QUOTATION: Religious Freedom

When people lose their religious freedom, they invariably lose all their other rights as well. The first three centuries of the Christian era, the French Revolution, and the Hitler Regime all teach us one lesson: those who restrict religious liberty will soon deprive citizens of all their other human rights.

--Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, Address of November 7, 1946 cited in Memoirs, 1974

QUOTATION: Interpreting Scripture

God's precepts will never be obeyed if every man may boldly devise for himself a conscience based on a commentary on God's Word that he's crafted himself, according to his own fantasies. For in this matter--in which people justify their private devotions--these word of the Scripture are proved true "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end leads to hell" (see Proverbs 14:12).

If a man should doubt his knowledge and understanding of anything written in the Scripture, he's not wise, then, to take upon himself the authority to interpret, boldly depending on his own mind. Instead, he should depend on the interpretation of the holy teachers and the saints of old, and on the interpretation that's been received and allowed by the universal Church through which the Scripture has come into our hands and has been delivered to us in the first place. And without the Church, as St. Augustine says, we couldn't know which books are Holy Scripture.

 If a man won't take the teachings of the Catholic faith as a rule of interpretation when he studies the Scripture--but instead, being distrustful, studies the Scripture to find whether or not the faith of the Church is true--he cannot fail to fall into errors.

--St Thomas More, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies

QUOTATION: Religiosity is a Talent

The phenomenology of religion demonstrates-- and we can all test this for ourselves-- that there are, or at least appear to be, in religion, as in all other realms of the human spirit, various degrees of endowment. Just as in the field of music we find the creative, the receptive, and finally those who are completely unmusical, so it seems to be in religion, too. Here, too, one meets people who are religiously "talented" and others who are "untalented"; here, too, those capable of direct religious experience and thus of something like religious creativity through a living awareness of the religious world are few and far between. The "mediator" or "founder", the witness, the prophet, or whatever religious history likes to call such men who are capable of direct contact with the divine, remains here, too, the exception. Over against these few, for whom the divine thus becomes undisguised certainty, stand the many whose religious gift is limited to receptivity, who are denied the direct experience of the holy yet are not so deaf to it as to be unable to appreciate an encounter with it through the medium of the man granted such an experience.

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

QUOTATION: Don't Be a Killjoy

It is against reason for a man to be burdensome to others, by offering no pleasure to others, and by hindering their enjoyment. Wherefore Seneca says (De Quat. Virt., cap. De Continentia): "Let your conduct be guided by wisdom so that no one will think you rude, or despise you as a cad." Now a man who is without mirth, not only is lacking in playful speech, but is also burdensome to others, since he is deaf to the moderate mirth of others. Consequently they are vicious, and are said to be boorish or rude, as the Philosopher states (Ethic. iv, 8).

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Environmentalism Incompatible with Abortion

Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?

--Pope Francis, Laudato Si, 120

QUOTATION: Confession

We called it penance, but really it is a sacrament of love, a sacrament of forgiveness. That is why it should not be a place of talking for long hours about our difficulties. It is a place where I allow Jesus to take away from me everything that divides, that destroys.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Where There is Love, There is God, Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., Ed.

QUOTATION: Eyes On Your Own Soul!

No, my dear brethren, while anyone passes his time in watching the conduct of other people, he will neither know nor belong to God. If only, my dear children, we were able to arrive at the stage of eradicating this first of the capital sins from our hearts, our neighbour would never do any wrong according to us. We should never amuse ourselves by examining his conduct. We should be content to do nothing else save weep for our own sins and work as hard as we could to correct them.

--St. Jean Vianney

QUOTATION: God vs. Chance

While God can create instantaneously or over any period of time He wishes, chance needs a long, long, long time to accomplish even the most meager results. The reason for this is that intelligent beings can choose intelligently. Chance is the complete absence of intelligence, choice, and, we should add, causal power.

--Scott Hahn, Benjamin Wiker, Answering the New Atheism, 2008.

QUOTATION: Abortion

Abortion is the greatest victory the devil has achieved since Original Sin.

