This is one of my favourite passages from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and it comes back to my mind a lot in these days:

On doctrinal points the Catholic faith places all human capacities upon the same level; it subjects the wise and ignorant, the man of genius and the vulgar crowd, to the details of the same creed; it imposes the same observances upon the rich and the needy, it inflicts the same austerities upon the strong and the weak; it listens to no compromise with mortal man, but, reducing all the human race to the same standard, it confounds all the distinctions of society at the foot of the same altar, even as they are confounded in the sight of God. If Catholicism predisposes the faithful to obedience, it certainly does not prepare them for inequality; but the contrary may be said of Protestantism, which generally tends to make men independent more than to render them equal. Catholicism is like an absolute monarchy; if the sovereign be removed, all the other classes of society are more equal than in republics.

I was so pleased to see that Peter Kwasniewski quoted it in his beautiful piece, “How the Traditional Liturgy Contributes to Racial and Ethnic Integration.”

There is much more to say on this, but it’s late and I wanted to post something quick, so enjoy Tocqueville and Peter’s piece.

The other evening I attended a talk on Abraham Joshua Heschel. The speaker touched on his book The Prophets, which prompted me to reflect on this particular excerpt: 

The nature of man’s response to the divine corresponds to the content of his apprehension of the divine. When the divine is sensed as mysterious perfection, the response is one of fear and trembling; when sensed as absolute will, the response is one of unconditional obedience; when sensed as pathos, the response is one of sympathy.

Continue reading “Pathos and Sympathy” →

Today I finished reading Omar Saif Ghobash’s book Letters to a Young Muslim. Ghobash is the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to France and former U.A.E. Ambassador to Russia (2008-2017). Through this book of letters addressed to his sons, Ghobash explores his family history, upbringing, and experiences that have led him to “see the world through the prism of responsibility.” Ghobash was born in 1971, the year the UAE was founded. His father had become minister of state for foreign affairs for the country in 1974 and was killed in a terrorist attack three years after that. Ghobash’s mother is Russian and descended from Orthodox clergymen. Growing up, Gobash spoke Russian at home, English in school, and eventually learned Arabic and French, too. In light of all of this, he offers some unique perspective. Below is an excerpt I found particularly interesting: Continue reading “Book: Letters to a Young Muslim” →