QUOTATION: True Mercy

God cannot simply ignore man’s disobedience and all the evil of history; he cannot treat it as if it were inconsequential or meaningless. Such “mercy”, such “unconditional forgiveness” would be that “cheap grace” to which Dietrich Bonhoeffer rightly objected in the face of the appalling evil encountered in his day. That which is wrong, the reality of evil, cannot simply be ignored; it cannot just be left to stand. It must be dealt with; it must be overcome. Only this counts as true mercy.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Volume 2.

QUOTATION: Arguing

We should not dispute stubbornly with anyone; rather we should patiently give our reasons with the purpose of declaring the truth lest our neighbor remain in error, and not that we should have the upper hand.

--St. Ignatius Loyola

QUOTATION: Cowardice

I don't like your euphemistic habit of calling cowardice prudence.

--St Josemaria Escriva

QUOTATION: Feelings

Don't bother too much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them; when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behaviour.

--C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Purpose

God has created me to do him some definite service; he has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission - I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

--Blessed John Henry Newman

QUOTATION: Cloistered Religious

The cloistered men and women are doing more for our country than all its politicians and labor leaders; they are atoning for sins of us all. They are averting the just wrath of God, repairing the broken fences of those who sin and pray not, rebel and atone not. As ten just men would have saved Sodom and Gomorrah, so ten just saints can save a nation now.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Submission to the Magisterium

Intellectually speaking, the position of one who "submits to the Church" is that of one who has reached a satisfactory induction--namely, that the Church is infallibly guided into all truth--and can infer from it, by a simple process of deduction, the truth of the various doctrines which she teaches. He does not measure the veracity of the Church by the plausibility of her tenets; he measures the plausibility of her tenets by the conviction he has already formed of her veracity. Thus, and thus only can the human intellect reasonably accept statements which (although they cannot be disproved) cannot be proved by human reason alone.

--Msgr Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics

QUOTATION: Modesty

Either we must speak as we dress, or dress as we speak. Why do we profess one thing and display another? The tongue talks of chastity, but the whole body reveals impurity.

--St. Jerome

QUOTATION: Tormentors

Those who unjustly inflict upon us tests and ordeals, shame and injury, sorrows and torments, martyrdom and death, are the ones we should love most, for what they're really inflicting upon us is eternal life.

--St. Francis of Assisi

QUOTATION: Bishops

Today, especially in the context of our secularized societies, we need bishops who are the first evangelizers, and not mere administrators of dioceses. Who are capable of proclaiming the Gospel. Who are not only theologically faithful to the magisterium and the pope, but are also capable of expounding and, if need be, of defending the faith publicly.

--Cardinal Marc Ouellet

QUOTATION: Materialism

All intense interest in luxury is a mark of inner poverty.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Taking up the Cross

To take up the cross of Christ is no great action done once for all; it consists in the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us.

--Blessed John Henry Newman

QUOTATION: Sermons

I wouldn’t want you to leave a sermon saying: Oh, what a great orator! Oh, he has an incredible memory! Oh, what erudition! How well he speaks! I would rather you say this: Oh, how beautiful repentance is! Oh, how necessary it is! My God, how good and just you are!.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Gaia Worship

I am in the habit of walking on the earth, not of worshipping it.

--St. Clement of Alexandria

QUOTATION: Faith and History

The New Testament message is not simply an idea; essential to it is the fact that these events actually occurred in the history of the world: biblical faith does not recount stories as symbols of meta-historical truths; rather it bases itself upon history that unfolded upon this earth.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Volume 2.

QUOTATION: Communists

If Communists used as much violence on their selfishness as they use on others, they would all be saints!

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Humility and Christ

Christ, the Master of humility, manifests His Truth only to the humble and hides Himself from the proud.

--St. Vincent Ferrer

QUOTATION: The Church

In a word, the most absurd thing that could be said of the Church is the thing we have all heard said of it. How can we say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages? The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them.

--G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

QUOTATION: Love

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

--C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: The Church

Thus the Church is not merely an institution outside ourselves or above ourselves; it is ourselves. We all know how the Englishman will rally to the appeal of his "country"; how he will lock his doors and hide his ledgers at the very mention of "the State." His prejudice against the Church is partly due to the impression that the Church" is the spiritual analogue of "the State'; he thinks of it as a tyrannous, prying institution which is bent upon circumscribing his liberty. He does not reflect that "the Church" is also the analogue of a nation or country, but with a supernatural solidarity of its own which far transcends all merely racial ties. In this sublime creation of Providence, all that natural instinct of gregariousness which has given birth to the clan, the tribe, the nation, the party, the club, is pressed into a higher service and acquires a supernatural character. The Church is our Mother, in that her baptism gave us supernatural life; our Mistress, in that her teaching secures us from speculative error; but she is more than that: she is ourselves.

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

QUOTATION: God Speaks to Us Through Our Reading

In reading holy books we receive many lights and divine calls. St. Jerome says that when we pray we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us. St. Ambrose says the same: "We address him when we pray; we hear him when we read." In prayer, God hears our petitions, but in reading we listen to his voice. We cannot, as I have already said, always have at hand a spiritual Father, nor can we hear the sermons of sacred orators, to direct and give us light to walk well in the way of God. Good books supply the place of sermons. St. Augustine writes that good books are, as it were, so many letters of love the Lord sends us; in them he warns us of our dangers, teaches us the way of salvation, animates us to suffer adversity, enlightens us, and inflames us with divine love. Whoever, then, desires to be saved and to acquire divine love, should often read these letters of paradise.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The True Spouse of Jesus Christ

QUOTATION: The Blessed Virgin Mary

Mary is the most sweet bait, chosen, prepared, and ordained by God, to catch the hearts of men.

