Catholic Thinkers

The Spiritual Life by Joseph Koterski, S.J.: 2. Goals of the Spiritual Life

This course is a systematic study of Christian holiness based on Sacred Scripture and classical writers. It considers the virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit, prayer, spiritual direction, and the stages of the life of grace.

From The Spiritual Life:

"While we never cease to be in the image of God, that's a structural feature about us, we have unfortunately frequently lost the likeness.  It has been obscured by original sin, and then the history of actual sins in our own persons, and sometimes in the disabilities that are inflicted upon a whole culture.  For this reason, the efforts to restore our likeness, we who were made in God's image, require the spiritual life."  

The Spiritual Life by Joseph Koterski, S.J.: 1. Introduction

Recorded in 2003. The Church understands the cultivation of holiness as a lifelong process of cooperating with the graces that God gives. The history of the Church makes clear that there are various reliable approaches, including those of Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross. In one way or another, all of these figures show us the importance of three stages in this process: (1) the purgative way (confronting sin and gaining freedom from disordered inclinations and aversions), (2) the illuminative way (receiving and accepting the light of Christ), and (3) the unitive way (growing in union with God through prayer). This course emphasizes the thought of great figures in the history of Catholic spirituality.

From The Spiritual Life:

"While we never cease to be in the image of God, that's a structural feature about us, we have unfortunately frequently lost the likeness.  It has been obscured by original sin, and then the history of actual sins in our own persons, and sometimes in the disabilities that are inflicted upon a whole culture.  For this reason, the efforts to restore our likeness, we who were made in God's image, require the spiritual life."  

https://youtu.be/sHjaJanGVPk

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An Essay By Fr. Schall: 15. The Brighter Side of Hell

"No more important intellectual exercise can be found than that of a right understanding of hell, what it means, how it is to be understood.  Seen for what it is, it is the best help we can imagine to teach us the importance God places on the ongoing drama of our daily lives."

 

From the essay:

Our lives are so ultimately important that we CAN lose them. But this possibility (hell) is placed before us so that we do not lose them...and we are not supposed to lose them. Hell exists to help us to achieve what we are given in the first place: the promise of eternal life.

The road to hell, it is said, is paved with good intentions.  It is also paved with many insights into the very nature of our being that guide us to the truth of things and the importance of our own existence.

An Essay by Fr. Schall: 14. The Beauty of God

The beauty of God comes from a reflection of a father of the Church. God's beauty is reflected in all He created, and is a theme that naturally arises from the existence of any beautiful thing. It is not just that something is beautiful, but that it must point to some origin that can cause it to be at all.

 

From the Essay:

"We exist to behold the Divine Beauty and we exist to respond to it...anything else is secondary."

An Essay by Fr. Schall: 13. On Being Roman Catholic

The lecture "On Being Roman Catholic" is an attempt to state briefly what the essence of Roman Catholicism is in distinction from other philosophies and religions.

From the Essay:

"The reason that properly belongs to Catholicism delights to hear any objection to its truth.  Such objections insight us to clarity and distinction.  Catholicism is a revelation confident in its own grounding and coherence."

"It is of the essence of Catholicism to be an intellectual religion.  On its own tenets it is not true if a case cannot be made for its validity." 

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An Essay by Fr. Schall: 12. Regensburg Revisited

Pope Benedict XVI's Lecture at Regensburg is one of the most concise and accurate analyses of the modern world and its origins. Its real dimensions were originally obscured , but become clear with more sober reflection on its meaning.

From the Essay:

"The Regensburg lecture is nothing less than an effort to re-establish among us or establish for the first time, as the case may be, just what a university is in its entirety and what it is to deal with--that is, with everything including revelation."

"He (Benedict) addresses all cultures from the basis of reason, that universal reason that was met by the initial thinkers of Christianity.  He does not allow them a culture that denies or ignores reason.  The same is true of the self limiting of a scientific method that claims to deal with the truth by leaving out most of man's really important questions."

An Essay by Fr. Schall: 11. On Travel

We all travel. Do we see only what we take with us? Do we really see what is there and why? We need to think of our travel and what it means to us.

From the essay:

"Experience is what happens to us when we encounter something that actually exists and something we would not know about in any other way but, as it were, by being there."

An Essay by Fr. Schall: 10. On Not Keeping Quiet about a Study

"But it’s quite impossible to keep quiet about a study, if one believes it is noble and true."  -Plato

From the Essay: 

"It is an illusion to think that if we study the classics, including the Christian classics, under the aspect of their truth, of their “non-necessity,” of their freedom, we will be missing something important. It is the other way around. If we do not study them, we will miss almost everything that is important."

"The improvement and humanization of the world is itself a major reason why man is in it.  But he also exists to know what he is, what the world is and in knowing them what their origins are...We do not "believe" in ourselves.  We "believe in God" as itself the last step in knowing why we exist in the first place."

An Essay by Fr. Schall: 9. On Learning from Not Having Learned

This lecture is a retrospective reflection on themes in Fr. Schall's book Another Sort of Learning.  We need to know what leaning means and when we fail to learn.  From here, we can begin to know what is there for us to know.

From the Essay: 

"We can do many things if we insist in being stupid.  Something will always go wrong with them when we accept stupid or false ideas.  Our stupidities are also sources of light if we would see where they...go wrong."

An Essay by Fr. Schall: 8. On Extraterrestrial Intelligence

This essay is an inquiry into the relation of human intelligence to the order that is found in nature.  In addition, the question of the uniqueness of human life in the cosmos is discussed.

From the Essay:

"The fact of the existence of the cosmos pales in interest before the drama of the free creatures within it." 

"The search for extraterrestrial intelligence may well be an excuse for not seeing that the universe itself betrays an extraterrestrial intelligence in its very existing order."

"And so the question of extraterrestrial activity brings us always back to the question of why do we exist in the first place and the purpose of our existence."