CAPG's Blog 

The same way in which the offering can help us - by the good motive governing our action: "Whatsoever shall give you to drink a cup of water in name... he shall not lose his reward." (Mark iv 40). 

The burning of a small candle is an insignificant action; but if it is done for God's glory and to honor one who is near to God, it becomes a meritorious action. "Whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God." (I Cor. x. 13.) "Whatsoever you do in word or in work, all things do ye in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. (Col. iii, 17). There is no reason why a candle could not or should not be burned to God's glory and in the name of Christ. The motive prompting a devout candle before the shrine of our Lord or saint is the very motive that urges a good citizen to drape a flag about the picture or statue of George Washington on February 22. How can a piece of cloth add to Washington's honor or assist the citizens? The representatives of a foreign nation goes to Mount Vernon and places a wreath of flowers upon Washington's tomb. We applaud and deem that our country has been honored. There is no need to explain or analyze that sentiment; it is a natural one, and everybody understands and appreciates it. That same sentiment is elevated to a religious and supernatural sphere when a Catholic burns a candle before the shrine of one of God's heroes. His intention is to honor the memory of that saint and thus give glory to God in whose cause that saint lived and worked and died; he asks the saint to pray to God for him; he begs God to hear and answer the saint's intercession; he is urged to imitate the saint's virtues; he feels inclined to serve God better. In other words, he performs an action which his supernatural motives render pleasing to God and of great benefit to himself.

Source: Our young People, a Home Magazine, Nov. 1916

It is not necessary to understand every word of Latin said by the priest at Catholic Religious services, any more than it is necessary to understand every word enunciated by Caruso or Gadski in grand opera!

Source: Our Young People, 1916

Perhaps the most emotionally challenging and political incorrect dogma of Catholic Christianity is that of the visible Church's indefectibility, i.e., her continued existence to the end of the world with her teaching, her hierarchical constitution, and her worship essentially intact.

source: The Indefectibility of the Church

We admit without the slightest reservation that the celibacy of the clergy is of vital importance to the Catholic Church in the prosecution of its divine mission. None but an unmarried clergy could wield the influence or win the credit or authority needed for the successful guidance and government of the faithful of Christ. None but unmarried clergymen are fitted to go as missionaries to foreign lands and labor there for the conversion of souls. This statement is amply borne out by the history of non-Catholic missions. The missionaries of Canada, the Far West, and South America have a unique place in history owing to their self-sacrificing devotion. How changed their story would be if wives and offspring and domestic finances figured in its pages!

Nay, even in Christian countries none but unmarried priests could risk their comfort, to say nothing of their lives, as Catholic priests do today in their ministrations to souls. Without her unmarried clergy the Catholic Church could never have accomplished all that she has in the course of centuries. The salutary influence of clergy upon people which is one of the fruits of celibacy may be styled universal dominion if our critics are minded to call it such; we shall not make that a casus belli.

The objector seems to regard the compulsory element in celibacy as the secret of the Church's power; but in no absolute sense does the Church compel any of her children to be celibates. No one is under nay obligation to enter the priesthood. To force one into the priesthood is forbidden by the laws of the Church. It is only after a voluntary reception of the higher orders that one is obliged to remain unmarried; and the obligation then imposed upon her clerics by the Church is justified and to a great extent necessitated by the nature of their clerical functions.

(...)

Why should it be a reproach to the Church to require in candidates for the prieshood conditions that will make them more efficient priests! Add to this the fact that the young men who present themselves for orders not only voluntarily but cheerfully make this sacrifice of their liberty in order to devote themselves the more to God and the Church.

But we are told that celibacy is contrary to the teaching of the Bible. Strange that the statement should be made by only one who has read the Bible. Is it not well known that Christ have the highest praise to voluntary celibacy when it was chosen for the sake of the kingdom of heaven and that St. Paul places voluntary virginity far above the married state?

When Protestant readers of the New Testament come to the seventh chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians they would do well to pause awhile and ask themselves whether they have ever understood the plain meaning of that chapter, which really seems to be very Catholic and very un-Protestant. Let them read that chapter as well as the nineteenth of St. Matthew, referred to above, and if then they can regard the effect of celibacy on morality as dubious, their opinion is clearly at variance with the words of Christ and His Apostle.

Source: The Catholic's ready answer; a popular vindication of Christian beliefs and practices against the attacks of modern criticism. 1915

What is the end of a preacher? Is it to please? To gain applause? To obtain promotion? Or is it to give men life; to make them " Sorrowful unto penance"?

