QUOTATION: Assent

Nor must it be thought that the things contained in Encyclical Letters do not of themselves require assent on the plea that in them the Pontiffs do not exercise the supreme power of their Magisterium. For these things are taught with the ordinary Magisterium, about which it is also true to say, 'He who hears you, hears me.'

--Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis

QUOTATION: Doctrines

Originally there was no such thing as a series of doctrinal propositions that could be enumerated one after the other and entered in a book as a well-defined body of dogmas. Such a notion, which today may be difficult to resist, would have to be described as a misconception of the nature of the Christian assent to the God revealed in Christ.

--Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, 1968

QUOTATION: Faith

No one can be a Catholic without a simple faith, that what the Church declares in God's name, is God's word, and therefore true.

--Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman

QUOTATION: Assent of Faith

Our belief in the teachings of the Church de fide must be an absolute and unconditional one, but we should not imagine that our fidelity to the Church's theoretical authority is satisfied merely by acceptance of ex cathedra pronouncements. We must also adhere wholeheartedly to teachings of the Church in matters of morality, even if they are not defined ex cathedra. The teachings of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, for example, is binding because its content had always been part of the teaching of the Church; in it we are confronted with the theoretical authority of the Church embodied in the tradition of the ordinary Magisterium. It is not a mere practical commandment of the Church, like the commandment to go to church on Sunday.

--Dietrich Von Hildebrand