Your favorite Catholic essay?

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I’m looking to hear what others have read that has profoundly impressed them about Catholic philosophy (not spirituality). I prefer that references be to essays rather than to books, or that the reference be to a specific chapter in a book, and that they be limited to the period from 1900 to the present.

My own candidate is:

The Idea of God and the Difficulties of Atheism by Etienne Gilson, 1969.

The first page of the essay can be located here:

pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=philtoday&id=philtoday_1969_0013_0003_0174_0205
 
Is this thread already dead? 🤷

Could have been a great place to share one’s most precious readings.
 
No, but it’s hard to think of one’s *favorite *Catholic essay–there are so many!!!

However, one that had a great effect on me, my understanding of God, and which has given me a great deal to think about is Michael Davies’ The Reign of Christ the King.
Let me see if I can find the link…

ETA: Here’s the link. It’s a somewhat anti–VII magazine, but this essay explains so much about the Kingship of Christ… about freedom and authority and how important this principle is. At first, I didn’t get it at all–my mind was still so full of secular ideas.
 
St_Francis said:
ETA: Here’s the link. It’s a somewhat anti–VII magazine, but this essay explains so much about the Kingship of Christ… about freedom and authority and how important this principle is. At first, I didn’t get it at all–my mind was still so full of secular ideas.
Click to expand...
Thank you Francis. I skipped to the last paragraph first to see what conclusion the author had drawn, and am intrigued to read the rest after supper. It may be more than coincidental (?) that my wife and I attend Christ the King parish. 🙂
 
St_Francis said:
No, but it’s hard to think of one’s *favorite *Catholic essay–there are so many!!!

However, one that had a great effect on me, my understanding of God, and which has given me a great deal to think about is Michael Davies’ The Reign of Christ the King.
Let me see if I can find the link…

ETA: Here’s the link. It’s a somewhat anti–VII magazine, but this essay explains so much about the Kingship of Christ… about freedom and authority and how important this principle is. At first, I didn’t get it at all–my mind was still so full of secular ideas.
Click to expand...
Thank you very much for this source. I’m still reading it.
 
Another fine Catholic essay is by Mortimer J. Adler, *God, Modern Man, and Religion *and is located online here:

bookofjob.org/CONCERNING%20GOD.htm

Adler was a lifelong ardent Thomist who did not become a Catholic until the last three years of his life. He is most famous as the American philosopher who was best able to communicate deep philosophical concepts to the layman in laymen’s language.
 
Thank you for that article on the Reign of Christ the King. It was well researched and documented, and the point of view substantiated that Vatican II got confused between regarding Christ as a King and Christ as a President. 🤷

The upcoming decision by the Supreme Court (six of the nine members being Catholic) regarding same-sex marriage will reveal how thoroughly our Catholic jurists have bought into Vatican II’s demotion of Christ as King to Christ as mere President and member of the bar.
 
I am glad you enjoyed the essay; I hope to be able to read the one you recommended one day 🙂 But the name is familiar to me and now I will know he’s good, iyswim. Thanks so much.

BTW, lots of interesting articles (an aggregation from many sources) and Catholic Education Resource Center. Many thoughts have been provoked there 🙂

ETA link
 
Any chapter from Chesterton’s *The Everlasting Man *is brilliant. Here is a sample paragraph.

“The civilization of antiquity was the whole world: and men no more dreamed of its ending than of the ending of daylight. They could not imagine another order unless it were in another world. The civilization of the world has passed away and those words have not passed away. In the long night of the Dark Ages feudalism was so familiar a thing that no man could imagine himself without a lord: and religion was so woven into that network that no man would have believed they could be torn asunder. Feudalism itself was torn to rags and rotted away in the popular life of the true Middle Ages; and the first and freshest power in that new freedom was the old religion. Feudalism had passed away, and the words did not pass away. The whole medieval order, in many ways so complete and almost cosmic a home for man, wore out gradually in its turn and here at least it was thought that the words would die. They went forth across the radiant abyss of the Renaissance and in fifty years were using all its light and learning for new religious foundations, new apologetics, new saints. It was supposed to have been withered up at last in the dry light of the Age of Reason; it was supposed to have disappeared ultimately in the earthquake of the Age of Revolution. Science explained it away; and it was still there. History disinterred it in the past; and it appeared suddenly in the future. To-day it stands once more in our path; and even as we watch it, it grows.”
 
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