Men may come and men may go, because God has left plenty of room for the to and fro of their free-will; but the substantial lines of nature and the not less substantial lines of Eternal Law have never changed, are not changing and never will change. There are bounds beyond which one may stray as far as one sees fit, but to do so ends in death; there are limits which empty philosophical fantasizing may have one mock or not take seriously, but they put together an alliance of hard facts and nature to chastise anybody who steps over them. And history has sufficiently taught, with frightening proof from the life and death of nations, that the reply to all violators of the outline of "humanity" is always, sooner or later, catastrophe. - Source.
May 2 is the feast of St. Athanasius, as well as the First Saturday of Our Lady.
Thanks for sharing the full text. There are so many wrong-headed ideas, I scarcely know where to begin. "They, the priests, know that the line they have to take in the confessional, while not holding women dressing like men to be automatically a grave fault, must be sharp and decisive." Tell me something. This was written in 1960. To the best of my recollection, the confessional box was a pretty dark place, and was set up so as not to allow for visual inspection of either of the parties. What is he talking about? Lecture the women who come in confessing that they wore pants or mini-skirts???
ReplyDeleteIt's an unlikely Saturday that I arise with anticipation of reading more deeply of a saint in the mornin'. It's also an unlikely Saturday that I arise with the planned memory of it being one of her First Saturdays--surely my 9 shall never be consecutive, but maybe Heaven can't count as well as we hope it can't.
ReplyDeleteSo, thank you, and thank you.
:-)
Michael, in Italy and the rest of Europe, many of the confessionals were open - the priest ws exposed and penitents, though kneeling to his right or left were often seen as well. Sometimes there were curtains.
ReplyDeleteIn those days priests actually were still able to instruct and guide the faithful in matters of doctrine and faith and morals without lots of cries and complaints, rebellions and lawsuits, protests and accusations of hate crimes as we see today.