I am of opinion, writes St. Francis of Sales, that a preacher ought not to aim at the gratification of the ear, which is the result of artifice, of worldly elegance, of merely ornamental oratory. He who desires to please his audience says only "pleasant things". The craving for applause blinds him to the truth. He relies almost exclusively on the persuasive words of human wisdom, he makes little or no account of the Word of God, which ought to be the chief source of sacred eloquence, and he speaks in a style more suited to the platform than to the pulpit, more profane than sacred.

 Hence there arises amongst the people and even amongst the clergy, a vitiated taste in respect to the Word of God, which gives scandal to the pious and no profit to the incredulous; for these latter, although they sometimes come to the church, especially if attracted by such high-sounding words as Progress, Fatherland, Modern Science, and loudly applaud the preacher, go forth from it no better than they entered.

Source: The Priest of Today, Rev. Thomas O'Donnell

Christ could not give his divine nature to his clergy, for that would make them sons of God by nature as so many Gods. But he gave them his supernatural power, that is his Priesthood, his complete power over his mystic body the church. But the powers or faculties and the acts of creatures are not the same, for they cannot be infinitely perfect like unto God, who is the infinite Act, because of his infinity simplicity God cannot be divided.

In the Priesthood given to men the power of holy orders is the substance while jurisdiction is the regulation of the acts, or the exercise of these holy orders. By ordination or by holy orders we come forth from Christ. Then we are born into his eternal Priesthood. As Adam is the father of the race according to the flesh, so Christ is the father of Christians according to the Spirit. By natural birth we come forth from Adam while by supernatural generation we come forth from Christ. Each person baptized is born again of "Water and of the Holy Ghost." By confirmation we are strengthened by his Holy Spirit. But by holy orders we receive in a higher way the Holy Ghost the Spirit of Christ, for by that we enter in to his eternal Priesthood.

Source: Christ's Kingdom On Earth, Or, The Church And Her Divine Constitution, Organization, And Framework: Explained For The People.

The world has decided accordingly that there is no certain truth. What must be its attitude then toward any institution which puts itself forward as the organ of THE TRUTH?

One of hostility necessarily. Is there such an institution?

There is: the Church.

The Church and (this) century therefore are enemies. The world of today does not admit any Truth; it does not want any exponent of the Truth. The world and all that are of the world agree to say there is no ONE truth, and that is the doctrine she, alone, imparts. Therefore the world must hate the Church. For let the world put on what garb of impartiality it will, it knows that is and the Church are foes; and he who is the Prince of this world, above all knows that she is his foes, and destined to crush his head.

Source: Catholic Oratory: A Compilation of Sacred and Sublime Orations, Cardinal James Gibbons, 1891

 It may be readily assumed that every sincere Christian is zealous for the spread of the Gospel and desirous to communicate its light and peace to others. Christ sent His followers to announce the good news throughout the world and to bear testimony to the truth, as He did, by their words and their lives. He who is not with Him is against Him; and the individual or congregation that becomes self-centered, that does not earnestly wish "all men to come to the knowledge of the truth," that in no way strives to enlarge God's kingdom, such an individual or such a community is weak in faith, stagnant in charity, and already in the early stages of decay. 

 It is true that the Church is indefectible, that the terrific forces arrayed against her can never prevail. But the extent of her victory from year to year, the number of those who submit to her, will in the last resort depend upon the militant spirit of all her members, laity and clergy alike, upon their energy in making known the truth, upon their skill in combating error, and upon their zeal in kindling in men's hearts the fire the charity which Christ brought down from Heaven. The practical question, therefore, arises, What is our duty to our separated brethren and non Christians? How are we to remove their prejudices and convince them of the truth? Is it by sermons and instructions directed at them? By controversy? By satire? By ridicule? By a self-satisfied superior attitude of aloofness? No, not by these methods, but quietly and wisely, by prayer, by grace, by good example, and by the character of our own lives and the lives of our people. By our fruits shall we be known.

What benefits does Catholicity bring to to individual or to society? that is the test question of outsiders.

Are Catholics no better than others - perhaps not even as good?  that is often their greatest difficulty.

If, on the contrary, Catholics are good citizens, upright and honorable, if their home-life is pure and peaceful, if they are reverent and rich in faith, then the Church will be respected, hungry and thirsty souls will be satisfied, and the true religion will need none of the "slings and arrows" of theological controversy.

