Atheism and the Suicide Cult

From time to time, I have a 'culture of encounter' and a 'culture of dialogue' with an atheist. We cross swords, there is no victor, it is a dialogue of the deaf. I do not accept his rationalist arguments which reduce God to some kind of testable item found in His creation.

To him, the entire 'God concept' is 'illogical' including the God of Revelation of whom we speak. Nothing, in his world view, points to a Creator, it is all explicable by science, and if it is not yet, it will be one day, even though the Universe has an order that is eerily stable, despite death, suffering and natural disaster. What astounds me about modern atheism is the triumphalism with which the atheist proclaims God's existence a figment of the imagination - a fairy tale to comfort the hopeless and naive, the oppressed and those for whom this life is unmitigated misery.

I won't go into the many aspects of the arguments we have. They are really quite predictable and will be very familiar to Catholics who have tried to convince stalwart atheists that the God revealed to the Church is knowable, loveable and worthy of all trust.

A Culture of Dialogue

What really does shock me about 'encounters' with atheists, as I say, is the glee with which God's absence is proclaimed. There really is a new 'faith' coming out from the atheist position which is evangelical in nature. 'Deconversions', or examples of the loss of faith are moments of joy, apparently, to these atheists. As if a candidate has been through masonic initiation, these newly enlightened atheists are crowned and recommended to others as those who have left the world of 'darkness' and entered into a place of 'light'.

I do not wish to 'rabbit' on about atheism but I do find it particularly concerning that along with the triumphant position taken by many a 'new guru' on the glories of atheism - which enthrones or even deifies the kind of rationalism that people can only apply to their beliefs (real, actual life is rarely so rational!) comes soon in its wake a frightening suicide cult. Many of those who proclaim the glory of the new atheism, such as Ian McEwan and Richard Dawkins, and so many others, most notably in the celebrity world, adhere to a strict doctrine on suicide that promotes it as a right - an inalienable right.

The same men and women of the age who promote atheism and godlessness are also, by and large, promoting a message of suicide along the line of rights. This is summed up in the campaign for the 'right to die'.

Celebrated author: Ian McEwan

There is a trend emerging which is quite clear. Atheism, in the modern age, has developed a tendency towards promoting suicide that is really quite worrying. We know the arguments. We keep hearing them..."It's my life, I can choose to end it as I wish, etc, etc..." 

There seems to be a strange juxtaposition between, on the one hand, joyfully declaring God's existence to be a fable, and yet, on the other hand, being obsessed with one's own end - arguing that it would be best if, in the circumstances of any suffering, mental or physical, or even dependence, feelings of indignity or loss of independence, it would be better to either kill oneself or have one's life extinguished.

Atheism and the Death Cult

The kind of atheism generated in the United Kingdom one the one hand glories in God's death, or non-existence, but is unable to replace Him with anything that would lead its adherents to accept suffering and natural death. Yet suffering and natural death, while regrettable, are natural. They are not artificial things. Atheists are unable, it would seem, to rejoice in God's non-existence without planning their own suicide, which they wish to be normalised so much that it takes place at the hands of friends, family or the GP.

One has to ask whether the religious fervour associated with the new atheism can be likened to the suicide cults of times past. For instance, one comment on this YouTube video, on the Jonestown Massacre, led by Jim Jones. Wikipedia tells us that...

"Jonestown" was the informal name for the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project formed by the Peoples Temple, an American religious organization under the leadership of Jim Jones, in northwestern Guyana. It became internationally notorious when on November 18, 1978, 918 people died in the settlement, at the nearby airstrip in Port Kaituma, and in Georgetown, Guyana's capital city. The name of the settlement became synonymous with the incidents at those locations.

A total of 909 Temple members died in Jonestown, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, in an event termed "revolutionary suicide" by Jones and some members on an audio tape of the event and in prior discussions. The poisonings in Jonestown followed the murder of five others by Temple members at Port Kaituma, including United States Congressman Leo Ryan. Four other Temple members died in Georgetown at Jones' command.

