QUOTATION: Threefold Hierarchy

Your bishop presides in the place of God, and your presbyters in the place of the assembly of the Apostles, along with your deacons, who are most dear to me.

--St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Magnesians, 6.

QUOTATION: Communism

A bishop can attach himself to communism only at the expense of his own cause.

--Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty

QUOTATION: The Clergy on Judgement Day

Let us fear lest the angered judge say to us: If you were the enlighteners of My Church, why have you closed your eyes? If you pretended to be shepherds of the flock, why have you suffered it to stray? Salt of the earth, you have lost your savor. Light of the world, they that sat in darkness and the shadow of death have never seen you shine. You were apostles; who, then, put your apostolic firmness to the test, since you have done nothing but seek to please men? You were the mouth of the Lord, and you have made that mouth dumb. If you allege in excuse that the burden was beyond your strength, why did you make it the object of your ambitious intrigues?

–-St. Charles Borromeo

QUOTATION: Church and State

Bishops must not rashly assail kings, if there be no grave sins for which the latter deserve reproach; but, if there be grave sins, the bishop must not spare, that the offenders may be corrected by his just remonstrances.

--St. Ambrose

QUOTATION: It's Not All Up to the Bishops

If laypeople don’t love their Catholic faith enough to struggle for it in the public square, nothing the bishops do will finally matter.

--Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

QUOTATION: The Duty of Bishops

Is the hierarchy perhaps free to teach what they find most to their liking on matters of religion, or what they expect will be most pleasing to the proponents of certain current views opposed to all doctrine? Certainly not! The prime duty of the episcopate is to transmit strictly and faithfully the original message of Christ, the sum total of the truths which He revealed and confided to the Apostles as necessary for salvation.

--Pope Paul VI

QUOTATION: Hell

Priests and bishops who don’t teach about Hell will probably wind up there.

--Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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: Bishops

Bishops, who are the successors of the Apostles, and priests, who according to their proper office cooperate with the Bishops, have been charged with announcing and teaching that gospel which Jesus and His Apostles first announced and taught, and which this Holy See and all the Bishops united to it have preserved and transmitted pure and inviolate through the centuries. The holy pastors, therefore, are not the inventors and the composers of this gospel, but only its authorized custodians and its divinely constituted heralds.

--Pope Pius XII, Ad Sinarum Gentem, 1954