QUOTATION: Evangelization

Effective Christian witness is not about bombarding people with religious messages, but about our willingness to be available to others “by patiently and respectfully engaging their questions and their doubts as they advance in their search for the truth and the meaning of human existence” (BENEDICT XVI, Message for the 47th World Communications Day, 2013).  We need but recall the story of the disciples on the way to Emmaus.  We have to be able to dialogue with the men and women of today, to understand their expectations, doubts and hopes, and to bring them the Gospel, Jesus Christ himself, God incarnate, who died and rose to free us from sin and death.  We are challenged to be people of depth, attentive to what is happening around us and spiritually alert.  To dialogue means to believe that the “other” has something worthwhile to say, and to entertain his or her point of view and perspective.  Engaging in dialogue does not mean renouncing our own ideas and traditions, but the claim that they alone are valid or absolute.

--Pope Francis, Message for 48th World Communications Day, January 24, 2014.

QUOTATION: Satan

Satan is equally pleased by our overestimating him and our underestimating him.

--Peter Kreeft

QUOTATION: Obedience to the Pope

He who rebels against our Father, Christ on earth, is condemned to death, for that which we do to him, we do to Christ in heaven – we honor Christ if we honor the pope, we dishonor Christ if we dishonor the pope… I tell you that God will and has so commanded that even if the priests and the pastors of the Church and Christ on earth were incarnate devils, it is seemly that we are obedient and subject to them, not for their sake, but for the sake of God, out of obedience to Him, for He wills that we should act thus.

--St. Catherine of Siena

QUOTATION: Expose Pro-Abortion Contradictions

There is a tremendous disconnect at every level of our society regarding abortion, and as a result, the child in the womb has become the great blind spot of our culture. This disconnect is fueled by denial and fraught with the most blatantly absurd contradictions that the human mind can conjure. To advance justice for the unborn, we have to challenge these contradictions and expose them.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: Atheism

The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Obedience

In an age in which emancipation is regarded as the true heart of redemption, and freedom appears as the right to do everything I myself want to, and only that, the concept of obedience is, so to speak, anathematized. It has been excised, not merely from our vocabulary, but from our thinking. Yet this conception of freedom is the very thing that has made people incapable of living with one another, incapable of loving. It enslaves people. That is why obedience, correctly understood, has to be rehabilitated and be made effective in the heart of Christian and priestly spirituality.

--Pope Benedict XVI, “The Ministry and Life of Priests”, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith

QUOTATION: The Number One Problem in the Church

Spiritual malnourishment is the number one problem facing our Church.

--Bishop Robert Barron

QUOTATION: Forgiveness

Forgiveness does not deny the injustice one has been subjected to, but it acknowledges the fact that the human being, created in the image of God, is always superior to the wrong that is committed.

--Pope Francis

QUOTATION: Gratitude

Acts of gratitude make one grateful because, step by step, they reveal that all is grace.

--Henri Nouwen

QUOTATION: Hell

Saints never deny Hell; they fear it. Unrepentant sinners never fear it; they deny it.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Prayer

I think we look for excuses not to pray and not to ponder. We can find them by the droves. But we don't have any excuse.

--Mother Angelica

QUOTATION: Nationalism

The worrying resurgence of aggressive forms of nationalism and racism constitute serious threats to human dignity and undermine social coexistence, peace and harmony.

--Pope St. John Paul II

QUOTATION: Satan's Use of Virtue

One of Satan’s tactics is to take one virtue and isolate it from others. Beware of these subtle tactics of Satan, who disguises himself well in the robes of virtue. He uses detached virtues, virtues out of balance and proportion.

--Msgr. Charles Pope, “Beware the Sins of the Pious – A Reflection on the Ways Satan Uses Even Good Things to Entrap Us”, Community in Mission Blog, Aug. 8, 2017

QUOTATION: The Idols of Our Day

Big government, big business, big labor, big education, big entertainment, big media and too often even big religion worship the same idols.

--Robert P. George

QUOTATION: Scruples

Up to a certain point scruples are not harmful to the one suffering from them, when that person becomes, because of his scruples, more vigilant and careful about not offending God, and does not form a judgment that this or that is sinful, even though he has some doubt or fear that it is, and places his confidence in another person whom he should trust, setting aside his own judgment and accepting that of his adviser. If these two points to not help the scrupulous person, then he is in the gravest danger, not only of offending God by failing to avoid what he erroneously thinks is sin, but also of losing the opportunity and the ability to serve Him, and even his own natural judgment.

--St. Ignatius Loyola, Letter to Father Juan Marín, 1556.

