The Capitalist Press

"This Capitalist Press has come at last to warp all judgment. The tiny oligarchy which controls it is irresponsible and feels itself immune. It has come to believe that it can suppress any truth and suggest any falsehood. It governs, and governs abominably: and it is governing thus in the midst of a war for life."

~Hilaire Belloc: The Free Press.

The Free Press

Reformation

“A man who thinks that, because the Church needed “Reformation” in the early sixteenth century, therefore the disruptive movement also known as “the Reformation” was necessary and good, is less intelligent than a man who does not confuse these totally distinct terms, though they happen to be expressed by the same set of syllables.”

~Hilaire Belloc: Essays of a Catholic.

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Essays of a Catholic

"The Puritan and the Manichee"

THE Puritan and the Manichee have the same attitude towards the universe; their creeds work out to the same moral and social practice. But there is one doctrinal difference between them, for while the Manichee believes in an evil principle which works side by side with, and is equal to, the principle of good in the universe, the Puritan, proceeding from Calvin and, therefore, only admitting one will in the universe, makes both evil and good combine in the same awful God who permits and, in a sense, wills evil and, particularly, the sufferings of man.

~Hilaire Belloc: Characters of the Reformation; Ch. 20, Oliver Cromwell.

"Calvin opened the door to the domination of the mind by money"

● CALVIN himself would have said with learning, sincerity, and zeal that the glory of God was the only object worthy of human activity, but as he divorced such activity from the power of saving the individual soul, what could there remain save the pursuit of riches?

● IN denying the efficacy of good deeds and of the human will, of abnegations, in leaving on one side as useless all the doctrine and tradition of Holy Poverty, Calvin opened the door to the domination of the mind by money.

~Hilaire Belloc: The Crisis of Civilization.

John Calvin

Saint Patrick

"WE know that among the marks of holiness is the working of miracles. Ireland is the greatest miracle any saint ever worked. It is a miracle and a nexus of miracles. Among other miracles it is a nation raised from the dead."

~Hilaire Belloc: St. Patrick.
> Read the complete essay here.

"The breakdown of Christendom"

“CULTURES spring from religions; ultimately the vital force which maintains any culture is its philosophy, its attitude toward the universe; the decay of a religion involves the decay of the culture corresponding to it—we see that most clearly in the breakdown of Christendom today.”

~Hilaire Belloc: The Great Heresies.

March

The north-cast wind has come from Norroway, 
Roaring he came above the white waves' tips! 
The foam of the loud sea was on his lips, 
And all his hair was salt with falling spray. 
Over the keen light of northern day 
He cast his snow cloud's terrible eclipse; 
Beyond our banks he suddenly struck the ships, 
And left them labouring on his landward way. 

The certain course that to my strength belongs 
Drives him with gathering purpose and control 
Until across Vendean flats he sees 
Ocean, the eldest of his enemies. 
Then wheels he for him, glorying in goal 
And gives him challenge, bellowing battle songs. 

~Hilaire Belloc

Sailing Vessels in a Strong Wind, by Hendrick Maertensz Sorgh.
Oil on canvas, 1660; The Hermitage, St. Petersburg (Russia).