English, General
Brave New Ireland
Mon, 10/26/2015 - 19:23 — webmasterBrave New Ireland (Position Papers (2015, no. 492), pp. 11ss)
For the last forty years we have been forming a generation to think that the fewer ties or commitments one has, the freer one is. This is just not so. Freedom is useless unless it ends in a choice. And perhaps it is worse than useless if one has been taught that all choices must be temporary, because nothing can give more than a passing satisfaction, nothing in fact is worth a definitive or binding choice. Always keep yourself 'free' for something or someone else. That is the philosophy our new generations are being taught.
Christian optimism: and God's logic
Tue, 08/03/2010 - 10:29 — webmasterChristian optimism: and God's logic (Homiletic and Pastoral Review: May 2010, pp. 26-41)
For the Christian mind, today's world appears to offer little that is encouraging. To all appearances, the most fundamental institutions and values are in rapid disintegration: marriage and the family, human sexuality, the sense of the unique dignity of human life and of the respect due to it before birth and at the moment of death. Moreover, our modern society seems dominated by a lack of solidarity, growing suspicion, distrust, separation, alienation, opposition and even hatred.
Modern man seems to have turned away from God, and to no longer care about him. "European culture", according to John Paul II, "gives the impression of a 'silent apostasy' on the part of men who are sated, who live as if God did not exist" (Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in Europa, no. 9). In the last few years the apostasy has become less and less silent.
Law and Medicine in the Service of the Person and Society
Thu, 07/29/2010 - 16:40 — webmaster(A lecture given in Wellington, New Zealand, 1994, to a combined meeting of the SS. Cosmas and Damian Guild and the St. Thomas More Society)
'Every Abortion is a Tragedy': Barack Obama
Tue, 01/07/2014 - 07:26 — webmaster'Every Abortion is a Tragedy': Barack Obama (Position Papers, 474, Dec. 2013, pp. 25-28)
The recent interview of Pope Francis, published in September 30, 2013 in America magazine [1] moved many people deeply, especially with his insistence that we live in a wounded world which has the right to expect healing of those wounds from the Church. His repeated insistence clearly came from his heart; "the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds.... Heal the wounds, heal the wounds."
He is not referring to bodily wounds so much as wounds of the spirit. Knowing well that this will provoke "scandal" among some, I would firmly assert that by far the greatest number of wounded people in today's world are the millions, the tens of millions, of women who, over the past decades, have had an abortion; and, admit it not, are still suffering from the wounds of this tragedy.
