Hannah Sillars

“It does, however, seem to me that fashionable Western self-loathing is fundamentally misplaced. Almost always it is directed at the fact of our wealth and power, relative to the other peoples of the earth, with the constant, quasi-Marxist (and false) assumption that the wealth must somehow inevitably be stolen from the poor, as if the economic pie were of a fixed size and economics a zero-sum game. Really, a decade and a half after the fall of communism, do we still need to go on disproving this? Our vast wealth does, indeed, impose upon us equally vast responsibilities toward those who remain in poverty. It is the real strengths of the West that created that wealth and that, tentatively and in humility, need to be proffered to those who could profit from them. The self-loathing, however, should be redirected from the mere fact of our prosperity to the disconnection, boredom, feeble-mindedness and infantilism that we have allowed our wealth to let us slip into. The unprecedented comfort of our lives allows us, if we are not careful—and we have not been careful—to lose hold of the fundamental realities that underpin all human existence.”
― Meic Pearse, Why the Rest Hates the West: Understanding the Roots of Global Rage

“And we, too, being called by His will to Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart; but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”
― Clement of Rome, The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians

“We know of course that the whole point is, the saints are not gods and never have been gods; even if they have often moved into temples which old pagan gods have had to evacuate, and even if they have often been smeared over with a little ancient paganism, the most ignorant and simple Catholics have always known that they are the very opposite of gods, men—that is, creatures, not creators. Even the most free-handed miracle workers among the saints do not operate by powers of their own, but by virtue of their association with God who created them and us all. And if popular legend often has a tendency to transform them, making it appear that they were distinguished from birth in a particular way, that from the very first they were equipped with extraordinary and unconventional qualities, this may be due to an unconscious attempt to provide an excuse for us ordinary people, who would be glad to evade the troublesome duty of becoming saints.”
― Sigrid Undset, Stages on the Road

“A woman has never been able to become a priest—she cannot even be a deacon, nor yet a chorister—but a woman can with the authority of the spirit reprove a priest who falls short of the dignity of his office, even if his office be that of the Vicar of Christ on earth. A widow from an outpost of the Europe of her day—St. Bridget of Sweden—or dyer’s daughter from Siena, St. Catherine—they bow humbly before the dignity with which the man is invested, while at the same time speaking their minds mercilessly and unafraid to the human side of him who has proved himself unworthy of his vicarship; and they do this by virtue of the spiritual authority they possess as favored souls and as courageous souls.”
― Sigrid Undset, Stages on the Road