Wednesday, November 10, 2004

The Feast of Pope St. Leo the Great, Doctor of the Church
is today. There is information on him here.

The principles and proceedings of the Church now were those of the Church then; the principles and proceedings of heretics then were those of Protestants now. I found it so—almost fearfully; there was an awful similitude, more awful, because so silent and unimpassioned, between the dead records of the past and the feverish chronicle of the present. The shadow of the fifth century was on the sixteenth. It was like a spirit rising from the troubled waters of the Old World with the shape and lineaments of the new. The Church then, as now, might be called peremptory and stern, resolute, overbearing, and relentless; and heretics were shifting, changeable, reserved, and deceitful, ever courting the civil power, and never agreeing together, except by its aid; and the civil power was ever aiming at comprehensions, trying to put the invisible out of view, and to substitute expediency for faith. What was the use of continuing the controversy, or defending my position, if, after all, I was but forging arguments for Arius or Eutyches, and turning devil's advocate against the much-enduring Athanasius and the majestic Leo? Be my soul with the Saints! and shall I lift up my hand against them?

Venerable John Henry Newman, C.O., Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, later quoted in Apologia Pro Vita Sua

It is also the feast of St. Andrew Avellino, C.R.T., Priest. To any Theatines out there, blessed feast day !

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