. . . has produced these random thoughts:
It seems that for many Catholics who are politically conservative, "prudence" plays the same part that "conscience" plays in the theology of many Catholics who are politically liberal.
What is a Trill but a secularized, "science-fictionized" fantasy of the Real Presence?
Because God alone is good, He alone is the unconditional value; creation is a hierarchy of descending goods, each in its place, none having meaning except in relationship to Him. Thus does Christianity free men from all inhuman tyranny, for each human act can only be conditionally valued and never respected for its own sake.
Evil cannot give life. Thus, if evil is to progress, make headway in the world, it must rely on the life of others, creations and creatures brought to a point where they are corrupted and die, coming within the expanding necrosis that increases the evil realm -- not by growth or change -- but by adding to the sheer number of dead things.
Only belief in the Resurrection can allow men to overcome their circumstances without changing them, thus preserving their human dignity from all oppression and disdain.
"Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." If there's nothing in my life which isn't an intolerable burden to me, if I am not suffering from an injustice which should not have to be suffered, there's probably something very wrong with my life.
Not all good things will be offered for the improvement of a person, a cause, or a situation. Sometimes God may will that we offer good things as a judgment on those who will reject them, like the houses or cities who refused to hear Him through the Apostles.
If you suffer for long because of the hardness of another's heart, think what great coldness, what awful hardness, you are trying to rescue the poor fool from!
Worldly men are hard, cold, and rigidly press their rights. To paraphrase St. Paul, the world will not tolerate suffering, and is cruel; the world envies and vaunts itself, puffing itself up it behaves unseemly, seeks its own, and is easily provoked. The thoughts of worldly men are consumed with evil, the evil they wish to do, and of the evil they fear from others. Such men are brittle and inflexible. They cannot accept true challenges or salutary changes. They cannot make a way. So they must be compensated for by men who are able to suffer, to give up their rights, their due, what the world "owes" them, in order to make way for new things.
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