QUOTATION: Separation of Church and State

Many wish the State to be separated from the Church wholly and entirely, so that with regard to every right of human society, in institutions, customs, and laws, the offices of State, and the education of youth, they would pay no more regard to the Church than if she did not exist; and, at most, would allow the citizens individually to attend to their religion in private if so minded. Against such as these, all the arguments by which We disprove the principle of separation of Church and State are conclusive; with this super-added, that it is absurd the citizen should respect the Church, while the State may hold her in contempt.

--Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos

QUOTATION: Two Kinds of Crosses

Crosses are of two kinds: pure ones, which come from the outside, such as pain, persecution, and ridicule; and inner, or impure crosses, which come as the result of our sins, such as sadness, despair, and unhappiness. These latter crosses can be avoided. They are made by contradicting the will of God.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, The Fifteen Mysteries

QUOTATION: The Church

If the Church limits itself to the work in its parish and lives shut up in its community, then the same thing will happen to it that happens to a person who shuts himself in: it will atrophy, physically and mentally.

--Pope Francis, Pope Francis: His Life in His Own Words

QUOTATION: The Poor

Today is it very fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately, it is very unfashionable to talk with them.

--Mother Teresa

QUOTATION: Evil

If God is the Creator of all things and evil is a thing, then God is the Creator of evil and He is to be blamed for its existence. No, evil is not a thing but a wrong choice, or the damage done by a wrong choice. Evil is no more a positive thing than blindness is, but it is just as real.

--Peter Kreeft

QUOTATION: Progress in the Spiritual Life

Do not think you have made any progress unless you esteem yourself inferior to all.

--Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

QUOTATION: Self-Importance

There exists a great deal of infirmity and foolishness even in the better sort of men. This is not to be wondered at, considering the original corrupt state of their nature, however it is to be deplored, repented of, and corrected. Good men are, like Elijah, "jealous for the Lord God of hosts," and rightly solicitous to see His tokens around them, the pledges of His unchangeable just government; but then they mix with such good feelings undue notions of self-importance, of which they are not aware. 

--Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman, "Contracted Views in Religion", Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 3

QUOTATION: Prayer

We do not have to talk very much in order to pray well.  We know that God is there in his holy tabernacle; let us open our hearts to him; let us rejoice in his presence: this is the best prayer.

--St. Jean Vianney, the Curé of Ars

QUOTATION: The Pope's Will

The Pope's will: God's will.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, Reaction to the Papal Brief suppressing the Society of Jesuits, 1773.

QUOTATION: Sin

The conclusion of all this is that you be ready to die rather than commit a mortal sin, and ready to die, also, rather than commit a venial sin with deliberation. Rather endure all things, rather death itself than offend God! It would be better to let the whole world go to ruin rather than try to save it by the smallest venial sin.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Holiness

The holiness of saints does not depend on anything sensational but on little things which seem but trifles in the eyes of the world.

--Pope St. John XXIII, Journal of a Soul

QUOTATION: Small Sins

The devil belittles small sins; otherwise he cannot lead us into greater ones.

--St. Mark the Ascetic

QUOTATION: Church and State

A Church dependent (or even heavily reliant) on the sword (or purse) of the state has misplaced the trust it ought to place in God alone.

--George Weigel, "The Sovereignty of Christ and the Public Church", in Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace, 2008

QUOTATION: Tolerance

The type of tolerance which permits God as a private opinion but refuses to allow him in the public arena, is, in the reality of the world and our life, not tolerance but hypocrisy.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Love

We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become. If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing. Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation. This means we are to become vessels of God´s compassionate love for others.

--St. Clare of Assisi

QUOTATION: Cohabitation

We commend, venerable brothers, to your fidelity and piety those unhappy persons who, carried away by the heat of passion, and being utterly indifferent to their salvation, live wickedly together without the bond of lawful marriage. Let your utmost care be exercised in bringing such persons back to their duty; and, both by your own efforts and by those of good men who will consent to help you, strive by every means that they may see how wrongly they have acted; that they may do penance; and that they may be induced to enter into a lawful marriage according to the Catholic rite.

--Pope Leo XIII, Arcanum

QUOTATION: Sadness

Excessive sadness seldom springs from any other source than pride.

--St. Philip Neri

QUOTATION: Mercy

It is mercy, not justice or courage or even heroism, that alone can defeat evil.

--Peter Kreeft, The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind the Lord of the Rings

QUOTATION: Faith and Reason

It is philosophically impossible for divine faith to profess what the reason must regard as false; not even divine omnipotence can make this otherwise.

--St. Thomas Aquinas, On the Unity of the Intellect

QUOTATION: Crosses

Any cross would be easy to bear if we could only tailor it to fit ourselves. Our Lord’s cross was not made by Him, but for Him. Crosses and burdens are thrust upon us.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, The Fifteen Mysteries

QUOTATION: Faith

Faith is no comfortable path. Anyone who offers faith as a comfortable path will not succeed. It makes the highest demands of man, because it thinks highly of him. But precisely because it does this, it is beautiful and in keeping with our own being. If we see it in its whole magnitude and breadth, then it bears in itself the answers for which our hour of history is calling.

--Joseph Ratzinger, (Pope Benedict XVI)

QUOTATION: Chastity

Christ so loved chastity that he wished to be born of a virgin.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Straightening Out

I am but a crooked piece of iron, and have come into religion to be made straight by the hammer of mortification and penance.

 --St. Aloysius Gonzaga

QUOTATION: God Conquers in Failure

We expect God in His omnipotence to defeat injustice, evil, sin and suffering with a triumphant divine victory. Yet God shows us a humble victory that, in human terms, appears to be failure. We can say that God conquers in failure!

--Pope Francis, General Audience, April 16, 2014

QUOTATION: Hatred of Our Enemy

It is strange that we should not realize that no enemy could be more dangerous to us than the hatred with which we hate him, and that by our efforts we do less damage to our enemy than is wrought in our own heart.

--St. Augustine, Confessions, Book One, XVIII

QUOTATION: Theists

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God.

--Peter Kreeft, Jesus-Shock

QUOTATION: Perfection

We can never attain to perfection while we have an affection for any imperfection.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Useless Words

Our Lord warns us that we shall render an account for every useless word. What will it be for those words against authority, those back- biting words, those words against God's goodness, those words against the poor of Jesus Christ, against the lowly who are already humiliated by their inferiority, whatever it may be!

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Honour

If honour were profitable, everybody would be honourable.

--St. Thomas More