TWE

Every sin gushes from a complex soul. The Pseudo-Macarius, a master of intimate theology, described the heart (a term nearly synonymous with soul) as follows: "The heart itself is but a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and there are also lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the

In the introduction to a collection of Cicero's essays, Michael Grant said of the Romans, “philosophy was regarded as a strictly practical study–something which, if approached in the right way, was perfectly capable of guiding and improving people's lives.” Philosophy is practical? It's

“The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.” T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

"By the time I graduated from college, in 1983, the polemical message of [Friedan's] “The Feminine Mystique” had been firmly established as the new orthodoxy. Almost without exception, my female classmates either went off to graduate school or found themselves jobs. If any of us harbored a

"I do not see what more can be desired than poverty linked with an active leisure." Albert Camus

When is a person monetarily wealthy? The question is inherently relative. A person living in a housing project or in the poor hills of Appalachia is wealthy compared to the average person in many parts of Africa. A person considered rich in my small town of Sturgis, Michigan would probably

"In order to arrive at having pleasure in everything, desire to have pleasure in nothing. In order to arrive at possessing everything, desire to possess nothing." John of the Cross

"I suppose I divide people into two classes: the Irksome and the Non-Irksome. Yes and there are the Medium Irksome and the Rare Irksome." Flannery O'Connor

Excerpted from my article in the March/April 2001 issue of The Catholic Answer: The full terror of Jesus' death is well magnified by looking at it through the prism of diabolic vengeance: Jesus took Satan's beating. Jesus, Full Being incarnate and therefore Full Goodness incarnate, was

“We cannot live without ascribing some meaning to our existence, or act without ascribing some goal to our activity; when philosophy no longer provides men with satisfactory answers to those questions, the only means they still have to escape skepticism and despair are moralism, or mysticism, or some combination of