As with Nations, So With People

St. Patricks Church ^ | 1950 | Dom Hubert Van Zeller, O.S.B.

[Askel5]

As with Nations, So with People

What happens to a country in a century may happen to an individual in less than a decade. Without ever going to the length of formal apostasy, a man may, every bit as fatally as a nation, allow false standards to replace true ones. Often the process of deterioration is exactly the same as that observed in the case of the State: material cares crowd out the needs of the spirit, quick returns are demanded without regard to ultimate ends.

In some cases, while the life of the soul is being whittled down to nothing at all, there is no great sense of guilt or loss. Gradual substitutions evoke no emotion either way -- there is neither remorse nor self-congratulation. As in the case of the nation, the individual wakes up to find himself pagan -- and then goes to sleep again.

In those periods of history when States have gone pagan there was all the more need for individual members of them to go spiritual. There is exactly this need today. How else, except by the sanctifying of the parts, can spiritual health be restored to the whole? The parts must know where they stand as regards such fundamentals as religion and happiness before the whole, as represented by government, can be brought to recognise their claims. [...]

[Askel5]

The State and the Soul (by Zeller)

The First Duty of Citizenship: Enthusiasm (by Molnar)

Advent

[martian_22]

BTTT!
There you go making me think again.