A very charismatic preacher whipped up a congregation into religious fervour and got them all to kill themselves, along with himself. It doesn't sounds a million miles away from the new atheists and their obsession with planning their untimely end, while rejoicing at God's 'non-existence' and asking politicians to allow them and their followers the 'right to die'. Yet they are so miserable.They're not promising a happy after life, are they? But the results would be just the same because, to the atheists, oblivion and annihilation, self-destruction and death at their own hands is to be welcomed, because after all their rejoicing at the death of God and the astonishing progress they had made without Him, anything is better than this life.

It would seem that without faith, life, of which suffering and loss of independence is a natural part, is simply unbearable. Without God the good times make sense. Without God the bad times must be brought to an unnatural close. So what was so great about atheism in the first place? Why the rejoicing when in the end, life itself was just an exercise in futility, a bad joke? Why rid yourself and others of God, when the replacement cannot help you to confront, rather than avoid through suicide, that which comes to all men? Faith has helped people to die happy. Atheism just wants to 'help people to die'.

The Guild of Blessed Titus Brandsma Needs You!

This is a reminder to members of The Guild of Blessed Titus Brandsma, that the Guild's blog benefits greatly from bloggers contributions.

If you would like to contribute to the Guild's blog, if you are a member, a registered author, please feel free to write something and post it up. If you are not a member but would like to contribute something to be considered for publication, send something over to me at englandsgardens@googlemail.com.

God bless readers and may Blessed Titus Brandsma intercede for the good success of the Guild's work in apologetics and evangelisation. As well as these works for Christ, The Guild exists to offer support to Catholic bloggers who work often in isolation.

If you are a Catholic blogger and have not yet joined the Guild, contact me if you wish to do so, we are always happy to consider new members. We are stronger together, then we are alone. If you wish to write for a blog but would like to be anonymous, for your own reasons, do not worry, for that can easily be arranged.

The next Guild meeting will be on 26th July 2014, so if you are a member of The Guild of Blessed Titus Brandsma, try if you can to keep this date in your diary vacant.

Equality is not a Right. It is a Superstition

Equality is now a concept so old as to be considered a relic

‘Equality’ is not a true law, nor can it justly be called a right. It’s dominance of popular culture has rendered it worse than a myth. If people are caught up in the notion of equality today it is because man easily becomes caught up in superstition.

What has given the word ‘equality’ – a word that has never lost its emotive power since the dawn of the Enlightenment - the power and force that it has in today’s society?

We now hear this word, particularly in the realm of gender and sexuality so much and it so dominates the public forum that for anybody to contradict the very notion of equality is to have committed a formal and public act of heresy that warrants public exclusion, potential loss of employment and perhaps worse.

The fear and hatred generated against those who have contradicted the concept of equality is visceral and powerful. Why? What has made rejection of this belief so highly charged? The simple truth would appear to be that the concept of equality has, as if from nowhere, acquired magical power or connotations of divinity that it does not deserve. From out of nowhere, ‘Equality’ has become a god, or a goddess before which those who refuse to burn incense are deemed to be enemies of the State and the people.

What has given this concept such force that it now rivals the Christian Church itself as a belief that threatens to engulf and destroy it and, indeed, anybody else who dares to stand in its way?

Equality: The sky fairy myth of our age

I believe the answer can only lie in superstition. Of course, the reason that we can rank ardent promoters of ‘equality’ among the superstitious is because superstitions are things people subscribe to without really thinking about it. There is a common trend in Britain not to walk under ladders or to believe that seeing a black cat, or some magpies is in some sense fortuitous.

We call these things superstitions because they are common associations with something positive that are not grounded in truth or reality or even human experience. There is no reason to think that a black cat is a good omen, or a bad omen, but people do. There is no need to worry that on Friday 13th something bad might happen. But people do. There is no such thing as equality, it is obvious from sun rise, to sun set, yet people believe in it, without seeing any evidence of it.

Is the modern adoration of ‘equality’ like this? Do people really think about the concept of equality to which they so readily subscribe and so readily defend and promote as a force for universal good? Or do they subscribe to the belief because it is dangerous to think otherwise, for who could be against equality? Who would dare to confront this aging monarch that has ruled the British people and the other nations of the West?

