QUOTATION: Overcoming Vice

There is no vice which with God's assistance cannot be overcome, and there is no reason to fear that God will refuse to help us.

--St. Robert Bellarmine, The Seven Words on the Cross

QUOTATION: Religion and Science

When there is an apparent conflict between science and religion it is either because of bad science or bad religion, or both.

--Father Robert Barron

QUOTATION: Judging

The Inquisition confused sin with sinners and judged both. Modern Americans make the same mistake but judge neither.

--Peter Kreeft

QUOTATION: Dogma

Dogma as a single tenet proclaimed by the pope ex cathedra is the latest and lowest way of forming dogma. The original form in which the Church states her faith in a binding fashion is the Creed or symbolum; the profession of faith in the birth of Jesus from the Virgin, a statement quite unequivocal in meaning belongs firmly from the start to all symbola and is thus a constituent part of the original dogma of the Church.

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

QUOTATION: Socialism

In man there is a natural desire to own, and Socialism, since it fails to gratify that desire, will be intolerable to the mass of men.

--G. K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Tribulation

The greatest of all tribulations is a guilty conscience.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Redemption

Consider that God allowed four thousand years to pass, after the transgression of Adam, before he sent his Son upon earth to redeem the world. And in the meantime, oh, what fatal darkness reigned upon the earth! The true God was not known or adored, except in one small corner of the world. Idolatry reigned everywhere ; so that devils and beasts and stones were adored as gods.

But let us admire in this the divine Wisdom : he deferred the coming of the Redeemer in order to render his advent more welcome to man, in order that the malice of sin might be better known, as well as the necessity of a remedy and the grace of the Saviour. If Jesus Christ had come into the world immediately after the fall of Adam, the greatness of this favor would have been but slightly appreciated. Let us therefore thank the goodness of God for having sent us into the world after the great work of redemption was accomplished.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ

QUOTATION: The Poor

We talk much about the poor, but very little to the poor.

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

QUOTATION: Purgatory

Purgatorial satispassion is not only accepted by the will, but it is offered, with ardent charity, as an act of adoration. Here we have one of the most beautiful views of purgatory. The soul clearly recognizes the imprescriptible rights of God, author of nature and grace. It now sees the infinite value of redemption, of the sacrifice of the cross, of Mass, of the sacraments, which on earth it treated with negligence. It also sees much more profoundly, without possible distraction, the value of eternal life, of the possession of God. What joy in purgatory when Mass is celebrated on anniversary days !

These souls love their suffering. On earth they were not generous enough to impose on themselves a condign punishment. Now that punishment becomes an expiatory sacrifice. And the more this suffering penetrates the depth of their will, the more lovingly they accept it. Egoism, selfishness, the rust of sin, is burned away, and charity reigns without rival in the depths, rooted there forever.

 --Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Life Everlasting

QUOTATION: The Church in an Atheist State

In an atheistic state a church that is not independent can only play the part of a slave.

--Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, Memoirs, 1974

QUOTATION: Manifest Grave Sin = No Communion

The judgment of one's state of grace obviously belongs only to the person involved, since it is a question of examining one's conscience. However, in cases of outward conduct which is seriously, clearly and steadfastly contrary to the moral norm, the Church, in her pastoral concern for the good order of the community and out of respect for the sacrament, cannot fail to feel directly involved. The Code of Canon Law refers to this situation of a manifest lack of proper moral disposition when it states that those who “obstinately persist in manifest grave sin” are not to be admitted to Eucharistic communion.

--Pope St. John Paul II, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 18

QUOTATION: Christian Revolutionaries

Unless Christians are revolutionaries, they are not Christian.

--Pope Francis, Address to the Participants in the Ecclesial Convention of the Diocese of Rome, June 17, 2013.

QUOTATION: Love of God

Few want to love Him, because He loves too much. He wants us to be perfect, and we do not want to be perfect.

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

QUOTATION: Refusing to Carry One's Cross

Those who refuse to carry the Cross of Christ, are obliged to carry the bonds and the chains of Satan.

--St. Robert Bellarmine, The Seven Words on the Cross

QUOTATION: Obedience

Obedience is the test of our love of God. His laws are God’s way of enabling us to prove our love for Him; there is no obedience where there is no love, there is much obedience where there is much love.

--Fr. John Hardon, “St. Joseph - Foster Father of Jesus”

QUOTATION: God's Love

With whatever love I am loved, with that love I respond. 

--God to St. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue 

QUOTATION: Fake Christians

He who is always calculating how much he must do to be just adequate and to be able to regard himself, after a few casuistical flicks, as a man with a nice, white shirt front, is still no Christian.

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

QUOTATION: Power Grab

The desire to rule is the mother of heresies.

--St. John Chrysostom

QUOTATION: Purity

‘Purity?’ they ask. And they smile. They are the ones who go on to marriage with worn-out bodies and disillusioned souls.

--St. Josemaria Escriva

QUOTATION: Sinners

We are not sinless, but we must be sinners without sin.

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

QUOTATION: Fighting

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Take Care of Yourself

Take care of your body as if you were going to live forever; and take care of your soul as if you were going to die tomorrow.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Free Will

It is erroneous to say that human acts and events escape God's fore-knowledge and ordination. It is no less erroneous to say that God's fore-knowledge and ordination imposes necessity on human acts; otherwise free will would be removed, as well as the value of taking counsel, the usefulness of laws, the care to do what is right and the justice of rewards and punishments.

--St. Thomas Aquinas, De Rationibus Fidei ad cantorem Antiochenum, 10

QUOTATION: The Difference Between Knowing About God and Loving Him

There is a world of difference between knowing about God through study and knowing God through love—as great as a difference between a courtship carried by mail and one by personal contact. Many skeptical professors know the proofs of the existence of God better than some who say their prayers; but because the professors never acted on the knowledge which they had, because they never loved the God whom they knew by study, no new knowledge of God was given to them. They liked to talk about religion but did nothing about it, and their knowledge remained sterile as a result.

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

QUOTATION: Truth

Truth nowadays is often reduced to the subjective authenticity of the individual. A common truth intimidates us, for we identify it with the intransigent demands of totalitarian systems. But if truth is a truth of love, if it is a truth disclosed in a personal encounter with the Other and with others, then it can be set free from its enclosure in individuals and become part of the common good. As a truth of love, it is not one that can be imposed by force; it is not a truth that stifles the individual. Since it is born of love, it can penetrate to the heart, to the personal core of each man and woman. Clearly, then, faith is not intransigent but grows in respectful coexistence with others. One who believes may not be presumptuous; on the contrary, truth leads to humility, because believers know that, rather than ourselves possessing truth, it is truth that embraces and possesses us. Far from making us inflexible, the security of faith set us on a journey; it enables witness and dialogue with all.
--Pope Francis, Lumen Fidei.

QUOTATION: Body and Soul

The body expresses the person. The relation between “us” and our flesh is never accidental or incidental. Our souls and our bodies are partners, never—as gender theory asserts—strangers or even enemies.

--Pope St. John Paul II

QUOTATION: Being a Christian

Being a Christian means essentially changing over from being for oneself to being for one another.

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

QUOTATION: Faith and Love

Love is the true ruling principle of the regenerate soul, and faith ministers to it. Love is the end, faith the means; and if the means be difficult, much more is the end.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, “Faith and Love”, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 4

QUOTATION: False Ideas

Catholic doctrine tells us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged. Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them.

--Pope St. Pius X, Our Apostolic Mandate, August 25, 1910

QUOTATION: Problems

I never call difficulties "problems." I always say, "gift of God," because it is always much easier to take a gift than to take a problem.

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