QUOTATION: Conversion to the Pro-Life Cause

You must remember that I was converted to the cause of life only because I was converted to the cause of truth.

-- Dr. Bernard Nathanson.

QUOTATION: Truth-Seeking Rests on Belief

There are in the life of a human being many more truths which are simply believed than truths which are acquired by way of personal verification. Who, for instance, could assess critically the countless scientific findings upon which modern life is based? Who could personally examine the flow of information which comes day after day from all parts of the world and which is generally accepted as true? Who in the end could forge anew the paths of experience and thought which have yielded the treasures of human wisdom and religion? This means that the human being—the one who seeks the truth—is also the one who lives by belief.

--Pope St. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio,  #27

QUOTATION: Truth

The concept of truth has been virtually given up, and replaced by the concept of progress. Progress itself “is” the truth. But through this seeming exaltation, progress loses its direction and becomes nullified. For if no direction exists, everything can just as well be regress as progress.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), “Conscience and Truth”, 1991.

QUOTATION: Truth

Hypotheses may fascinate, but they do not satisfy. Whether we admit it or not, there comes for everyone the moment when personal existence must be anchored to a truth recognized as final, a truth which confers a certitude no longer open to doubt.

--Pope St. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio,  #27

QUOTATION: Love

Lord, in my zeal for the love of truth, let me not forget the truth about love.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Truth

Christianity has done something which is totally revolutionary. Christ did not say “I have the truth”, he said “I am the truth”, Moses did not say so, Buddha did not say so, Mohammed did not say so. Christ alone claims that He is The Truth, capital T. Now, the very moment that you are confronted with the Truth, and you suddenly discover all the lies that are in us, there are two possibilities. Either you kneel down and adore and recognise Christ to be God, or you run away and say “depart from us, we can do without you”.

--Alice von Hildebrand, “The Secular War on the Supernatural.”

QUOTATION: Transcendence

It is essential, therefore, that the values chosen and pursued in one's life be true, because only true values can lead people to realize themselves fully, allowing them to be true to their nature. The truth of these values is to be found not by turning in on oneself but by opening oneself to apprehend that truth even at levels which transcend the person. This is an essential condition for us to become ourselves and to grow as mature, adult persons.

--Pope St. John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 25

QUOTATION: Clerical Authority

We can’t not exercise the service of authority: leave everything be, not intervene, not speak the truth which can hurt but which clarifies and helps us to get back up. We then leave people in confusion for fear of hurting them or speaking a truth that is not at all popular and which goes against the ambient culture. This applies to bishops, priests and pastors. It is a greater charity to communicate a truth that alienates a person from us for a time, a time during which he can come to realize that we acted in his favour.

--Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Actualité et avenir du Concile oecuménique Vatican II

QUOTATION: Truth and Love

Truth without love is bitter and can drive the wounded away; and “love” without truth isn’t love at all, but a comfortable form of lying.

--Archbishop Charles J. Chaput.

QUOTATION: The Truth Must Out

It is better that scandals arise than truth be suppressed.

--Pope St. Gregory the Great

QUOTATION: Speak the Truth

It’s your obligation to speak the truth, and everyone can either take it or leave it. But the truth must be in us.

--Mother Angelica

QUOTATION: Truth

Truth nowadays is often reduced to the subjective authenticity of the individual. A common truth intimidates us, for we identify it with the intransigent demands of totalitarian systems. But if truth is a truth of love, if it is a truth disclosed in a personal encounter with the Other and with others, then it can be set free from its enclosure in individuals and become part of the common good. As a truth of love, it is not one that can be imposed by force; it is not a truth that stifles the individual. Since it is born of love, it can penetrate to the heart, to the personal core of each man and woman. Clearly, then, faith is not intransigent but grows in respectful coexistence with others. One who believes may not be presumptuous; on the contrary, truth leads to humility, because believers know that, rather than ourselves possessing truth, it is truth that embraces and possesses us. Far from making us inflexible, the security of faith set us on a journey; it enables witness and dialogue with all.
--Pope Francis, Lumen Fidei.

QUOTATION: Truth

If Platonism provides an idea of the truth, Christian belief offers truth as a way, and only by becoming a way has it become man's truth. Truth as mere perception, as mere idea, remains bereft of force; it only a man's truth as a way that makes a claim upon him, that he can and must tread.

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

QUOTATION: Open-Mindedness

It must be said once and for all: it is self-contradictory to be open-minded to error. It is like praising a susceptibility for disease as a particular sign of health. No, only the truth makes us free and lets us participate in real universality. It is a special sign of this freedom and universality, and of open-mindedness, to be immune to error, especially to philosophical and metaphysical error, and pre-eminently to heresy, to any teaching incompatible with the divine Revelation of Christ.

--Dietrich von Hildebrand

QUOTATION: Truth

Truth has nothing to do with the number of people it convinces.

--Paul Claudel

QUOTATION: Freedom is Based On Truth

Freedom must be tethered to moral truth and ordered to human goodness if freedom is not to become self-cannibalizing.  If there is only "my" truth and "your" truth, but nothing that we both recognize as "the truth", then we have no basis on which to settle our differences other than pragmatic accommodation; then, when pragmatic accommodation fails (as it must when the issue is grave enough), either I will impose my power on you or you will impose your power on me. Truth and goodness shape the moral horizon against which the deliberations of free peoples can take place in an orderly and productive way.

--George Weigel, "The Free and Virtuous Society", in Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, 2008

QUOTATION: Humilty

There are certain psychological and spiritual conditions which are essential for the discovery of truth, and the most important of these is the virtue of humility. Humility is not a want of moral force; rather humility is recognition of the truth about us. To explore the Truth in all its complexity there must come moments when we confess ignorance, when we frankly admit that we are mistaken or bigoted or prejudiced. These admissions are painful, but they actually enrich character just as much as all approximations to falsehood forfeit it. If we are proud, covetous, conceited, selfish, lustful, constantly wanting our own way, it is far better to come face to face with our own ugliness than live in a fool's paradise.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Way to Inner Peace

QUOTATION: Truth in Love

Cook the Truth in Charity until it is sweet.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Seeking Truth

Anyone who seeks Truth seeks God, whether or not he realizes it.

--St.Teresia Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

QUOTATION: Truth

When lies have been accepted for some time, the truth always astounds with an air of novelty.

--St Clement of Alexandria