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POPSCalles Law ...Designed to put teeth into the constitutional articles, it spelled out in specific terms the penalties for violations -- 500 pesos for wearing clerical garb, five years imprisonment for criticizing the laws or inducing a minor to join a monastic order, etc. The trouble came when Calles mulishly attempted to enforce the laws in strongly Catholic west-central Mexico, particularly the states of Jalisco, Colima, Zacatecas, Guanajuato and Michoacán and even more particularly the Los Altos ranch country of northeast Jalisco, focal point of what would turn out to be the terrible 1926-29 Cristero War. Shouting their battle cry of Viva Cristo Rey! ("Long live Christ the King!"), a motley assortment of ranchers, Catholic students and workers from Guadalajara and Indians from Jalisco's northern sierra held off the cream of the federal army for three years.
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POPSVatican’s Celestial Eye, Seeking Not Angels but Data In the Vatican Observatory’s annual report, at the point where a corporation might describe its business strategy, is a section delineating the difference between creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing) and creatio continua: “the fact that at every instant, the continued existence of the universe itself is deliberately willed by God, who in this way is continually causing the universe to remain created.”
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POPSSex in 1984: Orwell and Catholicism The common thread among them is a view of human liberty in the positive sense. Whereas classical liberalism, following Hobbes, has a tendency to view liberty as the absence of impediments to free movement (the negative view), to find it in the silence of the law, or in a personal sphere defined by abstract rights, the positive view of liberty posits that it is also a state of mind. One may be free to do as one pleases, and easily become enslaved in their minds, hearts and souls to vice. The positive libertarian par excellence was Jean Jacques-Rousseau, who also had much to say about the relationship between virtue and liberty. A typical statement on the subject is found in the Discourse on Political Economy, where he writes There can be no patriotism without liberty, no liberty without virtue, no virtue without citizens; create citizens, and you have everything you need; without them, you will have nothing but debased slaves…
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POPSWhat it takes to be a Catholic man... Pope St. Gregory the Great : "What can we men , fully-grown, but weak, who are overcome by anger, inflated by pride, disquieted by ambition, corrupted by pleasure, when we see young women sent to the sword to the Kingdom of Heaven? We may not be able to attain the kingdom through battle and persecution, but let us be ashamed, that we are unwilling to follow God even in times of peace. At present God is not saying to any of us, "Die for me" , but just put to death the unlawful desires within you! Would we give our bodies for the Lord in time of war, when we are not willing to subdue their desires in time of peace?"
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POPSEinstein on the Stupidity of Religion Contrast his words with the zebrafish specialist P.Z. Myers, "There are days when it is agony to read the news, because people are so goddamned stupid. Petty and stupid. Hateful and stupid. Just plain stupid. And nothing makes them stupider than religion. Who is right?
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