I posit that the only people in Britain who could be against ‘equality’ are the honest – those who are able to see themselves and the world around them and report it honestly, to themselves, and to others. Of course, those most regularly charged with breaching the law on equality are the religious – those who are not so easily cajoled into superstition. Is this merely because they hold onto ‘bigoted views’, or is it because true religion can never subscribe to the concept of equality?

Surely, this is the case. For the Christian can never accept the concept of equality. The Christian knows that he is a creature – a creature – made by God in His image and likeness. There can never be worship of God when a creature looks at God as an equal, for God is greater than that which can be conceived. The outward act of kneeling in worship is a public and inward sign to him and to others of adoration of the Other who is All-Powerful, all-knowing, all mighty.

The concept of equality is put forward today as something terribly progressive, something so modern, so new, but already it is a false idol and one of great age, for there is nothing new under the sun. Equality was the battle cry of the French Revolutionaries.

It was the masonic battle cry of the Terror that saw thousands of aristocrats, priests, nuns and laity killed in France. It was the battle cry of the Russian Revolution a century or so later. It is the lie that keeps rearing its head, the head of a serpent that always needs to be crushed because it is only a word – a concept – a cause – a pathetic banner which is not, in any way, true.

In the West, people are being brainwashed into believing the fable, the myth, the superstition, that gender equality, for example, is something to be strived for, or that it even exists. Let us be frank. It does not exist. A man cannot give birth. A man cannot suckle children. A man cannot be a mother. A woman cannot be a father. There are things that men can do that the vast majority of women cannot do and there are things that women can do that men will never do.

A heterosexual relationship – or what we may have once been able to simply call a marriage, is in no way the same, but vastly different, to a sexual relationship between two persons of the same sex. What mental contortions does society have to perform, without thinking about it, in order to assert that they are?

How can it possibly be the same when in one of the relationships the protagonists are male and female – different in biology and different in other ways – and in the other the protagonists are the same.

Men and women are not the same, therefore they are not equal. If they were equal, they would be the same. The elderly and sick are not equal to the young and fit. They are equally worthy of love and protection, just as men and women are equally worthy of love and protection, but they are not the same, therefore we cannot call them equal.

And if we try, if we delude ourselves, that we can make all men and all women and all sexual relationships and all people equal, then as a society we have, whether we are religious or not, committed apostasy not just from what those who came before us believed, but from the truth. We have become a nation living a lie. We are a nation of people living in dreamland.

Do we really believe that Her Majesty the Queen is ‘equal’ to a man queuing up for his benefits cheque? Do we really believe that a gardener for an aristocrat is equal to the aristocrat? Do we believe that a Catholic layman can look at the Pope as his ‘equal’? Do we really believe that everyone is the same, even though everyone is different? Do we really believe that everyone can be an accomplished violinist, or a successful athlete? Do we really believe that women can run as fast as men? Do we really believe that the building trade is composed of a workforce split 50% between men and women?

If equality existed, there could be a Catholic Prime Minister...

Do we really believe that David Cameron, Nick Clegg or David Miliband understand for one moment what it feels like to live on a housing estate in Manchester and have to worry about knife crime, gang culture or where the next meal is coming from in their neighbourhood?

Do we really believe that from a homosexual relationship, by anal intercourse, two men can produce children and raise them as a mother and a father? Do we really believe that all relationships are equal and that this doctrine should be taught to little children in schools?

Christians – and others of other faiths – will face more and more pressure in the public sphere over their beliefs. They will be accused of blaspheming the sacred altar of the modern age, which is nothing but a relic of the 17th century that haunts the world to this day – the folly, the idiocy, the sheer lunacy of the continuation of an antique superstition from which the human race seems unable to be liberated. That all men and all women are equal.

Let us be frank. We are not equal. We were never intended to be equal. It is counter to our very happiness to desire to be equal. To desire equality is to fail to accept ourselves. We are who we are. We are all unique. We are all different. We all have a purpose. We all have a place on Earth, and if we desire it, a place in Heaven. We are all loved by God. If you are a man, you will never give birth. Please accept it. There is no ‘gender equality’. If you are a woman, you will never impregnate someone with your own seed. Please accept it. There is no ‘gender equality’. If your family has an income of £50,000 a year, it is incredibly unlikely that you will be investigated by social services for child neglect - even if you neglect your children.

