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Jenna

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The Brothers Karamazov

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Apr 28, 2023 12:48PM

“It is not the task of the state to create mankind’s happiness, nor is it the task of the state to create new men. It is not the task of the state to change the world into a paradise—nor can it do so. If it tries, it abandons its own boundaries and posits itself as something absolute. It behaves as if it were God, and, as the Revelation of John shows, this makes it the beast from the abyss, the power of the Antichrist.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Values in a Time of Upheaval: Meeting the Challenges of the Future

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“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place... Nothing outside you can give you any place... In yourself right now is all the place you've got.”
― Flannery O Connor

tags: flannery-o-connor

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“The father of this other view of political activity is Plato, who assumes that only one who himself knows and has experienced the good is capable of ruling well. All sovereignty must be service, i.e., a conscious act whereby one renounces the contemplative height that one has attained and the freedom that this height brings. The act of governing must be a voluntary return into the dark “cave” in which men live. It is only in this way that genuine governance comes about. Anything else is a mere scuffling with illusions in a realm of shadows—and that is in fact what most of political activity is. Plato detects the blindness of average politicians in their fight for power “as if that were a great good.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, Values in a Time of Upheaval: Meeting the Challenges of the Future

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“We thought in particular about the priests. Our priestly hearts wished to strengthen them, to encourage them. With all priests, we pray: Save us, Lord, for we are perishing! The Lord is asleep while the storm is unleashed. He seems to abandon us to the waves of doubt and error. We are tempted to lose confidence. On every side, the waves of relativism are submerging the barque of the Church.”
― Benedict XVI, From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church

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“Again and again people say: It must be a cruel God who demands infinite atonement. Is this not a notion unworthy of God? Must we not give up the idea of atonement in order to maintain the purity of our image of God? In the use of the term “hilastērion” with reference to Jesus, it becomes evident that the real forgiveness accomplished on the Cross functions in exactly the opposite direction. The reality of evil and injustice that disfigures the world and at the same time distorts the image of God—this reality exists, through our sin. It cannot simply be ignored; it must be addressed. But here it is not a case of a cruel God demanding the infinite. It is exactly the opposite: God himself becomes the locus of reconciliation, and in the person of his Son takes the suffering upon himself. God himself grants his infinite purity to the world. God himself “drinks the cup” of every horror to the dregs and thereby restores justice through the greatness of his love, which, through suffering, transforms the darkness.”
― Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection

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