Saturday, November 15, 2008

Passages to ponder ...

I have been reading again the best piece of character-drawing I have seen in ten years. Father Malachy's Miracle. ... What a superb thing it is! - every character distinct, sharp, individual, beautifully drawn, and interesting; not one among but that is interesting, fascinating, every minute of the time. I hear it did not do very well here. Grenville Vernon tells me it went against the grain of a good many Roman Catholics. How they could find it objectionable is beyond me, but apparently they did, and non est disputandum. One can only say that their zeal for the faith seems much more ardent than intelligent, and that unintelligent zeal is a pretty poor asset for any faith, in the long run.

- Albert Jay Nock, Journal of Forgotten Days

Father Malachy thought how sad it was that even priests bound to teach the same truths in the same heedless Scotland could not love and understand one another and of how very ultimately alone and dependent upon God was every human soul. Men talked of nations and corporate consciousnesses of various sorts; they didn't exist; there were only individual souls, imaged by the Father and superscribed by the Son, trying to pretend that they were essential parts of something greater than themselves, and all, apart from the Trinity and the Hierarchy of Heaven, ridiculously, appallingly alone.

- Bruce Marshall, Father Malachy's Miracle

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