Please fast and pray every Thursday for the renewal of the Catholic Church in America. Please note: The Cybersociety will fast on Fridays beginning January 2013, in accordance with ancient custom.

This is not a photoblog; this is not a Catholic trivia blog. The story of our origins.

Friday, May 30, 2014

 


Aqua lateris Christi, lava me.
 








Water from the side of Christ, wash me.

Friday, May 23, 2014

Anima Christi

Anima Christi, sanctifica me.
Corpus Christi, salve me.
Sanguis Christi, inebria me.







Soul of Christ, sanctify me.
Body of Christ, save me.
Blood of Christ, inebriate me.

Friday, May 16, 2014

 
"...and the late afternoon mingled with the sanctity of trees."
 (Hilaire Belloc, The Path to Rome)
 
 

Friday, May 9, 2014

And how shall they preach?




















                                                     ...except they be sent?


How beautiful are the feet                                            
                                         of them that preach


the gospel of peace. (Rom. 10:15)




Friday, May 2, 2014

The Pope: Now a Benedict, Now a Francis


"Why does the Church incur the dislike of so many men, even of believers?...Most people have trouble with the Church because she is an institution like any other, which as such restricts freedom....The limits that the Church erects seem doubly burdensome because they reach into man's most personal and most intimate depths. For the Church's rules for ordering life are far more than a set of regulations to keep the traffic of humanity from collision. They inwardly affect my course in life, telling me how I am supposed to understand and shape my freedom. They demand of me decisions that cannot be made without painful renunciation....

 
"[Yet] in the midst of this world full of harsh discipline and inexorable pressures, a secret hope still looks to the Church...There, at least, one would hope to know the taste of freedom, of redeemed existence....We think we must establish a better Church: a Church full of humanity, pervaded by a spirit of brotherhood and large-minded creativity, a place of reconciliation of all and for all....However much [one] may resist this noble project, it must be begun in earnest....[But] the reform that is needed that is needed at all times does not consist in constantly remodeling 'our' Church according to our tastes, or in inventing her ourselves, but in ceaselessly clearing away our subsidiary constructions to let in the pure light that comes from above and that is also the dawning of pure freedom."

---Pope Benedict XVI. Redacted from six pages of dense prose in Called to Communion. Really, dear Benedict, you need an editor. Happy to oblige.