Quote Catch-up

Again, I apologize for the long hiatus in between posts. I thought a good way to get back into the swing of things would be to post some great quotes from some books I've read over the past couple weeks. One of the authors, Robert Hugh Benson, was recommended by Sara and I have to admit that he is now one of my favorite authors and you'll be seeing a lot more of his work in my posts.

First up, Josef Pieper's slap in the face to modern art in the book Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation (I especially love this passage):

The artist may perchance be tempted - all the more so, the more he has acquired and mastered the "creative" possibilities of his craft - to produce an opus decidedly "different" from the accustomed and everyday experience of reality, yet in essence false, and in its banality a mere ruse. As is well known, fabrications of such a sort are quite assured of the public's applause.

I'm only going to post one passage by Benson here but expect much more of his work to be posted. I'm thinking about a recurring piece called "Benson's Best"... This passage is from his sermon on Meekness and Violence in the book Paradoxes of Catholicism.

The Catholic Church then is, and always will be, violent and intransigeant when the rights of God are in question. She will be absolutely ruthless, for example, towards heresy, for heresy affects not personal matters on which Charity may yield, but a Divine right on which there must be no yielding. Yet, simultaneously, she will be infinitely kind towards the heretic, since a thousand human motives and circumstances may come in and modify his responsibility. At a word of repentance she will readmit his person into her treasury of souls, but not his heresy into her treasury of wisdom; she will strike his name eagerly and freely from her black list of the rebellious, but not his book from the pages of her Index. She exhibits meekness towards him and violence towards his error, since he is human, but her Truth is Divine.

I'll leave it at that for now. I've recently begun to read C.S. Lewis as well and am finding out what a joy his writings are. My next post will include a great and practical quote by him. God bless!