Free Republic

"I consider it perfectly acceptable to hate those who hate you. In fact, it's a survival trait."

Unfortunately for you then, God doesn't. Hate is never OK, defend yourself? Absolutely, but never hate.

43 You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thy enemy. 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you
Matthew 5:43-44

Unfortunately this brave young woman doesn't have a prayer, no pun intended, of winning this lawsuit. Only athiests seeking to ban God from all daily activities ever win these things.

I just quit. You have to make up your mind that no matter how uncomfortable you are you are done smoking. I used patches for a couple weeks then some gum for a couple more weeks but it wasn't nearly as hard this time as the other times I've tried. (this is #3).
I really feel like I'm done with it, not that I don't want one from time to time but I've just decided that not matter I never have to smoke a cigarrette again. The cravings, no matter how intense, won't kill me(the cigarrettes will) and they will go away.

"If that's the Latin phrase of Horace, it should be medio. And virtus doesn't have quite as broad a meaning as the English word virtue, does it?"

Sure we can have fun critiquing McCarrick's Latin, I mean it's not like he uses it very much.

My dictionary says:
"manliness, manhood, virility, strength, valor, gallantry, excellence, worth, special property, moral excellence, goodness, virtue..."

It goes on like that for a while. So I guess his eminence got the word right (his secretary must have looked it up for him) but he sure doesn't know it from practical experience. I wonder if he knows that a properly ordered faith is necessary for moral virtue?

"Aristotle, all right, and Aristotle was an agnostic."

Well given that Aristotle lived over 200 years before Christ I don't think we can really hold that against him LOL.

Most educated Greeks of Aristotle's time didn't have a literal belief in the state religions of the Greek city states. They knew they were just stories.
There is nothing wrong with quoting Aristotle, Thomistic moral theology essentially is Aristotlean. It's just here he misquotes him and tries to use his concept of the "golden mean" as a justification for his heterodoxy.

I really don't get this one. The only thing I can figure is one of Bush's handlers called his secretray up and said "OK, its time to take all their property", the secretary wrote down the message and well we all know about George's reading skills....

"My concern is the fear that the intense polarization and bitter battles of partisan politics may be seeping into broader ecclesial life of our Catholic people, and maybe even of our (bishops) conference,"

You are correct Your Eminence, not all of your peers are Democrat sychophants anymore.

" We have to stay in the center. There's an old Latin expression, 'in medios stat virtus' -- Virtue's in the middle."

Is he really that poorly educated? Or does he just think we are? He doesn't know or expect us to know what that saying refers to?

It has nothing nothing to do with any political center, it's Aristotle's "golden mean".

Besides the only people McCarrick is "in the middle of" might be Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tseung.

"Lee died in prison of accidental hanging? How does one die of an accidental hanging?"

It's was an accident when the prison guards on duty say it was accident, get it?

Welcome to the new springtime!

So apparently many "conservatives" on FR favor laws that punish people for things they might do and/or thoughts they have.

That is why this country is finished.

So this is the new neo-con propoganda angle? Convince people that Iran started it? Pleeeeaaaase..

I guess they figure American's won't fall for the "weapons of mass destructions" BS again so soon heh?

"All historians today can be divided into two groups - those who tell half the truth and those that tell none of the truth."

-G.K. Chesterton

"I don't know when you were born, but if you're a Generation Xer like me, then you know how many Catholics of your generation have gone astray because of the fact that many western Catholics just didn't know what the Church taught in the immediate post-Conciliar time."

It is plain to me and anyone with eyes to see that many of those charged with the duty of catechesis don't believe what the Church teaches much less pass it on and those in authority over them have refused to do anything about it which amounts to acceptance and approval.

John Paul II has a lot to answer for, for 26 years, he did nothing about rampant heresy, the only persons who apparently warranted excommunication are 5 bishops who believed and taught what Catholic have always believed and wanted to continue to practice the Catholic religion as it has always been practiced.

I'm familiar with the post hoc - propter hoc fallacy, but I've yet to hear anything approximating a rational alternative explanation.

"The traditionalists love to trot out these figures but they don't establish any causal connection between the Council and the decline in religious practice."

And the neo-cons love to have their head planted firmly in the sand, estatically singing the praises of John Paul the Great!!!!

Hey, I hope you're right frankly.

In 1965 there were 58,000 priests in the U.S.; in 2002 there were 45,000, of whom 16% come from other countries.

In 1965 there were 1,575 ordinations to the priesthood; in 2002 there were 450.

In 1965 there were 49,000 seminarians; in 2002 there were 4,700.

In 1965 there were 180,000 sisters; in 2002 there were 75,000, with an average age of 68.

In 1965 there were 1,556 Catholic high schools; in 2002 there were 786.

In 1965 there were 10,503 Catholic grade schools; in 2002 there were 6,623.

In 1958 weekly Mass attendance was 74%; in 2000 it was 25%.

In 1968 there were 338 annulments; in 2002 there were 50,000.

And now 53% of Catholics believe you can have an abortion and still be considered a good Catholic.

Very much more of the "new springtime" and there won't be a Church left to revel in it.

"of the accomplishments made by the Church during and after the Second Vatican Council "

I wonder which those would be, the total loss of faith and reverence? the emptying of the seminaries and monasteries? the closing of 100s of Catholic schools?
The list is long...

OMG, can it be true?
Are the synchophants at FR waking up to the fact us paleo's have known for years - Bush is NOT a conservative by any stretch of the imagination? Are they waking up from their Jacobin daydream or world democratic empire?
Maybe I'll actually come back.

That's one creepy pic...

The fate of Judas (not dogmatic of course)

“Lo!” he exclaim’d, “lo! Dis; and lo! the place,
Where thou hast need to arm thy heart with strength.”
How frozen and how faint I then became,
Ask me not, reader! for I write it not;
Since words would fail to tell thee of my state.
I was not dead nor living. Think thyself,
If quick conception work in thee at all,
How I did feel. That emperor, who sways
The realm of sorrow, at mid breast from the ice
Stood forth; and I in stature am more like
A giant, than the giants are his arms.
Mark now how great that whole must be, which suits
With such a part. If he were beautiful
As he is hideous now, and yet did dare
To scowl upon his Maker, well from him
May all our misery flow. Oh what a sight!
How passing strange it seem’d, when I did spy
Upon his head three faces: one in front
Of hue vermilion, the other two with this
Midway each shoulder join’d and at the crest;
The right ’twixt wan and yellow seem’d; the left
To look on, such as come from whence old Nile
Stoops to the lowlands. Under each shot forth
Two mighty wings, enormous as became
A bird so vast. Sails never such I saw
Outstretch’d on the wide sea. No plumes had they,
But were in texture like a bat; and these
He flapp’d i’ th’ air, that from him issued still
Three winds, wherewith Cocytus to its depth
Was frozen. At six eyes he wept: the tears
Adown three chins distill’d with bloody foam.
At every mouth his teeth a sinner champ’d,
Bruised as with ponderous engine; so that three
Were in this guise tormented. But far more
Than from that gnawing, was the foremost pang’d
By the fierce rending, whence oft-times the back
Was stript of all its skin. “That upper spirit,
Who hath worst punishment,” so spake my guide,
“Is Judas, he that hath his head within
And plies the feet without.

Dante Allegheri
Inferno
Canto XXXIV, 20-59

Go Pat go...