But some people don't believe in 'gay marriage'. Get over it!

If you are a man who wants to be a woman, remember that you will never fully succeed because you are bioligically a man. Please accept it that you will never menstruate. If you are a dustman, please accept that you will probably never be Prime Minister and you will never sit in the House of Lords.

If you are a blogger, please accept that the likelihood of The Telegraph inviting you to be a Telegraph columnist, or The Guardian inviting you to be a Guardian columnist remains incredibly slim. Please accept that it may happen but it is not terribly likely because there is no such thing as equality even if you have talent. If you are deaf, you will, in this life, probably not hear. If you are blind, it is likely that, until the next life, you will not see. There is equality in this world, but only in the grave.

And if you think this is hate speech, I assure you that it is. You can prosecute me for this reason. I hate lies and I hate this particular lie. I and many others are dissenters from this political charade. This new religion. I do not hate those who have fallen for it, those who believe in this sorry superstition, but I hate the false god, the idol, the word that has miraculously accrued such divinity, the superstition that its adherents worship. As Lucifer knows only too well, an angel will never be Almighty God. He has his place. Don’t join him.

Whether you be great or small, whether you be rich or poor, whether you be wise or foolish, whether you be weak or strong, whether you be 'gay' or 'straight', male or female, whether you be virtuous or full of vice, you are what you are before God - that and nothing more. God has given all men and all women an equal dignity. That is a very different thing. He has not given us, nor will ever give us, equality.

The 'NEW' Church vs NuChurch - How about giving YOUR opinion on this and the future of Holy Mother Church

Peter Kreeft - How to Win the Culture War

Constancy, in a time of heresy - Bl John Forest

Consumed by fire...and love - Blessed John Forest

Picture: www.friar.org

The year is 1538 and, in a few days time, on 22^nd May, Father John Forest, Franciscan Friar, is due to be put to death, in a most excruciatingly painful fashion, for his Faith.

He has received, in his prison cell, a letter of love and comfort from the troubled Catherine of Aragon, wife (soon to be ex wife) of King Henry VIII.

And now, in the manner of all good priests, ever concerned for the welfare of their sheep, he replies to Queen Catherine. The text is a direct copy so, at times, the grammar may seem a little odd…

“Most Serene Lady and Queen, my daughter most dear in the bowels of Christ, - When I read your letter I was filled with incredible joy, because I saw how great is your constancy in the Faith.

In this, if you persevere, without doubt you will attain salvation.

Doubt not of me that by any inconstancy I should disgrace my grey hairs.

Meanwhile I earnestly beg your steadfast prayers to God, for whose spouse we suffer torments, to receive me into His glory.

For it have I striven these four and forty years in the Order of St Francis.

Meanwhile do you keep free from the pestilent doctrine of the heretics, so that even if an angel should come down from Heaven and bring you another doctrine from that which I have taught you, give no credit to his words, but reject him; for that other doctrine does not come from God.

These few words you must take in lieu of consolation; but that you will receive from our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom I specially commend you, to my father Francis, to St Catherine; and when you hear of my execution, I heartily beg of you to pray for me to her.

I send you my rosary as I have but three days to live”

This letter should be read and re-read by those to whom false ecumenism is their main goal in life.

An account of Blessed John Forest's death will be posted on his anniversary - 22nd May.

Posted by: Linen on the Hedgerow 

Wider Implications of Pre-Signed Abortion Certificates

Mr David Burrowes MP

Mr David Burrowes MP, who has recently been demanding that the Crown Prosecution Service should take action against the doctors who have been pre-signing blank abortion certificates, should be
congratulated for not letting this matter disappear into the long grass. Mr Burrowes reports that the names of 67 such pre-signing doctors are known.

A love letter....to a priest

Catherine, Queen of England, writes to her confessor

Imagine that the Catholic world is turning in on itself, that government is inflicting ever more secular solutions and ignoring the one true Church in favour of heresy and apostasy.

