Communism and the Conscience of the West

Communism and the Conscience of the West

Author: Fulton J. Sheen

Publisher:

Published: 2021-10-20

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9781685950064

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Communism and the Conscience of the West revolves around the single, disconcerting idea that Communism, in both its ideological and practical forms, is on the conscience of the Western world. Because the West has broadly lost that spiritual sensibility which made it great, thus reducing both man and cosmos to wholly material and base realities, Fulton J. Sheen argues, there is nothing to prevent the dissolution of the old order into a new and terrifying totality. And thus appears Communism: the recalcitrant, neurotic child of a permissive, neglectful parent. Since it first appeared in 1948, during the initial frigid days of the Cold War, Communism and the Conscience of the West has proven to be a prophetic witness to the grave dangers of decadent, individualistic liberalism and atheistic, collectivist totalitarianism alike. While the Cold War has ended and Soviet Union passed away, these dangers have endured and even metastasized. For the basic struggle remains: the moral and spiritual struggle for the very soul of mankind.


Worlds of Dissent

Worlds of Dissent

Author: Jonathan Bolton

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2012-04-13

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 0674064836

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Worlds of Dissent analyzes the myths of Central European resistance popularized by Western journalists and historians, and replaces them with a picture of the struggle against state repression as the dissidents themselves understood, debated, and lived it. In the late 1970s, when Czech intellectuals, writers, and artists drafted Charter 77 and called on their government to respect human rights, they hesitated to name themselves "dissidents." Their personal and political experiences--diverse, uncertain, nameless--have been obscured by victory narratives that portray them as larger-than-life heroes who defeated Communism in Czechoslovakia. Jonathan Bolton draws on diaries, letters, personal essays, and other first-person texts to analyze Czech dissent less as a political philosophy than as an everyday experience. Bolton considers not only Václav Havel but also a range of men and women writers who have received less attention in the West--including Ludvík Vaculík, whose 1980 diary The Czech Dream Book is a compelling portrait of dissident life. Bolton recovers the stories that dissidents told about themselves, and brings their dilemmas and decisions to life for contemporary readers. Dissidents often debated, and even doubted, their own influence as they confronted incommensurable choices and the messiness of real life. Portraying dissent as a human, imperfect phenomenon, Bolton frees the dissidents from the suffocating confines of moral absolutes. Worlds of Dissent offers a rare opportunity tounderstand the texture of dissent in a closed society.


Philosophies at War

Philosophies at War

Author: Fulton J. Sheen

Publisher: Colchis Books

Published: 2022-10-04

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

There are two ways of looking at the war: one as a journalist, the other as a theologian. The journalist tells you what happens; the theologian not only why it happens, but also what matters. If we look at this war through the eyes of a journalist or a commentator, it will he only a succession of events without any remote causes in the past, or any great purpose in the future. But if we look at the war through the eyes of God, then the war is not meaningless, though we may not presently understand its details. It may very well be a purposeful purging of the world’s evil that the world may have a rebirth of freedom under His Holy Law, for: Every human path leads on to God, He holds a myriad finer threads than gold, And strong as holy wishes, drawing us With delicate tension upward to Himself. Our approach is from the divine point of view, first of all, because it is the only explanation which fits the facts; secondly because the American people who have been confused by catchwords and slogans are seeking an inspiration for a total surrender of their great potentialities for sacrifice, both for God and country. The great mass of the American people are frankly dissatisfied with the ephemeral and superficial commentaries on what is happening. Being endowed with intelligence, they want to know why it is happening. We all know what we are fighting against; we want to know what we are fighting for. We all know that we are in a war; we want to know what we must do to make a lasting peace. We know whom we hate; but we want to know what we ought to love. We know we are fighting against a barbarism that is intrinsically wicked; we want to know what we have to do to make the resurrection of that wickedness impossible.


Communism and the Remorse of an Innocent Victimizer

Communism and the Remorse of an Innocent Victimizer

Author: Zlatko Anguelov

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9781585441952

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In moving but understated prose, he describes his own coming to terms with the harm done by compliance and his gradual shift into a more politically active stance."--BOOK JACKET.


Ministers of a New Medium

Ministers of a New Medium

Author: Kirk D. Farney

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2022-06-21

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1514003236

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Kirk D. Farney explores the work of Fulton J. Sheen and Walter A. Maier as groundbreaking leaders combining theology and technology to spread the gospel in the "Golden Age" of radio. With careful attention to both the theological content and the cultural influence of these masters of a new medium, this study sheds new light on the history of media and Christianity in the United States.


Preface to Religion

Preface to Religion

Author: Fulton Sheen

Publisher:

Published: 2022-10-04

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781505123845

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Amidst the backdrop of World War II, the great Fulton Sheen wrote Preface to Religion, his first book published after the war ended. As the world was recovering from death, destruction, and despair, Sheen's timely work tackles the most salient questions pertaining to happiness and sanity. With simplicity and frankness, Sheen declares, "If you do not worship God, you worship something, and nine times out of ten it will be yourself. If there is no God, then you are a god." Throughout this work, Sheen addresses the perennial subjects of fallen nature, forgiveness, the four last things, how God remakes us, the role of religion in the process, and the gift of second chances. Contrary to the modern world, God does not give us what "we want for our pleasure" but "what we need for our perfection." Preface to Religion reminds us of education's primary purpose, which is to train the mind to use freedom rightly. God chose to make a moral universe, but morality is impossible without freedom. And therefore, the reader will see that the body must always serve the soul. Finally, Sheen writes on faith, that "the modern man who is not living according to his conscience wants a religion without a Cross, a Christ without a Calvary, a Kingdom without Justice," and a pastor "who never mentions hell to ears polite." For anyone seeking to find true happiness and true freedom, Preface to Religion will be your guide.


The Quiet American

The Quiet American

Author: Graham Greene

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2018-03-13

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1504052544

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A “masterful . . . brilliantly constructed novel” of love and chaos in 1950s Vietnam (Zadie Smith, The Guardian). It’s 1955 and British journalist Thomas Fowler has been in Vietnam for two years covering the insurgency against French colonial rule. But it’s not just a political tangle that’s kept him tethered to the country. There’s also his lover, Phuong, a young Vietnamese woman who clings to Fowler for protection. Then comes Alden Pyle, an idealistic American working in service of the CIA. Devotedly, disastrously patriotic, he believes neither communism nor colonialism is what’s best for Southeast Asia, but rather a “Third Force”: American democracy by any means necessary. His ideas of conquest include Phuong, to whom he promises a sweet life in the states. But as Pyle’s blind moral conviction wreaks havoc upon innocent lives, it’s ultimately his romantic compulsions that will play a role in his own undoing. Although criticized upon publication as anti-American, Graham Greene’s “complex but compelling story of intrigue and counter-intrigue” would, in a few short years, prove prescient in its own condemnation of American interventionism (The New York Times).