Self-evident

Não há nada que mais precise de ser dito do que as evidências.

 The most urgent mission of our times is to explicitly state evident things.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
 The Declaration of Independence, 1776.

Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.
Chesterton, Heretics, 1905.

Beard Apologetics

 

Our Head is Christ crucified and buried, who was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven. And the Holy Spirit came from our head. To what did he come? To the beard. The beard is the sign of strong men; a beard is typical of young, vigorous, energetic, eager people. That is why we say, "He's a bearded fellow", when we describe someone of this character. The fragrant oil therefore fell first upon the Apostles, upon those who withstood the first assaults of the world, and therefore the Holy Spirit descended on them. For they who first began to dwell together in unity, suffered persecution. but because the oil had flowed down onto the beard, they suffered, but were not overcome. Their head had preceded them on the path of suffering, and from him the oil flowed. Who could conquer the beard when such an example had gone before?

In: Saint Augustine, Exposition of Psalm 132.

  Weird Life  

The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!In: Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain.

Catholicism in an age of discontent

Our postmodern age needs both the radiant light of Christ’s theological wisdom (Balthasar) and encouragement to venture out in search of decisive philosophical understanding (de Lubac). 

Along with these two imperatives we must adopt a third, one brought to the fore in the current pontificate. Our theological and philosophical efforts to overcome postmodern fear of—and despair about—truth must be accompanied by spiritual charity toward those who live disoriented and loveless lives in today’s secular culture.

The deepest threat to Catholic intellectual life today stems not from a lack of engagement with the outside world, but from ignorance of our own tradition and widespread loss of authentic biblical and doctrinal thinking. Dogmatic amnesia within the Church is the central intellectual challenge facing the Church today. 

De Lubac’s apologetic response was to show how Catholicism provides the authentic answer to the human search for genuine solidarity and universal communion. Today, the challenge is different: to convince human beings that the search itself is even possible.

Consequently, the Church needs to make philosophical arguments in the public square, ones that show that the world is inherently intelligible (and that our minds are naturally made for objective truth). This will resonate powerfully in today’s skeptical consensus. 

In short, the Church should simultaneously promote Catholicism as the religion of mystery and as the religion that promotes reason’s full capacity for grasping universal truths. 

What is needed is a Catholic theological interpretation of modern pluralistic democracy, one that insists on real space for the ideas and active contributions of religious traditions, while underscoring the value of respectful argument and even friendship among those who hold competing views.

A key task, then, which twentieth-century Catholic theology largely ignored, is to show the fundamental compatibility of the modern natural sciences with a deeper philosophy of nature and a metaphysics of the human person, one religious in orientation.



Thomas Joseph White, Catholicism in an age of discontent, in: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/11/catholicism-in-an-age-of-discontent

Mercy and Firmness of Doctrine 

 

In the Church we again meet with this same harmony between things most difficult to reconcile.
In her, charity most compassionate and doctrine most firm and uncompromising are united in one love, which is zeal for God's glory and the salvation of souls. She knows she can do no good without combating evil, that she cannot preach the Gospel without fighting heresy. 

Mercy and firmness of doctrine can exist only when united; separated they die, and we have left but two corpses, namely, humanitarian Liberalism with its false serenity, and fanaticism with its false zeal. 

It has been said: "The Church is intolerant in principle because she believes; she is tolerant in practice because she loves. The enemies of the Church are tolerant in principle, because they do not believe, and intolerant in practice, because they do not love." 

On the one hand, theory is opposed to practice; on the other, it penetrates and arranges all things with firmness and gentleness.

R. Garrigou-Lagrange, in: God, His Existence and Nature, Vol. II, 412, 1936