Sound familiar?

Well, we are back in the 16th century and Henry VIII's protestantisation of England and Wales is just in its early stages; yet to come is the removal of the Latin Mass and the imposition of a weak and feeble parody in its place....no, we really are still in the 16th century.

A noblewoman writes to her confessor who is suffering torture and pain in jail where he has been thrown because of his adherence to the Faith and to the foundation stone of the Faith, the Latin Mass.
He awaits news of his impending execution.

The noblewoman is none other than Catherine of Aragon of Spain but much loved by the men and women of her adopted country.

And her priest? Blessed John Forest, Franciscan and martyr.

Here is her letter of love and compassion - tomorrow, Deo volente, I shall post Father Forest's reply:-

My venerated Father,

You who have been accustomed to advise others in doubtful cases know best what advice to give to yourself; and with your piety and learning you know without doubt, and even desire if need be for the name of Christ to undergo death and refuse nothing in such a cause.

Be brave, then, and courageous, for if in these torments you have some pain to bear you will receive an eternal reward, which if anyone were to be ready to lose both you and I would count him to be mad.

But, alas, you leave me, your daughter, born to you in the Wounds of Christ, for a time at least you leave me in the greatest sorrow, for I am losing in you the man who has taught me the most in divine things.

If I may freely say my wish, I had rather go before you through a thousand torments than follow you after a time.

Yet I trust in the Lord that I shall see you not very long hence, when I shall be taken to the calm life of the blessed.

Farewell, my honoured Father, commend me always to God, now and from your place in Heaven.

Your most sorrowful daughter,

Catherine

Posted by: Linen on the Hedgerow

Thoughts after Storms

Iowa storms clear the sky and feed the land. This past day and into the night, we have had many storms, with heavy rain and wind, and we are grateful as this most likely ends the drought.

Pink and white lightning crisscrossed the sky, just as the setting sun found a break in the line of clouds, causing a rainbow as big as the prairie sky could hold.

Now, in the darkest of darkness, hundreds of frogs are singing in the flooded sections on either side of the Wapsipinicon, which newcomers call the River, not realizing that in these parts there is only one "River" and that is the Mississippi. The Wapsipinincon is just the Wapsi.

All the others are tributaries, feeding one of the largest river systems in the world.

Far away to my left, I can hear a Black Angus mooing. And, unlike most humans, and like my dad, I can hear the high squeaks of the bats venturing out to seize insect dinners.

This part of the world is "big". There is nothing small here. The bats are big, the frogs are big, the cattle are big, the rabbits are big, the sky is big.

I am surrounded by farms of 1,000-2,000 acres, in an area where one does not know one's neighbors and only rarely sees the agents who man the farms. This is the state of agribusiness, not farming.

Last week, the giant machines sprayed the fields with fertilizers, and even in the heat, I had to shut the windows in order to breath properly, but this all is part of the bigness as well.

One cannot get proud in Iowa. Iowa creates a humility which is caused by Nature and Weather.

I grew up in bigness and it does not make me nervous, as it does some people who grow up in small, comfortable valleys and near rivers one can cross on a footbridge.

Bigness reminds me who I am in the universe. I cannot look up at the big sky tonight, as the clouds cover the stars, but, in the colder nights of April, I saw seven large meteors, shooting stars big enough to rival the big land.

God is bigger than all this. We cannot imagine the Almighty. But, staring out the window into the darkness, seeing a few lights miles away, I can just begin to understand myself as merely one more creature in His great world.

Even so, He knows me, like He knows the stars hidden behind the clouds, and calls me by name.

The rain and lightning begin again and I have to decide whether to shut the windows or let some of the cooler air come into the room. I am not in charge here, no one is. One tries to tame this country, but only One is truly in charge, and He is God.

A Comment And A Question

I love Blessed Titus Brandsma. He is one of my chosen personal patrons.

I love the members of this blog as brothers and sisters of Christ.

But, I am wondering what a guild really is?

Here is the simple definition of a guild.

A guild has been defined as "an association of craftsmen or merchants, often having considerable power."