QUOTATION: When Will We End Abortion?

We will end abortion when enough of us grow restless, when we connect, both mentally and emotionally, with the human tragedy abortion represents, when we drink deeply of that spiritual imperative and become inebriated with holy impatience.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: Reaching Out

As I have frequently observed, if a choice has to be made between a bruised Church which goes out to the streets and a Church suffering from self-absorption, I certainly prefer the first.  Those “streets” are the world where people live and where they can be reached, both effectively and affectively.  The digital highway is one of them, a street teeming with people who are often hurting, men and women looking for salvation or hope.  By means of the internet, the Christian message can reach “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).  Keeping the doors of our churches open also means keeping them open in the digital environment so that people, whatever their situation in life, can enter, and so that the Gospel can go out to reach everyone.  We are called to show that the Church is the home of all.

--Pope Francis, Message for 48th World Communications Day, January 24, 2014.

QUOTATION: God's Forgiveness

The sinful woman in the Gospel was pardoned greatly because she loved greatly. In Jesus, God comes to give love to us and to ask love of us.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: God is the Source of Authority

The gravest danger to American democracy is not from the outside; it is from the inside – the hearts of citizens in whom the light of faith has gone out. Keep God as the origin of authority and you keep the ethical character of authority; reject Him and the authority becomes power subject to no law except its own.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Whence Come Wars

QUOTATION: Obedience to the Superior

The superior is to be obeyed not because he is prudent, or good, or qualified by any other gift of God, but because he holds the place and the authority of God, as Eternal Truth has said: He who hears you, hears me; and he who rejects you, rejects me [Luke 10:16]. Nor on the contrary, should he lack prudence, is he to be the less obeyed in that in which he is superior, since he represents Him who is infallible wisdom, and who will supply what is wanting in His minister, nor, should he lack goodness or other desirable qualities, since Christ our Lord, having said, the scribes and the Pharisees sit on the chair of Moses, adds, therefore, whatever they shall tell you, observe and do: but do not act according to their works [Matt. 23:2-3].

--St. Ignatius Loyola, Letter to the Members of the Society in Portugal, 1556

QUOTATION: We Must All Repent of Abortion

We need to see abortion not just as somebody else’s sin but our sin. Even if we have never participated in an abortion, we must ask forgiveness for it. It is easy to blame abortion on those who do it and support it. But we must blame ourselves as well. This is spiritual dynamic that has to undergird all of our other activities to abolish abortion. First and foremost we are called to repent, to take responsibility for the innocent blood that has been shed, and then to intervene to save the helpless.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: Take Risks!

Let us go forth, then, let us go forth to offer everyone the life of Jesus Christ. Here I repeat for the entire Church what I have often said to the priests and laity of Buenos Aires: I prefer a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security. I do not want a Church concerned with being at the centre and which then ends by being caught up in a web of obsessions and procedures. If something should rightly disturb us and trouble our consciences, it is the fact that so many of our brothers and sisters are living without the strength, light and consolation born of friendship with Jesus Christ, without a community of faith to support them, without meaning and a goal in life. More than by fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving and Jesus does not tire of saying to us: “Give them something to eat” (Mk 6:37).

--Pope Francis Evangelii Gaudium #49, November 24, 2013.

QUOTATION: Christianity

Christianity is not a complicated philosophy that has in the meanwhile also become obsolete, not a package of dogmas and rules beyond being grasped as a whole. Christian faith is being touched by God and witnessing to him.

--Pope Benedict XVI, “The Church on the Threshold of the Third Millennium”, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith

QUOTATION: The Anti-Religious

Why are those who are notoriously undisciplined and unmoral also most contemptuous of religion and morality? They are trying to solace their own unhappy lives by pulling the happy down to their own abysmal depths.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Correcting People in Error

We should not dispute stubbornly with anyone; rather we should patiently give our reasons with the purpose of declaring the truth lest our neighbor remain in error, and not that we should have the upper hand.

--St. Ignatius Loyola, To the Scholastics at Alcalá, 1543

QUOTATION: We're All Responsible for Abortion

Our land is polluted with the innocent blood of tens of millions of aborted children. The fact that we are ourselves have not done the killing does not absolve us responsibility.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: The Cross

God placed on Jesus’ Cross all the weight of our sins, all the injustices perpetrated by every Cain against his brother, all the bitterness of the betrayal by Judas and by Peter, all the vanity of tyrants, all the arrogance of false friends. It was a heavy Cross, like night experienced by abandoned people, heavy like the death of loved ones, heavy because it carries all the ugliness of evil. However, the Cross is also glorious like the dawn after a long night, for it represents all the love of God, which is greater than our iniquities and our betrayals. In the Cross we see the monstrosity of man, when he allows evil to guide him; but we also see the immensity of the mercy of God, who does not treat us according to our sins but according to his mercy.

--Pope Francis, Good Friday Way of the Cross, April 18, 2014

QUOTATION: Happiness

The ultimate goal for us all is that of becoming happy. Yet happiness exists only in company with each other, and we can keep company only in the infinity of Love. There is happiness only in removal of the barriers of the self in moving into divinity, in becoming divine.

--Pope Benedict XVI, “The Ministry and Life of Priests”, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith

QUOTATION: Faith and Human Equality

In vain will the world seek for equality until it has seen men through the eyes of faith.  Faith teaches that all men, however poor, or ignorant, or crippled, however maimed, ugly, or degraded they may be, all bear within themselves the image of God, and have been bought by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. As this truth is forgotten, men are valued only because of what they can do, not because of what they are.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Preface to Religion

QUOTATION: Faith

Now, one of the truths that reason can discover is that God is a person, and the central claim of the Bible is that this Person has not remained utterly hidden but has, indeed, spoken. As is the case with any listener to a person who speaks, the listener to the divine speech has to make a choice: do I believe him or not? The decision to accept in trust what God has spoken about himself is what the Church means by “faith.” This decision is not irrational, for it rests upon and is conditioned by reason, but it presses beyond reason, for it represents the opening of one heart to another. In the presence of another human being, you could remain stubbornly in an attitude of mistrust, choosing to accept as legitimate only those data that you can garner through rational analysis; but in so doing, you would close yourself to the incomparable riches that that person might disclose to you. The strict rationalist, the unwavering advocate of the scientific method, will know certain things about the world, but he will never come to know a person.

--Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

QUOTATION: Obedience

Now, it seems to me that obedience seeks to be blind, and is blind in two ways: in the first it belongs to the inferior to submit his understanding, when there is no question of sin, and to do what is commanded of him; in the second it is also the inferior's duty, once the superior commands or has commanded something, to represent to the superior whatever considerations or disadvantages may occur to him, and to do so humbly and simply, without any attempt to draw the superior to either side, so that afterwards he can follow, with peace of mind, the way pointed out to him or commanded.

--St. Ignatius Loyola, Letter to Fr. Giovanni Battista Viola, 1542.

QUOTATION: Evangelization Begins with Charity

To convert people from error to the truth, it is not enough to preach to them, you must first practice charity towards them. In other words, you will win over those who have been mislead by error only if you practice charity. Charity first and then, proclaim the truth.

--Fr. John Hardon, “Saint Peter Canisius - Jesuit Saint”, 1998.

QUOTATION: Unbelief

If we don’t believe in the devil, sooner or later we won’t believe in God.

--Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

QUOTATION: Fighting Oppression

We don’t fight oppression by “agreeing to disagree” with the oppressor. It is precisely when the oppressor disagrees that we have to intervene to stop the violence.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: Be Heralds of the Word

I say to you, dear brothers and sisters: be everywhere heralds of the word of life in our neighbourhoods, our workplaces and everywhere that people meet one another and develop relationships. You must go outside. I do not understand Christian communities that are shut into a parish.

--Pope Francis, Address to Participants in the Ecclesial Convention of the Diocese of Rome, June 17, 2013.

QUOTATION: Contempt for Zeal

We should not set up a kind of blasé “enlightened” attitude that regards the zeal of those who have been seized by the Holy Spirit, and their uninhibited belief in the word of God, as being equivalent to that fundamentalism which is anathema; an attitude that allows only that kind of faith for which “ifs”  and “buts” become more important than the substance of what is believed itself.

--Pope Benedict XVI, “Church Movements and Their Place in Theology”, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith

QUOTATION: Three Kinds of God

There are three possible kinds of God: the god of one’s own ego, in which the atheist believes, and which is also the god of modern confusionism; the god of nature, of stone and gold and silver, which belonged to the old religions of idolatry; and the Supreme God, who made both man and nature, and redeemed them both upon the Cross. Those who tell us that they deny the existence of God are merely substituting one god for another.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, On Being Human

QUOTATION: Scientism

Scientism is not discoverable through the scientific method. Where did you empirically verify and test through experimentation that only scientific knowledge is valuable? Scientism is a philosophical position and therefore self-refuting.

--Robert Barron, Speech, Catholic Convocation, Orlando FL, July 4^th, 2017.

QUOTATION: Fear is the Biggest Obstacle

The most daunting obstacle that stands between us and a culture of life is the fear in our hearts. This fear leads us to doubt whether we really should risk everything and sacrifice all.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: Charity and Poverty

We would do well to ask ourselves what we can give up in order to help and enrich others by our own poverty. Let us not forget that real poverty hurts: no self-denial is real without this dimension of penance. I distrust a charity that costs nothing and does not hurt.

--Pope Francis Lenten message 2014, December 26, 2013.

QUOTATION: Communism

The problem for Europe is that although the fallacy of the Communist economy has been recognized, its moral and religious fallacy has not.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Personal Encounter with Jesus

Neither theological knowledge nor social action alone is enough to keep us in love with Christ unless both are preceded by a personal encounter with Him. Theological insights are gained not only from between two covers of a book, but from two bent knees before an altar. The Holy Hour becomes like an oxygen tank to revive the breath of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the foul and fetid atmosphere of the world.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Divine Mercy

Many receive the message of divine mercy as tantamount to a denial of the reality of sin, as though sin no longer matters. But just the contrary is the case. To speak of mercy is to be intensely aware of sin and its peculiar form of destructiveness.

--Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

QUOTATION: Beginning the Fight Against Abortion

We begin our repentance by renouncing our cowardice, by regretting our silence, by rejecting our fear of risk and loss, our skewed priorities and attachments. Indeed, the fight against abortion does not start in the political arena or in abortion clinics. The obstacles to a culture of life, and the enemies arrayed against it, are not primarily the massive funding of Planned Parenthood or the pervasive bias in the secular media. The biggest obstacles are inside of us. They are the lies we tell ourselves, the fears to which we willingly submit, and the pretense of ignorance about what we really have to do next.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: Defeatism

One of the more serious temptations which stifles boldness and zeal is a defeatism which turns us into querulous and disillusioned pessimists, “sourpusses”. Nobody can go off to battle unless he is fully convinced of victory beforehand. If we start without confidence, we have already lost half the battle and we bury our talents. While painfully aware of our own frailties, we have to march on without giving in, keeping in mind what the Lord said to Saint Paul: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).

 --Pope Francis Evangelii Gaudium #85, November 24, 2013

QUOTATION: It's Not Just a Personal Relationship with Jesus

Christian faith is never just spiritual and inward, never just a subjective or a personal and private relationship with Christ and his word, but is entirely concrete and ecclesial.

--Pope Benedict XVI, “The Ministry and Life of Priests”, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith

QUOTATION: Atheism

Once God is denied as the Source of rights, the State sets itself up as an absolute.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Address to the Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, November 10, 1979

QUOTATION: God's Friendship

God continually loves the universe into existence. Thus, God’s fundamental stance toward all finite things is one of friendship.

--Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

QUOTATION: Abolishing Abortion

Many friends ask me, “What is our first spiritual duty regarding the abortion issue?” They think I am going to answer, “prayer.”  But actually, the answer is repentance. The first step in abolishing abortion is to examine our own hearts and to repent of the role we each have played in allowing this holocaust to happen.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: Prayer

Without prolonged moments of adoration, of prayerful encounter with the word, of sincere conversation with the Lord, our work easily becomes meaningless; we lose energy as a result of weariness and difficulties, and our fervour dies out. The Church urgently needs the deep breath of prayer, and to my great joy groups devoted to prayer and intercession, the prayerful reading of God’s word and the perpetual adoration of the Eucharist are growing at every level of ecclesial life. Even so, “we must reject the temptation to offer a privatized and individualistic spirituality which ill accords with the demands of charity, to say nothing of the implications of the incarnation”. There is always the risk that some moments of prayer can become an excuse for not offering one’s life in mission; a privatized lifestyle can lead Christians to take refuge in some false forms of spirituality.

--Pope Francis Evangelii Gaudium #262, November 24, 2013.

QUOTATION: Revelation

God wants to come to men through men.

--Pope Benedict XVI, “The Ministry and Life of Priests”, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith

QUOTATION: Atheism

If you do not worship God, you worship something, and nine times out of ten it will be yourself.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: To Jesus Through Mary

In going to Jesus through Mary, we are really paying honour to our Lord, for we are showing that, because of our sins, we are unworthy to approach his infinite holiness directly on our own. We are showing that we need Mary, his holy Mother, to be our advocate and mediatrix with him who is our Mediator. We are going to Jesus as Mediator and Brother, and at the same time humbling ourselves before him who is our God and our Judge. In short, we are practising humility, something which always gladdens the heart of God.

--St. Louis de Montfort, The Secret of Mary, 36.

QUOTATION: Self-Hatred

No man, then, hates himself. On this point, indeed, no question was ever raised by any sect. But neither does any man hate his own body. For the apostle says truly, "No man ever yet hated his own flesh." And when some people say that they would rather be without a body altogether, they entirely deceive themselves. For it is not their body, but its corruptions and its heaviness, that they hate. And so it is not no body, but an uncorrupted and very light body, that they want.

--St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book I, Chapter 24

QUOTATION: The Collapse of Christianity

When Christianity collapses into purely this-worldly preoccupations—as it has, sadly, in much of Europe—it rapidly dries up.

--Robert Barron, Vibrant Paradoxes: The Both/And of Catholicism

QUOTATION: Human Rights

Human rights are not granted by political systems. They are “pre-political.” They exist before government and, in fact, must be honored, served, and secured by government, not because the leaders of government say so, but because to fail to do so undermines the very purpose of government.

--Fr. Frank Pavone, Abolishing Abortion

QUOTATION: The Immortality of the Soul

A spiritual soul cannot be corrupted, since it possesses no matter; it cannot be disintegrated, since it has no substantial parts; it cannot lose its individual unity, since it is self-subsisting, nor its internal energy, since it contains within itself all the sources of its energies. The human soul cannot die. Once it exists, it cannot disappear; it will necessarily exist forever, endure without end. Thus philosophic reason is able to prove the immortality of the human soul in a demonstrative manner.

--Jacques Maritain

QUOTATION: Our Relationship With the Lord

This relationship with the Lord is not intended as a duty or an imposition. It is a bond that comes from within. It is a relationship lived with the heart: it is our friendship with God, granted to us by Jesus, a friendship that changes our life and fills us with passion, with joy. Thus, the gift of piety stirs in us above all gratitude and praise. This is, in fact, the reason and the most authentic meaning of our worship and our adoration. When the Holy Spirit allows us to perceive the presence of the Lord and all his love for us, it warms the heart and moves us quite naturally to prayer and celebration.

--Pope Francis, General Audience, June 4, 2014

QUOTATION: Atheist Self-Ownership

Nowhere that the human being makes himself the one lord of the world and owner of himself can justice exist.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Opening Mass, Synod of Bishops, October 2, 2005

QUOTATION: Education

Parents have to respect their children’s freedom, because there is no real education without personal responsibility, and there is no responsibility without freedom.

--St. Josemaria Escriva

QUOTATION: A Message of Hope

Be not cast down because the persecutors of religion, having laid the Church, like its Founder, in the tomb, utter the boast: ‘Behold the place where we laid it.’ The law of progress of the Church is the reverse of the law of progress of the world. We are most progressive when we are most hated. It is only because the fires of its Truth are blinding evil eyes and convicting them of sin and judgement, that the world vainly tried to put them out. And though the world is tearing up all the photographs and blueprints of a society and a family based on the moral law of God, be not disheartened. The Church has kept the negatives.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Lenten & Easter Inspirations

QUOTATION: Purgatory

The fire of Purgatory is the same as the fire of Hell; the difference between them is that the fire of Purgatory is not everlasting.

--St. Jean Vianney, Sermons

QUOTATION: Devotion to Mary

This does not mean that one who has discovered Mary through a genuine devotion is exempt from crosses and sufferings. Far from it! One is tried even more than others, because Mary, as Mother of the living, gives to all her children splinters of the tree of life, which is the Cross of Jesus. But while meting out crosses to them she gives the grace to bear them with patience, and even with joy. In this way, the crosses she sends to those who trust themselves to her are rather like sweetmeats, i.e. "sweetened" crosses rather than "bitter" ones. If from time to time they do taste the bitterness of the chalice from which we must drink to become proven friends of God, the consolation and joy which their Mother sends in the wake of their sorrows creates in them a strong desire to carry even heavier and still more bitter crosses.

--St. Louis de Montfort, The Secret of Mary, 22.

QUOTATION: What Mary Suffered

While other martyrs suffered by sacrificing their own lives, the Blessed Virgin suffered by sacrificing her Son's life—a life that she loved far more than her own. So she not only suffered in her soul all that her Son endured in his body. In addition, the sight of her Son's torments brought more grief to her heart than if she had endured them all in her own person. No one can doubt that Mary suffered in her heart all the outrages that she saw inflicted on her beloved Jesus. Anyone can understand that the sufferings of children are also those of their mothers who witness them.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, A Year with Mary

QUOTATION: Martyrs

The martyrs were bound, imprisoned, scourged, racked, burned, torn apart, butchered--and they multiplied.

--St. Augustine