Safe Haven

I went to Mass yesterday, as I customarily do. Father is leaving, so he preached a bit longer, and with more emotion. He said that the key to the life of holiness is gratitude. That is true. Often when you hear this, though, the tendency is to say something like, "I will be thankful for ALL THE THINGS! I'm going to pray 12 hours of every 24, the Rosary, Chaplet, etc." And that's fine, if you can. Most of us will fail, though, and were we to dwell on it, we would question the very gift of our faith. God does not want this. I went through the Mass, and I know it is becoming normal again when I know what the celebrant will say. I am hearing the words, praying them in my soul. If they vary too much, we become disoriented. Perhaps the essence of being Catholic is doing the same good things over and over again. We're conditioned to believe that doing things by rote is bad, that it is exactly the sameness that destroys Catholicism. On the contrary; the things we wa...

You know, I can't be a "rights" absolutist as a Christian. Christian freedom, properly speaking, is only to do that which is good. To confess virtue as praiseworthy, and vice as blameworthy is in effect to say that freedom is limited in precisely this way. Such is the nature of the error of voluntarism: that a thing is good because it is willed, not willed because it is good. These considerations lead without too much effort to the argument that if the good is not arbitrary, and patriotism is the love of country, then true patriotism is the love of that which is good about one's country. The error of nationalism is precisely opposite: What my country does or wills, so to speak, is good because she wills it. "My country, right or wrong," but even worse. If I were to agree entirely with that possible misattribution to Voltaire, "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," I would make the mistake of sa...

I saw one of those listicles the other day. Maybe it had 8 things. And the things listed were definitely sins. But you know what wasn't there? Fornication. That's sex between a man and woman who aren't married. I know it's common. I know that most people don't even see it as wrong. They think we're weird even holding the traditional view. Fornication is still wrong. When there is a baby, I think we're just relieved when they decide not to kill the baby. I can understand that. That special murder is so normal and so grave, our relief makes a certain sense. Fornication is still wrong. There is often that couple who promises to have a "church wedding" later. Look, if you're a baptized Catholic, your civil marriage doesn't count. You can't licitly have sex until you get married in the Church. I'm not saying you can't be forgiven; I am saying you need to be, if you fornicate. Confess it, and don't do it again.