A re-post from over a year and a half ago:
"With so much being written by the Left and the Right side of politics on the subject of Faith and Legislation, Judgeships and War, I have found some interesting essays and a 20 year old homily given by newly elected Pope Benedict XVI covering the topics discussed in the Congressional corridors, blogosphere, campuses, and in the homes of concerned citizens. These men, leaders in their fields of poetry, philosophy and religion, comment and forewarn of the dangers of men who tread on the domain of the Highest Power and whose thoughts of glory can at times lead Humanity into the Abyss from which it cannot escape. When kids sit in a History classroom learning about the Age of Antiquity and say," why do we need to learn this? It is so old." The teacher answers back, "because we cannot learn from our mistakes if we do not revisit them." Well, at least that is what I remember saying."
"The child who dwells inside us trusts that there are wise men somewhere who know the truth. That is the source of the beauty and passion of intellectual pursuits -- in philosophical and theological books, in lecture halls. Various "initiations into mystery" were also said to satisfy that need, be it through the alchemist's workshop or acceptance into a lodge (let us recall Mozart's Magic Flute). As we move from youthful enthusiasms to the bitterness of maturity, it becomes ever more difficult to anticipate that we will discover the center of true wisdom, and then one day, suddenly, we realize that others expect to hear dazzling truths from us (literal or figurative) graybeards."
Christian faith has destroyed the myth of the divine state, the myth of the state as paradise and a society without domination. In its place it has put the objectivity of reason. But this does not mean that it has produced a value-free objectivity, the objectivity of statistics and a certain kind of sociology. To the true objectivity of men and women belongs humanity, and to humanity belongs God. To genuine human reason belongs the morality that is fed by God’s commandments. This morality is not some private affair; it has public significance. Without the good of being and doing good there can be no good politics. What the persecuted Church laid down for the Christian as the core of its political ethos must also be the core of any active Christian politics; it is only when good is done and recognized as good that a good human social existence can thrive. To bring to public acceptance as valid the standing of morality, the standing of God’s commandments, must be the core of responsible political activity.
"Such is the gospel of the idealists. But it is also true that cosmos has sometimes degenerated into chaos. It is futile to rush with a fire brand through the priceless architecture of an ancient civilization chanting 'Excelsior' as each tower topples and each temple is destroyed. The mere efflux of time is not synonymous with progress: alteration is not necessarily repair; change may as easily connote decay as its opposite."
And again from Czeslaw Milosz, from a letter written to English poet Stephen Barker:
"How do you write about suffering and still be able to approve of the world at the same time? If you really think about the horror of the world, the only suitable attitude seems to be to reject it. I've always regretted that I'm made of contradictions. But, if contradiction is impossible to overcome, we have to accept both its ends."
