it’s not really that hard to stay Catholic, even at a secular university — that is, if you are committed to your faith going into college.
.. I think it would be difficult to become Catholic at a place like Harvard.
.. On the other hand, if you come to campus knowing that there are going to be certain challenges and opportunities .. then you can take advantage of the rich resources at your disposal as a Catholic at a place like Harvard
.. I only really stopped and thought about the fact that I had written a book when I had to go through the painful and repetitious process of editing.
.. Lord willing, I would be able to write a different, wiser version of the book every year for the rest of my life.
friendships of utility (classmates), friendships of pleasure (“party friends”),
.. true friendships, which inspire both people to greater virtue.
.. you will his good precisely because it is good for him, not because you gain from it in any way. I’ve had maybe ten of these friends in my life, and I think that’s more than many people ever get. I should add that a couple of them are not Christian.
.. there would come a day when I had to choose between what I most wanted and Christ. Whether that was being popular, or getting some promotion, or whatever I really wanted, one day I would be tested to see if I loved something else more than God.
.. For me, that day came when I was interviewing for the Rhodes Scholarship, and the interview committee asked me whether I would support embryonic-stem-cell research
American Political Integrity Is in a State of Collapse
The woman who went on every major Sunday-morning news program after the Benghazi terrorist attacks and told flat-out falsehoods about its nature and motivations is now lecturing America about integrity.
.. A person who was one of the chief national-security officials when the Obama administration was spinning false narratives about the Iran nuclear deal
.. watching Demcrats spill crocodile tears over the Supreme Court, convinced that Neil Gorsuch was basically stealing Merrick Garland’s seat. Yet every sentient being in Washington knows that if the roles were reversed and, say, one of the liberal justices stepped down or passed away in the final months of a Republican presidency, the congressional Democrats would have behaved in the exact, same way
.. In fact, none other than Joe Biden made that same promise more than 20 years before.
.. The president and his team have repeatedly issued false denials about contacts with Russians, and the president himself keeps tweeting allegations and assertions that are most charitably described as incomplete, imprecise, and sometimes just outright wrong. Even when he’s “vindicated,” it’s often a strange kind of vindication, where his actual words were wrong, but something still happened. For example, wiretapping becomes “incidental collection.” Millions of illegal votes becomes millions of illegal registrations.
.. All of this nonsense is justified, excused, and indulged through the sheer force of tribalism. Unilateral honesty is seen as unilateral disarmament.
.. In one of John Adams’s most famous letters, he wrote that “our constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
.. “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.”
.. America needs political virtue. Where will she find it?
General H.R. McMaster Fans Say They Would Follow Him Anywhere
Those who have served with and worked alongside Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s new national security adviser, describe a brilliant leader and military strategist they would follow anywhere.
.. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who recommended McMaster for the position, also served under him in Iraq. Cotton submitted his resignation from the army in 2007, partly because he was passed over for a promotion to a one-star general. He later rescinded that resignation to deploy to Afghanistan.
“H.R. McMaster is one of the finest combat leaders of our generation and a great strategic mind. He is a true warrior scholar, and I’m confident he will serve both the president and the country well,” he said.
.. Friends also say he is honorable.
“He is brilliant and principled. He speaks truth to power and that has occasionally rubbed some of his peers and superiors the wrong way,” said Collins.
.. McMaster wrote the book on military commanders speaking truth to power, which some say could cause him to collide with others at the White House.
.. “He has a forceful personality. He doesn’t suffer fools well. If he thinks somebody’s wrong, he won’t hesitate to say so,” Fitzpatrick added.
.. Fitzpatrick predicts McMaster will get along with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who reportedly had battled over political appointments with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a retired army lieutenant general.
“They’re kind of birds of a feather. … I think he’ll play well with [Secretary Rex] Tillerson at the State Department. But others in the White House — that’s the big question. How well they play with him is maybe the question.”
.. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-AZ) said in a statement, “I could not imagine a better, more capable national security team than the one we have right now.”
Measure of a Man: How he treats his inferiors
He will show his goodness in the kindly consideration he shows those less favored than himself. It is the way one treats his inferiors more than the way he treats his equals which reveals one’s real character.
—Rev. Charles Bayard Miliken, Methodist Episcopal, Chicago.
The words above of Reverend Miliken were published in multiple newspapers in 1910. By 1911 a comparable statement delivered by another religious speaker named Dr M. C. B. Mason was printed in newspapers [DRCB]: