QUOTATION: Suffering

Some will not look on suffering because it creates responsibility.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOATION: Evil Inclinations

Our own evil inclinations are far more dangerous than any external enemies.

--St. Ambrose of Milan

QUOTATION: Alternatives to Abortion

All who are genuinely committed to the advancement of women can and must offer a woman or a girl who is pregnant, frightened, and alone a better alternative than the destruction of her own unborn child.

-- Mary Ann Glendon

QUOTATION: Weaknesses

God can use our weakness as easily as our strength in order to accomplish His will.

--Pope John Paul II

QUOTATION: Wanting to be Needed

We must get over wanting to be needed.

--C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Clerical Garb

It is an infinitely small point, but does the abandonment, total or partial, of the clerical garb by some modem clergymen really make the laity feel more at home with them? Does it not rather create the suspicion that they are ashamed of being what they are?

--Msgr Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics, 1927

QUOTATION: Abortion and Social Justice

Working against abortion doesn’t license us to ignore the needs of the homeless or the poor, the elderly or the immigrant. It doesn’t absolve us from supporting women who find themselves pregnant or abandoned. In Catholic belief, all human life, no matter how wounded, flawed, young or old, is sacred because it comes from God. The dignity of a human life and its right to exist are guaranteed by God. Catholic teaching on abortion and sexuality is part of the same integral vision of the human person that fuels Catholic teaching on economic justice, racism, war and peace.

--Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

QUOTATION: Three States of Jesus

There are three states of Jesus that deserve singular and daily consideration: in the womb of the Father as Son of God, God of God, consubstantial and equal with his Father; in the womb of the Virgin as Son of Man, both man and God, the Mediator of God and men; in the womb of the Church, which is his center and altar, as Lamb of God and victim of praise and propitiation, which she (the Church) presents to the Father.

--Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle

QUOTATION: Unbelievers

Today those who do not have faith do not even know what they disbelieve.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Homosexuality and the Priesthood

Homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation. Otherwise, celibacy itself would lose its meaning as a renunciation.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Light of the World, 2010

QUOTATION: Following the Cross

I tell you that you have less to suffer in following the cross than in serving the world and its pleasures.

--St. Jean Vianney, the Cure of Ars

QUOTATION: Atheism

The modern god can be the ego, or self. This is atheism.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen

QUOTATION: Original Sin

There is in man a congenital moral weakness which goes hand in hand with the fragility of his being, with his psycho-physical fragility. And this fragility is accompanied by the multiple sufferings indicated in the Bible, from the very first pages, as punishment for sin.

--Pope John Paul II, Memory and Identity, 2005

QUOTATION: Spiritual Sweetness

The fly that clings to honey hinders its flight, and the soul that allows itself attachment to spiritual sweetness hinders its own liberty and contemplation.

--St. John of the Cross

QUOTATION: Sad Faces

It is not fitting, when one is in God's service, to have a gloomy face or a chilling look.

--St. Francis of Assisi

QUOTATION: Children Born and Unborn in Salvation History

God has become a child, and so he wants first to be known and adored by a child, and this is one of the first emanations of the childhood of God, manifesting himself to the universe. God is a child, the world ignores, heaven adores, and a child is the first person in the universe to recognize and adore him, and he does so by the homage and secret operation of God himself, who wants to act upon children. He wants to honor himself as child by giving the first knowledge of himself to a child in the world, making him his prophet in the universe. Thus the Infant-God is recognized and manifested, not by and angel, but by a child. So his first prophet is a child, just as shortly his first martyrs will be children.

--Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle

QUOTATION: History

It is convenient, no doubt, to call oneself a Christian, and even (by a modern metaphor) to call oneself "a Catholic," without feeling responsible for the whole chequered past of Christendom- without making oneself an accessory to the fires of Smuthfield, or being tarred with the brush of Torquemada. Happy is the nation (it has been said) which has no past; and a Church of yesterday enjoys the advantages which that dictum implies. To be tied to no dead hand of tradition, bowed down by no cumbrous legacies of antiquity, leaves the mind more free for speculation, and the heart for adventure. But in disclaiming the dead, you are yourself disclaimed by the dead. If you are not prepared to blush for Alexander the Sixth, it is childishly inconsistent to take pride in the memory of Saint Francis. You may claim a kind of sentimental connection with the Christianity of earlier ages, but not a historic, not a vital continuity. The Fathers of the early Church may be your models and your heroes, but they are no genuine part of your ancestry.

--Msgr Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics, 1927

QUOTATION: Last-Minute Repentance

Do not say: 'Tomorrow, I will be converted; tomorrow, I will give thanks to God; and all my sins, today's and yesterday's, will be forgiven'. It is true that God promises forgiveness for your conversion; but He does not promise tomorrow for your delays.

--St. Augustine of Hippo

QUOTATION: Parenting

Some probably believe the reason why Cain turned out so badly was because Eve had no books on child psychology.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen

QUOTATION: Trials

We always find that those who walked closest to Christ were those who had to bear the greatest trials.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Talking to God

Acquire the habit of speaking to God as if you were alone with Him, familiarly and with confidence and love, as to the dearest and most loving of friends. Speak to Him often of your business, your plans, your troubles, your fears— of everything that concerns you. Converse with Him confidently and frankly; for God is not wont to speak to a soul that does not speak to Him.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: The Will of God

After knowing the will of God in regard to a work which we undertake, we should continue courageously, however difficult it may be. We should follow it to the end with as much constancy as the obstacles we encounter are great.

--St. Vincent de Paul

QUOTATION: The Unborn Christ

But the knowledge and love of our Divine Redeemer, of which we were the object from the first moment of His Incarnation, exceed all that the human intellect can hope to grasp. For hardly was He conceived in the womb of the Mother of God, when He began to enjoy the beatific vision, and in that vision all the members of His Mystical Body were continually and unceasingly present to Him, and He embraced them with His redeeming love.

--Pope Pius XII, Mystici Corporis, #75

QUOTATION: Sexuality

The meaning and direction of sexuality is to bring about the union of man and woman and, in this way, to give humanity posterity, children, a future. This is the determination internal to the essence of sexuality. Everything else is against sexuality’s intrinsic meaning and direction. This is a point we need to hold firm, even if it is not pleasing to our age.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Light of the World, 2010

QUOTATION: Antichrist

The plainest mark of the Antichrist is the proud unwillingness to follow the teaching of Christ as interpreted by the Church.

-- Fr. John Hardon

QUOTATION: Causes

In history, the only causes that die are those for which men refuse to die.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Morality

Neither Catholicism nor any other form of Christianity pretends to have a special morality of its own; religion is meant to enforce, not to supersede, the natural code of morals. (Christianity, for example, forbids suicide; but then, so did Plato.) Ideally, the perfect pagan should interpret his moral duties exactly as a Christian would.

--Msgr Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics, 1927

QUOTATION: The Unborn Christ and The Blessed Mother

He is in her as in a temple where He praises and adores God; where He offers His respects to the eternal Father, not only for Himself but for every creature. It is a holy and sacred temple where Jesus dwells, the true ark of the true covenant. It is the first AND HOLIEST TEMPLE OF JESUS.

--Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle

QUOTATION: Self-Mastery

To be subjected to our lusts, and to yield to them, is the most extreme form of slavery. To keep those lusts in subjection is the only liberty.

--St. Clement of Alexandria