QUOTATION: The Church and Politics

The problem is not that the Church is too political; the problem is that our politics is too pagan.

--Fr. Frank Pavone

QUOTATION: Politics and Religion

I never discuss anything except politics and religion. There is nothing else to discuss.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Politics

Politics is never the main content of Christian faith. It can never provide perfect solutions. But no Christian can avoid the duty to work for more justice and charity in our life as a nation, a task that inescapably involves politics.

--Archbishop Charles Chaput, “There is no equivalence”, CatholicPhilly.com, August 10, 2015

QUOTATION: Advice for Politicians

Someone asked me what advice I had for politicians. I don’t like to get involved in politics, but my answer just popped out, “They should spend time on their knees. I think that would help them to become statesmen.”

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, No Greater Love

QUOTATION: Evangelization

He who converts his neighbour has performed the most practical Christian-political act of all.

--C.S. Lewis, “Meditation on the Third Commandment”, God in the Dock

QUOTATION: Politics is a Duty, not a Privilege

The greatest privilege of a Christian is to have nothing to do with worldly politics,—to be governed and to submit obediently; and though here again selfishness may creep in, and lead a man to neglect public concerns in which he is called to take his share, yet, after all, such participation must be regarded as a duty, scarcely as a privilege, as the fulfillment of trusts committed to him for the good of others, not as the enjoyment of rights (as men talk in these days of delusion), not as if political power were in itself a good.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, "The Danger of Riches", Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 2

QUOTATION: Politics

[Catholics] have an obligation to get involved in politics. We can't play the role of Pontius Pilate and wash our hands of it. It's easy to blame others. But people need to ask themselves: Me? What am I doing about it?

--Pope Francis

QUOTATION: Politics

Politics is one of the highest forms of charity because it seeks the common good.

--Pope Francis

QUOTATION: Political Conscience

I think that when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.

--St. Thomas More

QUOTATION: Politicians

A nation always gets the kind of politicians it deserves. If a time ever comes when the religious Jews, Protestants and Catholics ever have to suffer under a totalitarian state, which would deny to them the right to worship God according to the light of their conscience, it will be because for years they thought it made no difference what kind of people represented them in Congress, and because they abandoned the spiritual in the realm of the temporal.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Politics

Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: The Political Health of a Nation

The political health of any nation can be measured by how much the people expect the state to give them and how little they expect to do for themselves, or how much they believe the world owes them a living.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Only Personally Opposed to Abortion

Politicians who say they personally oppose abortion, but then don't work to change the laws in order to protect unborn life, are examples of the most damaging kind of secularism. Their faith life has virtually no effect on their public service.

--Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, Living the Catholic Faith