"Really," protested Martin Wood, "I do think you should be the last man in the world to tinker about with those beautiful Gothic arches, which are about the best work your own religion has ever done in the world. I should have thought you'd have had some feeling for that sort of art; but I can't see why you should be so uncommonly keen on photography."

"I'm uncommon keen on daylight," answered Father Brown, "especially in this dingy business; and photography has the virtue of depending on daylight. And if you don't know that I would grind all the Gothic arches in the world to powder to save the sanity of a single human soul, you don't know so much about my religion as you think you do." --Father Brown: The Doom of the Darnaways, G.K. Chesterton

Universal Basic Income

"We think that, in a system where a (more social) conception of property would be in force, this axiom ('nothing for nothing') would not be able to survive. Quite to the contrary, the law of usus communis would lead us to establish that, at least and foremost, what regards the basic material and spiritual needs of the human person, it is proper for people to get, for nothing, as many things as possible... The human person being served in his basic necessities is only, after all, the first condition of an economy which does not deserve to be called barbarous.

"The principles of such an economy would lead to a better understanding of the profound meaning and the essentially human roots of the idea of inheritance, in such a way that... all men, upon entering into the world, could effectively enjoy, in some way, the condition of being a heir of the preceding generations." --Jacques Maritain, Integral Humanism

"Finally, it is this equal condition of being coheirs of everyone's efforts which makes it feasible for all people to get, as much as possible and at no cost, a share of the basic material and spiritual goods that are required for human existence." --Jacques Maritain, Principles of a Humanistic Economy

This cracked me up when I heard it

"Everyone is singing the praises of technology - 'oh, if we could only use it properly'. It's pure hubris as far as I'm concerned. We are not in charge. We're like the people in the airplanes strapped in the seat. The machine is flying us, not us. We don't fly. We get strapped into machines that fly." --Godfrey Reggio

"If you marry the mood or the spirit of an age, you will be a widow in the next one." --Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen

"...in an evolved society there are no innocent victims of propaganda. Propaganda succeeds because men want it to succeed. It works on minds because those minds want to be worked on. Its conclusions bring apparent light and satisfaction because that is the kind of satisfaction that people are longing for. It leads them to actions for which they are already half prepared: all they ask is that these actions be justified." --Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Clearly, the "powers" and "elements" which in Paul's day dominated men's minds through pagan religion or through religious legalism, today dominate us in the confusion and the ambiguity of the Babel of tongues that we call mass-society. Certainly I do not condemn everything in the mass media. But how does one stop to separate the truth from the half-truth, the event from the pseudo-event, reality from the manufactured image? It is in this confusion of images and myths, superstitions and ideologies that the "powers of the air" govern our thinking - even our thinking about religion! Where there is no critical perspective, no detached observation, no time to ask the pertinent questions, how can one avoid being deluded and confused?

Someone has to try to keep his head clear of static and preserve the interior solitude and silence that are essential for independent thought. --Thomas Merton, from an essay first published in Katallagete and then in Faith and Violence

Fenner laughed and then looked puzzled. "I don't understand one thing," he said. "If it was Wilson, how did Wynd come to have a man like that on such intimate terms? How did he come to be killed by a man he'd seen every day for years? He was famous as being a judge of men."

Father Brown thumped his umbrella on the ground with an emphasis he rarely showed.

"Yes," he said, almost fiercely. "That was how he came to be killed. He was killed for just that. He was killed for being a judge of men."

They all stared at him, but he went on almost as if they were not there.

"What is any man that he should be a judge of men?" he demanded. "These three were the tramps that once stood before him and were dismissed rapidly right and left to one place or another; as if for them there were no cloak of courtesy, no stages of intimacy, no free will in friendship. And twenty years has not exhausted the indignation born of that unfathomable insult in that moment when he dared to know them at a glance." --G.K. Chesterton, The Miracle of Moon Crescent

"If each of us would only sweep our own doorstep, the whole world would be clean." --Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

"...then who am I to judge him?" --Pope Francis in press conference during flight back to Rome from Rio De Janeiro

Of the Stain of Sin

"Now man's soul has a twofold comeliness; one from the refulgence of the natural light of reason, whereby he is directed in his actions; the other, from the refulgence of the Divine light, viz. of wisdom and grace, whereby man is also perfected for the purpose of doing good and fitting actions. Now, when the soul cleaves to things by love, there is a kind of contact in the soul: and when man sins, he cleaves to certain things, against the light of reason and of the Divine law... . Wherefore the loss of comeliness occasioned by this contact, is metaphorically called a stain on the soul." --St. Thomas Aquinas, Of the Stain of Sin, from the first article

Mercy before Justice

"By experiencing the tenderness and pardon of the Lord, the penitent is more easily led to acknowledge the gravity of sin, is more resolved to avoid it in order to remain and grow in renewed friendship with him." --Pope Benedict XVI,  To The Confessors Who Serve In The Four Papal Basilicas Of Rome

I like this

St. Thomas Aquinas

"Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine." --St. Thomas Aquinas

Did you know that St. Thomas Aquinas was the inventor of dandelion-burdock beer? Yep. While he was writing the Summa and becoming very tired, the Spirit told him to go for a walk outside and take the roots of the first two plants he came across, then make a brew from them: they were the dandelion and the burdock.

