13 April 2014

Can we survive our fools?

A great quote from Cicero:

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

Change "nation" and "city" to "Church" and it still make perfect sense. 

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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:49 AM

    Is this a new meme or something...? Just saw it on a regular-reading site...

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    1. MFT, I saw part of this quote on another site, copied it, googled it, and decided to post the whole quote.

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  2. Reminds me of reading about the Spanish Civil War (between WW I and WW II). The term "fifth column" for the clandestine is said to originate here. Four columns of troops were advancing on a garrison and the commander, of the garrison, allegedly said that he had five columns to contend with. Four advancing from without and one attacking from within.

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    1. I think every large organization has something like a fifth column. Rarely do those in the fifth column think of themselves as such. They tend -- probably -- to think of themselves as the True Believers.

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  3. How do we prevent these folks from making Catholicism illegal in Catholic high schools? They invite in Catholic speakers and then publicly vilify them for saying...something...nobody outside the school knows exactly what. It seem that even Aquinas College would not stand behind their own sister

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