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