Bresson on how certain things should not be shown in film

"If you show it, it's finished. The same thing goes for love. You don't feel love if you see two people making love." --Robert Bresson

“I think in the whole world things are going very badly. People are becoming more materialist and cruel ... Cruel by laziness, by indifference, egotism, because they only think about themselves and not at all about what is happening around them, so they let everything grow ugly and stupid. They are all interested in money only. Money is becoming their God. God doesn't exist for many. Money is becoming something you must live for. You know, even your astronauts, the first one who put his foot on the moon, said that when he first saw our earth, he said it was something so miraculous, so marvelous, don't spoil it, don't touch it. More deeply I feel the rotten way they are spoiling the earth. All the countries. Silence doesn't exist anymore; you can't find it. That, for me, would make it impossible to live.” --Robert Bresson

Downward from above

"Nay, Bennet, never. Nay, not he," said the priest. "There cometh never any rising, Bennet, from below--so all judicious chroniclers concord in their opinion; but rebellion travelleth ever downward from above; and when Dick, Tom, and Harry take them to their bills, look ever narrowly to see what lord is profited thereby." --Sir Oliver in The Black Arrow, by Robert Louis Stevenson

Picture of a bill. Long handled.

Pride is from hell

Two classic essays by the master essayist G.K. Chesterton are on humility and pride.

Here is a quote from the essay on pride, entitled, If I Had Only One Sermon To Preach:

"There is produced also a sort of subconscious ossification; which hardens the mind not only against the traditions of the past, but even against the surprises of the future. Nil admirari becomes the motto of all nihilists; and it ends, in the most complete and exact sense, in nothing."

Here is a quote from Pope Francis' closing speech for the Synod:

"One, a temptation to hostile inflexibility [trans: rigidity], that is, wanting to close oneself within the written word, (the letter) and not allowing oneself to be surprised by God, by the God of surprises, (the spirit); within the law, within the certitude of what we know and not of what we still need to learn and to achieve."

Here is another quote from the pride essay:

"The moment the self within is consciously felt as something superior to any of the gifts that can be brought to it, or any of the adventures that it may enjoy, there has appeared a sort of self-devouring fastidiousness and a disenchantment in advance, which fulfils all the Tartarean emblems of thirst and of despair."

Here is another quote from Pope Francis' closing speech:

"...and also to transform the bread into a stone and cast it against the sinners, the weak, and the sick (cf Jn 8:7), that is, to transform it into unbearable burdens (Lk 11:46)."

and:

"The temptation to neglect the “depositum fidei” [the deposit of faith], not thinking of themselves as guardians but as owners or masters [of it]..."

Here is a quote from G.K.C.'s essay on humility, A Defense Of Humility:

"Looking down on things may be a delightful experience, only there is nothing, from a mountain to a cabbage, that is really seen when it is seen from a balloon. The philosopher of the ego sees everything, no doubt, from a high and rarified heaven; only he sees everything foreshortened or deformed."

Here is a quote from Pope Francis' closing speech:

"And this is the Church, the vineyard of the Lord, the fertile Mother and the caring Teacher, who is not afraid to roll up her sleeves to pour oil and wine on people’s wound; who doesn’t see humanity as a house of glass to judge or categorize people."

and:

"Many commentators, or people who talk, have imagined that they see a disputatious Church where one part is against the other, doubting even the Holy Spirit, the true promoter and guarantor of the unity and harmony of the Church – the Holy Spirit who throughout history has always guided the barque, through her Ministers, even when the sea was rough and choppy, and the ministers unfaithful and sinners."

Anyways, my allegiance is with Peter.

"When we shut our door on the wind, it would be equally true to say that the wind shuts its door on us. Whatever virtues a triumphant egoism really leads to, no one can reasonably pretend that it leads to knowledge. Turning a beggar from the door may be right enough, but pretending to know all the stories the beggar might have narrated is pure nonsense; and this is practically the claim of the egoism which thinks that self-assertion can obtain knowledge." --G.K. Chesterton, A Defense Of Humility

Quote

"All women are a little of My mother." --He and I

Vanitas

"Women who satisfy their vanity in their dress can never put on the life of Jesus Christ; moreover they even lose the ornaments of their soul as soon as this idol enters into their heart." --St. Padre Pio

Foolish Vanity

"You allege that you never invite others to sin. You did not by your tongue, but you have done it by your dress and deportment more effectively than you could by your voice. When you have made another to sin in his heart, how can you be innocent? You sharpened and drew the sword. You gave the thrust by which the soul is wounded. Tell me whom does the world condemn? Whom do judges punish? Those who drink the poison, or those who prepare and give the fatal draught? You mingled the execrable cup; you administered the potion of death. You are so much more criminal than poisoners, as the death which you cause is the more terrible; for you murder not the body, but the soul. Nor do you do this to enemies: not compelled by necessity nor provoked by any injury; but out of a foolish vanity and pride. You sport yourselves in the ruin of the souls of others, and make their spiritual death your pastime."

--St. John Chrysostom on Immodest Women

Quote

“Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name.” --Jaroslav Jan Pelikan

Max Monday

"...I would meander through all the sewers of the world, through degradations and humiliations, in order to paint. I have to do this. Until the last drop every vision that exists in my being must be purged; then it will be a pleasure for me to be rid of this damned torture." --Max Beckmann

Photo: Max teaching in Brooklyn. My favourite photo of him.