2023 [https://undergroundthomist.org/antipasto]
“How can we rush to catch a train which may not arrive for a few centuries?”
G.K. Chesterton “The Eternal Revolution” in Orthodoxy, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 #5 (May-June 2023)
“Peggy Jones was mowing her lawn in Silsbee, about 100 miles northeast of Houston, on Tuesday when out of nowhere, a snake plummeted from the sky before landing on her arm and wrapping itself around her limb, she told Houston-based NBC affiliate KPRC-TV. As the snake tightened around her arm, a hawk suddenly swooped down from above and started attacking Jones as it tried to pry the serpent away from her. ‘The snake was squeezing so hard, and I was waving my arms in the air. And then, this hawk was swooping down clawing at my arm over and over,’ Jones, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News, told KPRC. ‘I just kept saying, “Help me, Jesus. Help me, Jesus”,’ she said. She said the hawk came at her at least four times before it finally managed to get hold of the snake and fly away. Photos shared with KPRC appeared to show deep cuts and bruises on Jones’ bloodied right forearm following the attack. Jones said her husband took her to the emergency room after he heard her screaming and ran to her aid.... No snake bite was found, but Jones said she did find what appeared to be snake venom on her glasses, which were damaged during the incident. The Silsbee resident said people have told her she must be the unluckiest person alive to have both a snake and hawk attack her at the same time. However, she said: ‘I feel like the luckiest person alive to have survived this!’ She also said it wasn’t her first encounter with a snake — she already survived being bitten by a serpent a few years ago, KPRC reported.”
NBC August 9, 2023
“It is easy to maintain a situation while it is still secure;/ It is easy to deal with a situation before symptoms develop;/ It is easy to break a thing when it is yet brittle;/ It is easy to dissolve a thing when it is yet minute.”
Lao Tzu II.LXIV.152
“Vanitas vanitatum, which of us has his wish in this world, or, having it, is satisfied?”
G.K. Chesterton “Introduction to Thackeray”, quoted in Gilbert The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 26 # 4 (March-April 2023)
In my latest Loonie Politics column I analyze how Claudine Gay and Harvard put on a master class in “How Not To Manage A Scandal” by avoiding the crucial initial step of stopping to think whether they were in some way in the wrong before lashing out, whining, faking contrition and otherwise digging themselves into a deep deep hole.