Luke Mohan > Recent Status Updates

The fashion of a decade is rarely, if ever, the truth of a century.

The University, like the hospital, is very much an institution of Christendom… Universities are what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, called “switch points of cultural power.“

A common temptation in the present era is for people to try to separate the fruits of Christianity from belief in the basic tenets of the faith as expressed in the Creed… Secular humanist are often keen to retain these fruits but separate them from belief in God. This project leads to what Ratzinger calls “political moralism.”

Ratzinger expresses the principle: “Faith has the right to be missionary only if it transcends all [human] traditions and constitutes an appeal to reason and an orientation toward the truth itself.“

It is natural, normal, and healthy for one’s sense of self to exist within the context of a living history in tradition. Those, without such moorings, often spend their entire youth trying to “find themselves” without much success and often only after years of painful experimentation.

If the church wants to nourish scholarship and be the guardian of the great cultural treasures of the Christian centuries, then she needs to foster the study of the classical languages.

John XXIII endorsed the use of Latin not merely as a passport to a proper understanding of Christian writers of antiquity, or from a desire for bureaucratic uniformity, but as an element of the churches tradition that is valuable for “religious reasons.“

The study of Latin has been in the doldrums ever since Catholics parted with “the speech of Christian centuries“ and became “like profane intruders in the literary precincts of sacred utterance“ (to quote from the General Audience Address of Paul VI on November 26, 1969).

To quote the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, no one wants to die for a telephone company. If nations have no foundations higher than contract law, national identity will be very weak.

According to the tenets of political liberalism there is no greater form of anti-social behavior than making moral judgements that one life-style choice is superior to another. Underlying this ideology is a rejection of… the transcendentals.

So along with the development of this consumerist global civilization grows a mass of people who do not create any values. They are only intermediaries — public relations agents…

The universities were traditionally havens of aristocratic culture, but they have become so thoroughly democratized they now resemble businesses.

King Baudouin … in 1990 abdicated for a day rather than have his name attached to pro abortion legislation. At the time King Baudouin rhetorically asked: is it right that I am the only Belgian citizen to be forced to act against his conscience in such a crucial area? Is the freedom of conscience sacred for everyone except for the king?

Fundamentally, chivalry is about people with strength and power using whatever gifts they have acquired from nature or education to help those weaker than themselves. It is the complete antithesis of the survival of the fittest principles which govern life among the lower primates.

She was a pretty young woman with a decide air, and with a hint not of boldness but rather if that freedom which a wedding-ring and the protection if a child provides.

They may say the Polychrest ain’t very wuick in stays; they may say she don’t furl her tops’ls all that pretty; but if they say she’s shy, if they say she don’t like hard knocks, why, black the white of my eye.

I know things are not perfect, but I cannot reform the world and run a man-of-war.

…the man was incompetent, incompetent for such a situation as this. He was conscientious, he did his duty as he understood it; but he was no seaman.

…she is quietly and privately jolly. A great rarity in women…who are often as solemn as owls, though given to noisy laughter.

I beg leave to assure your Grace that I shall be happy in an occasion to mark the respect with which I have the honor to be, Madam, Your most obedient, humble servant

She gazed about her with the benevolence of a good-natured girl who has a ring on her finger, and who wishes everybody to be as happy as herself.

“To feel shame and guilt is an evil oppression.”
“Some kinds of shame and guilt are evil, but some kinds of shame and guilt are justified. In these times, we have brought shame upon ourselves because of our real guilt. And though justice has fallen upon us, behind this justice is the Lord’s great mercy.”

Love is an ocean, fathomless in depth and holy. It drowns the black flames of fear; it silences the hiss if serpents; it is stronger than death.

I am no arrow in the bow of the Lord, but a man who prays.

With learned voices and great dignity of office they justify their every rejection of the truth.

“But without repentance, cunning and shrewdness will avail us little.”

Do these priests not believe in what they profess? While they are fastidious in their ritual duties, have they given themselves permission to be inwardly rotten? Surely they understand that God desires the inner life of a man to conform to his outer conduct.

My eyes, my mind, my heart belong to the Lord, and this I must never forget. For an image of sin can lead to actual sin. Then the sin can lead to another sin, and then to worse sins.