A Quote
from Trojan Horse in the City of God
By Professor Dietrich von Hildebrand

Morality and holiness do not change with the times

What is most important, however, is to see that the unity of style an epoch may have never entitles us to extend it to the sphere of truth and morality.  It is impossible to speak of a Renaissance, a Baroque, or a modern truth, or of a Medieval and a modern morality, when by morality we mean the true nature of moral attitudes and not moral substitutes—which may indeed be typical of a certain epoch.  All the more must this be said of religious matters.  There is no Medieval holiness in contradistinction to a Baroque one, no holiness of the nineteenth century as distinguished from that of the twentieth.

Transformation in Christ is always essentially the same.  The differences we find among saints is due much more to their different personalities than to the epoch in which they lived.  And if one speaks of the piety typical of a certain epoch (always with the danger of oversimplification), this can only properly refer to a type of piety that does not contradict the piety of another epoch, but rather completes it.  As long as we refer to an authentic Christian piety and not to deviations, the difference is similar to that which obtains between types of devotion—for example, the devotion to the Infant Jesus, the suffering Christ, or the Sacred Heart. 

(This book, Trojan Horse in the City of God, was published by:
Sophia Institute, Box 5284, Manchester, NH  03108
Phone:  1-(800) 888-90344.)