QUOTATION: How the Religiously Insincere Act with God

You sometimes say of a man, "he is friendly, or courteous, or respectful, or considerate, or communicative; but, after all, there is something, perhaps without his knowing it, in the background. He professes to be agreed with me; he almost displays his agreement; he says he pursues the same objects as I; but still I do not know him, I do not make progress with him, I have no confidence in him, I do not know him better than the first time I saw him." Such is the way in which the double-minded approach the Most High,—they have a something private, a hidden self at bottom. They look on themselves, as it were, as independent parties, treating with Almighty God as one of their fellows. Hence, so far from seeking God, they hardly like to be sought by Him. They would rather keep their position and stand where they are,—on earth, and so make terms with God in heaven; whereas, "he that doeth truth, cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God." [John iii. 21.]

--Blessed John Henry Newman, “Sincerity and Hypocrisy”, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Volume 5.

QUOTATION: Silence

Silence is God’s first language.

--St. John of the Cross

QUOTATION: Reason

To disparage the dictate of reason is equivalent to contemning the command of God.

--St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1a-2ae, xix. 5, ad 2

QUOTATION: Spiritual Change

Most men are intuitively aware that no change except a spiritual change will be enough: the extreme sensitiveness and ready anger of those who urge revolutions against society and morality as their remedy are a proof of the insecurity of their position. The violence of their opposition to all criticism is a sure sign of the defenselessness of their own position; even they suspect that mankind stands less in need of revolution than redemption.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: Society Cannot Exist Without God

If God exists, and deserves the name, He is to every human good what electricity is to an appliance, and religion is the plug. The decline in happiness, in morality, and in longevity is inevitable: religious death, or supernatural death, or spiritual death always leads to some kind of natural or cultural death. No nonreligious, anti-religious society has ever existed. One reason is that religion has always been the strongest ground for morality and no society can survive without morality, in fact without some kind of natural law morality, since the prevailing morality of our experts is not morality at all, only psychology.

--Peter Kreeft, quoted in "What I shall do with atheism is to refute it” California Catholic Daily, August 4, 2016