miniZibaldone

(Paul Klee.  At the Core , 1935) Experience itself, in its totality, shows the way to an authentic understanding of the term reason or rationality. Indeed, reason is that singular event of nature in which it – reason – reveals itself as the operative need to explain reality in all of its factors so that we are introduced to the truth about things. In this way, reality emerges within experience and  rationality illuminates the factors within it. To say “rational” is to affirm the transparency or intelligibility of human experience, its substance and depth. Rationality is critical transparency of our human experience: “critical” means according to an all-encompassing view. (Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense , p. 101 )

I know what you mean about being repulsed by the Church when you have only the Jansenist-Mechanical Catholic to judge it by. I think that the reason such Catholics are so repulsive is that they don't really have faith but a kind of false certainty. They operate by the slide rule and the Church for them is not the body of Christ but the poor man's insurance system. It's never hard for them to believe because actually they never think about it. Faith has to take in all the other possibilities it can. Anyhow, I don't think it's a matter of wanting miracles. The miracles seem in fact to be the great embarrassment to the modern man, a kind of scandal. If the miracles could be argued away and Christ reduced to the status of a teacher, domesticated and fallible, then there'd be no problem. Anyway, to discover the Church you have to set out by yourself. The French Catholic novelists were a hero to me in this—Bloy, Bernanos, Mauriac. In philosophy, Gilson, Maritain an...

With the mainsail of reason adjusted to the breeze of my desire, I launch on the deep with hope of pleasant voyage. When we look into the cause of what annoys us, we find that in every case it comes from not knowing how best to use time. —Dante Alighieri

Time [Read Full Text]

By Reason Alone by Bacz Jakez   The Puritan Smile by Robert Neville This Mortal Flesh by Brent Waters The ABC of Relativity by Bertrand Russell  Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism by Amintore Fanfani Can Ethics Be Christian? by James Gustafson    The Girard Reader Anthropology as an Aid to Moral Science by Antonio Rosmini 

From the homily “Today I want to emphasize only one thing,” the Pope concluded. “There is a moment where the attitude of sin, or a moment where our situation is so secure and we see well and we have so much power” that sin “stops” and becomes “corruption.” And “one of the ugliest things” about corruption is that the one who becomes corrupt thinks he has “no need for forgiveness.” [...]  “Today, let us offer a prayer for the Church, beginning with ourselves, for the Pope, for the Bishops, for the priests, for consecrated men and women, for the lay faithful: ‘Lord, save us, save us from corruption. We are sinners, yes, O Lord, all of us, but [let us] never [become] corrupt!’ Let us ask for this grace.”   [link] From the address Therefore, mercy constitutes the architrave that supports the life of the Church: the first truth of the Church, in fact, is the love of Christ. [...]  This attention to the works of mercy is important: they are not a devotion. It is the concr...

The Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar by Gerard O'Hanlon gratis Gerard O'Hanlon Introduction to Christianity by Joseph Ratzinger Truth and Tolerance by Joseph Ratzinger The Dialectics of Secularization by Joseph Ratzinger and Jurgen Habermas Explorations in Theology, Volume IV by Hans Urs von Balthasar gratis Raymond Gawronski The Glory of the Lord I: Seeing the Form by Hans Urs von Balthasar gratis D.C. Schindler

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt gratis Jerome Kohn The Way Toward Wisdom by Benedict Ashley gratis +Benedict Ashley Slavery and Freedom  by Nicolas Berdyaev gratis Stephen Janos The Unity of Philosophical Experience by Etienne Gilson gratis Curtis Hancock Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities by St. Edith Stein gratis Marianne Sawicki

The Mystery of the Supernatural by Henri de Lubac The Splendor of the Church by Henri de Lubac gratis Paul McPartlan A Short History of Ethics by Alasdair MacIntyre   The Epiphany of Love by Livio Melina gratis Eerdmans Divine Likeness: Toward A Trinitarian Anthropology of the Family by Marc Ouellet     gratis Eerdsman The Catholicity of Reason by David C. Schindler   gratis D. C. Schindler Heart of the World, Center of the Church by David L. Schindler   gratis HUP Ordering Love: Liberal Societies and the Memory of God by David L. Schindler gratis Eerdmans