A guild has also been defined as "an association of people for mutual aid or the pursuit of a common goal."

Regarding the first part of the definition, one can see that 
such "craftsmen" must have something in common. 

    

They must actually be doing something. 

This "doing" for the Guild here is writing, on individual blogs and on this blog.

    If a blogger has decided to make his blog dormant, he is no longer working for the part of the second 

    definition, which is "an association of people for mutual aid or the pursuit of the common goal."

  

The common goal is the promulgation of Catholic teaching and Catholic thinking on certain subjects.

    

The "mutual aid" is the support bloggers should be seeing for each other in our work of blogging.

So, my question is this, "How many bloggers in the Guild actually still blog, still add to this blog, and help

each other in the work of the New Evangelization?

  

Guilds were not merely social gatherings, but organized to facilitate work. And, as indicated in the definition, 

some guilds became 'powerful" because of this working together.

 I treasure this blog and all the good people I have met in the Guild. But, are we a real guild, or an illusion?

 I, for one, as a person blogging away in the middle of ... nowhere, need support and "mutual aid".

 I also need to see work being done for the Kingdom of God on this excellent blog for my own sake.

    

Can we renew this guild to really be a guild? 

    Can we find ways to support each other in our blogging and on 

    this blog?

    Just wondering....

From The Office of Readings Today: Sing to The Lord A New Song

Sing to the Lord a new song; his praise is in the assembly of the saints. We are urged to sing a new song to the Lord, as new men who have learned a new song. A song is a thing of joy; more profoundly, it is a thing of love. Anyone, therefore, who has learned to love the new life has learned to sing a new song, and the new song reminds us of our new life. The new man, the new song, the new covenant, all belong to the one kingdom of God, and so the new man will sing a new song and will belong to the new covenant.

There is not one who does not love something, but the question is, what to love. The psalms do not tell us not to love, but to choose the object of our love. But how can we choose unless we are first chosen? We cannot love unless someone has loved us first. Listen to the apostle John: We love him, because he first loved us. The source of man’s love for God can only be found in the fact that God loved him first. He has given us himself as the object of our love, and he has also given us its source. What this source is you may learn more clearly from the apostle Paul who tells us: The love of God has been poured into our hearts. This love is not something we generate ourselves; it comes to us through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Romans 5:5).

Since we have such an assurance, then, let us love God with the love he has given us. As John tells us more fully: God is love, and whoever dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him. It is not enough to say: Love is from God. Which of us would dare to pronounce the words of Scripture: God is love? He alone could say it who knew what it was to have God dwelling within him. God offers us a short route to the possession of himself. He cries out: Love me and you will have me for you would be unable to love me if you did not possess me already.

My dear brothers and sons, fruit of the true faith and holy seed of heaven, all you who have been born again in Christ and whose life is from above, listen to me; or rather, listen to the Holy Spirit saying through me: Sing to the Lord a new song. Look, you tell me, I am singing. Yes indeed, you are singing; you are singing clearly, I can hear you. But make sure that your life does not contradict your words. Sing with your voices, your hearts, your lips and your lives: Sing to the Lord a new song’.

Now it is your unquestioned desire to sing of him whom you love, but you ask me how to sing his praises. You have heard the words: Sing to the Lord a new song, and you wish to know what praises to sing. The answer is: His praise is in the assembly of the saints; it is in the singers themselves. If you desire to praise him, then live what you express. Live good lives, and you yourselves will be his praise.

St. Augustine Sermon in the time of Easter.......... 

God as Goodness

As I have been doing a little mini-series on the Attributes of God on my blog, I decided to post one here on God as Good. 

The Goodness of God has been clearly defined by both St. Augustine in The Nature of Good, and by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theolgica, First Part, Question Six.

St. Augustine had to address the heresy of the Manicheans, with whom he identified for years. His treatise explains that as God is good, therefore, all good things in nature are also good. We can come to know the Goodness which is God from nature.

In our day, many people believe in a dualism, which makes evil equal in power or even majesty to good. In fact, in a recent poll in the States, the fastest growing "religion", or set of beliefs, was the Star Wars sect. of young people and not-so-young, who actually believe in a Manichean form of dualism.

