Catholic Culture Audiobooks

"I will attempt to suggest to you on the present Festival some of the incentives to wonder and awe, humility, implicit faith, and adoration, supplied by the Ascension of Christ." A powerful Ascension sermon from St. John Henry Newman's Anglican period. Links Mysteries in Religion  full text:  https://newmanreader.org/works/parochial/volume2/sermon18.html SUBSCRIBE to Catholic Culture Audiobooks  h...

"If, then, the infinite benevolence of God wins our love, certainly His justice commands it; and were we able, as the Saints made perfect are able, to combine the notion of both in their separate perfections, as displayed in the same acts, doubtless our awe and admiration of the glorious vision would be immeasurably increased." St. John Henry Newman's  Oxford Sermons , delivered during his time as...

"Come—I sing of a splendid dream, a mighty marvel, that came at midnight when the tongues of men are silent. A strange tree—most wondrous strange!— stretched forth branches in a blast of light." The Dream of the Rood is an ancient Anglo-Saxon poem, composed as early as the 8th century. It takes the form of a dream-vision in which the narrator sees the Cross on which Christ was crucified, and most...

Lives of the Popes on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lives-of-the-popes/id1885968422 Lives of the Popes on CatholicCulture.org: https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/category/lives-of-popes-podcast/

"... we shall find it difficult to estimate the moral power which a single individual, trained to practice what he teaches, may acquire in his own circle, in the course of years. While the Scriptures are thrown upon the world, as if the common property of any who choose to appropriate them, he is, in fact, the legitimate interpreter of them, and none other; the Inspired Word being but a dead lette...

"No work takes deep root, or has real stability, or will perpetuate itself, unless the apostle has begotten the interior life in other souls. Naturally, he cannot do this unless he himself is strong in the inner life." This episode concludes Part Four of the classic work by the French Trappist monk, Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard (1858-1935). Among other things, there is featured an illuminating descr...

"Am I really one of those who depend upon their mental prayer, their visits to the Blessed Sacrament, above all upon their Mass or their Communion, to put real moving power into their preaching? If I am not, I may perhaps be a loudly 'tinkling cymbal,' or even give forth the more pompous din of 'sounding brass,' but I am not communicating to others any love, that love which makes the eloquence of...

"Human philosophy was beaten from its usurped province, but not by any counter-philosophy; and unlearned Faith, establishing itself by its own inherent strength, ruled the Reason as far as its own interests were concerned, and from that time has employed it in the Church, first as a captive, then as a servant; not as an equal, and in nowise (far from it) as a patron." St. John Henry Newman's  Oxfo...

"Two attitudes are possible: one, that the world is an absolute jungle and that the exercise of coercive power by rulers is only a manifestation of this; and the other, that it is both necessary and right that there should be this exercise of power, that through it the world is much less of a jungle than it could possibly be without it, so that one should in principle be glad of the existence of s...

"When attention to the theological meaning of femininity is not accompanied by reflection on masculinity, men are left without a sense of the existential and sacramental significance of their own sex." A reading of a fascinating essay originally published in the journal Logos , about the work of Walter Ong, SJ. In the wake of an emphasis on the “feminine genius” as delineated by Pope St. John Paul...

"These falls can be MOST CERTAINLY avoided when one knows how to use the precious balancing pole of the interior life. It is only the abandonment of this INFALLIBLE instrument that brings dizziness and the fatal false step into space." Part Three of this classic work by the French Trappist monk, Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard (1858-1935), warns of the spiritual perils of an active life divorced from a...

"The true light of the world offends more men than it attracts; and its divine origin is shown, not in its marked effects on the mass of mankind, but in its surprising power of elevating the moral character where it is received in spirit and in truth." St. John Henry Newman's Oxford Sermons , delivered during his time as an Anglican preacher at the University of Oxford, were instrumental in shapin...

"The life of action ought to flow from the contemplative life, to interpret and extend it, outside oneself, though at the same time being detached from it as little as possible." Part Two of this classic work by the French Trappist monk, Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard (1858-1935), further explores the inseparable interdependence of the active and the interior lives—each depends upon, presupposes, and...

"If God calls me to apply my activity not only to my own sanctification, but also to good works, I must establish this firm conviction, before everything else, in my mind: Jesus has got to be, and wishes to be, the life of these works. My efforts, by themselves, are nothing, absolutely nothing." Part One of this classic work by the French Trappist monk, Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard (1858-1935), exam...

"The Comforter who has come instead of Christ, must have vouchsafed to come in the same sense in which Christ came; I mean, that He has come, not merely in the way of gifts, or of influences, or of operations, as He came to the Prophets, for then Christ's going away would be a loss, and not a gain, and the Spirit's presence would be a mere pledge, not an earnest; but He comes to us as Christ came,...