QUOTATION: False Peace

You and I are of a single mind in rejecting pacifism that does not recognize that some values are worthy of being defended and that assigns the same value to everything. To be in favor of peace on such a basis would signify anarchy, which is blind to the foundations of freedom. Because if everyone is right, no one is right.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, (Pope Benedict XVI), Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Chistianity, Islam, 2004

QUOTATION: Deathbed Conversions

We put off our conversion again and again until death, but who says that we will still have the time and strength for it then?

--St. Jean Vianney, The Cure of Ars

QUOTATION: Self-Surrender

There are very few people who realize what God would make of them if they abandoned themselves into his hands.

--St Ignatius Loyola

QUOTATION: The "Open Mind"

The “open mind” does not want Truth for Truth implies obligation, which predicates responsibility, and responsibility is the only thing the “open mind” is most eager to avoid. In their cowardice, they keep their minds “open” so they will never have to close on anything that would entail responsibility, duty, moral correction or altered behavior.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Progressive Religionists

It is the common assumption of all these modem prophets, whatever their school, that religious truth is something not yet determined, something which is being gradually established by a slow process of testing and research. They boast of their indecisions; they parade their dissensions; it shows (they say) a healthy spirit of fearless inquiry, this freedom from the incubus of tradition. Such sentiments evoke, I believe, no echo of applause outside their own immediate circles. The uneasy impression is left on the average citizen that "the parsons do not know their own business"; that disagreements between sect and sect are more, not less disedifying when either side hastens to explain that the disagreement is over externals, rather than essentials; that if Christianity is still in process of formulation after twenty centuries, it must be an uncommonly elusive affair.

--Msgr Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics, 1927

QUOTATION: Prayer to the Holy Spirit

Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thought may all be holy.
Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy.
Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy.
Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy.
Guard me then, O Holy Spirit, that I always me be holy.
Amen.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta

QUOTATION: Evil and Tolerance

Evil talks about tolerance only when it’s weak. When it gains the upper hand, its vanity always requires the destruction of the good and the innocent, because the example of good and innocent lives is an ongoing witness against it. So it always has been. So it always will be. And America has no special immunity to becoming an enemy of its own founding beliefs about human freedom, human dignity, the limited power of the state, and the sovereignty of God.

--Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

QUOTATION: Prayer

If we do not fill our mind with prayer, it will fill itself with anxieties, worries, temptations, resentments, and unwelcome memories.

--Scott Hahn

QUOTATION: Communion with the Pope

To follow Christ is to be in communion with the Pope, and therein lies the only security.

- St. Jerome

QUOTATION: Children

Europe is infected with a strange lack of desire for the future. Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present, as if they were taking something away from our lives. Children are seen as a liability rather than a source of hope. There is a clear comparison between today’s situation and the decline of the Roman Empire. In its final days, Rome still functioned as a great historical framework, but in practice it was already subsisting on models that were destined to fail. Its vital energy had been depleted.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, (Pope Benedict XVI), Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Chistianity, Islam, 2004

QUOTATION: The Blessed Virgin Mary

It was through the Blessed Virgin Mary that Jesus came into the world, and it is also through her that He must reign in the world.

--St. Louis de Montfort

QUOTATION: Belief and Action

If you don't behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: The Blessed Virgin Mary

The more her children entrust themselves to Mary, the nearer she leads them to the "unfathomable riches of Christ." And to the same degree they recognize more and more clearly the dignity and the vocation of human beings.

--Pope John Paul II

QUOTATION: Praying to Saints

You say you see no reason why we should pray to the Saints since God can hear us and help us just as well, and will do so gladly, as any Saint in Heaven. Well, then, what need, I ask, do you have to ask any physician to help your fever, or to ask and pay any surgeon to heal your sore leg? For God can both hear you and help you as well as the best of doctors. He loves you more than they do, and He can help you sooner. Besides-----His poultices are cheaper and He will give you more for your words alone than they will for your money!

--St. Thomas More

QUOTATION: Ascension

The joy of the disciples after the “Ascension” corrects our image of the event. “Ascension” does not mean departure into a remote region of the cosmos but, rather, the continuing closeness that the disciples experience so strongly that it becomes a source of lasting joy.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Volume 2

QUOTATION: Guardian Angels

Beside each believer stands an Angel as protector and shepherd, leading him to life.

--St. Basil the Great

QUOTATION: Suffering

The more we are afflicted in this world, the greater is our assurance in the next; the more sorrow in the present, the greater will be our joy in the future.