Here are some snippets from St. Augustine on the good.

All these things are so perspicuous, so assured, that if they who introduce another nature which God did not make, were willing to give attention, they would not be filled with so great blasphemies, as that they should place so great good things in supreme evil, and so great evil things in God. For what the truth compels them to acknowledge, namely, that all good things are from God alone, suffices for their correction, if they were willing to give heed, as I said above. Not, therefore, are great good things from one, and small good things from another; but good things great and small are from the supremely good alone, which is God.

and, 

Let us, therefore, bring before our minds good things however great, which it is fitting that we attribute to God as their author, and these having been eliminated let us see whether any nature will remain. All life both great and small, all power great and small, all safety great and small, all memory great and small, all virtue great and small, all intellect great and small, all tranquillity great and small, all plenty great and small, all sensation great and small, all light great and small, all suavity great and small, all measure great and small, all beauty great and small, all peace great and small, and whatever other like things may occur, especially such as are found throughout all things, whether spiritual or corporeal, every measure, every form, every order both great and small, are from the Lord God. All which good things whoever should wish to abuse, pays the penalty by divine judgment; but where none of these things shall have been present at all, no nature will remain.

and

Magnificently and divinely, therefore, our God said to his servant: "I am that I am," and "You shall say to the children of Israel, He who is sent me to you." Exodus 3:14 For He truly is because He is unchangeable. For every change makes what was not, to be: therefore He truly is, who is unchangeable; but all other things that were made by Him have received being from Him each in its own measure. To Him who is highest, therefore nothing can be contrary, save what is not; and consequently as from Him everything that is good has its being, so from Him is everything that bynature exists; since everything that exists by nature is good. Thus every nature is good, and everything good is from God; therefore every nature is from God.

Another popular idea is that evil comes from God as well as good, an idea held by millions in a certain false belief system.

Aquinas writes this:

God is the supreme good simply, and not only as existing in any genus or order of things. For good is attributed to God, as was said in the preceding article, inasmuch as all desired perfections flow from Him as from the first cause. They do not, however, flow from Him as from a univocal agent, as shown above (Question 4, Article 2); but as from an agent which does not agree with its effects either in species or genus. Now the likeness of an effect in the univocal cause is found uniformly; but in the equivocal cause it is found more excellently, as, heat is in the sun more excellently than it is in fire. Therefore as good is in God as in the first, but not the univocal, cause of all things, it must be in Him in a most excellent way; and therefore He is called the supreme good.

All goodness, great and small, come from He Who Is Goodness and the Supreme Good. God is good in His Essence, which makes Goodness an Attribute of God. 

Aquinas explains that all that is good has its origin in God.

Although this opinion appears to be unreasonable in affirming separate ideas of natural things as subsisting of themselves--as Aristotle argues in many ways--still, it is absolutely true that there is first something which is essentially being and essentially good, which we call God, as appears from what is shown above (Question 2, Article 3), and Aristotle agrees with this. Hence from the first being,essentially such, and good, everything can be called good and a being, inasmuch as it participates in it by way of a certain assimilation which is far removed and defective; as appears from the above (Question 4, Article 3).

Everything is therefore called good from the divine goodness, as from the first exemplary effective and final principle of all goodness. Nevertheless, everything is called good by reason of the similitude of the divine goodness belonging to it, which is formally its own goodness, whereby it is denominated good. And so of all things there is one goodness, and yet many goodnesses.

Too often, today, young people fall into a cynicism about goodness, denying or doubting that there exists any goodness in the world. These two great Doctors of the Church assure us of God as Good. 

We can participate in the goodness of God only in so far as we allow Him to cleanse us of evil. Our goodness would be from that of God, and made in His image and likeness, we have lost the likeness, which is grace, according to St. Bernard of Clairvaux and must regain that likeness through the sacramental life of the Church and through purification.

Some can get into a mental habit of concentrating on evil rather than good. We become like that of which we think and that which we love.

If we love Goodness, we shall regain our likeness, which we lost in the beginning of humankind.