Let no Christian therefore, whether philosopher or theologian, embrace eagerly and lightly whatever novelty happens to be thought up from day to day, but rather let him weigh it with painstaking care and a balanced judgment, lest he lose or corrupt the truth he already has, with grave danger and damage to his faith.
Interpretation
One should critically evaluate new ideas instead of accepting them blindly to protect one's existing beliefs.
Pope Pius XII emphasizes the importance of critical thinking and careful consideration when encountering new ideas or trends, especially in matters of faith. The quote suggests that one should not just accept novelty for novelty's sake but should ensure that their understanding and belief system remain intact and grounded in truth to avoid potential harm to their faith.
In practice
In a seminar about balancing faith and modern science, this quote can serve as a reminder to evaluate new scientific claims critically.
If a worker is deprived of hope to acquire some personal property, what other natural stimulus can be offered him that will inspire him to hard work, labor, saving and sobriety today, when so many nations and men have lost everything and all they have left is their capacity for work?
To live without risk is to risk not living.
It might be said that society speaks through the clothing it wears. Through its clothing it reveals its secret aspirations and uses it, at least in part, to build or destroy its future.
The faith of the Church is this: That one and identical is the Word of God and the Son of Mary Who suffered on the Cross, Who is present in the Eucharist, and Who rules in Heaven
True science discovers God in an ever-increasing degree — as though God were waiting behind every door opened by science.
You lose nothing through peace. You can lose everything through war.
It’s in the very trickery that it pleases me. But show me how the trick is done, and I have lost my interest therein.
Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being so rapidly added to the sum of human experience, that it appears as if the theorizer would always be in arrears, and were doomed forever to arrive at imperfect conclusion; but the power to perceive a law is equally rare in all ages of the world, and depends but little on the number of facts observed.
But the thought arrived inside her like a train: Marya Morevna, all in black, here and now, was a point at which all the women she had been met—the Yaichkan and the Leningrader and the chyerti maiden; the girl who saw the birds, and the girl who never did—the woman she was and the woman she might have been and the woman she would always be, forever intersecting and colliding, a thousand birds falling from a thousand oaks, over and over.
We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures, we are the sum of the Father's love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son Jesus.
Being critical of the nation is a far cry from being unpatriotic or anti-American. In fact, most social criticism . . . is based on a love of America's ideals and a concern we're not living up to them.
Winning and losing, that's never been my objective. It's my hope that in the fullness of time, the majority of the court will come to see things as I do.
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