--St. Isidore of Seville

QUOTATION: The Devil

The devil is afraid of us when we pray and make sacrifices. He is also afraid when we are humble and good. He is especially afraid when we love Jesus very much. He runs away when we make the Sign of the Cross.

--St. Anthony of Egypt

QUOTATION: Gossip

We cannot gossip without either overrating ourselves or underrating our neighbors and frequently we do both.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Relativism

In recent years I find myself noting how the more relativism becomes the generally accepted way of thinking, the more it tends towards intolerance, thereby becoming a new dogmatism. Political correctness, […] seeks to establish the domain of a single way of thinking and speaking. Its relativism creates the illusion that it has reached greater heights than the loftiest philosophical achievements of the past. It prescribes itself as the only way to think and speak-- if, that is, one wishes to stay in fashion. Being faithful to traditional values and to the knowledge that upholds them is labeled intolerance, and relativism becomes the required norm. I think it is vital that we oppose this imposition of a new pseudo-enlightenment, which threatens freedom of thought as well as freedom of religion.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, (Pope Benedict XVI), Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Chistianity, Islam, 2004

QUOTATION:The Motive of Belief

The average Protestant persists in believing that the attitude of the Church towards the human intellect is adequately summed up in the phrase, familiar to us from childhood, "Open your mouth and shut your eyes." It is supposed that anybody who is brought up as a Catholic retains, without any further questioning or instruction on the point, the pious credulity with which he accepted all that his mother told him, all that the priest told him, when he was too young to think for himself. Any dawning doubts as to the sufficiency of such a motive for belief are crushed, we must suppose, with threats of hell and excommunication. This would be extraordinary enough, considering the number of Catholics there are in the world and the ample opportunities they have for being infected, in a world like ours, with the germs of unbelief. But, still more extraordinary, this Church, which has no proof of anything she says beyond her own bare assertion, is making converts, in an enlightened country like ours, at the rate of some twelve thousand in the year. How does she manage (one wonders) to play off her confidence trick with such repeated success?

This is, indeed, a phenomenon at which non-Catholics profess to feel the utmost astonishment. But it is a kind of astonishment which has grown blunted by usage; they have come to regard it as part of the order of things that their neighbours should become the victims, now and again, of this extraordinary tour de force. If they were compelled to picture to themselves the process of a conversion, they would, I suppose, conceive it something after this fashion--that the mind of the inquirer is hypnotised into acquiescence by the crafty blandishments of a designing priest; not by his arguments, for he has none, he only goes on shouting "Become a Catholic, or you will go to hell!"; not by his arguments, but by some fatal quality of fascination, which we breed, no doubt, in the seminaries. In a dazed condition, like that of the bird under the snake's eye, he assents to every formula presented to him, binds himself by every oath that is proposed to him, in one openmouthed act of unreasoning surrender. After that, of course, pride forbids him to admit, so long as life lasts, that the choice so made was a mistaken one; besides, one knows the power these priests have. Yes, it is very curious, the power attributed to these priests. When you have had the privilege of assisting at their education for seven years, you feel that "curious" is too weak a word for it.

--Msgr Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics, 1927

QUOTATION: Enemies

We should love and feel compassion for those who oppose us, since they harm themselves and do us good, and adorn us with crowns of everlasting glory.

--St Anthony Zaccaria

QUOTATION: Pride

Know that one grain of pride suffices to overthrow a mountain of holiness. Be humble, then, and endeavor to know yourself.

--St. Paul of the Cross

QUOTATION: Cynicism

A cynic is a man who cheats at solitaire and then thinks that everyone else in the world is a cheat.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Suffering

Try to exclude the possibility of suffering … and you find that you have excluded life itself.

--C..S Lewis

QUOTATION: Temptation

Someone who is not tempted is not tested; someone who is not tested makes no progress.

-- St. Augustine

QUOTATION: The Cross

The gate that gives entry into these riches of his wisdom is the cross; because it is a narrow gate, while many seek the joys that can be gained through it, it is given to few to desire to pass through it.

-- St. John of the Cross

QUOTATION: Humility

As soon as we begin to see our own limitations, we perceive perfection in others.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Taking up One's Cross

To take up the cross of Christ is no great action done once for all; it consists in the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us.

--Blessed John Henry Newman

QUOTATION: Protestantism

You may give in your name to any Protestant denomination with tolerable certainty that your grandchildren will be called upon to believe less, if anything, certainly not more than you.

--Msgr. Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics, 1927

QUOTATION: Relativism

If man can decide by himself, without God, what is good and what is bad, he can also determine that a group of people is to be annihilated.

--Pope John Paul II, Memory and Identity, 2005