--Alice von Hildebrand

QUOTATION: Happiness

It is impossible for man to find that true happiness, which he desires naturally, in any limited good: pleasures, riches, honor, glory, power, knowledge. Our mind, noticing at once the limits of these goods, conceives a higher good and carries us on to desire that higher good. We must repeat: Our will, illumined by our intelligence, has a depth without measure, a depth which only God can fill.

--Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Life Everlasting

QUOTATION: Finding God

The truth of the matter is, not that God is hard to find, but rather that man is afraid of being found.

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

QUOTATION: Damnation

Only the soul who wants it will be damned, for God condemns no one.

--St. Faustina

QUOTATION: Unpopular Doctrine

When the true doctrine is unpopular, it is not right to seek easy popularity.

--Pope St. John Paul II

QUOTATION: Faith and Forgiveness

Faith has to do, and must have to do, with forgiving; that it aims at leading man to recognize that he is a being that can only find himself in the reception and transmission of forgiveness, a being that needs forgiveness even in his best and purest moments.

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

QUOTATION: Our Blessed Mother

Him whom the heavens cannot contain the womb of one woman bore. She ruled our Ruler ... She gave milk to our Bread.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: The Average Believer

I say plainly, and without fear of contradiction, though it is a serious thing to say, that the aim of most men esteemed conscientious and religious, or who are what is called honourable, upright men, is, to all appearance, not how to please God, but how to please themselves without displeasing Him. I say confidently,—that is, if we may judge of men in general by what we see,—that they make this world the first object in their minds, and use religion as a corrective, a restraint, upon too much attachment to the world. They think that religion is a negative thing, a sort of moderate love of the world, a moderate luxury, a moderate avarice, a moderate ambition, and a moderate selfishness.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, "Obedience without Love, as instanced in the Character of Balaam", Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 4

QUOTATION: Abortion

By abortion, the mother does not learn to love but kills even her own child to solve her problems, and by abortion, the father does not have to take any responsibility at all for that child he has brought into the world.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Where There is Love, There is God, Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., Ed.

QUOTATION: Never Jesus Without the Cross

Never the Cross without Jesus, or Jesus without the Cross. Through his dying upon it the Cross of ignominy became so glorious, its poverty and starkness so enriching, its sorrows so agreeable, its austerity so attractive, that it became as it were deified and an object to be adored by angels and by men. Jesus now requires that all his subjects adore it as they adore him. It is not his wish that the honour even of a relative adoration be given to any other creature however exalted, such as his most Blessed Mother. This special worship is due and given only to his dear Cross. On the day of the last judgement he will bring to an end all veneration to the relics of the saints, even those most venerable, but not to those of his Cross. He will command the chief Seraphim and Cherubim to collect from every part of the world all the particles of the true Cross. By his loving omnipotence he will re-unite them so well that the whole Cross will be re-formed, the very Cross on which he died. He will have his Cross borne in triumph by angels joyfully singing its praises. It will go before him, borne upon the most brilliant cloud that has ever been seen. And with this Cross and by it, he will judge the world. Great will be the joy of the friends of the Cross on beholding it. Deep will be the despair of its opponents who, not being able to bear the brilliant and fiery sight of this Cross, will plead for the mountains to fall upon them and for hell to swallow them.

--St. Louis de Montfort, The Love of Eternal Wisdom

QUOTATION: Spiritual Corruption

Corrupt people do not notice their own corruption. It is the same as when people have bad breath: they seldom realize it themselves. Others realize it and need to tell them. Hence, also, it would be hard for someone who is corrupt to escape from that state through inner repentance. Their good spirit in this regard is anesthetized. Generally, our Lord saves them through means of trials that come from situations they experience (illness, loss of money, loss of loved ones, and so forth), and these are what pierce the armor of their corruption and enable grace to enter. Then they can be cured.

--Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (Pope Francis), "Corruption and Sin", The Way of Humility, 2005

QUOTATION: The Virtue of Eutrapelia

There can be a virtue about games. The Philosopher gives it the name of wittiness (eutrapelia), and a man is said to be pleasant through having a happy turn of mind, whereby he gives his words and deeds a cheerful turn: and inasmuch as this virtue restrains a man from immoderate fun, it is comprised under modesty.

