The
Church … regards this world, and all that is in it, as a mere shadow,
as dust and ashes, compared with the value of one single soul. … she
holds that it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the
earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of
starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than
that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one
single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no
one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse. She considers the action
of this world and the action of the soul simply incommensurate, viewed
in their respective spheres; she would rather save the soul of one
single wild bandit of Calabria, or whining beggar of Palermo, than draw a
hundred lines of
railroad through the length and breadth of Italy, or carry out a
sanitary reform, in its fullest details, in every city of Sicily, except
so far as these great national works tended to some spiritual good
beyond them.
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1 comment:
Puts the HHS issue in perspective!
Mempoit
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