Be vigilant! Yes, there are many who, like the apostles in Gethsemane the moment their Master was about to be arrested, seem to fall asleep in their blind unconsciousness, convinced that the threat hanging upon the world does not affect them, that they bear no responsibility and run no risk in the crisis in which the universe struggles in anguish. … How many remain deaf and inert to Christ’s warning to his own Apostles: Vigilate et orate ut non intretis in tentationem! … Be vigilant!
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Source: Luiz Sérgio Solimeo, "ISIS and a Jesuit Priest Rejoice as Notre Dame Burns," The American TFP, April 23, 2019, https://www.tfp.org/isis-and-a-jesuit-priest-rejoice-as-notre-dame-burns/.
Cantabo Domino in vita mea. Alacritate et magnanimitate Eum sequar. I shall sing to the Lord in my life. I shall follow Him eagerly and generously.
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Leo XIII on When Christendom Existed
There was once a time when States were governed by the philosophy of the Gospel. Then it was that the power and divine virtue of Christian wisdom had diffused itself throughout the laws, institutions, and morals of the people, permeating all ranks and relations of civil society. Then, too, the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, established firmly in befitting dignity, flourished everywhere, by the favor of princes and the legitimate protection of magistrates; and Church and State were happily united in concord and friendly interchange of good offices. The State, constituted in this wise, bore fruits important beyond all expectation, whose remembrance is still, and always will be, in renown, witnessed to as they are by countless proofs which can never be blotted out or ever obscured by any craft of any enemies.
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Source: Leo XII, Encyclical Immortale Dei, Nov. 1, 1885, no. 21, http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_01111885_immortale-dei.html.
Wednesday, April 24, 2019
Aleister Crowley on the Signs of the Age of Horus
Horus rules the present period of 2,000 years, beginning in 1904. Everywhere his government is taking root. Observe for yourselves the decay of the sense of sin, the growth of innocence and irresponsibility, the strange modifications of the reproductive instinct with a tendency to become bi-sexual or epicene, the childlike confidence in progress combined with nightmare fear of catastrophe, against which we are yet half unwilling to take precautions.
Consider the outcrop of dictatorships, only possible when moral growth is in its earliest stages, and the prevalence of infantile cults like Communism, Fascism, Pacifism, Health Crazes, Occultism in nearly all its forms, religions sentimentalized to the point of practical extinction.
Consider the popularity of the cinema, the wireless, the football pools and guessing competitions, all devices for soothing fractious infants, no seed of purpose in them.
Consider sport, the babyish enthusiasms and rages which it excites, whole nations disturbed by disputes between boys.
Consider war, the atrocities which occur daily and leave us unmoved and hardly worried.
We are children.
Consider the outcrop of dictatorships, only possible when moral growth is in its earliest stages, and the prevalence of infantile cults like Communism, Fascism, Pacifism, Health Crazes, Occultism in nearly all its forms, religions sentimentalized to the point of practical extinction.
Consider the popularity of the cinema, the wireless, the football pools and guessing competitions, all devices for soothing fractious infants, no seed of purpose in them.
Consider sport, the babyish enthusiasms and rages which it excites, whole nations disturbed by disputes between boys.
Consider war, the atrocities which occur daily and leave us unmoved and hardly worried.
We are children.
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Source: Aleister Crowley, The Book of Law and the Book of Lies (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2017), 7.
The Book of Law, of which the above is an excerpt, was originally published in 1938.