QUOTATION: Dehumanization

We are scandalized at seeing what the release of the sub-human has done to the Fascists, Nazis, and Communists. Yet we have not learned that the same deleterious effects can be present in the individual who, starting with the philosophy that he is only a beast, immediately proceeds to act like one. To just the extent that a man is unmortified in his selfish passions, it becomes necessary for some external authority to control and subdue those passions. That is why the passing of morality and religion and asceticism from political life is inevitably followed by a police state, which attempts to organize the chaos produced by that selfishness. Law gives way to force; ethics is replaced by the secret police.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: Materialism

Another argument against epiphenomenalism is that if thought is merely a by-product of matter, a kind of fart of the brain, then you can’t account for the validity of thought—of any thought, and therefore of that thought, too. If we can’t help how our tongues happen to wag because some blind and dumb molecules are pushing it one way rather than another, then why should you pay attention to my words any more than to tea leaves in the fortune-teller’s cup? It seems to me that materialism is akin not to science but to primitive superstition.

--Peter Kreeft, Letters to an Atheist, 2014

QUOTATION: Consciousness

Consciousness, after all, (1) cannot be denied without self-contradiction (that’s Descartes’ point in“I think therefore I am”), but (2) it has none of the properties that characterize that is material (shape, size, mass, etc.), and (3) it has properties that are not material (e.g., “truth”). The existence of consciousness seems to immediately refute materialism.

--Peter Kreeft, Letters to an Atheist, 2014

QUOTATION: The Argument from Consciousness

How does a materialist account for the stubborn fact of consciousness? If it’s nothing but physical brain activity, then what is my consciousness of my physical brain activity? Remember, the knowledge of a thing one of the parts of the thing known. This can be proved by formal logic alone. For the alternative would make accurate knowledge (knowledge that matches the thing known) impossible. For in the very act of knowing all the facts about a thing you create a new fact about that thing: that it was known. And that fact can be only known still by another act of knowing, et cetera ad infinitum.

--Peter Kreeft, Letters to an Atheist, 2014

QUOTATION: Lifestyle

It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed toward having rather than being, and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself.

--Pope St. John Paul II

QUOTATION: Materialism

The love of worldly possessions is a sort of bird line, which entangles the soul, and prevents it flying to God.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Riches

The more worldly prosperity you enjoy, the more destitute you are likely to be of spiritual riches, for an abundance of this world's goods leads you to trust in them rather than in God. Oh! That you knew the misery which such prosperity prepares for you! The desire of more which springs from the love of riches is a torment which far exceeds the pleasure we derive from their possession. It will entangle you in a thousand temptations, fill you with cares, and under the delusive image of pleasure plunge you into renewed sin and prove an inexhaustible source of trouble and disquiet. Again, riches are acquired only at the expense of pain and labor; they are preserved only by care and anxiety; and they are never lost without bitter vexation and grief. But, worse than all this, they are rarely accumulated without offense against God; for, as the proverb says, "A rich man is either a wicked man or a wicked man's heir."

--Louis de Granada, The Sinner's Guide

QUOTATION: Frugality

Frugality is a sin in this respect:  that it arises from the love of possessing. In contrast, we should both abstain from pleasures and by no means withhold money.  To use money sparingly, that is, moderately, is a type of weakness of the mind. It reveals someone fearing lest he will be in need.  Or it reveals someone despairing of being able to recover it, or someone incapable of the contempt of earthly things.

--Lactantius 

QUOTATION: Materialism

All intense interest in luxury is a mark of inner poverty.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: God's Existence

The very nerve of our contention is that the material world which meets us in our experience does not provide the explanation of its own existence, or of the forces which control it, or of the laws which govern it, that the explanation, consequently, must be looked for in something that is outside and beyond itself. Our thought can only be satisfied by the existence of some necessary Being, to which all this contingent existence around us, the world of creation, is secondary, and upon which it depends.

--Msgr Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics, 1927