--St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

QUOTATION: Deists

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: Man is a Metaphysical Animal

For the great difference between an animal and man is that an animal can have its desires satisfied but man cannot. All that any animal wants is to have its immediate needs granted; this is never the case with man. Man is animated by an urge, an unquenchable desire to enlarge his vision and to know the ultimate meaning of things. If he were only an animal, he would never use symbols, for what are these but attempts to transcend the visible? No, he is a “metaphysical animal”, a being ever longing for answers to the last question.

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

QUOTATION: Focus on the Here and Now

The average fault among those who have a good will is that they wish to be something they cannot be, and do not wish to be what they necessarily must be. They conceive desires to do great things for which, perhaps, no opportunity may ever come to them, and meantime neglect the small which the Lord puts into their hands.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: God's Existence

Unless blinded by devotion to God’s non-existence, a reasonable person would infer that existence of a creative Intelligence as the cause of fine-tuning is far less miraculous than the aimless gropings of Chance.

--Scott Hahn, Benjamin Wiker, Answering the New Atheism, 2008.

QUOTATION: The Irrationalism of Rationalism

Man, looking for complete emancipation, undertook to reduce everything to the level of reason. And in the end he comes to renounce the real; he no longer dares to use ideas to adhere to being; he forbids himself to know anything beyond the sensible fact and the phenomenon of consciousness; he dissolves every object of thought in a great flowing jelly called Becoming or Evolution; he considers himself a barbarian if he does not suspect every first principle and every rational demonstration, of naïveté; he replaces the effort of thought and logical discernment by a certain refined play of instinct, imagination, intuitive thrills, and visceral emotions; he no longer dares to judge.

--Jacques Maritain, St. Thomas Aquinas, 1958

QUOTATION: Christian Belief

Christian belief -- as we have already said-- means opting for the view that what cannot be seen is more real than what can be seen.

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

QUOTATION: Religious Persecution

Religious persecution has two faces, just like Janus. One of its faces may shine brightly and promise us liberty; but its other face glares at us with the grim gaze of a tyrant.

--Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, Address of November 7, 1946 cited in Memoirs, 1974

QUOTATION: Succession of Popes

For if the lineal succession of bishops is to be taken into account, with how much more certainty and benefit to the Church do we reckon back till we reach Peter himself, to whom, as bearing in a figure the whole Church, the Lord said: Upon this rock will I build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it! [Matthew 16:18] The successor of Peter was Linus, and his successors in unbroken continuity were these:— Clement, Anacletus, Evaristus, Alexander, Sixtus, Telesphorus, Iginus, Anicetus, Pius, Soter, Eleutherius, Victor, Zephirinus, Calixtus, Urbanus, Pontianus, Antherus, Fabianus, Cornelius, Lucius, Stephanus, Xystus, Dionysius, Felix, Eutychianus, Gaius, Marcellinus, Marcellus, Eusebius, Miltiades, Sylvester, Marcus, Julius, Liberius, Damasus, and Siricius, whose successor is the present Bishop Anastasius. In this order of succession no Donatist bishop is found. But, reversing the natural course of things, the Donatists sent to Rome from Africa an ordained bishop, who, putting himself at the head of a few Africans in the great metropolis, gave some notoriety to the name of mountain men, or Cutzupits, by which they were known.

--St. Augustine, Letter 53, 1:2

QUOTATION: Abortion Destroyer of Peace

Our children, we want them, we love them, but what of the other millions. Many people are very concerned with the children of India, with the children of Africa, where quite a number die, maybe of malnutrition, maybe of hunger and so on, but millions are dying deliberately by the will of the mother. And this is what the greatest destroyer of peace today, because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Where There is Love, There is God, Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., Ed.

QUOTATION: Being Pastoral

We hide the truth from people to be "pastoral"...I don't think leading someone to hell is pastoral.

--Mother Angelica