The divine lineaments of Catholicity, if not lost or obscured in its local presence, are sufficient to convince any thoughtful enquirer. "The Church herself," says the Vatican Council "...is an enduring motive of credibility, an irrefragable proof of her own divine mission, like unto a standard unfurled to the nations, calling on those who have not yet believed, and giving certainty to those who have." Her marvelous unity and symmetry, her under caying vigor and buoyancy, her broad human sympathies, her manifold methods of satisfying the restless human heart; above all, the peace, the purity, the steadfast of her children - those are the features, the well marked outlines, that proclaim the divinity of our creed and its title to be not merely the truth but also "the way and the life." "If we do our duty," that is, if by our lives, by our sympathy, and by the intelligent exposition of our doctrine we keep alive the Christian ideal of manhood, "truth will make progress among our non-Catholic fellow-citizens, and once made Catholic, they will by their zeal and activity rank amongst the most loyal and most devoted of the children of the Church." " It is not controversy, above all not biting controversy, not even argumentative discussion, that will bring souls to the Church, but rather exposition touched with piety, explanation warmed with devotion; the presentation of faith, not a system to be accepted, but as the holding lovingly fast to what God has taught." It is not a syllogism that touches and converts men - it is virtue, it is God's grace. Augustine was captivated, not by the reasoning and learning of Ambrose, but by this kindness and courtesy.

"Faith of our Fathers, we will love
Both friend and foe in all our strife;
And preach thee, too, as love knows how,
By kindly words and virtuous life."

Source: The Priest of Today, His Ideals and Duties by Rev. Thomas O'Donnell. 1910

How important it is that priests should be faithful dispensers of the Mysteries of God. With what interior and exterior reverence they should treat Sacraments and ceremonies. How pure ought be their hearts, how decorous their outward bearing, how free from levity their words and looks; in the house of God and in all the functions of the ministry how modest and reverent ought be their whole deportment. 

Yet it sometimes happens that the influence of the liturgy and its sacred accessories is weakened, even spoiled, by the negligence if not irreverence of a priest. He loves not the beauty of God's house, he neglects the altar, he allows vestments and altar linen to be shabby and soiled, he talks unnecessarily in the Divine Presence, he genuflects in a slovenly way, he robs the sacred Mysteries of their native dignity, he hurries through the ceremonies of the Mass as if rushing for a train, he administers the Sacraments in a perfunctory fashion, he mumbles his sermons, he recites the Rosary and other prayers with a sort of mechanical routine, at offices for the Dead he betrays an utter lack of sympathy and reality. 

What wonder if onlookers are disgusted rather than edified, if their confidence is shaken, if they come to the conclusion that such a priest hardly believes what he professes!

Source: The priest of Today His Ideals and Duties, Rev. Thomas O'Donnell, C.M. 1910

A priest is not one merely chosen to read public prayers, or preach, or take a leading part in local good works. No sacramental symbol is required to enable a man to discharge these offices. The main function of the priest is to sacrifice; and, in the new law, to absolve from sin. Divine service is not necessarily Divine sacrifice. The rite of sacrifice, as essential, indeed , the main central act of worship, can never perish from the earth, not a priesthood to offer it. Forms, rites and ceremonies may change - not the priestly offering.

The abrogation of the sacrifices of the old law was only the introduction of the one majestic sacrifice of the new, still carried on in the Mass, and offered daily by the new priesthood " from the rising to the setting sun."

 There is, and was, only one sacrifice worthy of God, and adequate to atone for sin - that of Christ on Calvary. That one sacrifice is still offered in an un-bloody manner in the Mass by the visible priesthood, representing and sharing in the power of our one invisible High Priest, Christ. Mystic powers are conveyed in Holy Orders, the chief of which is the perpetuation of the sacrifice of the Cross, "Do this in commemoration of me." This command to sacrifice, i.e., offer Christ's precious Body and Blood, the Church faithfully carries out through her priests. The Victim is the same, the priest the same, Jesus Christ, speaking through His priest, the manner only differs.

The Mass is the Sun of Divine worship. It sums up in solemn splendor and spiritual beauty all other outward forms of sacrifice. We may say, in a reverent sense, that the old and new law survive in the Mass. Nature, in the form of grape and wheat, all that men can bring in the way of art, and wealth, and taste, flowers,a nd music, and, on occasions, majestic rites, are embodied in the great Eucharistic Sacrifice of the Mass. All men's gifts to God circle round the altar, or are collected in the church, where holy Mass is offered by the priest, "first for his own sins, then for the people's" (Heb. VII, 27). The Mass is the one changeless Sacrifice of the Cross, offered up all the world over, to the quick and the dead.

Source: Holy Orders, by the Rev. William Graham. A Pulpit Commentary on Catholic Teaching: The liturgy of the ecclesiastical year. 1910