--St. Catherine of Siena

QUOTATION: Suffering

We complain when we suffer. We have much more reason to complain when we do not suffer, since nothing so likens us to Our Lord as the bearing of His Cross.

--St. Jean Vianney, the Cure of Ars

QUOTATION: Friendship with Christ

You seek the company of friends who, with their conversation and affection, with their friendship, make the exile of this world more bearable for you. There is nothing wrong with that, although friends sometimes let you down.

But how is it you don't frequent daily with greater intensity the company, the conversation, of the great Friend, who never lets you down?

--Josemaria Escriva, The Way, 88

QUOTATION: Christ and the Cross go together

The cross without Christ is the concentration camp, the police state and slavery. Christ without the cross is effeminacy, degeneration, LSD and mysticism which settles for pharmaceuticals instead of sacrifice.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Sin

They who voluntarily commit sin show a contempt for life eternal, since they willingly risk the loss of their soul.

--Pope St. Gregory the Great

QUOTATION: The Face of Evil

The greatest evil…is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.

--C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Church and State

Through the message that he proclaimed, Jesus had actually achieved a separation of the religious from the political, thereby changing the world: this is what truly marks the essence of his new path.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Volume 2

QUOTATION: Temptation Against Purity

As soon as you become aware of temptation, busy yourself with something. Idleness and modesty can’t go together. In overcoming idleness, you will overcome temptations against purity.

--St. John Bosco

QUOTATION: Foolish Prayers

So blind are we in this mortal life, and so unaware of what will happen, so uncertain of even how we will think tomorrow, that God could not take vengeance on a man more easily in this world than by granting his own foolish wishes.

-- St. Thomas More

QUOTATION: Prayer

He who prays most receives most.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: Mortification

Let us observe that when the soul begins to mortify itself, everything is painful to it. If it begins to give up comforts, it grieves; if it must give up honor, it feels torment; and if must suffer an offensive word, the hurt becomes intolerable. In sum, there are never lacking sorrows for it until death. But as it succeeds in its determination to die to the world, it will find itself freed of these sufferings, and the contrary, there will be no complaining any longer.

-- St. Teresa of Avila, Meditations on the Song of Songs, Ch.3, no.12

QUOTATION: The Perfect is the Enermy of the Good

A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault.

--Bl. John Henry Newman

QUOTATION: Obedience and Freedom

Only [by ecclesial obedience] can Adam be overcome in us, too, and the way opened up to the new human life. 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.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith

QUOTATION: Supernaturalists

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

--C. S. Lewis

QUOTATION: The Advantage of Being Catholic

(...)Athough we ought always to hope, for the sake of charity, that this or that Protestant is in good faith, we can’t be sure that he is in good faith, nor, for that matter, can he. Therefore we should always encourage the conversion of a Protestant, if only for safety’s sake. But, you know, even if you could be certain that some friend of yours was in good faith, and was on the whole a clean-living sort of person, so that there was no great reason to worry about him, it isn’t true to say that you and he enjoy exactly the same supernatural advantages. First, you have the certainty of faith; you are spared the anxious uncertainties which often assail him; he’s not certain whether there is a future life, whether his life’s worth living, whether anything you do or say really matters much – from these doubts you are set free. Second, you have access, where he has no access, to sacramental grace; he can win forgiveness for his sins (for example) only by an act of perfect contrition, and who can be certain that he is making an act of perfect contrition? Whereas for you attrition suffices, as long as you make use of the sacrament of penance. Third, you have the merits of the Church at your disposal; you can go out to Rome in the vacation and get a plenary indulgence, or (if your dispositions are not sufficient for that) an indulgence of some kind; he can go out to Kamchatka and he won’t get off a day’s Purgatory for it. The reason why you don’t realize your privileges as Catholics is because you don’t use them more.

--Msgr. Ronald Knox, The Unconscious Catholic

QUOTATION: Why Souls Go to Hell

Souls go to hell for one reason...they refuse to love. Love pardons everything except one thing - refusal to love.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Humility

As patience leads to peace, and study to science, so are humiliations the path that leads to humility.

--St. Bernard of Clairvaux

QUOTATION: Western Self-Hatred

In our contemporary society, thank goodness, anyone who dishonors the faith of Israel, its image of God, or its great figures must pay a fine. The same holds true for anyone who dishonors the Koran and the convictions of Islam. But when it comes to Jesus Christ and what which is sacred to Christians, instead, freedom of speech becomes the supreme good. […] This case illustrates a peculiar Western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological. It is commendable that the West is trying to be more open, to be more understanding of the values of outsiders, but it has lost all capacity for self-love. All that it sees in its own history is the despicable and the destructive; it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure. What Europe needs is a new self-acceptance, a self-acceptance that is critical and humble, if it truly wishes to survive.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, (Pope Benedict XVI), Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Chistianity, Islam, 2004

QUOTATION: Sovereignty

In the eyes of s a sound political philosophy there is no sovereignty that is, no natural and inalienable right to transcendent or separate supreme power in political society. Neither the prince nore the king nor the emperor were really sovereign, though they bore the sword and the attributes of sovereignty. Nor is the state sovereign; nor are even the people sovereign. God alone is sovereign.

--Jacques Maritain, Man and the State