QUOTATION: Loss of Faith

In many cases those who lost the faith never did so for a reason. They left it for a thing. Souls generally do not fall away from Christ because of the Creed; they first have difficulty with the Commandments. The Creed, later on, becomes the handy tool of their rationalization: ‘I no longer believe in confession.’

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Two Types of People in the World

I believe that there are only two classes of people in the world: those who are on the Cross with Christ, and those who are beneath it to harangue Him. Those who are on the Cross, even by sympathy, like His Blessed Mother, are those who suffer. Take, for example, the hungry, a large percentage of the population of the world. They are on the Cross. They may not know it, but that is the way they will be saved. Then there are the others who are beneath it saying…Come down and we will believe.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: The Problem with Skeptics

I will not engage in verbal controversy with the skeptic, because long experience has taught me that the skeptic’s ultimate skepticism is about the use of his own words and the reliability of his own intelligence.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Sin and Lack of Faith

Weakness of faith, however, in those who live in sin, does not spring from the obscurity of faith; for though God, in order to make our faith more meritorious, has veiled the objects of faith in darkness and secrecy, he has at the same time given us so clear and convincing evidence of their truth, that not to believe them would argue not merely a lack of sense, but sheer madness and impiety. The weakness of the faith of many persons is to be traced to their wickedness of living. He who, rather than forego the enjoyment of forbidden pleasures, scorns the divine friendship, would wish there were no law to forbid, and no chastisement to punish, his sin; on this account he strives to blind himself to the eternal truths of death, judgment, and hell, and of divine justice; and be cause such subjects strike too much terror into his heart, and are too apt to mix bitterness in his cup of pleasure, he sets his brain to work to discover proofs, which have at least the look of plausibility; and by which he allows himself to be flattered into the persuasion that there is no soul, no God, no hell, in order that he may live and die like the brute beasts, without laws and without reason.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: The Age of Unbelief

A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, ‘Where have they taken Him?”

--Pope Pius XI

QUOTATION: Disbelief in Hell

The basic reason why moderns disbelieve in hell is because they really disbelieve in freedom and responsibility. To believe in hell is to assert that the consequences of good and bad acts are not indifferent.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Preface to Religion